Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Frand Dealing of Travage brand. We
Speaker 1: were setting this up. We normally use the software Riverside,
Speaker 1: which works in Chrome. You refuse to download a Google product,
Speaker 1: tell me about that.
Speaker 2: I'm not a big fan of downloading anything onto my
Speaker 2: onto my computer. I don't really. I generally use the
Speaker 2: fary just because it's it's uh, it's more secure as
Speaker 2: a as a bit of software. There's more, you get
Speaker 2: more privacy with it. Google, Google will It's like an
Speaker 2: anal probe. They just want to get right up inside
Speaker 2: you and they're into all your bits and piece And
Speaker 2: I'm not I just find them very intrusive. I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm not keen on on when that. I think
Speaker 2: Apple are a little bit more kind of privacy oriented.
Speaker 2: Or maybe that's just what I be led to believe.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so have you had a problem downloading stuff
Speaker 1: on your computer.
Speaker 2: When today?
Speaker 1: No, I'm talking about in general, since you're anxious about
Speaker 1: downloading stuff.
Speaker 2: No. No, I I just don't like Google. I don't
Speaker 2: like the company. I'm not a big fan of Google.
Speaker 2: I'm not I think I'm not that my key on it,
Speaker 2: but I'm anyway, it's just, you know.
Speaker 1: Well, the question is, if you have a problem with Google,
Speaker 1: what other companies and what other products don't you use?
Speaker 2: I'm I don't. I don't really. I don't use Instagram,
Speaker 2: I don't use Facebook, I don't use what's that? Don't use?
Speaker 2: I actually do use Twitter, but that's now gone all
Speaker 2: a bit wobbly. I don't really, I'm not. I think
Speaker 2: their business models are interesting, you know, Facebook and or
Speaker 2: sorry Alphabet. I think their business models are how could
Speaker 2: you put it, very inventive. You know, you think you've
Speaker 2: got four hundred thousand followers or five hundred thousand followers,
Speaker 2: but in order to access those followers, you have to
Speaker 2: pay the company to open up the gate to allow
Speaker 2: you to reach all your lip you know, all your followers.
Speaker 2: So it's like an illusion. You know, you've got forty
Speaker 2: thousand or one hundred thousand, or a million or twenty
Speaker 2: five million followers, but in order to reach them you
Speaker 2: have to pay, you know. So it's it's not really
Speaker 2: it's all a bit of a like smoking mirrors thing.
Speaker 2: And again it's this feeling of being anally probed by
Speaker 2: by someone in Silicon Valley, the Silicon Valley finger.
Speaker 1: So did you used to use these programs and stop
Speaker 1: where you never used.
Speaker 2: Them at the beginning? And I never liked Facebook really
Speaker 2: very much. I did I have a Facebook account? I
Speaker 2: think it did, and I just kind of went away
Speaker 2: from it. So something kind of like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: you know, some some people just give you a vibe,
Speaker 2: and some apps just give you a vibe and you're
Speaker 2: like nah nah. And so Facebook was like that. And
Speaker 2: then I got a little bit kind of like weary
Speaker 2: because then they Facebook bought Instagram and they bought WhatsApp,
Speaker 2: and it's all about I guess having the it's I
Speaker 2: don't know. And of course there's TikTok. We were talking
Speaker 2: about TikTok today being banned in the US or possibly
Speaker 2: as a Supreme Court over the the their decision. But
Speaker 2: that's another I don't know, you know, that's a that's
Speaker 2: a whole other that's like crack cocaine. That's like social
Speaker 2: media on crack.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're not on TikTok.
Speaker 2: Fuck that well, I'm my band is on TikTok, but
Speaker 2: and personally not on TikTok. I mean that I feel
Speaker 2: it's again it's like I feel social media is do
Speaker 2: you know, like have you ever I mean, have you
Speaker 2: read like much German history? No, Like if you go
Speaker 2: back to like when what's his name Martin Luther delivered
Speaker 2: the Bible to the people, like you know, like he
Speaker 2: printed it. That it was the printing press was invented.
Speaker 2: And then suddenly you had this mass dissemination of information.
Speaker 2: And when the normal people of Germany, you know, all
Speaker 2: of the sort of normal people of Germany were able
Speaker 2: to have the Bible for the first time, they suddenly
Speaker 2: had the word do you know, they had the information
Speaker 2: at their fingertips. Interestingly, the modern German language as you
Speaker 2: know it today comes from that Bible. It was. It
Speaker 2: was written in a sort of like a sort of
Speaker 2: street the way there was there was a few different
Speaker 2: types of German when before that, and Martin Luther went
Speaker 2: around all of these different places. And when he wrote
Speaker 2: the Bible or the Old Testament, I think, yeah, he
Speaker 2: he wrote it in a sort of almost like street talk,
Speaker 2: like a sort of street version of German. And that
Speaker 2: that took the high German and the low German and
Speaker 2: put them together to get the German that we sort
Speaker 2: of know today. And so when all these people began
Speaker 2: to read this book, the Bible, they had it for
Speaker 2: like four hundred years after that it was the only
Speaker 2: printed book available to people for for a long time.
Speaker 2: But when they first got it, there was a thirty
Speaker 2: year war like because people were like, you know, the
Speaker 2: Church didn't control the world of God anymore. The people did.
Speaker 2: So we're in this moment right now where I think
Speaker 2: we're having another mass dissemination of information and it's kind
Speaker 2: of it causes chaos. And I believe that the guys
Speaker 2: in Silicon Valley they're very I'm not sure if it's
Speaker 2: left or right brained, but they're not artistically minded. They
Speaker 2: have no they're all very math you know, they're all
Speaker 2: very sort of zeros and ones, and they think in
Speaker 2: a certain way. They don't they never, i'm sure, ever
Speaker 2: considered the consequences of what the impact of social media
Speaker 2: would have on the planet. So I'm kind of I'm
Speaker 2: getting to a point and I think a lot of
Speaker 2: people are where you're like, I just want to live
Speaker 2: in a cave. Would just give me a cave and
Speaker 2: just don't like I want to throw my computer out
Speaker 2: the window. I definitely did after trying to get onto
Speaker 2: this to this today.
Speaker 1: Okay, outside the US, the world runs on WhatsApp, So
Speaker 1: you're on tour outside of the US. How do you communicate?
Speaker 2: I use them messages on iPhone and that works for you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Oh.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, just you're very well educated on these issues.
Speaker 1: What do you think about Elon Musk and his power
Speaker 1: in the American government?
Speaker 2: Well, that's that's a whole different question. That's about that
Speaker 2: talks about power. I don't know if you've read any
Speaker 2: of Robert Carrow's writing, and you know, the power broker,
Speaker 2: I know who we're talking about.
Speaker 1: I have not read these books.
Speaker 2: Well he I think he's on the fourth volume of
Speaker 2: his of his biography of My Brain's Melting, Thank you,
Speaker 2: Thank you, Lindon Johnson, and he's he talks in that.
Speaker 2: I've watched a few interviews with Carol and he speaks
Speaker 2: about power and he's sort of really his interest is
Speaker 2: in that. And he said something really interesting in a
Speaker 2: New York Times interview your podcast when he was asked
Speaker 2: about the nature of power, and one of the things
Speaker 2: he said that piqued my interest was that talks about
Speaker 2: Lyndon Johnson for I think seventeen years, you know, being
Speaker 2: very friendly and very he knew exactly who to talk
Speaker 2: to to pull in power, to gather power, and never
Speaker 2: once showed his hand about what he would do once
Speaker 2: he had that power. So for all of us people
Speaker 2: that don't have any power, I mean, it's kind of
Speaker 2: like none of us do in this world today. You're
Speaker 2: either something like Elon Musk he's got a lot of
Speaker 2: money but and and influence. But our political leaders have
Speaker 2: a lot of power. That's where the power really lies
Speaker 2: in the country. But billionaires and political leaders. And so
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what he's up to because a minute ago,
Speaker 2: you know, he was like I was like, for instance,
Speaker 2: I was saying, I'm like I was turning a corner
Speaker 2: for my sins. I bought a Tesla a few years
Speaker 2: ago because my kid was like, we got to get Tesla,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I'm happy with my nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: We say these three hundred d I'm just let's not
Speaker 2: get a Tesla. So I went, fuck it, I'll get
Speaker 2: a Tesla. And we've got this this machine that drives
Speaker 2: at this computer that drives now, and I was turning
Speaker 2: into my street in Los Angeles, in Venice in it
Speaker 2: and this guy I was beside me in the car,
Speaker 2: beside me, he rolled down his window and my window
Speaker 2: was down, my elbows on the window and this is
Speaker 2: when was this a year and a half ago? And
Speaker 2: he shouted, I mean we were maybe one foot apart
Speaker 2: from each other, took a cigarette out of his mouth
Speaker 2: and screened fuck Elon at me. And I was like,
Speaker 2: I was like, what you kidding? Because it was it
Speaker 2: was round about the time when Elon Musk was beginning
Speaker 2: to go like change his political leanings. He's moved his
Speaker 2: company to Texas. And I was like, I knew that
Speaker 2: his the worm was turning for him, but this the
Speaker 2: memo hadn't reached this guy yet that Elon was going
Speaker 2: into his car. And and but it's interesting to me
Speaker 2: how these people operate, Like for normal people like you
Speaker 2: and I and most people that roam the lands, we
Speaker 2: we're just normal people. And I have no idea what
Speaker 2: someone like that is agenda is. I can only imagine
Speaker 2: that he wants to get to Mars, so he's going
Speaker 2: to probably do everything possible to make that as easy,
Speaker 2: to make that as much the path of leisure resistance
Speaker 2: as possible. So I don't think he's I think he's
Speaker 2: definitely on the spectrum. So his his very is very
Speaker 2: sort of know what to behavior, what would seem like
Speaker 2: anti social behavior, like his op likes the way he talks,
Speaker 2: the way he acts in a kind of different way.
