A couple of weeks ago, we interviewed Blitz Kids at Radstock Festival in Liverpool. We talked about their new album, the rise of the small festivals and playing on the same stage as Limp Bizkit. Enjoy!
HOW ARE YOU ALL?
Jono: Excellent.
DID YOU JUST GET HERE?
Jono: Literally just got here, yeah. On my first beer!
YOU’RE ON THE VITAMIN WATER…
Joey: What can I say? I’m a pro.
SO THERE ARE NO DRINKING RULES BEFORE SHOWS FOR YOU THEN…
Jono: I’m allowed to, because I suck without it.
Joey: And he doesn’t play his instrument onstage, he just mimes. But I actually have to sing.
Jono: I wish we could mime! That’d be great.
Joey: And no-one would know. That would be wonderful. But sadly we have to play our instruments. Practise drunk and play sober.
Jono: If we played Top Of The Pops we’d be sorted.
WHAT TIME ARE YOU ON TONIGHT?
Joey: 8pm.
PREPARED AND READY?
Jono: Always.
Joey: How long have we got?
Jono: Two and a half hours.
ARE YOU PEPPED UP?
Jono: Yeah I am actually. We’re really excited about this. We’re playing up on the balcony of the main room. It’s really odd.
Joey: It’s odd but pretty cool. It’s not gonna be very good for crowd interactions but still, pretty good.
Nic: We’ve got a £20 bet to see who will jump off the balcony first.
Joey: Oh really? D’you reckon I can get down? Probably, yeah. If I can find a shortcut from there and a way back up. There’s stairs at the side so I’ll just leg it down in the interlude of a song and run around and run back up again.
Jono: Spoiler alert!
Joey: This isn’t coming out before…
Jono: Joey’s gonna do something special so watch Blitz Kids!
Joey: Joey’s gonna die.
Jono: Ironically during the song Never Die…
Joey: That would be a top story.
YOU’RE GIVING IT ALL AWAY! WILL THERE BE PYROTECHNICS TOO?!
Jono: You’ve got a lighter haven’t you?
Joey: Yeah.
Nic: Just a gentle strobe, lighter with my fingers. And then it’ll go out.
I’VE NEVER SEEN YOU PLAY BEFORE. WHAT CAN I EXPECT?
Jono: We’re not sure yet. We haven’t played this set before so we don’t know what to expect. Should be fun.
Joey: We’ve started practising so we’re probably gonna be better. We never used to practise, but now we do.
Jono: We used to just turn up at his house where we used to practise and because we were at his house we wouldn’t do anything. There was no urgency about it. But now we’re practising at a rehearsal space it’s like, ‘Shit, we’re paying for this’, so we have to actually do work.
Joey: Veterans of the game! We’ve been together for six years and only now we’re going to be good live.
HAS IT BEEN SIX YEARS?!
Jono: Since our inception, yeah.
Joey: Although now people say that when you formed is since you’ve had your most recent members, and in that case we’ve only been together for a year.
Jono: Exciting times! We’re like little children, but also old haggard men. Old bodies, young hearts.
Nic: That’s a quote!
HOW’S THE MINI-ALBUM, NEVER DIE, BEEN GOING DOWN?
Joey: Really well. That came out last year and it’s definitely the thing we’re most proud of that we’ve released by far. We’d never really been that happy with anything we’d put out until then so it was the first time we genuinely really liked what we put out. We just finished our new album which is gonna come out in September and we’ve just dropped the first single from that on Radio 1 the other day, and a lyric video to go with it, and the reaction to that was unbelievably good. Yeah, it was crazy. The internet went mad. We had such a good response. We’ve never had that many people comment about it: people in the business, bands that we know, friends tweeting about it and retweeting it and telling people to go check it out. It was amazing. So now that’s the thing we’re most proud of that we’ve released.
Jono: Continually getting better. Always on the ball! Pushing things forward.
YOU DID THE NEW ALBUM WITH JOHN FELDMANN, DIDN’T YOU?
Joey: We did. It was amazing. LA is a beautiful place and he’s an amazing guy to work with and we had so long to do it as well. We had five weeks so we actually had time. In the past we’ve always rushed it so this was five weeks and we got to chill out while we were doing it and we got some perspective. And like we said, this is easily the best work we’ve ever done and it’s had the best reaction so far.
Jono: This shit’s about to blow up man! The engineer who worked on half of the album is actually here today. We haven’t seen him in 18 months. He’s over from LA doing Natives’ record. We saw him before and we were like ‘AHHHHH!’
WHAT BETTER PLACE FOR A REUNION THAN RADSTOCK?
Jono: It’s the first year of a new festival and it’s wicked. Good vibes already. It’s cool, there’s a good turn out. These things can be touch and go when they’ve never been done before, but the line up’s great and the ticket prices are quite cheap. I remember a few years ago there was a new festival with a great line up but it got pulled because of finances and stuff, but we’re here now and it’s all going ahead smoothly.
Joey: Brilliant. The way it should be.
Jono: With things like Leeds and Download being so expensive now, it’s all about the small festivals. Then you’ve got Slam Dunk, Hit The Deck, Takedown etc, and all these smaller festivals are going from strength to strength every year.
Joey: Hopefully this will be the same! I mean, aren’t Leeds tickets £250 now?
Jono: Yeah, including booking fee. First time I went was £110.
Joey: First time I went was £120. That’s insane.
Jono: People are being priced out because there are these massive bands, whereas most of the bands people want to see are these kinds of bands who are rising. It’s a wicked line up today. Loads of our friends are here. We’ve played with almost every band on the bill. It’s like an all day party. We’ll do a little bit of a party later. Liverpool as a city is one of the nicest cities in the UK. Everyone’s so nice here as well. It gets a bad reputation with the stereotypes and stuff but when you actually come here everyone’s so nice. The only people that are friendlier than in Liverpool are the Glaswegians. Glasgow gets a bad rep as well but they’re sound. We don’t come to Liverpool enough. We’ve only done one show here.
WHAT HAVE YOU GOT COMING UP AFTER THIS?
Joey: Go on to our Facebook (http://on.fb.me/17eYBqb) and download free music. There’s free songs from the new album.
Nic: And we’re doing the Lower Than Atlantis tour.
Jono: We’ve got the LTA tour in the UK. We’ve just finished the European tour with them.
Joey: And come and see us at Download. And Slam Dunk. We’re doing the Sunday at Download. We’re on the same stage as Limp Bizkit.
Jono: We’re opening and they’re closing. Maybe they’ll do a cover of Never Die. If Fred comes on and does a rap over one of our songs I will shit my pants.
Joey: You can’t just call him Fred. You’ve gotta call him by his full name.
LAIS MW