The Mic's Jon Hague and Benedict Watson had the fantastic opportunity to interview Johnny Took from DMA’s before their sub-headline set at Y Not Festival, where they discussed their new album ‘How Many Dreams?’ and more!
Are you looking forward to your set tonight?
Johnny: Yeah can’t wait, it feels like these UK festival sets are getting better and better. Incorporating
songs from the new record into the festival set has been awesome, there’s always a few songs from
a new album that become staples in the set, and it just elevates the whole experience for everyone.
Have you got a view to headlining UK festivals at some point?
Johnny: To be honest I don’t really think of it like that. We just want to keep writing the best music we can, keep pushing our boundaries, and I think if you just focus on that then the rest will come naturally. We keep working on the live set, we played Tramlines last week and something wasn’t quite working, so we tried something new for Truck Festival and that really changed the tone of the set, so we’ll probably stick with that today.
You did your album tour in April and you recently announced another UK tour for December.
What was the reasoning behind doing the two tours?
Johnny: The UK has become such an important market for us. We have a lot of British influences in our music and UK crowds have taken us under their wing which is really important to us. When we did the first tour, the album had only been out for two weeks, but when the tour is six months later,
people have really got to grow with the songs. They’ve got to have a summer with the songs where
they’re driving with their new partner to a holiday house and they play that song and they have a
memory associated with that song, but when it’s been out for two weeks there’s been no time for
that.
What’s your favourite song to start a set on?
Johnny: It changes, on album tours I like opening the set with the song that is the first song on the record, there’s something cool about that.
"...when the tour is six months later, people have really got to grow with the songs. They’ve got to have a summer with the songs where they’re driving with their new partner to a holiday house and they play that song and they have a memory associated with that song"
What was the recording process like for How Many Dreams? and how was it different to your
previous albums?
Johnny: It was a strange one. There was a lot of COVID kicking about, we recorded the skeleton of it over 3 weeks in London. Then we got back to Sydney and felt that we hadn’t completed the record yet, so we finished the record in Australia.
What’s your favourite song off the new album?
Johnny: Probably Get Ravey at the moment, it always changes for different reasons. I wrote that riff
years ago, actually the original version of Get Ravey had an outro melody which ended up becoming
the chorus of The Glow.
We have one last question; if you were a fruit, which fruit would you be, and why?
Johnny: I’ve had this conversation with my wife actually. I’d probably be a pear, I don’t know why.
Thank you very much to Johnny from DMA’s for his time!
Jon Hague and Benedict Watson
Edited by Tabitha Smith
Cover/Featured Image courtesy of Y Not Festival via Facebook
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