Speaker 2: I think that's definitely spectrumy. I mean, we're all on
Speaker 2: the the my grainbow in some way, in some more
Speaker 2: than others. But I think possibly with Elon Musk, he's
Speaker 2: definitely he wants to go to Mars. He wants to
Speaker 2: save the world, and he doesn't really give a damn
Speaker 2: about like what people think. It seems. But I'm from
Speaker 2: the outside where you and I are sitting, does it matter?
Speaker 2: Do we have any power to change any of that?
Speaker 2: Doesn't really seem so we're quite powerless. And I realized
Speaker 2: that a long time ago. I realized that when when
Speaker 2: we had the Iraq War with George W. Bush and
Speaker 2: Tony Blair's wonderful war in Iraq that everyone marched against
Speaker 2: because we all smelled something funny, fishy, and everyone said,
Speaker 2: don't do it, and they did it anyway. That's when
Speaker 2: I began to realize, Oh, God, this this idea of
Speaker 2: democracy and this idea of the people have the power
Speaker 2: is actually it's kind of not really, not really true.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna change the focus for a minute. Originally,
Speaker 1: you're from Scotland. Yes, Scotland has talked off and on
Speaker 1: about seceding from the UK. In addition, UK you've had Brexit.
Speaker 1: What are your views on those things?
Speaker 2: I remember, I remember where I was when breakfast we
Speaker 2: were in Amsterdam. I was sitting in a hotel lobby
Speaker 2: when I when I saw the headlines and I was like,
Speaker 2: this is not good. It's not good. For first of all,
Speaker 2: it's it was you know, you watch the the the
Speaker 2: way that what's the word? The campaign was ruled out
Speaker 2: and it was very very persuasive to you if you
Speaker 2: didn't maybe read enough or or look at the news enough,
Speaker 2: or you didn't get your news from different sources. And
Speaker 2: this was the birth of Cambridge Analytica as well. This
Speaker 2: was their their little guinea pig almost Brexit was to
Speaker 2: see if they could target people on Facebook, you know,
Speaker 2: and get there exactly know exactly who would we who's
Speaker 2: about to tip to the right or the left, and
Speaker 2: they can send them exactly a tailored commercial to their
Speaker 2: Facebook that will tip them in favor of Brexit. And
Speaker 2: they did and they won, and I was like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this is going to be a disaster. And
Speaker 2: it's been a disaster. Wow. We can't like even I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's gone into every walk of life. I think
Speaker 2: it's going into I mean, speaking personally, the live business
Speaker 2: where you could get in a tour bus and just
Speaker 2: tour Europe and go around Europe as a band. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of red tape now, I mean
Speaker 2: a lot. And we talk about our fishing industry, we
Speaker 2: talk about like the role of and also the breakup
Speaker 2: of Europe. You're seeing it fragmenting, you're seeing Russia NATO again.
Speaker 2: All of these things are way above my head and
Speaker 2: I'm sure your head and everyone's head, because it's these
Speaker 2: are the this is you go back to this idea
Speaker 2: of power and that's where it lies and lies. And
Speaker 2: I mean I had little tiny brushes with it here
Speaker 2: and there down the line when I'm I've been to
Speaker 2: Brussels and I've gone in to represent some of the
Speaker 2: music business. You know, when we've been talking about Brexit
Speaker 2: and we've been talking about like trying to sort of
Speaker 2: make it easier for bands to make some money from recording.
Speaker 2: So I've been there, but you get the feeling that
Speaker 2: there's so much like you're talking a different language anyway,
Speaker 2: bricks at Brexit was a really big fumble over there,
Speaker 2: but we're living again where these this is like, you know, me,
Speaker 2: you live in interesting times. We're living in such interesting times,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, just because a lot of people are Americans who
Speaker 1: are really not familiar with world politics, explain why Scotland
Speaker 1: wanted to s seed and what the status of that
Speaker 1: is today?
Speaker 2: No idea what the status is today. It's it's Scotland
Speaker 2: wanted independence. I can't honestly because I moved away like
Speaker 2: twenty twenty odd years ago. So as a Scottish person
Speaker 2: moving away, I don't want to be one of these
Speaker 2: against Scottish people who are like blah blah blah when
Speaker 2: I don't live there. You know, I live in the
Speaker 2: United States and I'm I'm kind of I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm in I'm neither in. I'm in neither country, but
Speaker 2: I'm on a base level. The Scottish National Party ran
Speaker 2: a very very good campaign to have Scotland become independent,
Speaker 2: and at the time I wasn't sure because I wasn't
Speaker 2: living there. You've got to be there, you've got to
Speaker 2: be on you've got to have feet on the ground
Speaker 2: and be in the bars and be in the street
Speaker 2: and be in the supermarket and be talking because we
Speaker 2: like to talk in Glasgow. And so a lot of
Speaker 2: my friends were pro it. Some of my friends were
Speaker 2: against it. Personally, I always feel like putting walls up
Speaker 2: and dividing things is not great. But I think the
Speaker 2: reasons for independence in Scotland stem from just long history
Speaker 2: of England or sorry no England London and just kind
Speaker 2: of fucking us are. Like you rewind back to the
Speaker 2: nineteen late nineteen eighties nineties. We have a thing called
Speaker 2: the poll tax and this was like a type of
Speaker 2: tax that British government tried out in Scotland. First, you know,
Speaker 2: where do all the where do all the nuclear submarines
Speaker 2: say they live in Scotland. You know they don't live
Speaker 2: in England. They keep all the nuclear arsenal of Britain
Speaker 2: next to us. I mean, it's it's kind of like funny,
Speaker 2: you know. So this is all of these reasons, like
Speaker 2: they the nuclear thing, to the economic thing, to just
Speaker 2: this historic thing of being kind of humped by London.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of Scottish people, half of Scotland
Speaker 2: almost wanted to secede, as you say, and it didn't happen.
Speaker 2: They failed, And but now that then then Brexit happened
Speaker 2: and now I don't know where anyone stands because the SNP,
Speaker 2: the Scottish National Party, is in disarray. They've lost Alex Salmon,
Speaker 2: the leader at the time of that. He's dead. He
Speaker 2: died last year. Nicolas Sturgeon, who used to run the SNP,
Speaker 2: she resigned. She's in a sus a weird scandal herself.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's been resolved. So it's Scottish
Speaker 2: politics is in slight disarray.
Speaker 1: So how did you decide to leave Scotland in the UK?
Speaker 2: It's a great question. Well, I Travis. So Travis got
Speaker 2: together in nineteen ninety one. That's when we started the band.
Speaker 2: I was starting our school and I started the band
Speaker 2: at the same time. And we chugged along for six years,
Speaker 2: our five years or whatever, and it became and I
Speaker 2: got a little bit better and a little bit better
Speaker 2: at writing songwriting, and then it became clear to me
Speaker 2: anyway that we needed to change the backdrop. We needed
Speaker 2: to bring the the mountain was that they say the
Speaker 2: mountain would come to Mohammad, take my Hammed to the mountain. Right.
Speaker 2: I had to do that. We had to go down
Speaker 2: to London to seek our fame and fortune Dick Whittington style,
Speaker 2: and we arrived there in nine team nine to six
Speaker 2: June the first or April the first, Oh no, yeah,
Speaker 2: June the first, and we that's where we stayed for
Speaker 2: twelve years. We went down for six months to try
Speaker 2: and get a record deal. We were all on the
Speaker 2: doll meaning one how met unemployment benefit right, which we
Speaker 2: called the John Major mute John Major, who is the
Speaker 2: UK Prime Minister. We called the unemployment benefit the John
Speaker 2: Major Music Scholarship Scheme. And we we got lucky. We
Speaker 2: got a deal very quickly. The day before my twenty
Speaker 2: third birthday July twenty second, nineteen ninety six, this guy
Speaker 2: came up to me in a bar and said, I
Speaker 2: want to give your band a deal like and I
Speaker 2: was like what, because we'd only just got there and
Speaker 2: he'd managed to get a tape from someone and we
Speaker 2: sang to this to this guy a few months later,
Speaker 2: but that's another story. But yeah, that's why we went
Speaker 2: down there. We we we couldn't get arrested in Scotland.
Speaker 2: I think people come up there and they they they
Speaker 2: check people out, they check bands out, and I think
Speaker 2: we just had to go down And it was a
Speaker 2: really interesting time in London. It was britt pop was booming,
Speaker 2: the the art scene was amazing, and labor was just
Speaker 2: about to get into power. Tony Blair was just about
Speaker 2: to so everything was was was about to flip to
Speaker 2: to something new. And we went down and we were
Speaker 2: right in the midst of all this when when we arrived,
Speaker 2: and so really and it was a really great time.
Speaker 2: It was it was you have Oasis and pub britt
Speaker 2: pop and all that stuff going on, and we weren't
Speaker 2: really part of that. But that's why we need to.
Speaker 1: Live, okay. And how did you leave London?
Speaker 2: Ah? We left London. So we moved in ninety six
Speaker 2: and in two thousand and six I had my kids,
Speaker 2: my boy Clay, and and while we while my wife
Speaker 2: was pregnant with Clay, someone through a brick through our
Speaker 2: window and there was a series of events, like three
Speaker 2: things happened we had a brick thrown through our window.
Speaker 2: Someone stole like I'd lest stupidly left my laptop sitting
Speaker 2: on a sort of with it opened, like glowing out
Speaker 2: of the window. So I got my laptop stolen. They
Speaker 2: smashed the window and I felt like, whoa, that's that's
Speaker 2: that's a bit kind of aggressive. And then two people,
Speaker 2: two of our neighbors, were mugged on our street, one
Speaker 2: at knife point and then another one was at knife
Speaker 2: point taking on a bus, driven away out into the
Speaker 2: middle of nowhere and robbed. Neither of them were hurt,
Speaker 2: but I was like, wow, that's it felt like it
Speaker 2: didn't feel safe anymore. And we lived in a very
Speaker 2: leafy suburb of London called crouch End where Nick Hornby,
Speaker 2: the writer based High Fidelity, was based there. That's the
Speaker 2: neighborhood from that book. So that's that. When we got there,
Speaker 2: it was really nice and then it started to cool
Speaker 2: a bit nasty, so I was like, let's just go,
Speaker 2: and so we moved to Berlin. Meet my wife and
Speaker 2: like two eighteen month old son. We moved to Berlin
Speaker 2: and Berlin was I mean, for such a huge city
Speaker 2: in Berlin's massive, it's quite provincial when we moved there.
