For the last few weeks, what’s inside has been a lot more than just ham. It’s been everybody! (sorry.) One band that seem to be ‘coping’ with it all well is those lovable scamps FEET, keeping us all entertained with tales from their exclusive London hideaway on their Daily Lockdown Diary. Now to add to the fun, they’re rolling out ‘Live At The FEET Flat’, a weekly series of stripped-back and chilled sessions performed, well, live at the FEET flat. Dork caught up with singer George to find out more…
Hey! How are you guys? How’s lockdown been?
Yeah, good. I mean, productive to an extent.
You look like you’ve been up to loads.
Yeah, the house is great. We’ve got like a little recording demo set up. And Muswell Hill’s pretty nice anyway, we’re not complaining. We’re watching The Sopranos, that’s like our nice little routine at night.
How’s everyone coped?
We’ve done all right to be fair. I think I was getting a little jittery last week, just that kind of routine gets to you. Days become weeks. I guess we’d stay up later and then wake up later and before you know it, it’s light when you’re going to bed and dark when you’re waking up. It’s strange.
Any crazy lockdown dreams yet?
They’ve all been pretty mental, I think. Callum said he had one the other day where… I think he might have killed me in his dream? He pushed me down the stairs in the flat.
That’s very specific.
I’m hoping that it’s not a consistent occurring dream. I’m keeping an eye out now, don’t you worry. (laughs)
What are the sleeping arrangements like, five of you in a 3-bed must be a bit much?
Yeah. I share with Ben. Callum and Harry share, and then Oli’s got his own little room. It kind of worked out best for me and Ben. I went into Rains and Harry’s room a few days ago, and found they didn’t have a light bulb and it hasn’t for about a month. They couldn’t be arsed to fix it.
So they’re just sitting in darkness? No wonder there are murderous thoughts.
Yeah. I could hear the hairdryer going the other day, and I peered into the room. Pitch black. Harry’s in bed, and Callum is completely naked just hair-drying. Drying his hair in complete darkness. I couldn’t see anything.
Probably for the best to be fair. Pivoting away from naked guitarists as fast as possible, are you dabbling with the Joe Wicks workout or anything?
Unfortunately not, but I do Yoga With Adriene. Although I have heard that she’s got a big competitor on Youtube, it’s like a yoga Godfather scenario. We’ve done a couple of group yoga sessions in the morning, which is good.
Have you been getting involved with any pub quiz nights?
Yeah, we did one the other day. The quiz buzz has probably died down for a little while, that’s a good thing. There’s only so much general knowledge you can take, I guess.
What would be your specialist subject?
I quite like the jumbled up words. All the verbal reasoning stuff and the picture rounds.
You share a manager with Declan McKenna and The Murder Capital, can you take them on at quizzing?
It depends, last time it was quite biased towards the Irish. We can’t compete!
Anyway, let’s talk about Music. You’ve been whispering about album number two online, how’s that coming?
Good. I’m not saying that the songs we’ve finished in this demo period are the ones that are going to go on the album, but we’ve got about nine songs we’ve done so far. We’ve got so much time on our hands, we might as well just keep writing.
Are you trying anything new with them?
Yeah, definitely. Although it seems like it took a long time, the first record was kind of churned out quite quickly. We hadn’t really known each other for a crazy amount of time. So now we’ve had some time to sit down and kind of work out a style, I think that this next album has definitely got a little more direction to its general sound. I think that it’s a bit more cohesive because the first one was a bit higgledy-piggledy. But if anything, it’s exciting to put this new thing out and have that become the identity of the band rather than the old album.
And then obviously you’ve started doing ‘Live At The FEET Flat’. It looks such a cool setup.
Yeah, it’s just sweet. We can’t complain. I don’t know if you saw the ridiculous flat-screen TV. We got that for free. It’s the perks of living in Muswell Hill; it was on Freecycle from this guy in Crouch End. Apparently, he was replacing it because it gets a bit streaky when he was watching the snooker. A 55 inch TV!
What was the thinking behind doing these sessions?
We still have to entertain you; it’s the job, isn’t it? When we were 14 years old was, the setup that we have now is what we would have drawn up on a piece of paper. So we can’t squander it and have got to use it to its full potential. I think if I saw my 14-year-old self in that house, I would be like, that’s what I want to do, do you know what I mean? But, by tomorrow we might be all gone so we might as well flex while we can.
True. So ‘Dog Walking’ came first, ‘Chalet 47’ this time around. Any reason why you’re picking these, is it a random order? Any surprises in store?
We’ve got we’ve got a couple of surprises, yeah. I think that the reason why we chose the sessions is because they come across well because they’re all stripped back and stuff, but I think that they’re probably our favourite songs off the first album as well. But I think we are putting a new song out on the session, it’s called ‘Library’. So maybe that’s a surprise.
Maybe not so much of a surprise now.
That’s more the kind of style I think we’re going for. I mean, if people don’t like it then there’s plenty more where that’s coming from so… (laughs)
Words: Jamie MacMillan
