Speaker 1: If you live by your standards and you treat everyone
Speaker 1: with love and respect, that's the best way to longevity.
Speaker 2: Good evening and welcome to Midnight Chat, the music interview
Speaker 2: podcast for late night listening. I'm Stuart Stubbs and I'm
Speaker 2: Great Cochrane and on tonight's show, Greg is an old
Speaker 2: friend of yours. It's Joe Tolbert, the lead singer from Idols.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Joe's the singer of the band and a rare
Speaker 3: returning guest because Joe was last on the podcast in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty in the middle of the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 3: That's episode ninety four for anyone who wants to get
Speaker 3: back and check it out.
Speaker 2: I've heard this episode Greg, obviously, and it's great. It's
Speaker 2: very It's a deep one. I was quite jealous because
Speaker 2: You've got to go to Joe's house and I love
Speaker 2: snooping around guests houses.
Speaker 4: What was it like? What was his house like?
Speaker 2: And how how was the whole thing because it is,
Speaker 2: as I say, it's quite a deep conversation.
Speaker 1: List.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his place is very stylish. So Joe lives in
Speaker 3: an apartment in Bristol here in the UK. I went
Speaker 3: to see him right at the very end of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three. It's just before Christmas. He'd actually been to
Speaker 3: see his daughter's Nativity play that morning. And you're right,
Speaker 3: it is quite a deep chat, and I think that's
Speaker 3: why a lot of people really resonate and get and
Speaker 3: like Joe. He's very candid talking about things like parenthood
Speaker 3: and mental health, addiction, and politics and the general state
Speaker 3: of the world. And yeah, I'd love to know what
Speaker 3: people make of this.
Speaker 2: If you're new to us here at Midnight Chats, please
Speaker 2: do give us a follow, give us a like, give
Speaker 2: us a nice positive review. Mainly though, tell a friend.
Speaker 2: That's the best thing you can do right now, help
Speaker 2: spread the word of what Midnight Chats is. Before we
Speaker 2: get into this, Greg, there's two things I need from you.
Speaker 2: Tell me how good the new Idle's album is.
Speaker 3: The New Idol's album is very good. It's called Tank
Speaker 3: and it's available everywhere now excellent.
Speaker 2: And the other thing is there was a few things
Speaker 2: so we just needed to clear up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So well, first one's a bit of a warning. Joe
Speaker 3: loves a swear word, so if you're sensitive to those,
Speaker 3: this is just your official heads up. The Nigel that
Speaker 3: he mentioned in this chat is Nigel Godrich, the producer
Speaker 3: for the likes of Radiohead in the past. And Kenny
Speaker 3: that he mentions is the songwriter and producer Kenny Beats.
Speaker 3: And the final thing is that the afgang if you're
Speaker 3: not familiar with that, that's the band's fan community. Hopefully
Speaker 3: that clears those things up for anybody listening.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much, Greg, I feel ready for this now.
Speaker 3: This is Joe Tolbert from Idols on Midnight Chats.
Speaker 4: Joe, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3: So good to have you on Midnight Chats again, and
Speaker 3: thanks for inviting us to your house. I mean your
Speaker 3: hospitality is exception so far. We've got coffee, We've got biscuits.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks.
Speaker 4: I feel like you've pushed the boat out a bit.
Speaker 1: Well. You know, if someone comes into your home and
Speaker 1: you haven't got biscuits, what home is that? No? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am, yeah, but I don't know you taught me that.
Speaker 1: Someone recently is like, you've got to always have biscuits.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 3: I think it's true. First things first, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: How things really good? Yeah? I've been through it a
Speaker 3: bit recently.
Speaker 1: Mental health wise, not not too recent, maybe a month ago.
Speaker 1: I was a bit I've been sober for a while
Speaker 1: and like, I don't know, it's just things hit you,
Speaker 1: you know, And so I was I was going for it,
Speaker 1: but and then coming out of it, I started therapy again,
Speaker 1: and coming out of it was like a huge revelation
Speaker 1: for me, more than normal. So yeah, I'm good, I'm stable,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm very excited for this new album
Speaker 1: Tank and my kid is very healthy and happy and
Speaker 1: started school and I've got to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: good time with that and the band. I think we're
Speaker 1: all hungry for a new tour, a different show and
Speaker 1: new songs and a challenge. You can only go so
Speaker 1: far with a tour where it almost becomes too easy.
Speaker 1: And I mean that in the best way possible. It's
Speaker 1: the best thing in the world. As I've always said,
Speaker 1: not apologies, it gets easy, and we don't like that.
Speaker 1: We're like a challenge and we want to keep moving
Speaker 1: forward and getting better and we're really good at what
Speaker 1: we do, so we want to be not as good,
Speaker 1: so we've got something to work towards.