Speaker 2: You know, you've get kids here are like nine, ten
Speaker 2: eleven walking hand in hand down the street. It's lovely.
Speaker 2: And so we went there. We stayed there for ten
Speaker 2: years and I had a lovely time, and then came
Speaker 2: to came to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Okay, There're been a lot of legendary records made in Berlin.
Speaker 1: We had David Bowie in the seventies, We ultimately had
Speaker 1: you two. Could those records have been made anywhere or
Speaker 1: is there a vibe that affects your creativity in Berlin?
Speaker 2: Well? Interestingly, I the both of those bands and Depeche
Speaker 2: Mode made their seminal albums are arguably some of their
Speaker 2: most seminal work in one studio called hansa Hands of
Speaker 2: Tone Studio, and I had I had. My room was
Speaker 2: in that complex. My room was the room where Depeche
Speaker 2: Mode even when we were recording. When I was demoing,
Speaker 2: I was a found video of Depeche Mode in my
Speaker 2: room playing like showing a journalist how to sample the
Speaker 2: sound of dropping like a scruise on the ground and
Speaker 2: showing them that you could put it into keep order
Speaker 2: and you can so could the question, Yeah, Berlin I
Speaker 2: think now this is both of those bands. Actually, you
Speaker 2: two came after the wall fell, so Bert Bowie did
Speaker 2: a lot of great work with you know, in hans
Speaker 2: A before the Way, before the wall fell. You two
Speaker 2: came in after the wall fell. There is a vibe
Speaker 2: there and I think, but the further you got away,
Speaker 2: the further you got away from the vibe at the
Speaker 2: further you got away from the wall falling in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine, that the more it Berlin has become a
Speaker 2: little bit just smoother, you know, a little bit more
Speaker 2: and your margindized, if you know what I mean. You know,
Speaker 2: the high store streets are kind of like the high
Speaker 2: store streets. They got a Uni Globe, they've got a Nike,
Speaker 2: They've got you know, all these things. So it's but
Speaker 2: there's definitely, you know, Berlin is a very interesting town.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: If you want provincial, you got it in Spade Fields.
Speaker 2: If you want Second World War horror like tours, you
Speaker 2: got it. If you want to go and dance all
Speaker 2: night in a nightclub, you got it. And Berlin's kind
Speaker 2: of got it all. And there's a very liberal I
Speaker 2: would say liberal. It's an interesting flavor because it's not
Speaker 2: quite liberal. It's it's when people can put up with
Speaker 2: other people. I don't know the words my Ward's family,
Speaker 2: when people can like if you're gay, black, white, and
Speaker 2: they don't care. It's just like you're just a human,
Speaker 2: let's just go on with it. I think like in
Speaker 2: all the years I lived in Berlin, and never once
Speaker 2: I never once heard any and everyone saw someone getting
Speaker 2: beaten up, and never once saw broken glass, and never
Speaker 2: once saw anyone raised their voices to anyone. It's a
Speaker 2: very and I think that has a lot to do
Speaker 2: with their history, where there's almost zero tolerance over there
Speaker 2: of any aggression of any kind. So you've got like
Speaker 2: you could you can be arrested for calling someone a cunt,
Speaker 2: which is if you're in Glasgow. I mean it's like
Speaker 2: Glasgow's like you know, Iceland has got like a thousand
Speaker 2: ways to say snows. In Glasgow, there's like a thousand
Speaker 2: meanings of the word cunt. We use it in a
Speaker 2: very different way than everyone else. So if you call
Speaker 2: someone a seaward in Glasgow, sorry, in Berlin, you can
Speaker 2: get arrested because they don't put up with any of it.
Speaker 2: And I think that's got a lot to do with
Speaker 2: their like the history people just they don't have any
Speaker 2: time for any any like anger or aggression. But weirdly,
Speaker 2: as I've been living in Los Angeles the last eight
Speaker 2: years and looking over to Berlin and still talking to
Speaker 2: friends over there, looking at the news every day, we're
Speaker 2: beginning the pendulum is swinging to the to the other
Speaker 2: side again. And it seems to be very like like
Speaker 2: I say, it's a pendulum, the pendulum of politics or
Speaker 2: the pendulum of pendulum of the populace with one way
Speaker 2: and another. I think Angelo mercle was possibly one of
Speaker 2: the most amazing and politicians in history. Like she managed
Speaker 2: to hold on to power, keep everyone happy, most closely
Speaker 2: stand on the world stage. And and she had she
Speaker 2: had a very and and she had a very sort
Speaker 2: of right on background. But I know it's and then
Speaker 2: she's left, and pendulum is the petulum is swinging very
Speaker 2: much in the opposite direction. Now, I guess ship like
Speaker 2: that happens.
Speaker 1: So how did you end up leaving Berlin and getting
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles again?
Speaker 2: It was never and it wasn't really a plan as such.
Speaker 2: I we had a we had a We're fortunate enough
Speaker 2: to have an apartment in New York and we got
Speaker 2: that in two thousand and three and we sold it
Speaker 2: in two thousand and fifteen or so, and I was like,
Speaker 2: we we knew we had friends in Los Angeles, and
Speaker 2: I was like, let's just get a place there, like
Speaker 2: swap a brick for a brick. So we did that
Speaker 2: and we went over to LA and when we were
Speaker 2: over someone was like, oh, they're having open days for schools.
Speaker 2: And Clay had been not really enjoying bilingual school, which
Speaker 2: is like in Germany. In Berlin, he went to German
Speaker 2: speaking an English speaking school together and they teach you
Speaker 2: mathematics in German and they teach you history and English
Speaker 2: and it's like it all kind of and he never
Speaker 2: really liked it. So we saw a school over here
Speaker 2: and then we thought, fuck it, let's just go. So
Speaker 2: we all of our stuff in a big truck and
Speaker 2: came to LA. And we've been here and I'm gett.
Speaker 2: I think it's like it seems to be a pattern here,
Speaker 2: like a ten or around about ten years. Every ten
Speaker 2: years I moved to another place, and it's coming up
Speaker 2: to that now.
Speaker 1: So if we were talking, we are talking, would you
Speaker 1: be saying, yeah, I'm ready to move on from La.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely, I've never you know, on like
Speaker 2: La and Berlin are apparently his sister sister cities, and
Speaker 2: there's there there couldn't be more different, Like I was saying,
Speaker 2: in all my time in ten years in Berlin, I
Speaker 2: didn't hear anyone raise their voice to anyone. I didn't
Speaker 2: see any trouble. It's a very peaceful place. Like yeah
Speaker 2: it was. It was super peaceful on the country. Come
Speaker 2: into Los Angeles. It's like you're I was saying to
Speaker 2: someone the other day, LA is like a pressure point
Speaker 2: on like if you're getting a massage and someone you know,
Speaker 2: presses that a little bit in your back where you're
Speaker 2: like fucking know here where all the where, everything, all
Speaker 2: the nerves come into one point. That's l A is
Speaker 2: one of those places. And uh, it's it's it's downs
Speaker 2: is it. Yeah, it's it's upstream from from other places.
Speaker 2: If it happens here in La, then you can be
Speaker 2: guaranteed it's probably going to happen somewhere else down the line. Culturally,
Speaker 2: you know, they make Hollywood here and and but I
Speaker 2: and all of the cities I've ever lived in, I mean,
Speaker 2: Ela gets a really Eli gets. I don't know why
Speaker 2: people think Ella is kind of like look and dizzy
Speaker 2: or you know, you get New Yorkers early la and
Speaker 2: can't San Franciscan say like la as if it's kind
Speaker 2: of like nah, I've never lived in a more badass,
Speaker 2: hard ass city than this. I mean this city at
Speaker 2: the moment anyway. And maybe it's just the time, but
Speaker 2: the it's like, you've got that this homeless crisis. You
Speaker 2: got seventy thousand homeless people, which is you know, it's
Speaker 2: like what in it? How can I how can people
Speaker 2: let that happen in the richest country in the world.
Speaker 2: You've got insane crime. I saw I've seen four people
Speaker 2: dying in front of me on the street in Los Angeles. Well,
Speaker 2: I've lived here. I've gotten into four different altercations, not
Speaker 2: none of which had anything to do with be just
Speaker 2: people like I got someone try to carjackbe like pull
Speaker 2: me out of the window of my car. Someone When
Speaker 2: we were away from our house for a little while
Speaker 2: we came back, I'm talking like a week. We came
Speaker 2: back to our house. There was a dudle in our house,
Speaker 2: tooled up like he had but he was he'd just
Speaker 2: taken drugs, so he was a little bit like, you know,
Speaker 2: out of his head a little bit, and he was
Speaker 2: a big guy and I had to like gingerly walk
Speaker 2: him out of the house, you know. And I got
Speaker 2: into this fight where a guy who smashed his hands
Speaker 2: down on my car and ordered me to get out
Speaker 2: of the car, which, being from Glasgow, I did. He
Speaker 2: took his shoes off and it was like going to
Speaker 2: like beat me up karate style, and I managed to
Speaker 2: talk him off the ledge. We're very diplomatic Scottish people.
