We caught up with The Spook School ahead of their set at La Belle Angèle as part of this years Wide Days Artist Showcases! Give it a read below as we talk SXSW, Movies and UK Tours….
Hi Guys!
How did you guys form and what made you want to pursue a career in music?
Adam: I don’t know about a career in music
*Laughter*
Adam: Me and Nye are brothers, so we knew each other and we wanted to be in a band, we met Anna and Niall doing stand-up comedy at university and then said do you want to be in a band and that’s where the band started
Nye: It’s not a very exciting story!
Adam: We never started it with the intention of a career I music, we just started it for fun and we just say yes to everything
*Laughter*
Anna: We end up having a nice time though!
So you embark on a UK tour shortly, for people who haven’t seen you live before what can they anticipate?
Niall: A very confident drummer
Adam: And a very not confident everyone else, yeah Nye talks a lot so we tell him to shut up but it’s mostly songs
Niall: Yeah there are some other things but predominantly songs cause were a band and we don’t shy away from that
Adam: They can expect a very nice time, if we had trip advisor we’d give ourselves a good review
Nye: I don’t think you’re allowed to do that
No one will ever know though
Niall: We’d give ourselves 3 out of 5 stars
Adam: And the audience would give us 2 out of 5
*Laughter*
Niall: 5 out of 5 for enthusiasm
That’s what counts though!
Anna: Yeah 5 out of 5 for loudness, just turn everything up
Niall: Yeah queer noise!
What are you looking forward to most about the tour?
Nye: Playing with Bad Moves, they’re amazing
Adam: Yeah they’re an American band that we’re kind of friends with, well only really one of them, we’ve met the others once but we’ll all be friends by the end of the tour
Niall: Well yeah we have met them before so they are our friends!
Anna: That’s how Niall decides who his friends are, he meets them once *laughs*
Niall: They’re my friends, they don’t know they’re my friends yet, but they will
Nye: But yeah they’re all lovely and they write really great songs. I’m just looking forward to seeing them live every night
Adam: Yeah just hanging out, I just bought some noise cancelling headphones so I’m looking forward to trying those out
Niall: I will be louder than them, my mission is now to be louder than Adams noise cancelling headphones. That’s what I’m most looking forward to
*Laughter*
So you recently got back from SXSW, how was that experience overall for you guys?
Nye: It was good yeah, I ate a lot of tacos
Niall: That’s the main thing, whenever you go to any industry event. It’s always the food
Nye: It’s weird there seems to be this thing in Austin and Texas where they tend to have toilet cubicles that don’t have any doors on them and I only experienced that once this year which is an overall improvement on last year!
Niall: We go to a lot of toilets
Adam: We had a really great time and we played a lot of shows!
Anna: We were really busy but in a really good way!
Adam: Feeling very productive, I had a really big car well we did
Niall: That sounded like you’d won it for a little while
Adam: Yeah I had a big automatic American car and I got to drive around on the wrong side of the road
*Enacts Driving Motion*
Niall: It’s important to note because this is getting transcribed, when Adam was talking about the car he was making little driving motions
Adam: So yeah we saw lots of bands and had lots of fun, it was a pleasant experience overall!
Do you have a standout moment from SXSW?
Nye: I got to see a band called Le Butcherettes and they were phenomenal live, I never seen them before or heard of them. They’re front woman is just the best, probably the best stage performer I’ve seen in a while so yeah that was probably my highlight
Niall: Playing at the Bike Shop, this guy just put on shows outside his shop and we were playing there and there was this small child in the audience with massive headphones on, it really didn’t have any care for what was going on and just kept running right up to each of us
Anna: What I thought was funny was how it kept throwing it’s cup of juice on the floor, very punk
Niall: Yeah probably the most punk audience member, security really should’ve had a word. *Laughs*
A standout moment from 2016?
Niall: Headlining Indie Tracks, it’s a festival in Derbyshire that we’ve been going to for a long time now so getting asked to close that was really nice
Nye: Yeah I think Indie Tracks was definitely the best thing from last year, there were a lot of people there which was scary but nice!
Niall: We pretended to be the Vengaboys for a bit, we had this really long joke where we came on and said “We’re the Vengaboys” and everyone was confused and thought we’d forgotten, then at the end of our set we only went and played the bloody Vengaboys. Oooft what are we like!
*Laughter*
Adam: Yeah there was actually a good story ark to that, it went on for an hour
Niall: Everyone was convinced we’d forgotten!