Speaker 4: I remember last time we came on the podcast, we
Speaker 4: were still.
Speaker 3: In that weird mode where we were all coming out
Speaker 3: of COVID and we were talking about you rehearsing for
Speaker 3: the Abbey Road live stream, and so there weren't any
Speaker 3: there weren't any shows on the calendar at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know that's rewinding a bit, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I just remember how terrible they were. I really we
Speaker 1: were rusty, it was they were bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if it's if it's not too much of a
Speaker 3: kind of invasive question to start with, you know, you
Speaker 3: kind of raised it there, Like you and I have
Speaker 3: spoke quite a few times over the years, and you've
Speaker 3: had those periods where like you've had moments where that
Speaker 3: you've found things particularly difficult and they've been triggered by
Speaker 3: different things and you've kind of like found pathways through it,
Speaker 3: and you've always been super transparent about that and people
Speaker 3: very much relate to that. Have you got kinder on
Speaker 3: yourself over the last few years when you know those
Speaker 3: those periods are coming, and like, having been through it
Speaker 3: a few times, do you you.
Speaker 4: Know is it is?
Speaker 1: It? Is? It?
Speaker 4: Does it continue to be hard every time?
Speaker 1: And yeah, not it gets I don't know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: get easier. But I'm lucky. I'm very lucky. I'm privileged
Speaker 1: in more than one way. You know, I'm financially sound,
Speaker 1: I've got my health, and I've got support network of
Speaker 1: people it will listen and guide. I've got my dream job.
Speaker 1: I traveled a well with my mates. I just said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a few problems recently, and I just had
Speaker 1: to solve them. It gets easier. I'm kinder to myself, yes,
Speaker 1: but maybe I wasn't that unkind really other than the
Speaker 1: obvious self abuse, but I'm kinder to others. What I've
Speaker 1: learned in the past four years of being a father
Speaker 1: is that if you approach life with empathy, you get
Speaker 1: more out of it. So with that in mind, I
Speaker 1: approach things with empathy. I'm a lot more patient. I'm
Speaker 1: a lot kinder. I think I'm really just learning to
Speaker 1: be vulnerable, practicing what I've been talking about, and it
Speaker 1: just takes a long time. These things don't happen over night.
Speaker 1: And I've been learning a long time, and I'm in
Speaker 1: a flux. I've realizing just how much I have to learn,
Speaker 1: and that's beautiful and exciting. So I'm very grateful that
Speaker 1: I've had an audience that have allowed us to learn slowly.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk a lot about what's to come
Speaker 3: throughout twenty twenty four. So many exciting things coming up,
Speaker 3: including a new album. But I just want to do
Speaker 3: a very brief and quick kind of rewind on twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, because obviously you've been making a new album,
Speaker 3: but you have been doing some other things.
Speaker 4: One of the big things last summer was.
Speaker 3: He played a show in London with Jamie T at
Speaker 3: the Park, amongst others. What have some of the stand
Speaker 3: up moments of this year been for you?
Speaker 1: Personal things? Really a few really transitional moments of enlightenment
Speaker 1: in terms of what I want to do, where I
Speaker 1: want to be in life, and how I'm going to
Speaker 1: get there. There's a lightness with this album campaign where
Speaker 1: I really truly don't give a fuck what other people
Speaker 1: say or think about it. And that's not because I
Speaker 1: don't care. I care more than I ever have, but
Speaker 1: about the right thing, and that's being present within myself
Speaker 1: and how that music makes me feel and how fucking
Speaker 1: magic is going to be to play it. The Jamie
Speaker 1: T show was beautiful because I got to see Jamie
Speaker 1: T and seeing someone almost come out of a cocoon
Speaker 1: and become this beautiful, vibrant human being on stage. It
Speaker 1: was a really lovely thing to see. And I think
Speaker 1: when you see your friends succeed, that's a Freuda and
Speaker 1: Frida drop there, But seeing other people succeed, it's a
Speaker 1: very uplifting feeling when you give a shit. So that
Speaker 1: was good.
Speaker 4: Willie j.
Speaker 3: Healy and Jamie T and yourself. There's been talk of
Speaker 3: doing something together. As we're talking about Jamie this is
Speaker 3: is that going to come into being at some point? Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a soul record, right, it was a soul group
Speaker 3: and make some soul songs.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, Willie and I have met up started writing stuff. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we hang out every week when we're both in town,
Speaker 1: ride our bikes together and stuff and do other things.
Speaker 1: But we're busy. I want to call the project Perils Pedios,
Speaker 1: which means lost Dogs. I don't think they know that.
Speaker 1: I was like, that's a sick name. That is good,
Speaker 1: and then like all our merchants that could be like
Speaker 1: lost dog posters sick.