Speaker 2: We top people off ledges. They should get us in for,
Speaker 2: you know, like when people are on when people are
Speaker 2: jumping off bridges. And oh yeah, I got bitten by
Speaker 2: a dog and almost lost my finger, my finger. I
Speaker 2: was a neighbor's dog escaped and I was just driving
Speaker 2: down my hill and at at like another neighbor's dog
Speaker 2: had been hit by a card a year earlier, and
Speaker 2: I've seen I saw the dog and I'd stopped my
Speaker 2: car and there was all the other cars on the
Speaker 2: on the road and I was like, no on my watch,
Speaker 2: And so I chased this sausage dog up my hill
Speaker 2: and then picked it up and it just like chewed
Speaker 2: my finger off. So it's been and then, yeah, I've
Speaker 2: seen people like I've seen things. I feel like Rutger
Speaker 2: Hower at the end of Plage Runner. I've seen things
Speaker 2: you wouldn't believe. It's living in Los Angeles, and I'm
Speaker 2: not to mention you're like, we're truly right in the
Speaker 2: heart of global warming. It's like last year there was
Speaker 2: massive floods. My house flooded and it was a nightmare.
Speaker 2: This year, my friend's houses are gone, they burnt down.
Speaker 2: Because it's just like what and we're right on the
Speaker 2: San Andreas fault line ready to pop at any second.
Speaker 2: Why anyone would come here? You know, you've got to
Speaker 2: be crazy to come here, right, but in a weird way,
Speaker 2: all of that kind of all of that kind of
Speaker 2: makes it interesting. But I am absolutely ready to move
Speaker 2: from Los Angeles. I think if you've lived here, if
Speaker 2: you were born here and you grew up, it's like
Speaker 2: boiling a frog, you'll have no idea that coming in
Speaker 2: from the outside. I mean my album, there's a song
Speaker 2: on the album, which is the title track of the album,
Speaker 2: which is a massive event on Los Angeles and it's
Speaker 2: a sort of spoken word. I'm not saying it's a rap,
Speaker 2: but it's a spoken word of me just ranting about
Speaker 2: the city. And I think the reason if if, if anything.
Speaker 2: And again, and then there's the people of Los Angeles
Speaker 2: who you see, it's been amazing actually to watch people
Speaker 2: going out and helping other people in this time of
Speaker 2: this disastrous time that everyone's certain neighborhoods are going through
Speaker 2: the outpouring of of of charity and helping and it's like,
Speaker 2: I've never seen anything like it. And I think because
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, you're not really you don't get a
Speaker 2: chance to rehearse being a human being because you're everyone.
Speaker 2: Come out of your house, you get in your car,
Speaker 2: go to your work, get out your car, you walk
Speaker 2: up the stairs, do your work, come down the stairs,
Speaker 2: getting your car, go home, walk across your path, go
Speaker 2: into your house. There's that sort of so everyone is
Speaker 2: in there these like metal boxes in their pods, listening
Speaker 2: to their podcasts. Hopefully they're listening to this one. And
Speaker 2: and but there's not this. It's there's no metro system.
Speaker 2: You know, like if you were to take what we
Speaker 2: were in Paris in September and I was thinking, wow,
Speaker 2: if you if you took the Metro out of Paris.
Speaker 2: It would be like, how could you possibly have Paris
Speaker 2: without the metro? How could you have New York without
Speaker 2: the subway and the and the and the bus system.
Speaker 2: Or London with its tubes and its public transport, where
Speaker 2: no matter if you're rich or poor and everything in between, black, white,
Speaker 2: every religion and creed, they all get on it. You
Speaker 2: all sit next to each other. You might meet someone
Speaker 2: who talks to you. You might you might be and
Speaker 2: you might have a revelation, you might have nothing, but
Speaker 2: you're all in it together, whereas in La we're all
Speaker 2: in our own separate little pods and the We do
Speaker 2: have a public transport system here, but that's generally for
Speaker 2: like poor people who can't afford a cup. So I think,
Speaker 2: like watching how the city and the people of the
Speaker 2: city have reacted to this disaster just now, it's been
Speaker 2: really interesting because I think folk are dying to be human,
Speaker 2: you know, they're like they just they want that there's
Speaker 2: a there's an absence, there's like her They talk about
Speaker 2: the drought and the hills. There's been like a drought
Speaker 2: of humanity or something here. You know, there's people aren't
Speaker 2: allowed to talk to one another because they're all in there,
Speaker 2: they're all in their cars. Anyway I am. I mean,
Speaker 2: I could talk all day about it, but I think
Speaker 2: it's time to move on.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, just to stay on this LA point for
Speaker 1: one second. You're talking about New Yorkers in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: people putting down Los Angeles. Yeah, what are the positives
Speaker 1: that you seem to be alluding to?
Speaker 2: I think there's there's there's It's like if you concrete
Speaker 2: everything over, you know, nature has a habit of just
Speaker 2: like popping through you. You see the little bit of
Speaker 2: green grass popping through the crack on the pavement, on
Speaker 2: the sidewalk, And I think underneath all of this there's
Speaker 2: a there's a big heart. Ellie's got a big heart.
Speaker 2: But it's too dangerous, you know. I mean, I've got
Speaker 2: to say it's a dangerous place. And I'm like, I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm reached. I'm reaching my third strike and
Speaker 2: I don't know you are My inner my inner alarm
Speaker 2: bell alerts, it's is it red? Now it's like get out,
Speaker 2: you know my I mean for five years ago was
Speaker 2: like get ready, and now it's like get out. So
Speaker 2: I'm not alluding to it. I don't think. I think
Speaker 2: you meet in your life. There's loads of people you
Speaker 2: meet along the way, and you learn a little bit
Speaker 2: from every single person you meet, and then there's all
Speaker 2: like the other people that you don't get to meet.
Speaker 2: I think this is a I think I came to
Speaker 2: Los Angeles to live at a really, for want of
Speaker 2: a better word, interesting time, and it's not being great.
Speaker 2: It's been frustrating at times. I am and I'm ready
Speaker 2: to I'm ready to get out. I mean, my friend
Speaker 2: left the other day. He's he's moved to Alabama and
Speaker 2: of all places, to Birmingham, and I was like, you're leaving,
Speaker 2: Like it's like the guy running from the the warehouse
Speaker 2: is the warehouse explodes into you know in the movies,
Speaker 2: and he's driving his car and on the background there's
Speaker 2: like fire, and you know, it's like Lord of the
Speaker 2: Rings in the background. It's it's a it's a it's
Speaker 2: a it's an intense place, and I've really kind of
Speaker 2: enjoyed and not enjoyed living here. I don't think I've
Speaker 2: ever been more stressed out than I've than than to
Speaker 2: be in in LA than any other city I've ever
Speaker 2: lived in. So I'm quite ready to move on to
Speaker 2: I mean, I think about maybe moving back to New
Speaker 2: York because my kid is going to art school there
Speaker 2: next next year. Like New York, I mean, when we
Speaker 2: moved out of New York, it was like, fuck, man,
Speaker 2: this place is that it's just too crazy. But it's
Speaker 2: there's you know, it has it has. There is more
Speaker 2: chance to bump into people on the streets in New
Speaker 2: York and less so here.
Speaker 1: Okay, how do you keep a band together when you're
Speaker 1: living in Berlin and then you're living in la.
Speaker 2: We met in various different ways, and we became a
Speaker 2: band eventually, And hmmm, what drew is to one another
Speaker 2: as friends is the thing that's at the core of
Speaker 2: the band, This friendship between the four of us, and
Speaker 2: each relationship, my relationship to Kneel and the drummer, to Dougie,
Speaker 2: to Andy the guitarist, and Andy's relationship to me and
Speaker 2: the two other guys, and you know, everyone's relationships I've
Speaker 2: woven in such a way as it's it's a very
Speaker 2: manageable relationship. You know, some bands get together in the
Speaker 2: last two weeks and you know, the front man falls
Speaker 2: out with a guitarist because the guitars wants to be
Speaker 2: the singer or I don't know, or the front of
Speaker 2: mine wants to be the drummer. I don't know. And
Speaker 2: some bands last, you know, like us twenty years as
Speaker 2: a band, thirty four years as friends. And I think
Speaker 2: there's a lot that's a lot to do with making
Speaker 2: each other laugh. There's a lot of laughter in our relationship.
Speaker 2: It's funny like each year that goes on, when we
Speaker 2: do interviews, we we're asked this more and more, like
Speaker 2: what keeps you together? Because it's like I feel like sometimes,
Speaker 2: like you know, you get these couples that be married
Speaker 2: for like fifty sixty years and it's like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: And I guess it's like you just we make each
Speaker 2: other laugh. We really expect each other space, the personal space.
Speaker 2: We also we're friends, but you're in a band together,
Speaker 2: your business partners as well, but you're also married. It's
Speaker 2: a weird quasi place between all of those three that
Speaker 2: trifecta of things and the relationship of our by this
Speaker 2: somewhere in the middle of it. And you know, you'd
Speaker 2: take a bullet for them, but you could shoot them sometimes,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like like any marriage that
Speaker 2: seems to work is there's a sort of duality there.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I love the guys in my band
Speaker 2: and we love each other, and I think that's the
Speaker 2: bottom line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but if you're all that in the same location,
Speaker 1: how does it work?
Speaker 2: All? Right? Well, thankfully we can. We get together and
Speaker 2: play shows in the same location and uh, and we
Speaker 2: go into the studio in the same location. And when
Speaker 2: we're not on the road or in the studio, we're
Speaker 2: in our different places. And and we don't need to
Speaker 2: be together all the time, because when you're on the road,
Speaker 2: you are together all the time. I think we've spent
Speaker 2: more time together than we spent with anyone in our lives,
Speaker 2: probably maybe even our own children. So yeah, we we
Speaker 2: almost like that the bat phone goes and we're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we'll be right there, and we all we all turn
Speaker 2: up to the show and and and then you go
Speaker 2: on tour, like we're about to go on a tour
Speaker 2: in America and we're going to turn up in Raley,
Speaker 2: North Carolina on Monday and get on bus and off
Speaker 2: we go, and like we've been to get there for
Speaker 2: like a long time. And I think like it just
Speaker 2: I mean I mean, god, we've there's some I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know I should say this, but there's there's
Speaker 2: some like big shows we've done where we've maybe not
Speaker 2: played for like two years, like we've had a blong
Speaker 2: break and h we've gone, fuck it, let's just do
Speaker 2: the show and see if we can just do it
Speaker 2: without raharsing, just just for the hell of it. And
Speaker 2: its fine because it's like fallen off a bike. So
Speaker 2: it is to me all the bands that I love,
Speaker 2: they've always kept there the sanctity of the band. You
Speaker 2: know that the four members have remained the same until
Speaker 2: the band had broken up. So yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: pretty easy to.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're going to go on the road, you're
Speaker 1: not going to rehearse at all.
