The Travelling Band
Saturday was not only the biggest day for Friends of Mine Festival, with the Rapture imminent, it was also judgment day.
We spent the last twenty minutes of our lives catching up with Adam Gorman and Jo Dudderidge from The Travelling Band. Fortunately we survived and went on to watch them perform a stunning set on the Lake Stage at dusk.
- It’s 20 minutes until the end of the world, is this where you envisaged yourselves to be?
Jo: To be honest there’s worse places to be. We’ve got a British flag, a nice bottle of wine, some binoculars, I’m with my best mate, all we need is a guitar and a couple of strippers and we’ll be sorted.
- How does it feel to be playing a festival in your home town?
Adam: It feels great and it’s the first one of the season so it’s nice to be close to home. It’s good to do Friends of Mine too, we’ve played the club night a few times so it’s nice to see it go from that to a big festival.
- Why do you think Manchester doesn’t already have an established festival?
Jo: I was chatting with someone about this. Although there are some decent green spaces, like Platt Fields, it’s difficult because there’s a church there and houses around.
After that you’re looking at Heaton Park, which is awkward, so I suppose just lack of transport links and lack of green spaces - I think they should turn Old Trafford into a festival site and maybe dismantle the football club at the same time.
- Manchester has a rich musical heritage, but people from outside the city particularly, tend to associate a stereotype that you guys don’t really fit. Do people have certain expectations of you as a Manchester band?
Jo: People just expect you to take lots of drugs and drink loads. They think that you’re mad for it but I think Manchester’s always had a pretty eclectic music scene.
Although there’s been huge waves of subculture over the years and this festival proves that there’s just a whole mix of music from Manchester, different types, different kinds of people, but the thing I buzz about Manchester is that everyone gets on and everyone’s just doing it because they love it.
- Is Friends of Mine a good opportunity to prove what Manchester has to offer then?
Adam: I think so. It’s a real thriving city and it’s very diverse with lots of little pockets of different things going on rather than just one large scene, so it’s nice to see that represented at a festival.
- How did you come to developing a sound that is so far removed from your environment?
Jo: It’s the records we’re into, the records we listened to when we were younger and the records we all put on when we went to each other’s houses. We were all in different bands and the band started as a bit of a cheeky bit on the side.
While the cat’s away the mice will play. We used to play a lot of 60s and 70s records and harmony bands as well as bands like Wilco and The Shins and we’d just get together and play each other’s records.
I’m not really sure that we were necessarily trying to go for that but I think the sound of guys singing in harmonies was just natural because that what we were doing at parties and stuff.
But if you go back to The Hollies, that’s what they did, so for me when you’re talking about Manchester harmony bands, just go back 40 years and you’ve got that.
- I read that you formed in New York - how did you all meet?
Jo: We met in the GUM clinic one fateful day, it was a positive result. I mean it was a negative positive.
Adam: It all canceled each other out. But we ended up recording the first album in New York which is where that comes from and that was really where we got together.
We weren’t really a proper band at that point we just all ended up heading out there because we had the opportunity to record in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, so we all sold cars and guitars and just funded it however we could and it was born out of that.
- Where did the name The Travelling Band come from?
Jo: We love playing live obviously, most bands do and those who don’t need to get their head out their arse and do something else. But the name stuck early because of the three bands we were born out of going off on tour.
We went to Cornwall on the tour and had this idea about having this supergroup, so the three bands getting on stage and that would be the Travelling Band and it stuck. So we never really sat down and had this whole discussion about it.
Some people think we’re gypsies, not that there’s anything wrong with being a gypsy or a traveller, but they get the wrong end of the stick when we call ourselves The Travelling Band.
- The name fits the music perfectly though - was the sound developed before the name?
Adam: I would say so, I don’t think it was really in conjunction with the name, it was more of an idea that someone, who actually isn’t in the band, came up with.
- Your second album Screaming is Something is out at the end of the month, what kind of progression can we expect to see from the debut?
Jo: Well we were loosely a jam band when we started and recording the first album was the first time we recorded together. It whittled down to six guys in a room so there was very little time spent pre-planning it.
But it had the energy of some more traditional recording methods where you would just learn the song and go in and do it and we recorded all the vocals live so a lot of it was quite understated.
With this record we’ve definitely tried to be a lot more ambitious with some of the arrangements and the textures and we’ve also been producing it so as a band we’ve had that control over the songs and the way the album works.
It’s a more epic record I think, it’s more direct and I think that songs are better, the arrangements are better and it’s just a better record all round.
- What’s the lyrical content of the album?