Speaker 4: Right yeah, big time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So yeah, we've got ideas well. I was at
Speaker 1: Jamie's house quite a while ago now and were talking
Speaker 1: about sampling and sampling this tune I love, and he
Speaker 1: just fucking got it up on YouTube, chucked it on
Speaker 1: his like sample pad, and we were like, this has
Speaker 1: got happen now. I think because we're all very different
Speaker 1: versions of the same beast, which is that we we're
Speaker 1: very different people. Obviously, all three of us, we're an
Speaker 1: odd trio, but we have the same intention and we
Speaker 1: have a lot of love, and we all connect with
Speaker 1: soul music. So I think it would just be a
Speaker 1: great project to do, even just for ourselves if it
Speaker 1: doesn't come out. But yeah, it excites me that idea,
Speaker 1: but then a lot of musical ideas excite me at
Speaker 1: the moment thinking about you know, I want to do
Speaker 1: a noise project techno thing with Bobo. Sorry, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stop calling Bobo. It makes my shit. It's when I
Speaker 1: hear someone else calling it, so I don't know why
Speaker 1: I do, but when So, yeah, we're there's plenty coming.
Speaker 3: Sticking on this year, and things have happened this year. Briefly,
Speaker 3: you're in the States, you played run of shows with
Speaker 3: LCD sound System, and then obviously James and Nancy Wang
Speaker 3: appeared on Dancer that sounds like the stuff of dreams
Speaker 3: obviously to get to play with them and then to
Speaker 3: get to collaborate with them. What did you take away
Speaker 3: from that experience of like being with them on the road,
Speaker 3: seeing them play, speaking to them, collaborating with them. Was
Speaker 3: there anything that you took away from that experience that
Speaker 3: you're going to kind of take into the future if
Speaker 3: you like?
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah. The first thing I'd say is as a
Speaker 1: touring company, they're doing it perfectly. They do the right
Speaker 1: amount of shows in the right venues. Everyone, everyone on
Speaker 1: that team that tour together, band crew, everyone loves it
Speaker 1: because they're treated with respect, they're treated well, they're treated
Speaker 1: with comfort, and they're a family and it's beautiful to see.
Speaker 1: And we joined them on a tour and they treated
Speaker 1: us like family and it was it was one of
Speaker 1: it's probably the best tour I've ever done. It was
Speaker 1: fucking magic.
Speaker 4: Did you watch them every night?
Speaker 1: No? No, no, no, no, no no. I didn't see I've
Speaker 1: probably missed like one or two shows, but I watched
Speaker 1: the most nights. I normally watched the first and the
Speaker 1: last show of the support act. I don't want to.
Speaker 3: Overkill that's going to say, Yeah, that must be a
Speaker 3: small that's this difficult one to land. That, isn't it
Speaker 3: When you go and talk with a band that you love,
Speaker 3: the kind of the temptation must be to watch them
Speaker 3: every night. But like you say, you could overkill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they are phenomenal life and they're like us.
Speaker 1: There is no they have this they you know, they
Speaker 1: didn't divert from the set list, but they you know,
Speaker 1: the nuances and the fluctuations to speak are there. So
Speaker 1: it changes every night and it's great to see. My
Speaker 1: foot thing is that I don't I get bored easily,
Speaker 1: and I don't like being bored because the board are boring.
Speaker 1: As my mum always said. So if I'm watching the
Speaker 1: support band, I don't. I don't watch it much because
Speaker 1: I've picked them because I love them every support band
Speaker 1: we've ever had. That's why next year it's going to
Speaker 1: be a nightmare to pick them. They to choose from.
Speaker 1: Yeah that I love you that I've already put themselves forward.
Speaker 1: I don't enjoy it, but yeah, so watching them was great,
Speaker 1: the incredible, incredible life band and watching their basis who
Speaker 1: got ill and had to leave the tour. They're more
Speaker 1: pitching and theyve included played a few songs every night,
Speaker 1: which was a dream in itself. Like, you know, I've
Speaker 1: known that guy since he was sixteen. He was this
Speaker 1: bean pole with weird blonde hair and banging to speed
Speaker 1: and like we fell in love, you know. And to
Speaker 1: see this very insecure man end up on a stage
Speaker 1: playing with his favorite band was one of the most
Speaker 1: beautiful things I've ever seen. So that was cool. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of good things happened there, and it taught
Speaker 1: me that if you live by your standards and you
Speaker 1: treat everyone with love and respect, that's the best way
Speaker 1: to longevity because you'll come out of it sleeping well
Speaker 1: at night, as well as still doing what you love.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, straight out of the gate.
Speaker 3: I want to say that I think Tank is my
Speaker 3: favorite Idols album, and that's not good because I'm here,
Speaker 3: sat with you now and you've made me a lovely
Speaker 3: cup of coffee and given me a biscuit and show.
Speaker 4: Me your lovely Christmas tree.