Speaker 2: Oh No, we've we've we've basically come we've basically come
Speaker 2: off a UK tour, so we don't wear weird. We're
Speaker 2: so rehearsed. We've only had like three weeks off, so
Speaker 2: we're we're in peak match fitness right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talked earlier about being in Brussels talking about
Speaker 1: remuneration for recordings. Can you tell us more about your
Speaker 1: viewpoint on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know where I stand on that anymore.
Speaker 2: I'm still getting everything's changing so quickly right now, and
Speaker 2: it's just they don't know where I stand on it.
Speaker 2: I was talking. I was saying, in.
Speaker 3: A car park, we are driving out of a concrete
Speaker 3: car park the other day and there was a guy
Speaker 3: with his window down playing music, dance music, really.
Speaker 2: That's kind of music. And I had never heard this
Speaker 2: song ever. I don't know. It was like, no idea
Speaker 2: what this song was. This guy was. This guy was
Speaker 2: loving this. He was really getting into it, and it
Speaker 2: made me think, like I was. I just had this
Speaker 2: thought to myself that maybe in the next ten years,
Speaker 2: we'll see with all of the artificial intelligence and deep
Speaker 2: learnings of AI sort of things happening, you'll have so
Speaker 2: you'll have all the music that you like that you
Speaker 2: listen to you know it. So iTunes will know or
Speaker 2: Spotify will know what your favorite songs are because they
Speaker 2: push you in songs, they know what you like. You'll
Speaker 2: discover new songs, and so that's what's happening at the moment.
Speaker 2: And when I heard this guy's music that I didn't know,
Speaker 2: and he was like as if it was like he
Speaker 2: was listening to I don't know like something. Everyone was like,
Speaker 2: he just loved this music that I had no idea of.
Speaker 2: It made me think maybe in the next ten years
Speaker 2: or even sooner, there'll come a time when those companies Apple, Spotify,
Speaker 2: the streamers will have their own way of so you
Speaker 2: use a user, well, you'll be able to generate your
Speaker 2: own music that is so well done that it's almost
Speaker 2: it might even get to number one of the charts,
Speaker 2: and it will just be based on what you like.
Speaker 2: It's getting there. I mean, I was thinking the other day,
Speaker 2: like I was actually talking to chat GPT about it.
Speaker 2: Have you ever talked to chat GPT? No, you should
Speaker 2: try it. It's it's it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 2: it's a it's a trip. So you can actually talk
Speaker 2: to it now, and it talked back to you really
Speaker 2: like a like when you're talking. And I was saying
Speaker 2: to it because I had this thought that we'd we
Speaker 2: started this is a quite interesting bookend because we started
Speaker 2: talking about Google and my feelings of the finger of
Speaker 2: the silicon finger being like being anally anally inserted into
Speaker 2: your data. I think that I was thinking, in the future,
Speaker 2: wouldn't it be a nice thing. If every person you me,
Speaker 2: every person like these these these companies were able to
Speaker 2: mine every email that you've ever written, every phone call
Speaker 2: you've ever made, every like I'm sure they maybe do
Speaker 2: a little bit of it just now because they know
Speaker 2: what to push you for adverts and whatnot. But imagine like,
Speaker 2: because when I look at my emails, I have a
Speaker 2: certain tone and I'm sure you do too, right, And
Speaker 2: so if they got all of that information on a
Speaker 2: on on a language sort of level, and and and
Speaker 2: crunched it all together, and then they used your actual
Speaker 2: voice as well, like they could take now they can
Speaker 2: take my voice. I've done it myself. They've got the
Speaker 2: technology even now where you can say a sentence that
Speaker 2: they give you and then you can write anything and
Speaker 2: it will say in your voice. It's pretty amazing and
Speaker 2: it's very early days yet. But if you could crunch
Speaker 2: all the information from all your emails and canmmunications and
Speaker 2: somehow get your personality or close ish to your personality
Speaker 2: out of that, Like how would you answer a question
Speaker 2: about Brexit, or how would you answer a question Fran
Speaker 2: about or Bob about your mum or you know or
Speaker 2: your family or whatever imagine, like I've lost a lot
Speaker 2: of people. I just lost my friend, a really really
Speaker 2: good friend of mine, just before Christmas, and we were
Speaker 2: texting to each other a couple of days before it,
Speaker 2: and I was looking through the texts and it's like
Speaker 2: he's pretty much there, and the textion was his personality's
Speaker 2: definitely there. But imagine you could if your dad died,
Speaker 2: or your mom died, or your brother or sister died,
Speaker 2: or your best friend died, and you could call them up,
Speaker 2: you know, you could just like speak to them and
Speaker 2: they would speak back and at the close ish to them,
Speaker 2: and it was based on all their millions and billions
Speaker 2: of emails that they've written in, all of their phone
Speaker 2: calls and all of whatever is I think that would
Speaker 2: be a nice thing to do with everyone's information rather
Speaker 2: than pushing you know by this Alapisia cream threw your hair,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean there are a couple of things there.
Speaker 1: On some level, we're on the continuum because it used
Speaker 1: to be and I grew up on the East Coast,
Speaker 1: I moved to the West coast. You kind of lost
Speaker 1: touch with people. Your kid, who's what nineteen or whatever,
Speaker 1: he's never going to lose touch with anybody. Everybody's going
Speaker 1: to be completely reachable. I mean, you talk about the fires,
Speaker 1: somebody tracked me down for somebody's phone number, who's in
Speaker 1: a hotel. In the old days, if you would change
Speaker 1: your number all the time, Today people have a number
Speaker 1: that's their number. They don't want to change it because
Speaker 1: everybody knows it, et cetera. But I think when it
Speaker 1: comes to creativity, there's a human I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: you were talking, You're talking about you know, this is
Speaker 1: one of these algorithmic things people tell. You know, I
Speaker 1: got a big bug up my ass because statistically active
Speaker 1: users don't listen to playlists they pick and choose. But
Speaker 1: what if I'm listening to Jackson Brown and Joni Mitchell.
Speaker 1: It's never going to predict that I buy the First
Speaker 1: Wire album one four three. But I bought it and
Speaker 1: I listened to it and I kind of liked it.
Speaker 1: You know, same thing. You know, It's like research. Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs legend a difficult person, but leaving that alone, never
Speaker 1: did any market research. Market reasters tell you where you've been.
Speaker 1: I won't tell you where you're going. It's like people
Speaker 1: send you AI songs that sound like legendary acts and
Speaker 1: you go, oh, well that's kind of cool, but you
Speaker 1: don't continue to listen. And it's like whenever you listen,
Speaker 1: you know, we listen to the old favorites, but what
Speaker 1: we're hungry for is the new and different. So listen.
Speaker 1: There will definitely be evolution. But moving on from this point,
Speaker 1: you're going on the road. Do you have to go
Speaker 1: on the road for the money or you're going on
Speaker 1: the road because you're a band and that's what you do.
Speaker 2: You're asking some very good questions. It's great, great question.
Speaker 2: So it's a it's a balance. We when Travis started, like,
Speaker 2: first of all, all of the bands that made me
Speaker 2: once to get into a band, we're American. I just
Speaker 2: I mean it's being maybe it's a Scottish thing. We
Speaker 2: look over to America and we just love we all
Speaker 2: loved your accent, you know, I love the American accident
Speaker 2: and all the movies and the TV shows and it
Speaker 2: was just like couldn't get enough of it, and your
Speaker 2: culture was really it was just this the shining White
Speaker 2: House on the hell kind of it was to us
Speaker 2: and all the ball the music that come out of America.
Speaker 2: I mean I've got you sort of take your own
Speaker 2: for granted, the Beatles and all that thing, but Irm
Speaker 2: for instance, was a huge influence on me, not musically,
Speaker 2: but more like, this is what a band should feel
Speaker 2: like their career should be, not just this rocket to
Speaker 2: the moon and then remain in orbit for it. It's like
Speaker 2: it should go up and down, you should go left
Speaker 2: and right, and the band should stay together. And then
Speaker 2: Bill Barry sort of had his aneurysm and stepped aside,
Speaker 2: and they went on for a little bit longer. But
Speaker 2: when they were a four piece, they were my template
Speaker 2: as well as the band Robbie Robertson, Leave On Hell,
Speaker 2: et cetera. They were, if you could sort of Travis
Speaker 2: Are somewhere in It's like a cocktail of those two bands.
Speaker 2: So when we first came out to America, we toured
Speaker 2: with Ben Folds five, and we kept coming touring and
Speaker 2: touring and touring, never making a penny. We never ever
Speaker 2: ever have made money in America ever, We've never We've
Speaker 2: maybe lost money once at the very early days when
Speaker 2: we were starting out, but we generally we have all
Speaker 2: through our history just broken even in America. So we
Speaker 2: come to America when you see Travis in America, we're
Speaker 2: coming to see you. We're not there to make any
Speaker 2: money or anything, because we've never made money in America,
Speaker 2: and our manager didn't really like that, so he stopped.
Speaker 2: He stopped, he stopped bringing us over here fourteen years ago,
Speaker 2: and eventually we we we changed their manag sure after
Speaker 2: twenty twenty odd years and and now that we're a
Speaker 2: little bit more in control of our of the controls
Speaker 2: of our of our spaceship, we're coming back. And we
Speaker 2: might not make any money in America, but it's not
Speaker 2: about money. Like you ask any any songwriter or a
Speaker 2: musician or artists worth their salt, or journalist or anyone
Speaker 2: who makes something from nothing, they you probably find that
Speaker 2: most of them are kind of like like, wow, we
Speaker 2: we we're still getting away with this. You know, we're
Speaker 2: still able to do this. So I would say, coming
Speaker 2: to America, we Travis Priky, we go and do like festivals.
