Interview Versus: Los Campesinos! & Pinegrove grill each other ahead of Mirrors Festival 2017

Well, I didn’t actually get to go home for that week – I drove from Milwaukee, where our tour ended, to Chicago to meet up with Half Waif and travel with them for a few days. Hanging at their show in Chicago and getting to just watch a concert without having to be a part of it was actually a really beautiful experience for me. I watched the show from a few different places in the room, and was really able to absorb the music and think about how it sounded and what it meant without having to worry about my own performance schedule for the evening. That was pretty refreshing. I also spent the first part of that day staying in bed until 3pm and eating vegan buffalo wings.

I get really bad at responding to messages from friends while I’m on the road. Tour is such an independent reality from home life that you can kind of push things off without as much immediate consequence as if you were home. It’s also hard for me to not have at least a couple nice beers at most shows we play (they’re free & usually really good, after all!) which I know is a little more than I should be having.

Thanks! Great question. Evan and I played in a few bands in high school – the first one was a cover band called the Pug Fuglies. We learned ‘Voodoo Child’, ‘El Scorcho’ and ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and then broke up. Our next band stayed together from 7th – 12th grade and I think we actually did some really cool stuff! But for part of that time we were called Vakker Støy, which means beautiful noise in Norwegian. That’s pretty cringe-worthy looking back on it.

Well, actually, I’m jealous of your proximity to so many countries! I guess this is maybe a grass-is-greener thing between us. There’s so much diverse history and culture within a drive’s distance for y’all Europeans. Of course, not that touring is vacationing, and sometimes one of my main frustrations with tour is the lack of time to actually absorb anything the city you’re in has to offer beyond the one-block radius of your venue. But still! Even just stopping at gas stations and seeing the different types of food, the languages, observing the architecture – all of that blows my mind.

I’ve actually never tried Crystal Pepsi! Are you guys up on La Croix? We go through those pretty quickly in the green room. I’m also a big fan of a hoppy, American-style IPA. Getting a good beer in the UK – dang, now that’s been tough for me! What’s up with that cask stuff you guys mess around with?

Growing up I used to have that 1991 – 2001 Greatest Hits album in heavy rotation. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to them, though. In fact, I think

IT’S BEEN

ONE WEEK

We used to play a game revolving around coming up with puns but all it did was reveal how childish and revolting we all are. After ten years of touring our communication is probably 70% in-jokes and made up language. It’s always heartening how even though we might go three or four months without seeing each other these days, we always pick up instantly right where we last left off. Our big tour tradition these days are stopping to eat at Toby Carvery wherever we can (really, you must add one to your itinerary next time you’re over here for a proper stretch.)

No beef here, do not fear. I live in Bath, which is beautiful but boring, and right next door to Bristol, so that’s where I’m required to go for anything nearing excitement. Cardiff is a good place though, that obviously we have had a great deal of good times in. There is a big soccer rivalry between Cardiff and Bristol City, the Severnside Derby, with both teams having pretty elite hooligan groups associated with them. I feel like that’s something North American sport really lacks - organised violence.

As road weary veterans of the late 00s indie-rock boom and bust we did a lot of pretty lengthy tours. Regrettably, those days are long-gone now and with us all working proper jobs these days we don’t get to tour anywhere near as often or as long as we’d like to. I agree though, you soon realise that a day-off is much more productive than shoe-horning in a show, playing to 50 people in the middle of nowhere in order to bring in an extra $500 to help a tour run a profit. Having said that, we’ve always been a cheap-hotel rather than sleeping on floors band, cos we quickly understood not many people have floor space for a band of seven members.

We are SAVVY now. It took us too long to realise “the money spent on your rider is money taken from your fee,” so gone are the kooky requests and nothing gets left behind.

Ranked in order -
1. Nice beer for backstage
= cheap beer for onstage
= bottle of whiskey
4. a wedge of bottled water
5. Coca Cola

You don’t have to ask for hummus and pitta, it’ll be there anyway (and we’ll be grateful for it.)

At the time it was fantastic. Very supportive and nurturing and a city which had a ton of venues. We really jumped the queue in terms of breaking out of Cardiff, but most everyone was really happy for us. I feel like the house-show scene is something that exists in the UK a lot less than in the US, but I would concede I am no expert on it. Maybe it’s the nature of housing over here, more terraces and fewer basements, with everybody scared of losing their rent deposit.

Los Campesinos! and Pinegrove play at Mirrors Festival this weekend (Saturday 28th October). The last few remaining tickets can be purchased here.

Tags: Los Campesinos!, Pinegrove, Features