Speaker 3: It genuinely is amazing, and I cannot wait to be
Speaker 3: in a field next summer to just dance my lap
Speaker 3: side after that record, and it's got me really really
Speaker 3: excited about next year and it's got me really excited
Speaker 3: about music. In terms of the where you were at
Speaker 3: when you were writing this album, your kind of headspace,
Speaker 3: your mindset. It was clearly a shift from when you
Speaker 3: were writing the material for Crawler.
Speaker 1: I was a lot more uncomfortable this time around. I
Speaker 1: was out my comfort zone. IELs you know and Kenny
Speaker 1: are both very they're vehemently against laziness, lackluster approaches. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't a challenge for them to get
Speaker 1: to get up. For us, we're very fucking driven and
Speaker 1: we don't like to sit around and do the easy option,
Speaker 1: and we like challenges. Every album, we've set ourselves a
Speaker 1: theme and a palette and you know, and a sense
Speaker 1: that we have to move forward in order to succeed,
Speaker 1: you know. But with this record, it was like we
Speaker 1: you know, we're more and more privileged because there are
Speaker 1: fucking increments to this game. Suddenly you're getting paid ten
Speaker 1: times more, you're spending ten times more on your tools,
Speaker 1: You've got more time to record. Because you have more money,
Speaker 1: you can go to your heroes and ask them to work,
Speaker 1: and with that comes gratitude. That gratitude comes a sense
Speaker 1: of hard work that's how you show you're grateful by
Speaker 1: challenging yourself, moving forward, breaking things down and putting yourself
Speaker 1: to work. And like, that's the most exciting bit of
Speaker 1: our job. It's that bit when you're really fucking changing things,
Speaker 1: breaking things down and moving forward. So this record was
Speaker 1: like the most that because we had three weeks in
Speaker 1: the studio instead of two and we were working with
Speaker 1: two of our favorite producers on the planet. You've got
Speaker 1: to make that work, man. I came at it with insecurity,
Speaker 1: so I didn't know if I was quite good enough
Speaker 1: for the writing process. I wrote a bunch of songs
Speaker 1: in the room with the boys in Bristol without Boeing,
Speaker 1: but they didn't really feel like there was this exciting,
Speaker 1: transgressive thing behind them that I wanted it to be.
Speaker 1: And I set this thing in my head where I
Speaker 1: was going to write lyrics before I went to the booth,
Speaker 1: because I did half the albums in the booth before that,
Speaker 1: Whereas I felt like, no, these songs deserve to be
Speaker 1: written before and really work at it because I might
Speaker 1: be missing out on something, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like I might have written a better song if I
Speaker 1: had spent a month on it. And it's that's bollocks.
Speaker 1: And I realized that late I was like, I didn't
Speaker 1: write a single word because I was busy writing the music,
Speaker 1: you know, I was writing the music with buying in London,
Speaker 1: in Nysall Studio in Brixton. And then it just got
Speaker 1: to a point where I was just like confused. I
Speaker 1: don't like displacement. I like all my ducks in a row.
Speaker 1: I like knowing where all my tools are alone, where
Speaker 1: the exit is. And I like, you know, carrying a
Speaker 1: knife just so I can open the packet myself and
Speaker 1: see what's inside. Do you know what I mean? Under
Speaker 1: three inches half? I think it's too But anyway, like,
Speaker 1: I wasn't comfortable and it took me a while to
Speaker 1: realize that that's the point. But it was, you know,
Speaker 1: it was. It was great. It was the most fruitful,
Speaker 1: the most learning I've done and I've now, I mean
Speaker 1: in terms of mental health and where I'm at in life.
Speaker 1: Flack I was not same as I was a crawler man.
Speaker 1: Like I was sober then, I'm sober now. I was
Speaker 1: drinking and doing drugs in between. I have a sense
Speaker 1: of excitement and sense that I have a new perspective
Speaker 1: in our potential now, I'm sober, sober, and and I
Speaker 1: understand we have way more potential than we did before.
Speaker 1: And that's because of the two. And Bowen produced the
Speaker 1: record as well, but I have to have a different
Speaker 1: relationship with him than I do to Kenny and Nigel.
Speaker 1: But with those two, they really forced us to challenge ourselves.
Speaker 3: When you talk about potential for the band, like calling
Speaker 3: back to like when I first met you and we
Speaker 3: came to Bristol and we walked around the sort of
Speaker 3: landmarks that meant a lot to the band at that point,
Speaker 3: that the flat that you lived in with Dev, the
Speaker 3: pub that you worked in whilst you were doing your
Speaker 3: first rehearsals, like the rehearsal space that you shared with
Speaker 3: the other Bristol bands and things like that. What then
Speaker 3: you probably had a very different idea to like what
Speaker 3: the purpose and the potential of the band was to
Speaker 3: what you do now. So when you talk about purpose
Speaker 3: and potential of the band now, what do you think of.