Speaker 2: This is where bands generally make their their their like
Speaker 2: paydays and and festivals are very different from their own shows.
Speaker 2: And we're we haven't really toured in America for fourteen years,
Speaker 2: so this is like this tours. I feel like we're
Speaker 2: can have. It's like starting over again. It feels I
Speaker 2: think there's a lot of a lot of work to
Speaker 2: do in America, and then I don't know if there's
Speaker 2: enough years left in my life to do it. But
Speaker 2: we have a good following here and people come and
Speaker 2: see us, so I guess that's good.
Speaker 1: Okay, underneath that, you're gonna go on the road. Let's
Speaker 1: just assume you break even. You're gonna play venues where
Speaker 1: everybody's gonna know all the songs, great personal experience. In
Speaker 1: the back of your mind, are you saying, well, if
Speaker 1: this is really great, maybe next time they'll bring their friends,
Speaker 1: will be larger venues, or maybe there'll be some spark.
Speaker 1: Is that part of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's definitely a part of it. Every band wants
Speaker 2: to break America, every band, because it's like there's there's
Speaker 2: a there's there's different aspects of of what it is
Speaker 2: that we do. One of them is try and write
Speaker 2: a melody that you've not heard before, try and speak
Speaker 2: your heart. Don't write a song, don't don't ever ever
Speaker 2: write a song to fit with the current wallpaper. Just
Speaker 2: like Steve job Right, I write songs. I'm a big
Speaker 2: believer in that. Just if it comes out like it's you,
Speaker 2: don't don't kill it because it doesn't look like all
Speaker 2: the other ones. You know, like like that that because
Speaker 2: it doesn't look the other ones, then that's something to celebrate.
Speaker 2: So all the songs that come out has to mean something.
Speaker 2: But there's also another aspect of it, which is wow.
Speaker 2: You know, like songs are like a cure. Songs are
Speaker 2: like medicine. They're like magic spells. And you can see
Speaker 2: it when you when you play a show. The challenge
Speaker 2: is break America and and but don't don't lose that
Speaker 2: core value. Don't don't don't do it against your core values.
Speaker 2: Don't burn your core value used to break America. If
Speaker 2: you break America, it'll probably be the backs. And we
Speaker 2: broke Europe and the United Kingdom in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: about two thousand and three, and then it was but
Speaker 2: it was real, it was it's not It wasn't really
Speaker 2: that enjoyable because you suddenly you're famous, and then everyone
Speaker 2: treats you differently, and then suddenly you're it's a weird thing.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine what it's like to break America. But
Speaker 2: the challenge is to hold on to your core values
Speaker 2: and be and play bigger venues because these songs, they
Speaker 2: they work, they're they're a cure. They make people feel better.
Speaker 2: They and you and I both know when you hear
Speaker 2: a song you talked about Jackson Brown, I was listening to,
Speaker 2: Oh God, it's that song. It's in Taxi Driver, remember
Speaker 2: the name for this late for this guy. So that
Speaker 2: when I heard that song, and I didn't really know
Speaker 2: Jackson Brown. I know what it looks like and a
Speaker 2: few friends had records by albums and then I heard
Speaker 2: that song and I was like, who the fuck is this?
Speaker 2: And it like it went into me. I was sorry
Speaker 2: for digressing, jumping and popping and even but my brain
Speaker 2: jumps around a little bit. Last night, I was lying
Speaker 2: in bed with my mother half and it was like
Speaker 2: one o'clock in the morning and we're sort of trying
Speaker 2: to fall asleep, and the end song on a TV
Speaker 2: show we were watching was Wichita Lineman, which I mean,
Speaker 2: I could tear you just thinking about that song. What
Speaker 2: is it about that song that makes me like like
Speaker 2: well up? And there's a line in it and I
Speaker 2: was saying to say, like, what, what an amazing thing?
Speaker 2: There's a line in that song that goes and I
Speaker 2: need you more than want you, and I want you
Speaker 2: for all the time. Isn't it great that you can
Speaker 2: hear a song and that one line can last you
Speaker 2: your whole life. I can, I can eat that line
Speaker 2: forever because it never ever it's like a riddle or something,
Speaker 2: and you sit with it and you're like, oh it
Speaker 2: even now just saying I'm like, oh, such a gorgeous
Speaker 2: use the words, the melody and the emotion and the
Speaker 2: strings sound on top of it. It's music is like
Speaker 2: a So if you're a musician who writes from the heart,
Speaker 2: it goes out and you we're not we're not, we're
Speaker 2: never just we're not doing it for money. Right, You're
Speaker 2: out and you're you're you're carrying the cure. You're you're
Speaker 2: taking it to people to make people feel better, and
Speaker 2: I'm if you doing that, then I want to take
Speaker 2: it to a bigger audience. You might never your audience
Speaker 2: might never get bigger because you're not in control of
Speaker 2: that at all. But but the temptation to take it bigger,
Speaker 2: to cure more people, to make hearts feel better, Like
Speaker 2: people come up to me all the time and tell
Speaker 2: me all this song really helped me, or this song
Speaker 2: got me back in touch with my dad, or because
Speaker 2: we both liked it, and you know, it's like wow,
Speaker 2: it's a powerful thing, is music. And I'm I'm deeply
Speaker 2: kind of humbled and everything to be able to do it.
Speaker 2: And I definitely I think I think we've been singing
Speaker 2: longer than we've been speaking. And I think that's why
Speaker 2: music's maybe goes deeper than all of the arts.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about not selling out and you got
Speaker 1: to speak from the heart. To what degree didn't you
Speaker 1: dissociate yourself from the audience. Let's use the reverse paradigm.
Speaker 1: There are all these people in writing sessions as we
Speaker 1: speak in Nashville trying to write a hit. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: is there ever in your mind going, well, you know
Speaker 1: if I do that, I want to write my own
Speaker 1: Wichita Lineman, let me see how I can put the
Speaker 1: pieces together.
Speaker 2: Of course you do that every time you sit down song.
Speaker 2: But you don't write Richita Iman. You write Richard ta Wineman. Right,
Speaker 2: You're you're just you're trying to all everything. You're like
Speaker 2: a You're like a tea bag in every single song
Speaker 2: you've ever listened to and every experience you've ever had,
Speaker 2: and every time your heart's being broken or you've been
Speaker 2: let down, or every time you've been lightened up, it's
Speaker 2: a tea leaf in that tea bag and then the
Speaker 2: hot water pours in and then a cup of tea
Speaker 2: comes out, and it's a different flavor every time. You
Speaker 2: don't know what you're going to get. When you sit
Speaker 2: down to write a song, you don't know what it's
Speaker 2: going to be. It's fucking amazing. It's a miracle. It's
Speaker 2: like like we're talking to Dougie, our best player when
Speaker 2: we were on tour and U can. He's like, yes,
Speaker 2: our shows kind of we have the song and we
Speaker 2: have a talk a lot on stage, and I don't
Speaker 2: have anything in my head before I go on stage.
Speaker 2: I just talk. So some nights it's just nonsense and
Speaker 2: it's and some nights I say some quite cool stuff.
Speaker 2: But there's definitely two different bits of the gig. And
Speaker 2: he says there's the talking bit, and it gets the
Speaker 2: audience is listening to that, and then he says the song.
Speaker 2: Then the song begins and he says songs like a
Speaker 2: magic spell, and everyone sort of go into this strange
Speaker 2: sort of reverie for about four minutes and then you
Speaker 2: sort of come out of it. And the only people
Speaker 2: who are not under the spell are the other roadies
Speaker 2: and the guys who are having a like hold the
Speaker 2: spelling place because they can't and if they do, and
Speaker 2: sometimes they do, go into the spell zone. So yeah,
Speaker 2: the Nashville thing is an interesting thing because you've got
Speaker 2: ten guys sitting around deliberately trying to write a hit,
Speaker 2: deliberately thinking. I mean, it's the way the music business
Speaker 2: has done its thing. I mean, ninety eight percent of
Speaker 2: the music business is that, and that's song designing. I'm
Speaker 2: more interested in song divining. And that's where the two schools.
Speaker 2: That's where AI comes in. That AI will replace that
Speaker 2: the thing that I'm doing, the thing that you're doing.
Speaker 2: AI can't replace it because you need to you need
Speaker 2: you need to get your hand bitten by a dog.
Speaker 2: You need to get you need to get carjacked, you
Speaker 2: need to see someone dying in front of you, You
Speaker 2: need to look into like kiss your granda's forehead and
Speaker 2: his coffin right that. AI can't fucking do that. And
Speaker 2: that's where songwriting or No, I didn't even want to
Speaker 2: call it that magic. Spell making really comes in handy
Speaker 2: and that's why you'll all but always need it, because
Speaker 2: we all need that touch human touch thing that makes
Speaker 2: us human humans. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: So let's just say you had to stop today. Let's
Speaker 1: not talk about why do you have enough money? And
Speaker 1: there's enough money coming in from your history of Travis
Speaker 1: to get to you to the end. Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: you're not doing this primarily for money, and.
Speaker 2: What's my job? So you get paid for it, right,
Speaker 2: for for doing like the festivals and things and that
Speaker 2: that sort of. But I'm lucky enough to have written
Speaker 2: some evergreen songs that that the residuals are like good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's not it's not it's not great, but it's
Speaker 2: it's not like I grew up poor. And that's another thing,
Speaker 2: you know, like if you're poor, you're all of this,
Speaker 2: all these wonderful things like music and art, culture and
Speaker 2: journalists and all those things are not on your menu.
