It’s time to start getting excited, Dear Reader. We’re less than a month away from the unofficial start of our 2019 festival season. That May Day Bank Holiday weekend means one thing – Live At Leeds. Packed with (literally) hundreds of the best new bands on the planet, it sees one of the country’s most vibrant creative cities turned into a mecca of buzz, hype and awesome live music.
To celebrate, we’re holding a special Live At Leeds takeover. Over the course of the day (11th April 2019, in case you’re coming to this late – Ed), we’ll be bringing you all kinds of stuff from and about the acts playing this year’s event. If you’re going, it’ll help you plan out those all-important spreadsheets. If you’ve not yet picked up your tickets – well, what are you waiting for? You can grab ’em here, right now.
Who doesn’t love playing Leeds, that’s the better question. Fatherson are pros on the touring circuit with several years and thousands of live sets under their belts, so they know a thing or two about where’s good. Bassist Marc Strain has a catch-up ahead of the band’s set at Live At Leeds.
Hey Marc, how’s it going?
It’s going very well indeed thank you.
What are you guys up to at the mo, getting ready for festival season?
We are, first up though we have our biggest ever headline show at the O2 Academy in Glasgow. We’ve also got a couple of shows at Omera in London which are set to be really special. We’re just back from the US also, so we’ve had a few days to recover and are back at it now. It’s nice to have a few headline shows interspersed around festival season kicking off.
How do you prepare for spending so long on the road and in muddy fields? Does it get any easier with experience?
It definitely does. The first festival we ever played was T in the Park back in 2011 I think, and we made the mistake of arriving on the Friday (for a Sunday slot) and getting far too into the festival spirit. These days it’s much more of a one-day affair.
Your new Reimagined EP is fun, are you going to crack out any re-workings live?
I don’t think so. It was really more of a studio project. We wanted to go in and forget everything that we knew about recording music, no guitars, no drum kits just a computer and some keyboards. It was a lot of fun. We worked with our friends Blue Americans on it, and it was nice to spend a week at their studio in Belfast just hanging out and experimenting. I think it turned out as a really nice companion to the full record.
You’re playing Live At Leeds soon, is it a festival you’ve played many times before? What’s been your experience of it previously?
Last time we played Live at Leeds we had driven from Munster in Germany where we’d been supporting Biffy Clyro the night before. So we were deliriously tired, but everyone’s energy was definitely lifted when we got on stage. We love playing in Leeds; the crowds are always great fun, so hopefully, it’s the same this time around!
On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your Yorkshire pudding making skills?
We love cooking, but I have to be honest, I just buy the bake at home Yorkshire puddings… I’ll need to up my Yorkshire pudding game.
Do you have a favourite venue in Leeds?
I think it’s probably the Brudenell Social Club. We’ve only played there once but it was booked in for the small room, and we ended up getting bumped up to the big room which was lovely. I have very fond memories of that show.
Are you going to hang around to catch some other bands while you’re there?
We’re hoping to catch as many as we can. I’d love to see Be Charlotte, Brunswick, Retro Video Club, The Snuts, Tom Joshua and loads more. The line up is great!
Fatherson play Live at Leeds (4th May), Dot to Dot (24th-26th May), Truck (26th-28th July) and more.