What can people anticipate from the next six months?
Adam: Ooooh awful things will happen
Niall: Politically?
*Laughter*
Niall: Not really in the next six months but we’ve just finished recording an album which we should release at the end of the year
Adam: No we might get it out in the next six months
Niall: That’s really optimistic though isn’t it
Adam: Yeah well we might get a single out
Niall: Still a bit of a reach
Maybe just part of a song then
*Laughter*
Niall: We’re gonna play some festivals and get nervous about some stuff. Feel some anxiety, I’ll probably buy a new outfit
Adam: Oooh I need some new socks actually
Niall: There you go, Adam will buy some new socks!
Anna: We might finally get a van actually instead of constantly driving round in a Honda Jazz
Adam: No one can really get excited about that though
Anna: I definitely will
Adam: Yeah we’ll look dead professional
Niall: We can go to drive thru’s
Nye: We can do that in the car now, you’re allowed in a drive thru with a car, it’s kinda the whole point!
Niall: Yeah but if we get a lot of food in the van, people will be like no one even knows how many people are in that van
Anna: We can invite audience members with us
Niall: That sounds really seedy now
Anna: I just wanted to take them to McDonalds
Niall: Anna just wants to feed our fans
Adam: We could go to the car wash
Niall: Take out groupies to the car wash?
*Laughter*
Nye: Im really sorry we’ve not managed to answer this question!
Don’t worry about it! We’ve got a lot of good content
*Laughter*
Quickfire!
The first gig you ever went to?
Niall: Bowling For Soup
Adam: Steps no S Club 7, we (to Nye) went to S Club 7. It was really good
Anna: Mine was Spice Girls
Niall: Yeah Bowling For Soup in Dublin
Nye: Thats nowhere near as cool as Spice Girls or Steps
Anna: I was actually going to say Sum 41 to try and sound a little bit cooler!
If you could have written any song ever which one would it be?
Niall: Happy Birthday!
We’ve literally recently had that in an interview
Niall: Awww I’m so hacked
Nye: Ah that’s so hard maybe, Station To Station by David Bowie. It’s pretty good, it’s like three songs in one so I think that’s a pretty good choice
Niall: I don’t like anything that I do so I’d immediately stop liking the song as soon as I’d written it
Adam: I watched that Brian Wilson documentary last night so I can only think of Beach Boys songs. So I would have liked to have written one Beach Boys song, even one of the shitty cheesy ones I would have just liked to have been involved somehow
*Laughter*
Niall: I would’ve liked to have written a B-52’s song, like maybe Private Idaho. Just because, oh and I’d be able to dress up
If you could have starred in any movie ever which one would it be?
Nye: Grease!
Niall: Grease 2!
Ooooooh no!
*Cue chorus of ‘Who’s That Guy?’*
Adam: What’s that film set in Greece? The one where the giant thing attacks the city
Anna: The Blob?
Nye: I don’t think that’s set in Greece…
Adam: Oh well it’s around about the same time
*Laughter*
Anna: So you would wanna be The Blob
Adam: Yes I would want to be The Blob
*Laughter*
Anna: I’m covering Grease 2 with Niall
Describe The Spook School in three words?
Niall: Grease 2 plus
*Laughter*
Anna: Grease 2 plus?
Adam: Queer D.I.Y Pop
Anna: Is D.I.Y one word?
Niall: Queer Die Pop
That took a dark turn
Anna: Queer Pop Yourself
Niall: Nice-People-Doing-Nice-Things. All hyphenated
Adam: So we’ve got one word then
*Laughter*
If you have one your most embarrassing moment on stage?
Niall: I take my clothes off a lot
Nye: Oh so one time Niall decided to start wearing hot pants so we were on stage and he usually takes his shirt off in the middle but this time he decided to take his pants off too to reveal his hot pants but nobody in the crowd knew what he was doing
Adam: Yeah cause they weren’t tear away trousers or anything
Niall: They were quite tight jeans too
Nye: So everyone started booing and I had to try and be like ‘No he’s not doing what you think he’s doing!’
Niall: Everybody wasn’t booing some people were like yes please
Nye: No that was in your head Niall
*Laughter*
Niall: It ended up being really dissapointing cause they were gold shimmery hot pants but under the lights they just looked like tiny boxers so no one thought it was incredible showmanship
Anna: Are you embarrassed about it?
Niall: No not really, I think I embarrassed the band though, the question should have been what have I done that’s embarrassed the band!
*Laughter*
Well Thanks Guys!
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