News

The catch-up #77

18th Nov 2008

We called up Kev yesterday to find out how the UK tour has been going. Thanks to Ben Yacobi for letting us use his lovely Hammersmith pics, and to Kev for the one of Dumbledore's house. Leave your comments below and email your questions for Ciaran next time to feedback@thefeeling.com...

Hello Kev. How are you?
Very well, thanks.

Where are you today?
Manchester, where we're resident for a few days now because we've got gigs in a big circle around it. We're staying in a big, funny-shaped hotel.

How's the tour been going?
It's been going really well. The first dates of a UK tour are always a bit scary because we never leave ourselves enough time to get things like the light show rehearsed for the crew. But it actually started off really well and it's just been getting better as we've been getting more into it and everyone's settling in. So yeah, we've been enjoying it!

Kev at Hammersmith

Has there been a highlight gig so far?
I think it varies for every member of the band, but I think Hammersmith was really good for everyone. London shows always come with a bit more pressure because you've got all your friends and family there. That probably added to our nervous energy which, thankfully, translated into musical energy. We had a really good one - loads of our mates came along and everything worked as it should have done. And, of course, Trevor Horn came on for the encore and sang with us. It was a lovely gig.

Dan was a bit overcome by emotion after Trevor Horn's appearance

Have you had any mishaps?
Actually, last night in Doncaster, our big light show intro kicked off as usual and we were getting ready to come on stage when suddenly all the house lights came up! It's all computer controlled apparently and the computer had decided that it wanted all the lights on. So we had to abandon the intro and start again.

Have you done any sight-seeing?
Well, when we were travelling around in Scotland we passed this strange Disneyland house thing. I think we were going between Inverness and Aberdeen and the bus driver had just got a new sat-nav unit that insisted that the quickest way was this crazy cross-country route. It was actually incredibly beautiful - I was sat at the front the whole time - but we did all feel a bit sick afterwards because it was such a windy road. Anyway, we spotted this strange Dumbledore-style abode at the side of a river. The River Avon actually. So we got out and had a look. It was all pointy and Gothic and looked like some portal to another world. I decided that I would have to live there and write weird books when I eventually retire!

Dumbledore's gaff

Is the tourbus getting messy by this stage of the tour?
It is a long tour but there are only six of us on it including our tour manager. We're all reasonably tidy and Ray the driver is exceedingly so.

Rich said in the last catch-up that you were suffering from insomnia in Europe.
Yes. Sleep is a general issue with me anyway. And sleeping on tour buses is something I just can't manage, which is unfortunate given what we do. Some people are fine with it, but I'm just not very good with the stopping and starting and the getting chucked around a bit and everyone in their own coffin-shaped things either side of you - there were eleven of us on the bus on our European tour. So I've been a bit like the living dead the past few weeks.

How do you cope with gigs when you're tired?
With adrenalin and coffee mainly! I spend as much of the day as possible lying down. It seems that 22 hours of lying down a day equates to enough rest to get through an hour and a half of show.

Can you sleep on the bus more when it's not moving?
I tend to sleep in the time between the bus stops moving and when the first other member of the band gets up. That's usually only an hour or two.

That's quite unfortunate.
Mmm. Actually, the other guys bumped into the band who are supporting us at the moment, Das Pop - who are very good by the way - at a club in Glasgow the other night and they were surprised not to see me there because they'd deduced from my appearance that I was the raver in the band! They'd put my haggard and drawn appearance down to partying rather than just not being very good at sleeping.

How have the support bands been?
Great! Das Pop are on with us at the moment. For their show, they have these balloons that spell out their name which they inflate with helium. During our Glasgow gig, which was probably the most lively in the Scottish sense of the word, the D and P that were spotted floating round the audience during our set. I'm not sure if those had been given away or if they'd been acquired by the Glasgow audience! But both the support bands - Das Pop and Gary Go - have been great. You can always tell that they've gone down well by the state of the audience when we come on. And they're always enlivened.

So, have you been playing new stuff?
Yeah, we've been playing a new song which has been going down very well. It's called The Truth Comes Out When The Drink Goes In.

