Skinny Lister has been supporting Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls on their UK and USA Tour. Skinny Lister supported Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls, along with Will Varley on Sunday the 15th and Monday 16th November, and for the next month on their UK tour. Gabriella Ahmed and Ella Wood had to opportunity to interview all three artists.
Hey, how you doing?
Just so tired! I’m like “WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF!” but yeah. Day off tomorrow yesssss.
What you doing tomorrow then?
Going back home to Leicester. So yeah I grew up coming to Nottingham, and getting pissed, being thrown out of nightclubs. I’ve been thrown out of various places, me and my brother used to just get on the train and have to get drunk in Leicester.
Isn’t your brother in the band?
Yes he plays melodeon.
Yeah I saw you last night, and couldn’t tell if two of they guys were brothers..?
(Laughs) yeah you have to be tall and blonde to be in the band.
How would you describe your style of music? I mean it has a lot of punk, rock, folk and Celtic roots I feel!
Well we definitely have obviously got folk our core, and we’ve always played like folk sessions, and my dad’s a folk singer-songwriter, so that’s always there, and Dan’s got quite a pop sensibility so yeah, and the band love The Clash, The Jam and Dexys, so it’s all sort of a mixture of things that we’re listening to really.
So you’ve just released “Six Whiskies” what was the influence behind that?
Lorna: (Laughs) when Dan gets drunk and get’s thrown out of a club, that’s the basis of the song. Dan?
Dan: Yeah well, I got thrown out a nightclub in Farringdon, but it’s all about that feeling of still being drunk and wandering the streets of London. And it’s a bit of an ode to London really, and a lot of songs on the album are London centric, and this is one of them. Then the video was shot when we were in America, last month with Frank actually, and the main shot of it is Michael crowd surfing with his double bass.
You did that last night!
Dan: Yeah yeah, some of the bigger venues we’re doing with Frank, they’re good because they have balcony’s which we manage to get a cameraman on top of it, and we got some nice shots of him crowd surfing. Then we put it in black and white, and slow motion.
Lorna: Everything’s better in slowmo.
How do you think it sums up where you guys are now, compared to when you started up?
Lorna: Well when we first started we didn’t have drums, so definitely, and funnily enough someone found a setlist from a gig we did like years ago, and looking at it, it’s really folky.
Dan: We used to draw a lot more traditional material than what we do now, and looking at that setlist, half of it was traditional songs, so a traditional English Polka, a couple of Sea Shanties, now we do maybe.. one or two traditional songs? We’ve now started to write our own, we have a song called Raise your Wreck which is like a Sea Shantie but we’ve incorporated that sort of rhythm on it. But yeah, we’ve definitely, stuff we do now if more original, but we still do like throwing in a lot of traditional stuff. And we still use bits like throwing in the occasional accordion riff, bit of a mish mash.
Lorna: It’s definitely the instruments, which make it more like our sound. The accordion, the concertina or the mandolin. Breaking out into our traditional folk session.
What was the first song you did last night by the way?
Oh that was ‘This is War’ off the new album, but we don’t normally open with that! We’ve been opening with ‘Raise a Wreck’ for God knows how long, but the last two nights we started with ‘This is War’. That’s on the album with a video we filmed in.. Tokyo actually, one of those live performance things.
You’ve been at 8.. gigs already is it?
Yeah well we’ve been touring since the 10th of September with Frank, spent 6 weeks with him in the US, then we did another week of our own, so we did 8 weeks.
So where’s your favourite place to have performed in those 8 weeks?
Dan: Last night was pretty good actually, some of the highlights in the US though were like Boston, New York, where we have quite a good following of our own anyway, on the East Coast, but then we got back to the UK..
Lorna: Nottingham’s always got a good crowd and we’re not just saying that! Its always good coming back to the Midlands,
Dan: Well last time we played The Bodega, and that was great, people are always up for it in Nottingham! Nottingham is definitely a highlight, but last night was definitely fun.
We try! Okay so if you could perform on stage with anyone dead or alive, who would it be and why?
Gotta be Freddie Mercury, because he’s bloody amazing! Well we’re kinda Pogues fans, so I’d like to get it on with Shane Macgowan if he can still stand! Well yeah, we should do ‘Fairytale of New York’ when we get round to December!
Well I think that’s great! Thanks for your time guys!
No worries, enjoy the gig!
By Gabriella Ahmed and Ella Wood
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