Speaker 1: Well, in terms of like why I started the band,
Speaker 1: it's exactly the same as it was then.
Speaker 4: Twelve years ago, no longer, yeah fo yeah.
Speaker 1: Whenever I started the band My intentions were to have
Speaker 1: something that was a channel or a bridge towards the
Speaker 1: universe and feeling connected with a people, to feel like
Speaker 1: I was safe in arms of something much greater than myself.
Speaker 1: That's always been the same and it's the same today.
Speaker 1: What's changed is our musical potential. You know, I'm writing
Speaker 1: way more songs now than I was ultremonto, you know,
Speaker 1: because I realized that I can, like there's not a
Speaker 1: gatekeeping in music and art, you know, and that's often
Speaker 1: within you know, it's within yourself. You gatekeep yourself. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't do that imposter syndrome. I don't have that
Speaker 1: really anymore. I just know that I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of work to do it for I want to be
Speaker 1: what I want to be is and you know, I've
Speaker 1: just got timing well in between school drops ship. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm physically a lot fitter and stronger, which helps
Speaker 1: the potential it's musical. I want to achieve what my
Speaker 1: hero has achieved. There was a point, you know, where
Speaker 1: I found a channel to go down musically with the
Speaker 1: first two records, and then I realized that there's so
Speaker 1: many other facets to me as a human being. That
Speaker 1: I want to express. So I got to kind of
Speaker 1: burn that effigy of what everyone's made of idols in
Speaker 1: order to start again. We did that, and now we
Speaker 1: can do whatever the fuck we want.
Speaker 3: On this album, Tank, like I can hear the development
Speaker 3: of you on it, Like I think there are a
Speaker 3: few moments where I was like, Wow, Joe's doing something
Speaker 3: new there, always pushing himself. And the one that was
Speaker 3: standing out to me was there's a track called roy
Speaker 3: and on there, I think like your vocal performance for
Speaker 3: me was like really reminiscent of some of the great
Speaker 3: rock and roll singers like Hamilton Nighthouser, who I know
Speaker 3: you're a fan of Eddie Vedder. Those are the things
Speaker 3: that I was hearing in that song, and so I
Speaker 3: wondered if you felt like you push yourself further than
Speaker 3: ever before vocally on this absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was my intention way before the album
Speaker 1: started from Crawler really, because you know, Kenny, Kenny comes
Speaker 1: from a place of ace his perspective as a student,
Speaker 1: but within that, you know, he's a fucking teacher, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. He's incredible at what he does.
Speaker 1: He's just amazing, And you know, you've got to be
Speaker 1: a servant to the song, you know, and like, if
Speaker 1: I'm going about it, the reason why I kept shouting
Speaker 1: is because I was scared to sing, and that's not
Speaker 1: doing a song justice every time. Some deserve violence and
Speaker 1: some deserve grace. And that's where I'm at, you know.
Speaker 1: And I learned that from being given that time in
Speaker 1: the pandemic to really listen to myself. Do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? That was just it like I had
Speaker 1: loads of time my mind so and I wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: waste it.
Speaker 3: And there's two songs I want to talk about that
Speaker 3: I thought my interpretation you might well be wrong on this,
Speaker 3: but I'd love to hear your thoughts of kind of
Speaker 3: there's all of love songs, but in a very different way.
Speaker 3: One is gospel and the other one is all the
Speaker 3: notes because they're sort of they're about different relationships. My
Speaker 3: interpretation was but both loving all of its difficulty and
Speaker 3: brilliance and acceptance and gratefulness with the kind of stands
Speaker 3: that I took from it a gospel.
Speaker 1: Boeen wrote that in his house on his piano that
Speaker 1: the album is an iPhone recording. He just chucked his
Speaker 1: phone on the top of piano and played it. You
Speaker 1: can hear his kid in the background if you listen.
Speaker 1: And then they did another piano track on top that.
Speaker 1: It was a mechanical piano, right, so no one actually
Speaker 1: played it. It was programmed. Okay, So there's two like very
Speaker 1: human and very like like metronomic thing that it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's you know, a product of bowing and noise against together,
Speaker 1: which was a great moment. And it's a song I
Speaker 1: wrote last, as it is in I wrote it in
Speaker 1: the studio obviously recording in France, and I left it
Speaker 1: to the last because I was so nervous about it,
Speaker 1: because I wanted to do it justice because it was
Speaker 1: like a you know, Bowen's moment, you know, like that
Speaker 1: was a personal thing he did in his in his space,
Speaker 1: in his home. There was something about that made me
Speaker 1: quite like I got to do this one right man.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna have to sing, not like I was
Speaker 1: already singing, like I'd sang that was the last track,
Speaker 1: so obviously sang all this ship and like I know
Speaker 1: I can sing like I had that You mentioned Roy.
