Interview: Tall Ships (February 18, 2013)

I spoke to the wonderful Tall Ships about their upcoming tour, BBC Introducing and their plans for the year. For those who don't know, Tall Ships are a Falmouth/Brighton based indie rock trio, and have recently headlined BBC Introducing. These guys are gonna blow up, so check them out. 

Hi there, Tall Ships!                            

Hello there!! 

Who is Tall Ships and how did you get together?

We are Ric, Matt and Jamie and we met in Falmouth whilst at University scrambling through our Art Degrees. 

What are you up to at the moment?

I'm in London writing this drinking coffee and listening to Blakfish! 

You're about to embark on a UK tour with Emperor Yes, and you said you'd be 'mixing things up quite considerably from previous tours'. What exactly can fans expect from the upcoming shows?

Well that would be telling! We will be announcing a few things closer to the tour but its exciting and were going to be playing some songs that people wont have heard live before...

How was the BBC Introducing gig for you? Was it a big deal for you?

Amazing besides a few cruel acts of god! BBC Introducing have been so supportive to us and continue to, we can't thank them enough. They're doing so much for so many bands, the music industry and putting unknown bands on Radio 1. We are very lucky in this country for that.

It's just been announced that you're playing Truck Festival in Oxford. What do you think of the line up?

It's looking great, we played it last year and we were so blown away with how many people came to see us. There were a lot of great bands and we were humbled that so many people came and stood in the cow shed to watch us! There's some awesome bands on the lineup already and a good chance to catch up with a lot of friends in those bands. But one band to look out for this year is 'The physics house band' they are good pals and will knock your socks off! 

Are you fans of playing festivals or do you prefer more intimate gigs?

Both! They are two very different animals. Playing intimate shows to your own fans is so personal and you can get a good connection with people and not have to rush your set. However festivals are so rushed and frantic and so many people its got a different kind of buzz which means you cant over think it. You're on stage, then off, but you give it your all in that 30 minutes. It's exhilarating!

How was the reaction to Everything Touching? Is there anything you'd do differently with the making of the album now? 

The reaction was amazing, its always a scary moment letting go of your songs but the reaction has been overwhelming and  puts faith back into those long nights scratching our heads wondering  if the songs are any good?!

There's always a million and 1 things you would like to do different but we are really proud of what we have done and recording this album was a huge learning curve in how to write and record an album. So next time we will know what to expect and how to tackle it!

Have you any plans to release more music this year?

We have another single from the album coming out very soon and then we will start writing the next batch of songs for the 2nd album.

There's a lot of hype around you guys at the moment; what with the aforementioned BBC Introducing gig and radio plays from Mr Zane Lowe. Does that put extra pressure on you to live up to the critics, or does it affect you at all?

Eh... Yes and no. We are so in debt to BBC intro and people like Zane Lowe and Huw Stephens for playing our tracks and there is a pressure to be bigger and better. For us we always put ourselves under the most pressure, and we want to keep playing to more people and reaching more people and to have DJ's from the BBC backing us it spurs us on to come back BIGGER!

What bands would you say influence you? .

There's the Tall Ships holy trinity...

Biffy Cyro

Battles

Sigur Ros

but we take influence from so many bands, artists and writers were like sponges. 

If Tall Ships was a dish, what dish would it be?

A Cornish Pasty...

Soft and reliable on the outside, but meaty and packed full of stuff on the inside...

Final words?

Hopefully see you at one of the shows on the tour and maybe at the Scala show on Mar 7th where we will be breaking Tall Ships history playing our biggest headline show to date....