Adam: It’s quite broad, anything from infidelity to the inevitability of death really, it has it’s lighter moments as well but I think I lot of people get into our music and see it as quite joyous and happy but when you get into the lyrical side of it a bit more you see there’s a bit more to it than that.
It’s hard to sum-up because we have different songwriters so there’s different themes approached by different people. But lyrically for me, the listener is always involved. When someone hears a lyric it can mean something completely different for someone else, so it’s up to the listener to make that decision as well.
Jo: I think it’s got that more morose side of our personalities in it but I think all the songs have that little bit of hope in them.
- What can we expect from the set tonight?
Jo: I think we’re going to concentrate on playing tunes off the new record. I think it’ll be pretty upbeat and we’ll probably have some far out moments, we’ll just see what happens I guess.
This will be the fourth gig of the tour and it’s going great. We’re still sort of working it out because we were off the road for a while.
Adam: We’re just settling back in and the screws are tightening but we played in Leicester last night and gigs have been getting gradually better so that’s going to stand us in good stead for tonight.
Jo: We started in London and Manchester though and I think in the future we should leave them until last
- What other acts are you looking forward to seeing?
Adam: Badly Drawn Boy definitely. It will be nice to see Damon.
Jo: And Joe Rose tomorrow, there’s loads of good stuff. We’re going to see it through, we might have to go home on Sunday night and make sure we’re rested up for our Preston gig but you’ll see us at a campfire at some point.
Adam: Well that’s after the Rapture, I think there’ll be a few campfires after that.
Jo: Well me and Adam like to think we’re on the good side of the apocalypse.
Interview by Antonia Charlesworth
Saturday was not only the biggest day for Friends of Mine Festival, with the Rapture imminent, it was also judgment day.
We spent the last twenty minutes of our lives catching up with Adam Gorman and Jo Dudderidge from The Travelling Band. Fortunately we survived and went on to watch them perform a stunning set on the Lake Stage at dusk.
- It’s 20 minutes until the end of the world, is this where you envisaged yourselves to be?
Jo: To be honest there’s worse places to be. We’ve got a British flag, a nice bottle of wine, some binoculars, I’m with my best mate, all we need is a guitar and a couple of strippers and we’ll be sorted.
- How does it feel to be playing a festival in your home town?
Adam: It feels great and it’s the first one of the season so it’s nice to be close to home. It’s good to do Friends of Mine too, we’ve played the club night a few times so it’s nice to see it go from that to a big festival.
- Why do you think Manchester doesn’t already have an established festival?
Jo: I was chatting with someone about this. Although there are some decent green spaces, like Platt Fields, it’s difficult because there’s a church there and houses around.
After that you’re looking at Heaton Park, which is awkward, so I suppose just lack of transport links and lack of green spaces - I think they should turn Old Trafford into a festival site and maybe dismantle the football club at the same time.
- Manchester has a rich musical heritage, but people from outside the city particularly, tend to associate a stereotype that you guys don’t really fit. Do people have certain expectations of you as a Manchester band?
Jo: People just expect you to take lots of drugs and drink loads. They think that you’re mad for it but I think Manchester’s always had a pretty eclectic music scene.
Although there’s been huge waves of subculture over the years and this festival proves that there’s just a whole mix of music from Manchester, different types, different kinds of people, but the thing I buzz about Manchester is that everyone gets on and everyone’s just doing it because they love it.
- Is Friends of Mine a good opportunity to prove what Manchester has to offer then?
Adam: I think so. It’s a real thriving city and it’s very diverse with lots of little pockets of different things going on rather than just one large scene, so it’s nice to see that represented at a festival.
- How did you come to developing a sound that is so far removed from your environment?
Jo: It’s the records we’re into, the records we listened to when we were younger and the records we all put on when we went to each other’s houses. We were all in different bands and the band started as a bit of a cheeky bit on the side.
While the cat’s away the mice will play. We used to play a lot of 60s and 70s records and harmony bands as well as bands like Wilco and The Shins and we’d just get together and play each other’s records.
I’m not really sure that we were necessarily trying to go for that but I think the sound of guys singing in harmonies was just natural because that what we were doing at parties and stuff.
But if you go back to The Hollies, that’s what they did, so for me when you’re talking about Manchester harmony bands, just go back 40 years and you’ve got that.
- I read that you formed in New York - how did you all meet?
Jo: We met in the GUM clinic one fateful day, it was a positive result. I mean it was a negative positive.
Adam: It all canceled each other out. But we ended up recording the first album in New York which is where that comes from and that was really where we got together.
We weren’t really a proper band at that point we just all ended up heading out there because we had the opportunity to record in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, so we all sold cars and guitars and just funded it however we could and it was born out of that.