Speaker 1: The chorus of Roy, I've had for like five years.
Speaker 1: I've wanted to write that chorus raises Bowen did the
Speaker 1: bridge the verse in the bridge, and we were packing
Speaker 1: up about to leave Nigel studio. I was having a
Speaker 1: bad day every fucking day in Nigel studio. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: was such a little bastard. But I realized I was
Speaker 1: being a little bastard and got over it. But it
Speaker 1: was what everyone was packing up, and then I realized, oh,
Speaker 1: that fucking chorus, that's it, because the bridge was going
Speaker 1: to be the chorus. So like literally John was already
Speaker 1: packing his drums and I said, right, get back, got
Speaker 1: this idea, do this drum beat, bah blah blah. Write
Speaker 1: in about five minutes, recorded it and I sang it
Speaker 1: on the way home. So I'd written that bit, not
Speaker 1: the words, but the melody that note in baby. I
Speaker 1: was like, that's it. Started crying and driving home, I
Speaker 1: was like, fuck God, that's I finally got that chorus
Speaker 1: in and then what's the other.
Speaker 3: On all the notes? I wondered if that was about
Speaker 3: somebody like dev to be honest.
Speaker 1: Well it is someone like that, Yeah, that's start my brother,
Speaker 1: but it's actually it's about this was a very much
Speaker 1: about me trying to turn a trope of love song
Speaker 1: into something else, which I like to do and I've
Speaker 1: been doing since brutalism, where like I like to take
Speaker 1: something and you know, like I kissed and I liked
Speaker 1: it kind of thing, not the most like profound transformative work,
Speaker 1: but like I love it and I like playing with things,
Speaker 1: and it's honest because that's who I am. So this
Speaker 1: was about the period where I met a bunch of
Speaker 1: guys when I started cycling Willy J. Healy to be precise.
Speaker 1: One of them was Willy where you fall in love
Speaker 1: with someone in a very platonic way, but you fall
Speaker 1: in love with someone, it makes you feel great and
Speaker 1: they bring out something new in you, or they really
Speaker 1: they reinvigorate a part of you that you've forgotten. And
Speaker 1: he's a very youthful, bright, beautiful tender man as smart
Speaker 1: and he's way better at songwriting than anyone else on
Speaker 1: now an incredible songwhere and an incredible voice, and he
Speaker 1: likes boxing. So like we just started hanging out and
Speaker 1: it's a love song about falling in love with someone
Speaker 1: and you're becoming that thing and the reference to hall
Speaker 1: of OAS's uh an ex partner in my self would
Speaker 1: joke about it wasn't my idea, was her idea. She
Speaker 1: said that, like, you know when you've made you fucked
Speaker 1: someone for the first time, make love to someone for
Speaker 1: the first time, and the next day, like hall of
Speaker 1: Oates is playing in your head all day and you
Speaker 1: have kicking cans, like yeah, yeah, it's like it's that feeling.
Speaker 1: You get that feeling like you've just there's this whole
Speaker 1: vibrant new episode to your life because you met someone.
Speaker 1: And I like, I love that, and I think it's
Speaker 1: it's an important love song. It's an important message to
Speaker 1: celebrate these people. I want to I want to say
Speaker 1: it like this because it's true. Men don't do this enough,
Speaker 1: you know, like just declare your love for someone because
Speaker 1: they make you a better person. There isn't a woman
Speaker 1: or a man that you're in a romantic relationship with,
Speaker 1: but you know a friend, he's just like, I fucking
Speaker 1: love this person, and that's all right. It's nothing weird
Speaker 1: about that. I don't get me wrong. Most people do.
Speaker 1: But I like to sing a song about it because
Speaker 1: I'm a musician.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I love that track. It's a real standout
Speaker 4: for me, and I.
Speaker 1: Was I mean the music, the musical journey of that
Speaker 1: song was about five minutes long. I wrote it when
Speaker 1: I was taking a ship and because we were having
Speaker 1: like we were in that That's one of the only songs. Nah,
Speaker 1: there's a couple on the album that we wrote in
Speaker 1: the room, but that was one of them. And I
Speaker 1: was just on the tour. I was like, it was
Speaker 1: it was a terrible writing session. We were just I
Speaker 1: was doing, everyone was doing my dad. So I went
Speaker 1: and I went to the toilet.
Speaker 4: There was another song I wanted to ask about, Grace.
Speaker 4: It's on the album.