Speaker 2: You're you're going to go to school, You're you're going
Speaker 2: to not enjoy it. You're going to leave and get
Speaker 2: a job, have a have a family, and die and
Speaker 2: life's going to be hard. It's going to be cool
Speaker 2: and nice and there's going to be all the ups
Speaker 2: and downs, and but I, like I said, it wasn't
Speaker 2: one of the menu for me. And my mum moved
Speaker 2: us from this very like where we lived was the
Speaker 2: Heroin capital of Europe in nineteen eighty three or eighty two,
Speaker 2: place called Possel Park like if you's it's like fossil
Speaker 2: but with a p and we lived there and she
Speaker 2: moved us over to the south side of Glasgow and
Speaker 2: to one of the best normal just schools, but it
Speaker 2: was one of the best schools in the whole city.
Speaker 2: And at this school, I there was a couple of
Speaker 2: teachers that saw something in me and even polished it
Speaker 2: a little bit and gave me confidence and got me
Speaker 2: and went look at this. Look here's the impressionists. You
Speaker 2: can draw. I mean that's what I did. I was
Speaker 2: a drawer. I never like like I think, I only
Speaker 2: started singing like when I was like much older and
Speaker 2: being in bands was much more down the line. But
Speaker 2: art and drawing and visual art was much more my things.
Speaker 2: Kind of still isn't a way, So yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 2: That wasn't on the menu and for me and so
Speaker 2: I to think that I have residuals or you from
Speaker 2: get played on the radio from these songs is partly
Speaker 2: kind of like wow again, Like I say, like musicians
Speaker 2: are a little bit like can you believe we're getting
Speaker 2: away with this? You can actually make a living out of.
Speaker 1: So have you ever decided to go straight? You didn't decide,
Speaker 1: If you didn't do it, you ever thought about it? Though,
Speaker 1: I just can't do this anymore. For whatever reason. I
Speaker 1: got to do something else.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, yeah, yeah, I do it. Every time I
Speaker 2: sit down to write a song. I fucking hate writing songs.
Speaker 2: It's the most humiliating tooth pulling process in my life.
Speaker 2: And there's because it's like everyone talks about it like
Speaker 2: it's some kind of artistic thing I have. It's just
Speaker 2: pure digging dig dig dicks. Like uh. The the scene
Speaker 2: at the beginning of There Won't Be Blood, Daniel day
Speaker 2: lewis down the hole like with a little with his
Speaker 2: leg broken, and he's digging and digging and digging looking
Speaker 2: for that little bit of gold that he's going to
Speaker 2: take up and crawl across the desert to the to
Speaker 2: the guy. He's going to crush it down and make
Speaker 2: it into the ring or whatever. It feels like. Songwriting
Speaker 2: to me is very man you And there's a lot
Speaker 2: of like, you know, the sort of classic scrunched up
Speaker 2: bits of paper get thrown at the waste paper by
Speaker 2: his kid. You know, that's a piece of ship. That's
Speaker 2: a piece of ship. And you sort of you've slowly
Speaker 2: drinned your ego down until it's dust and you can't
Speaker 2: and you think you're the worst song writer in the
Speaker 2: entire world. And what I've learned is just beyond the
Speaker 2: crest of that hill of self hate and humiliation lies
Speaker 2: the song. The ego can't. I've learned in my many
Speaker 2: years writing that the ego has to be out of
Speaker 2: the way, it has to be gone for you to
Speaker 2: for the thing to come through you. And when it does,
Speaker 2: it's like it's kind of mad and special. And that's
Speaker 2: the thing you get addicted to. You get addicted to
Speaker 2: that feeling when when a song comes through and you
Speaker 2: let oh my good, when nothing compares to it, there's
Speaker 2: nothing that compares to it. I can only imagine what
Speaker 2: Jimmy Webb thought when when he wrote and I need
Speaker 2: you more than want you, and I want you for
Speaker 2: all time. I mean probably I mean, he's he probably
Speaker 2: punched the air and he was just like yes. But
Speaker 2: to get to that line, who knows if it took
Speaker 2: like months of digging and digging or if it just
Speaker 2: like happened with that. But so yeah, when I'm in that,
Speaker 2: I'm like, fuck this. I do not have fucking hate
Speaker 2: this job. I'm rubbish. I can't do this, But I
Speaker 2: do it because at the back of your head, you
Speaker 2: want that. You want you want to you know that
Speaker 2: the there's a certain arrangement of notes and a rhythm
Speaker 2: that constitute a new melody, and finding a new melody
Speaker 2: and a new song or feeling to put around that
Speaker 2: melody is more overpowering than the humiliation and that I
Speaker 2: want to stop doing this, but I do have those
Speaker 2: feelings like I can't go on.
Speaker 1: Oh okay. But in terms of your process, are you
Speaker 1: always writing songs or you're saying, oh, it's time to
Speaker 1: do an album. I got to sit down and write songs.
Speaker 2: It's like going to the bathroom. It's like flushing a toilet.
Speaker 2: Like no, it's not like litt let's let's keep scatology
Speaker 2: out of it. It's like flushing a toilet. Will stay
Speaker 2: hold we'll stay in the bathroom. But your cistern where
Speaker 2: all the water is kept, it fills up. And in
Speaker 2: this filling up of the cistern is an It is
Speaker 2: what you do between the finishing the last song for
Speaker 2: the last record and beginning writing the next and the
Speaker 2: next song, not the next record, because it's just song
Speaker 2: best and and and right now it's filling up. And
Speaker 2: I know, I know songwriters who have gone in and
Speaker 2: they flush the toilet, and now comes the album, and
Speaker 2: then they go for for the next twenty years and
Speaker 2: they get little little gyps if there's nothing. Really you
Speaker 2: gotta wait for it. You gotta let let let it.
Speaker 2: Let your live a bit go out. You have experiences,
Speaker 2: live your life a little bit. Let the let the
Speaker 2: cistern fill up. I used to feel like shit, I
Speaker 2: don't want to write writer's block. And then I realized
Speaker 2: sort of got wise to it, and I was like, no,
Speaker 2: this is this is part of the process, This is
Speaker 2: part of this is a complete This is like possibly
Speaker 2: the sort of the biggest bit of it, which is
Speaker 2: the the inaction. You know, you're the harvest is only
Speaker 2: a week long. You know, for the rest of the year,
Speaker 2: the field is being tell the seats are being planted,
Speaker 2: then watered, then then grown and then but like I say,
Speaker 2: the harvest is very quick. So right now I'm in
Speaker 2: the follow that I'm quite happy to not be writing.
Speaker 1: Okay, I understand the analogy to the system, Yes, but
Speaker 1: how much of this is eking it out? And how
Speaker 1: much of it is a bolt of lightning raw inspiration?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's all most of it digging. And then then
Speaker 2: you see the little the little something. And I think
Speaker 2: if there's any talent involved in song ring its identities,
Speaker 2: knowing that when you see it, it's having the patience
Speaker 2: to dig, and knowing having the sense to sense the
Speaker 2: glitter when you see it or when you feel it,
Speaker 2: and know that that's worth pursuing, and you pull it
Speaker 2: out very gently, you know, like a little thread of
Speaker 2: nylon out of the the ether, out of nothing, and
Speaker 2: you can make I mean, I was talking to someone
Speaker 2: the other day about what's that like? Two notes? Right?
Speaker 2: Is that that classical music place? Dun damn dunn dwn Right,
Speaker 2: that's two notes. And he took that and he made
Speaker 2: it into a symphony. Two notes, the whole fucking thing
Speaker 2: two notes. And that's what I mean, Like it can be.
Speaker 2: He's so he recognized in that little two notes an
Speaker 2: entire He made an entire. It's like you can pick
Speaker 2: it out and you can make a symphony out of it.
Speaker 2: You can make a two minute pop song out of it.
Speaker 2: You can make a poem, you can write a paint
Speaker 2: of painting. It's so there is a flash of lightning
Speaker 2: and that's but most of it is darkness. That you
Speaker 2: don't see the lightning unless it's dark.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's assume at what point do you say
Speaker 1: it's time to record, and how does that happen since
Speaker 1: everybody lives in a different location.
Speaker 2: I'm well, you we so you go right, we can't
Speaker 2: just I don't want to. There's there there's a natural
Speaker 2: sort of cycle to it. So you get your you're
Speaker 2: sort of maybe three quarters. You've got maybe you've written
Speaker 2: hundreds and hundreds of ideas, but there's maybe seven that
Speaker 2: are that have a heartbeat or a pulse. So then
Speaker 2: you start talking about like, shoot, like let's let's maybe
Speaker 2: plan for in nine or six or nine months going
Speaker 2: to the studio and make a record. And it's as
Speaker 2: simple as that. You just book the time, put a
Speaker 2: line in the sand, and you go everything has to
Speaker 2: be written and demoed and ready to go by that
Speaker 2: line then you like in our case, the band came
Speaker 2: to Los Angeles, we all went into the studio with
Speaker 2: US producer Tony Hoffer and we spent three weeks which
Speaker 2: recorded the album and it was done.
Speaker 1: So you've worked with a lot of producers. To what
Speaker 1: degree our producers influential and what have you learned?
Speaker 2: There are hugely influential, hugely And they're influential in that
Speaker 2: they're a calm, very calm hand on the wheel there.
Speaker 2: They know how to talk to their like musician whisperers.
Speaker 2: Speaking to a drummer and a guitarist, there's two different languages,
Speaker 2: there's two different types. And they're very very good at
Speaker 2: talking to people and getting the best possible performance out
Speaker 2: of them and almost like the songwriter, they're brilliant at
Speaker 2: spotting the best performance not of that person's life, but
Speaker 2: that goes perfectly with the song. So when you put
Speaker 2: it all together, it's just it's like it sounds like records.
Speaker 2: Nigel Gotshi would would be like I'd be like singing
Speaker 2: and I'd be like that one was brilliant. I was
Speaker 2: I was like that's the best one, and Nigel would
Speaker 2: come on my headphones like that was ship.
Speaker 1: Do it again.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, and we do it again. I mean
Speaker 2: he would say that, but we we were like very
Speaker 2: good friends and would joke and he wouldn't mean it shit,
Speaker 2: just mean it's not good enough, so can do it again.
