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The Cheshire five-piece and Slam Dunk regulars talk about opening the main stage in 2014 and more

You were first on the main stage. How was it?

I didn’t expect anyone to turn up because about 20 minutes before there was no one in there. They hadn’t even opened the door, but then it filled up and it was wicked. We’ve played Slam Dunk twice before in very small rooms so did not expect that many people. I’m a bit emotional when I think about it because we we’re first on and no one comes to see the first band really. Everyone’s dealing with the cloakroom and sorting their stuff out but people were literally legging it to get there.

You’re from Nantwich. Have you been to the jazz and blues festival there?

We all are, except for our drummer, Matt. We played there this year, twice. We played acoustically at the Bowling Green where we used to work. There’s probably space for 25 people there, but we played for about 70. Then we did electric at the White Horse and it was rammed.

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What was the transition like leaving Hassle Records for Red Bull?

Smooth. Hassle are an independent label and they have a certain breed of music and when they signed us we did kind of sound like those bands – we were quite spazzy and weird and disjointed – but when we took a step back and rethought what music we wanted to play, what band we actually wanted to be, they went “oh… oh ok, this doesn’t really fit with us as a label”, so they were happy for us to move on.

How did you come to work with producer and Goldfinger frontman John Feldmann?

I sent him a video of us playing live in 2005, and he sent me a message saying “you’re not ready yet”, then three or four years later I went on holiday to LA with my family and got introduced to him. I wrote a song with him called Sometimes, which is on our record, and he said: “This is really good. You’re not going home with your family – you’re staying here.” I did, and we wrote loads more songs together but we didn’t have any backing or money to do the album so he funded it himself and paid for the time we had in the studio, because he believed in us so much.

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What’s it like playing with an American strong line up?

We’ve toured with so many US bands now, we’ve toured with half the bands on this line-up. We are mates with the letlive lads, we are going to watch them later, and they are going to absolutely destroy this festival. It’s a really good vibe here and everyone’s really good friends, obviously the bigger festivals have the really huge bands, so you don’t get a chance to bump into anyone, you cant exactly bump into Jared Leto and see if he wants a pint, but here people watch each others bands and everyone just chills out backstage. There are no divas at this festival.

Is there any performance rivalry at a festival like this?

I think any band wants to be the best band on the bill and if anyone says that they don’t, then they are lying. We try and put on the best performance that we can, we can’t control any other performance than our own so we just have to make it our best. It’s not just for us, it’s for the festival, people have paid £35 to come and if you go out and just fuck about, then you are ripping them off.

Ricky Stack

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