“There’s always been hyped bands. I don’t know how we fit into it. I don’t think we’re really bothered about it. If it happens, it happens…”
“There’s always been hyped bands. I don’t know how we fit into it. I don’t think we’re really bothered about it. If it happens, it happens…“
Tiffany Davenport interviews Little Barrie
Little Barrie we’re playing at Rotterdam’s Motel Mozaique Festival on April 15th. I got to talk to them about their new CD, Edwyn Collins, and those pesky music magazines….
TD: Hello guys, can you first of all please introduce yourselves?
Barrie – Hello, my name is Barrie Cadogan and I sing and play guitar in Little Barrie.
Wayne – Hello, my name is Wayne Fulwood and I sing and play drums in Little Barrie.
Lewis – I am Lewis Wharton and I play bass in Little Barrie.
TD: You’re about to kick off a tour with DJ format. How did you end up doing a tour with a hip hop artist?
Barrie – Well, we’re label mates.
Lewis – We kind of knew him a bit before through friends of ours, the Aspects. They’re similar to DJ Format. We met a year half ago and it just seemed a natural thing to do. He did a remix of a track we did with Aspects.
TD: It’s a bit surprising because it’s two different kinds of music but both very happy. I imagine it makes for a fun night out.
Barrie – Yeah, I think it fits together quite well.
Lewis – We’ve done something similar with Aspects. We always seem to get quite good press from the hip hop crowd and we’re into bits of hip hop as well. It’s quite a natural thing. It’s not like we’re planning some hip hop cross over.
Barrie – We didn’t set out to cross genres. We just play what we wanted to play and it’s quite interesting to see that people have picked up on it.
Wayne – We thought it’d be interesting for a guitar band to do a tour with a hip hop artist because you never get that. We thought it would be a bit different and we’re up for trying different things all the time.
Barrie – You have bands where they try to mix rock with rap and it’s had a more heavy metal kind of take on it and we come with a soul/rhythm and blues thing.
TD: I know you’ve also played with The Bees. You guys are all friends, right?
Barrie –Yeah, we first met them quite a few years ago and we found out that they had our records and they know Aspects as well, and they would do a club night together and we would go down for that and stay with them at their house. They would look after us.
Lewis –Touring with The Bees and Aspects has been one of our highlights so far because you already had three bands that got on really well. It was really good fun.
TD: I also heard you would play with them on stage. That’s sounds nice and also a bit old fashioned – in a good way.
Lewis – We would talk about that while on tour. There used to be soul reviews (in the sixties and seventies) and bands then were more interactive and less, ‘This is what we do. This is our album. You have to buy this.’
Wayne – It’s much more of a show. I think often record companies try to get new artists on tour with established artists whether it works or not, or whether the bands like each other or not. You can see sense in it but it’s better when you got bands that get on and their music crosses over. You can put together a package where it’s a great overall show rather than people not turning up for the support acts, which quite often happens in England anyway. Word got around after we did a few gigs with The Bees and people came early to see us and Aspects play.
TD: You guys recently released your CD, We Are Little Barrie. What’s the response been like?
Wayne – It’s been great so far. There has been quite a lot of units moved – that’s what they say in the industry – units. I think we’ve sold something like 25,000 so far and it’s only been out for a couple of months.
Barrie – We just found out today that we’re going to Japan. We knew we were going to Australia but now we’re going to Japan as well and then San Francisco and then New York. Then we got Glastonbury and then a little bit of a break and then we go on and do a European tour as well!
TD: What about summer festivals, anything confirmed?
Wayne – Pukkel Pop in Belgium. We get a mad itinerary, which is updated every few weeks and it’s getting more and more full, which is wicked.
Lewis – We go back to Japan in August to do Summer Sonic Festival.
TD: Are you excited about going to Japan?
Wayne – Yeah, how many people get to go there and play music?
We have a fansite there already. We’ve never been out there or anything and that’s the territory we’ve sold the most albums in so far besides England.
Lewis – We’ve done some press there and their questions are really in depth. Not just ‘what’s your favorite colour and what new bands you like’. They ask everything about your guitars.
Wayne – It’s really cool and sometimes funny. They ask very specific questions.
Barrie – I think they already know more about us than we do.
TD: Barrie, you played guitar for Morrissey’s tour. How was it for you? Did you get to talk with him?
Barrie – Yeah, I talked to him a little bit but he’s a very private guy so you don’t always see that much of him. Sometimes you rehearse just with the band. But I chatted with him a bit. I learned a lot. It was an intense period. I had to learn the songs quickly and do the first show within three days. It was a good experience, they were good people and I played some good shows.