Speaker 3: And I did wonder whether, like the kind of explicit
Speaker 3: references to obviously, no God, no King. I said, love
Speaker 3: is the Thing, no crown, no ring, like the period
Speaker 3: when that was written in I mean very not, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm no Poiro, Like the reading into that. I did
Speaker 3: wonder whether it was written in kind of the autumn
Speaker 3: of last year, as the country was sort of like
Speaker 3: responding to death of the Queen and all those kind
Speaker 3: of things, and like whether that was in your mind
Speaker 3: and how that made you feel, and whether that came
Speaker 3: out of those moments.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, I think when you become a parent, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a sense of the potential of what you would
Speaker 1: do to someone if they were to harm that person
Speaker 1: is so much more violent and terrifying, and you can
Speaker 1: imagine when you're not a parent. And with that in mind,
Speaker 1: it also makes you realize just how much you want
Speaker 1: to fight for your child's future and just how disgusting, hypocritical,
Speaker 1: loveless the Tory government and the monarchy is. And it
Speaker 1: sends me into a place where I'm willing to do
Speaker 1: things should anyone step in away with my kid having
Speaker 1: a good life with love in it. And then you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to I'm not say you know, it's
Speaker 1: like it's like assuming that you have to be religious,
Speaker 1: to fear a god, to be a good citizen. I'm
Speaker 1: not always you know, I wanted these things before. It
Speaker 1: just highlights how sad it is when you have a child.
Speaker 1: There you become more vulnerable because you're suddenly responsible for
Speaker 1: someone else, and that vulnerability is is scary and it's infuriating,
Speaker 1: and you just suddenly realize that there's a lot, like
Speaker 1: our kids are going to have to fight for a lot.
Speaker 1: And you know, I wanted to write love and I
Speaker 1: wanted to be love, and you know, as Bell Hooks writes,
Speaker 1: you know love is love is a verb, and you
Speaker 1: know it has facets of grace, empathy, commitment, kindness, And
Speaker 1: I think you know if you act with love and empathy,
Speaker 1: you're not You're not painting a carriage gold to carry
Speaker 1: an unelected leader down a path whilst there's foodless food banks.
Speaker 1: You're not shaking hands with net and Yahoo sanctioning or
Speaker 1: allowing a genocide in Gaza, and you're not whatever. It's
Speaker 1: a fact. You know, you're not desperately seeking to leave
Speaker 1: a union, and you're not desperately seeking to attack and
Speaker 1: blame a group of people for anything. You're looking to
Speaker 1: come at solve a problem with empathy and grace.
Speaker 3: I feel like I've said this a lot of the
Speaker 3: last few years, but it's a bit like next year
Speaker 3: is a big year. It could be a year of
Speaker 3: like big change. Twenty four potentially will be a year
Speaker 3: of big change. There's going to be a general election
Speaker 3: in the UK, There's going to be a US election.
Speaker 3: I can tell just from the way that you're exhaling
Speaker 3: there that you feel apprehensive about that.
Speaker 1: Yes, one thing that people are obsessed with now is
Speaker 1: making change on this platform they call social media. They
Speaker 1: think that it's a big platform, but it's not. De
Speaker 1: sanctioning bodies that allow you to express yourself and making
Speaker 1: sure that platform is very small, very small. You're seeing
Speaker 1: what they allow you to see, which is what you
Speaker 1: want to see, what you are hungry for, which is
Speaker 1: a sugary fix in a political fucking nightmare. So I
Speaker 1: am well aware that what I see is maybe not
Speaker 1: what's going on. And I'm no longer barking at the tree.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the roots. I fucking pray. I am
Speaker 1: praying that this circumstands by people. And you know what
Speaker 1: all this noise that people make around around the world
Speaker 1: is the general elections are the only place to really
Speaker 1: make a change, to start anyway. But this country and
Speaker 1: the way it's set up, you know, you've got a
Speaker 1: House of lords. That's insanity. House the Lords is insanity.
Speaker 1: I try and explain that to an American and they
Speaker 1: look at me like and this is someone with the Senate.
Speaker 1: And lobbying is invented there, you know, lobbying, and they're
Speaker 1: looking at me like you poor bastard. Yeah, it's fact.
Speaker 1: They're inheriting and buying seats in our parliament. That's fucking corruption, right,
Speaker 1: is it not. I hope obviously, blah blah, fucking blah.
Speaker 1: I hope that it starts with the Labor government, and
Speaker 1: I hope that that's the start of something. Unfortunately, this
Speaker 1: country always has to be on there to collapse before
Speaker 1: people really realized who used to blame. But the problem
Speaker 1: with left wing politics is, and I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: centrist left, I'm talking about proper left wing politicies. Is
Speaker 1: that's a fifty year plan, you know, And we definitely
Speaker 1: don't have that. So I don't know. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I am hopeful, Yes, I have optimism.