Speaker 2: I'm like, and to the point again, it may be
Speaker 2: an ego thing where I'm like that I'll finished singing something.
Speaker 2: I'm like, that's the worst I've sung that in the
Speaker 2: entire session. And he's like his voice comes on the
Speaker 2: count that was great. He's like, come in and you're like,
Speaker 2: I'm like, it's not great. There's the worst one. And
Speaker 2: you you go in and and plays it back and
Speaker 2: you're just like it's fair because it's a funny again,
Speaker 2: it's like magic, It's really it's really cool.
Speaker 1: So you know there was a peak in the UK
Speaker 1: the turn of the century for Travis. You won these
Speaker 1: brittle awards. All that is great, but emotionally, how is that?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like I want to climb the mountaintop
Speaker 1: or you say that's just one side detour and a trip.
Speaker 1: What do you say you got? I'm pissed that people
Speaker 1: were not getting recognized on that level.
Speaker 2: Two things from from that that period and maybe like
Speaker 2: say the brit Awards, sermon, m we we won two
Speaker 2: years or three years in a row, we won something.
Speaker 2: We gave our awards away to different people that I
Speaker 2: don't really care about awards and that's not bothered, but
Speaker 2: it's nice to get things and be recognized and it's
Speaker 2: a reflection of your success. Walking up to get one
Speaker 2: of them, to get the award, I was walking up
Speaker 2: with the band and there was two levels. There's there's
Speaker 2: like the stages here, there's the first level and then
Speaker 2: there's another level where there's more tables. And we were
Speaker 2: on this level, so you have to get up and
Speaker 2: walk along. There's a sort of glass barrier, you know,
Speaker 2: where people were leaning on it like and as we
Speaker 2: were walking up to get our award for the best
Speaker 2: British Band of the Year or whatever it was, this
Speaker 2: guy stuck his leg out and tripped me up on
Speaker 2: the way to on the way to the to the
Speaker 2: to get match to to get the award. I didn't
Speaker 2: really care about and that he tripped me up and
Speaker 2: I went like I went flying and I was going
Speaker 2: to knock his block off. I was like, fuck you.
Speaker 2: It's it's like come on, and then go up and
Speaker 2: like be like thanks everyone, be nice and happy. That's
Speaker 2: the sort of example of this sort of dichotomy of
Speaker 2: like you're on top of the world, but actually there's
Speaker 2: still a bully out there that's going to, you know,
Speaker 2: trip you up, literally trip you up as you're as
Speaker 2: you're in your thing. The other thing was another time
Speaker 2: when we went up there, I made a speech about
Speaker 2: I was like holding the award talking about if you're
Speaker 2: sitting in your room right now writing trying to write songs,
Speaker 2: this is dedicated to you, and I'm like, don't I
Speaker 2: said something like, don't give up. If you really really
Speaker 2: want to write and do it, just keep pushing and
Speaker 2: keep pushing. And I said something along those lines. And
Speaker 2: I met someone who's now one of the biggest songwriters
Speaker 2: in the world, like a total gun for hire, and
Speaker 2: she had been on her last legs and she was
Speaker 2: going to give up her thing, songwriting, and she saw
Speaker 2: us get the awards and it gave her a little
Speaker 2: bit of hope to keep going and she did, and
Speaker 2: she she's doing really well for herself. She's doing the
Speaker 2: other me.
Speaker 1: Okay, but going to the point where that was a peak.
Speaker 1: Are you constantly trying to eve a peak? Or is
Speaker 1: that just another bump in the road.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Again, you go back to the thing
Speaker 2: where you're you're you're carrying the you're carrying the word,
Speaker 2: You're carrying the cure. And so I want you want
Speaker 2: to you want to get to as you want to
Speaker 2: get the cure to as many people as possible. So
Speaker 2: you want to you want that song to get out there.
Speaker 2: So and with that, if it does get out there,
Speaker 2: with that comes a lot of like cruise stuff, but
Speaker 2: also kind of like for someone for an introvert, it's
Speaker 2: not it's not it's not nice when you get famous.
Speaker 2: So with that comes uncomfortable stuff. Uncomfortable stuff. Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: So I'm constantly pushing, yeah, pushing.
Speaker 1: Okay, you say you're an introvert, tell me about that
Speaker 1: in your everyday life.
Speaker 2: I am. I'm very shy. I'm not, it's just weird.
Speaker 2: I'm shy, but I'm not afraid to get up on
Speaker 2: the stage. I've like when I'm big, A lot of
Speaker 2: people are like parties or social gatherings. I'm not really
Speaker 2: I get really anxious, like you know, like too many people,
Speaker 2: there's I don't know why. I just always got a
Speaker 2: bit like I mean, some nights maybe not, but other
Speaker 2: nights I get a bit. I spend a lot of
Speaker 2: time on my own. I'm an only child, and so
Speaker 2: I spend a lot of time by myself, and so
Speaker 2: writing songs is quite conducive. There's two things go hand
Speaker 2: in hand. So again yeah, but again on the other
Speaker 2: side of that, I'm not I've never been faced by
Speaker 2: getting on a stage and talking songes inder what I'm
Speaker 2: going to say.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're living in la generally speaking, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: You're watching streaming television, you're reading a book, you go
Speaker 1: into the studio, you're calling up friends. What is your
Speaker 1: everyday life? Like?
Speaker 2: Well, in everyday life has sort of been upended recently
Speaker 2: because my son has graduated now from high school and
Speaker 2: he's going to art school next year, and he's having
Speaker 2: a year of traveling in gallivanting this year, and I'm touring.
Speaker 2: But when he graduated May last year, and then we
Speaker 2: went on touring at the end he graduated end of
Speaker 2: me we went on tour June July or September. I
Speaker 2: came back in September and I hadn't processed the whole
Speaker 2: life changing. So and I'm still processing that right now
Speaker 2: because for seventeen years you are your number one job
Speaker 2: is being the father of Clay and that is over
Speaker 2: everything else. That's my whole day was that and songwriting
Speaker 2: and all the other stuff revolved around that. But now
Speaker 2: he's off, So I'm now in this new quite nice, like,
Speaker 2: oh I've got some got some room. So I do
Speaker 2: a lot of work for the band. I mean making
Speaker 2: videos and making artwork and writing songs and and that
Speaker 2: that generally takes up a lot of time. As you'll know.
Speaker 2: You can you can sit for the last night, I
Speaker 2: was listening to a show we recorded it in Glasgow
Speaker 2: last December. It was our last show of the year,
Speaker 2: and I got all of the files and then just
Speaker 2: started fiddling around with it on pro tools in like
Speaker 2: three hours, just and so time, and you know, it's
Speaker 2: that's what I do with my time.
Speaker 1: I just what you in Potter, Okay, But to what
Speaker 1: degree are you social? You live in a big city
Speaker 1: and to what degree you know, Robbie.
Speaker 2: Williams, I'm not social at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you're not social at all. So generally speaking,
Speaker 1: you're a homebody. You're doing your thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never had a dinner party in my entire life.
Speaker 2: I've never thrown one.
Speaker 1: How about going to one.
Speaker 2: I've gone a couple, but I'll leave early. It just
Speaker 2: stresses me out too much.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, not, Well, you talked about this friend
Speaker 1: who moved to Alabama, you talked about the friend who
Speaker 1: passed away. Do you have a regular friend network that
Speaker 1: you're in contact with?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do, dude, but it's not very big, and
Speaker 2: it's yeah, it's not back again. It's like we're living
Speaker 2: in a time where you need everyone's like everyone's got
Speaker 2: like fifty thousand friends. And I'm like, I tend to
Speaker 2: think about you sort of mirror your first seven years.
Speaker 2: The rest of your life mirrors that. And I grew
Speaker 2: up with my mum, just me and her. That was it,
Speaker 2: and my granddad, Ma Nana would pop in and I
Speaker 2: would pop in there. And that was very small. I
Speaker 2: didn't have any brothers and sisters. I didn't. I only
Speaker 2: have one cousin and I'd see them every few persis.
Speaker 2: So my life now very much reflects that time. I
Speaker 2: have my my other half sparer, and we spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time together, Like she's half our time with
Speaker 2: our kids, and when she's not doing that, we were
Speaker 2: hanging out. If we can triangulate our times because I'm
Speaker 2: half with my kid and his mom's half with him.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's very simple.
Speaker 1: So what do go your You a student of the game,
Speaker 1: someone like Elton John follows it really closely. The guys
Speaker 1: at a c DC. Young says, I only listen to
Speaker 1: my own music.
Speaker 2: I'm not. I don't think I'm a student of the game.
Speaker 2: Like I say, I think there's more to the game
Speaker 2: than just music. Like Elton John wrote that met the
Speaker 2: top line melodies and that's that was the sort of
Speaker 2: a lot of emotion comes from that. I think that
Speaker 2: it's the melody. And I'm definitely not. I don't watch
Speaker 2: the I don't watch the wallpaper. I am, I print it.
Speaker 2: I do the other the other thing, and I don't
Speaker 2: listen to myself either. It's the last thing I'm going
Speaker 2: to do. I get out and about and I take
Speaker 2: in information and.
Speaker 1: Well, friend, we've come to the end of the feeling
Speaker 1: we've known. You've been very forthcoming. It's been a great
Speaker 1: pleasure to speak with you, and I'm sure your fans
Speaker 1: are going to really enjoy the Travis performance is coming up.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks, Bob, I am it's been lovely talking to you.
Speaker 2: And despite all all the technical and kerfuffle at the beginning,
Speaker 2: but we managed that. We got there in the end,
Speaker 2: and and hopefully maybe in one hundred years from there
Speaker 2: we'll meet again our AI versions of ourselves and in
Speaker 2: the new stimulation and and we'll well, the next time,
Speaker 2: we probably won't need microphones. We'll just we'll just it'll
Speaker 2: just happen.
Speaker 1: Our avatars will talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In any event, until next time. This is Bob Left
Speaker 1: Shows