Have you been pleased with the response?
Yeah, we think it's sounding really good and by the end of the song, people are singing along to the chorus. I think it was up on YouTube after the first time we played it on the European tour, and it's surprising how many people seem to know it - plus there are the regulars who seem to come to every gig anyway!

Do you think it could be a single?
It's hard to say because although we've played through some other songs that will probably end up on the next album, we're only in the early stages of working on them. I think the new song's great and I think if everything else Dan comes up with and we work on is in a similar league then we'll have a very good album. But there's no telling until everything else is done.

In other news, the DVD is out this week.
Yes. It's nice that it actually happened. One of the main features on it is the Alps documentary which was something that we put together ourselves and did under our own steam. Initially there wasn't going to be a DVD, but we went ahead and did the documentary independently. That's when the label saw it and said: that's really good we'll make a DVD now. So it's nice that it's finally out there and people are buying it. And because we did it all ourselves, there's a real sense of achievement.

It's got some amazing stuff on it.
Yeah - we crammed as much as we could on there. There's some stuff on it that dates all the way back to right at the beginning of things. It was interesting for us while we were putting it together just seeing what we looked like ten years ago.

You have changed quite a lot.
Yeah, we can afford haircuts now!

The Hunter wellies that you singed at Glastonbury are doing very well in Water Aid's auction. There are 20 pairs on sale and yours are currently the fourth or fifth most expensive on there.
And how much would that be?

They're currently at £77. Jay-Z's wellies are only £25.
Does that mean we'll be headlining Glastonbury?

James Blunt's at £35. Arctic Monkeys only £36. And Amy Winehouse only £42.
Well, I think next year's Glastonbury line-up should be based on the final selling price of the wellies!

Good plan. Now, readers' questions, Monica went to the gig in London and wondered if you had some troubles with your guitar. She says you swapped instruments a few times.
I don't remember having any troubles with it. I do swap it anyway because I've got different guitars that do different things. So I may, for example, have been swapping to the new one I've got which has a whammy bar which I use in the solo for Join With Us. The whammy bar is what lets you do the strange dive-bombing noises which are prevalent in 1980s guitar music.

Andisha from Prague would like to know if you're the lead guitarist of The Feeling or if Dan is? Or does it depend on the song?
It depends on the song. It's all very flexible.

How do you work it out in the studio?
Well if Dan's got a song which he's written and arranged, he'll quite often come up with a solo that's an integral part of the song. It'll have a melodic hook in it and he would quite often end up playing that. But we also have different styles of playing and it's often really apparent who should be doing what. If it's not, it would probably fall on me to do it because Dan gets to do all the singing, so it's only fair that I should get to do some of the widdling.

And the final question from Lizzie Lizzy - what do you collect and how many have you got?
Guitars, I suppose. I've got nine plus two bass guitars.

How many of those do you take on tour?
We have to have a spare of everything that we take so we can do the swappy thing if a string breaks, so I suppose I've got four or five with me on tour.

The four left at home must be a bit sad.
Actually, they're usually equally good versions which I don't want to get scratched by Richard's belt buckle when he borrows them!

Comments

Showing 21 to 27 of 27 (prev 20)

From	Comment
ammyyy 18/11/08	Aha! truth be told, that picture of Dumbledore's gaff does look pretty realistic!
-sandi- 18/11/08	Nice catch up! Love it and good to hear that the band is still enjoying their touring! Good luck with finding many quiet hours to sleep, Kevin! xxxxx
jojoxd 18/11/08	I love the picture of Dan! Ace catch-up. Can't wait 'til your back in Scotland again! :)
mattleeds 18/11/08	Brilliant catch up, thanks Kevin! Glad to hear the tour has been a successs! :-) Ohh, and we soon forgot about that slight mishap in Doncaster, as Sam says below, twas an incredible night! =]
sam2691 18/11/08	Great catch up its good to hear that the tour is going well. It was a shame about the technical problems in Doncaster but even with that it was still the best gig ever!! Can't wait until Thursday - Newcastle Academy. Sam :D :D
pteranodon 18/11/08	Awesome guys and I'm so excitedf about seeing you in Derby and buying your DVD tommorow night

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