Speaker 3: Yes, what role do you think that music broadly has
Speaker 3: in the potential of the run up to something like
Speaker 3: an election in the UK? I mean, last time we
Speaker 3: saw it like a lot of the music community mobilized
Speaker 3: behind the Labor Party, Jeremy Corbyn, etcetera. So would that
Speaker 3: happen again?
Speaker 4: Do you think.
Speaker 1: It might be? You're a star.
Speaker 4: It's different, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah? I was really excited by it. But me and
Speaker 1: my dad were going to talk way before he got
Speaker 1: voted in because he's like, you know, he was a
Speaker 1: cutthroat in the law. You know, and I thought that
Speaker 1: might be not the law is in police obviously. I
Speaker 1: think it was just solicit. I can't remember my dather
Speaker 1: was telling me about it anyway. You know, the idea
Speaker 1: of someone who's good at debates and actually fight on
Speaker 1: that side of the room for once, but he seems
Speaker 1: to be the opposite of that. It's just centrist bollocks
Speaker 1: in it. Do I think the music community, I mean,
Speaker 1: you do what you can do, Like, you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of the general election, like we we we tried
Speaker 1: to we were flying back to the UK and Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders campaign asked us to play for that and we're like,
Speaker 1: we're going home, fuck and we can't afford to like
Speaker 1: stick around and like it's crazy money and then oh no,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. We just can't do it. And then
Speaker 1: recently it was for the pro Palestine March. They asked
Speaker 1: us to play for the Corbyn around the Corbin one
Speaker 1: of the Corby speeches, and we were already in Turkey.
Speaker 1: So it's painful, like you want to do these things
Speaker 1: and it would be great. That sort of thing is that,
Speaker 1: you you know, it's the same as going on in
Speaker 1: you just add you just add feet to that and
Speaker 1: the presence is the blessing there. You know, you just
Speaker 1: got to try and add numbers so that they see you.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't ignore you as an entity. I
Speaker 1: think you know it's about this is what I mean
Speaker 1: about algorithms and arguing in your political sense is like
Speaker 1: idols are not followed by the populace. We do not have.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not in the the world of you know,
Speaker 1: we're not played in the range. We're not played in
Speaker 1: between and deck or whatever. You know, we're not in
Speaker 1: that world. So you know, when Storms, he gets behind Corby,
Speaker 1: and that's sick because there's a huge amount of people
Speaker 1: there that are behind Storms. Like we don't have that
Speaker 1: sense of fame. So we will try. But obviously it's
Speaker 1: just better when Adele does it, and that's what I want.
Speaker 1: I'd rather Adele was doing it than me. It's up
Speaker 1: to It's up to everyone to chip in with whatever
Speaker 1: they want or not at all. It's none of my
Speaker 1: fucking business. Do I think music can make a difference. Yes,
Speaker 1: if it allows people to connect between themselves, that's all
Speaker 1: I can do is offer a bridge of like feeling.
Speaker 1: That's what music is. It's a universal language of feeling
Speaker 1: connection to the world, connection to other people. I hope
Speaker 1: we're giving that.
Speaker 3: I want to finish on the note of talking about
Speaker 3: community because I've I always loved watching the activity of
Speaker 3: the af Gang over the years and how that community
Speaker 3: has developed and supported and surrounded the band. And I
Speaker 3: just wondered whether you had any particular stories that have
Speaker 3: come from that community, like we're talking how it's developed
Speaker 3: six seven years on that I've really touched you, that
Speaker 3: have really warmed your heart to know, like, oh, for
Speaker 3: a connection with our band, certain things have happened, people
Speaker 3: have met, They've gone to a gig where they didn't
Speaker 3: have somebody to go to a gig with before, or
Speaker 3: whatever it might be. I just wonder if there are
Speaker 3: any particular stories that have just landed with you, with
Speaker 3: you that you've thought we're doing something significant, because without us,
Speaker 3: that thing wouldn't exist.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of men have messaged me privately saying,
Speaker 1: and I don't read much anymore just because I don't
Speaker 1: have the mental space for it, but I used to
Speaker 1: get messages of men telling me that I had given
Speaker 1: them a sense of strength to be vulnerable and to change.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful thing, and that's all I'm really interested in,
Speaker 1: is like helping people feel connected and be open and vulnerable,
Speaker 1: because again, you come up the world with vulnerability and
Speaker 1: empathy in love. I feel that that's something going to
Speaker 1: go one way.
Speaker 3: Midnight Chats is the joint production between Loud and Quiet
Speaker 3: and Atomized Studios for iHeartRadio. It's hosted by Stuart Stubbs
Speaker 3: and Greg Cochrane, mixed and mastered by Flow Lines, and
Speaker 3: edited by Stuart Stubbs. Find us on Instagram and TikTok
Speaker 3: to watch clips from our recordings and much much more.
Speaker 3: We are Midnight Chats Pod.
Speaker 2: For more information, visit loudan Quiet dot com