TD: Did you play in the UK?
Barrie – We did the Meltdown Festival, which Morrissey was part curator of and that was three shows at the Royal Festival Hall in London and the Move Festival in Manchester and we did some shows in Europe.
How did you hook up with Edwyn Collins?
Barrie – We met a guy called Andy who ran a guitar shop and after getting to know him we found out he was Edwyn’s guitarist and we started giving him our singles and said we were looking to record another single. Andy suggested we get in touch with Edwyn and it sort of spiralled from there. Edwyn got really into it.
Were you familiar with Orange Juice?
Barrie – We were really keen about it because we love the sound of his records and we liked his songs.
TD: I heard that you guys moved to London and opened a guitar shop, is that true?
Wayne –There’s a rumor going around that we do, but we’ve worked in music shops and record shops… as good as.
Lewis – We barely own musical instruments let alone a music shop
TD: I thought maybe you were rich kids….
Lewis – I’d love to be a rich kid!
TD: Well, you’re having fun now.
Lewis – Yeah it’s all good.
Wayne – But it’s been a long hard road….
TD: How is Edwyn? Do you have any contact with his family?
Barrie – He is sort of recovering. It’s going to be a long process. We don’t know huge amounts of facts apart from that he’s doing well. He’s sort of undergoing speech therapy and physio.
Wayne – Nobody really knows how he’s going to come out. You just hope it’ll be ok.
Lewis – We’ve heard that things are as good as they can be. I imagine Edwyn just wants to take time away from everything and get back on his feet.
Barrie – He’s in really good hands. His family is very touched by the amount of support that loads of fans have put on the website. I think they were quite surprised actually. There’s a lot of people out there thinking of him which is really cool.
Wayne – It was a big shock for us when we found out. He had a second hemorrhage a week later. It was pretty touch and go for a while.
TD: My colleagues are huge fans and they wanted me to express their best wishes for him. (Get well soon Edwyn! – Ed)
Wayne – We’re gonna see him soon in hospital.
There’s a ‘flavour of the month’ thing going on in some music magazines. Do you think music fans will ever get sick of that approach?
Barrie – Some people look to that media as guidance and other people want to get far away from it and make up their own minds.
Wayne –There’s always been hyped bands. I don’t know how we fit into it. I don’t think we’re really bothered about it. If it happens, it happens…
Barrie – It can spoil things for bands. If they’re really hyped, they might get loads of press and adulation. They might think ‘wow, we’re doing well’ and then eventually those papers are gonna go on to somebody else. It could affect their confidence. It could do more harm than good. I think for some people it might really work and send them on their way. They build up their fans and it goes fine. But it could be dangerous and unfair and it could stop a band from developing naturally. They might end up ending before their time.
Wayne – NME is not the gospel but some people take is as it is in the UK.
TD: Are there any music magazines that you prefer? (us! Say us! – Ed)
Lewis – There’s quite often good stuff in Mojo to be honest. (aargh! – Ed) They seem quite diverse in what they like.
Wayne – Mojo Collections is quite cool because it features specific artists.
Barrie – They might do like the history of roots reggae or something like that. There is a cool magazine called Art Rocker. It’s a small thing from London. It’s quite honestly and genuinely written but because of limited funds they make it whenever they can. We got to know the guy who edits that and it’s just a really cool magazine and it’s quite refreshing to have something that’s not so corporate.
It seems like more people are tuned in to that idea and they’re ready for a magazine with a independent voice.
Barrie –At the end of the day if someone is interested in a certain artist they’ll go out and listen to the record anyway.
Wayne – It’s easy for people to go on the net and find things out as well. There’s loads of, what would you call them magazine-kind-of-things on the Internet that don’t get published on paper. That’s a cool way to do it.
Lewis – Internet music magazines don’t discriminate so much. It’s more about the music than the fashion lifestyle element of it, which is refreshing.
Barrie – The Internet has helped in a lot of ways because there is so much information on it and people can get in touch with other people that are into the same things.
Wayne – People can hear snippets of tracks and make up their own mind.
TD: How do you feel about your music being online?
Wayne – I think it’s great. The more people that can hear it, the better. None of us have ever been in it for money or financial gain. We’ve had a few things in newspapers like The Guardian in the UK that had one track and people e-mailed us and said they bought The Guardian and heard our track and they thought it was amazing and that’s really cool.
TD: Well, I just heard that you have twenty minutes until show time so I should let you go. Thanks for this and good luck tonight and with the rest of the tour.
Little Barrie – You’re welcome. Cheers.
Words: Tiffany Davenport.