How are you doing?
Jackie: Good, we just arrived like half an hour ago.
Can you tell me how long have you been in this band and why did you decided to begin with it?
Michael: We’ve been on it for about two or two and half years, something like that. We just started to amuse ourselves and to entertain ourselves. It kills the time really.
I know you both have been in other bands before. Have you always been involved only with music or do you dedicate your time to other kind of stuff as well?
J: Music is the only thing that we do well. We both have been in bands since we were very young, but this one is the most fun, it is the one we enjoy the most.
You were here last year too, also forming part of the Popkomm festival, what’s the difference now and how do you feel playing here just one year later?
J: Well, we feel much the same. It doesn’t really matter if you are a little bit more successful or less successful or anything. You just plug in and play your songs in front of people, and the public react, that’s it, nothing changes for us really.
Are you now touring Germany or are you going to play just here in Berlin?
M: We’ve been around other four or five German cities and this is the last one before we go to Australia, Japan and America.
J: We are going tomorrow to Australia, just the two of us, Norman [Blake from Teenage Fanclub] is not coming. Our normal bass player left the band five days before we started the tour, so Norman did the European tour, another guy who was in other band with Michael, called Donald, will do Australia, somebody else will do Japan, just for one gig,, and another guy will do America for six weeks.
And do you already know who is going to be the permanent bass player?
J: We don’t know it at all yet. No idea.
Was Norman Blake also the producer of your album?
J: He produced our first single, we did just 400 copies of that and then Bernard Butler produced the whole album.
Why did you choose him?
M: He was recommended to us… by the label that employs him!
J: But he is good! He comes from a similar background as us. He likes a lot of the same music as us and is good to have that. He is also really good at spotting what’s wrong with the song. He gets into the song and takes it apart, which is good because we cannot go so far with that.
Did you spend much time listening to the Stones while you where making this album? Because there are lot of little bits in many songs that remind me of their music…
M: We both love the stones, but it comes naturally, we don’t necessary want to sound like them.
J: I’ve never used to play guitar anything like the Stones, only when I started to play with Michael. My guitar playing completely changed.
Which other music influences do you have? What kind of music do you like to listen to?
M: Everything really, just pop music and dance music too.
J: I love David Bowie, the Stones… I love Leonard Cohen; I listen to his music constantly, all the time.
What about new bands? Is there any do you like specially?
J: I like Arcade fire and there’s a band in Glasgow that I like called The Royal We. We like CSS and the Long Blondes too.
Do you have any other influences apart from music?
J: All our influences are honestly each other. When we play music we never think let’s do something like this or something like that. It’s just like he starts playing drums or I start playing guitar. Even though a lot of the songs sound like things.
Your music is very joyful and funny, are you like that in real life or is it just a new rock attitude?
J: No! We are like that. When we started we really had a good time together, we laughed and got drunk together and staff like that. If we like the music we play together we may as well make the music reflect what we are like.
How is it like living in Glasgow as a band?
M: It’s hard to say that, because we have not lived as a band in Glasgow properly, because we were away all the time. When we started it was very easy, because we all live near each other, those circumstances really helped the whole situation and it is a great city.
J: I love it! I really like it and whenever I go back to Glasgow I’m feeling so excited. It’s easy have fun there, it doesn’t look very nice but you can have a good time.
And lastly I’m not going to ask you about the name of the band but I would like to know why you John changed your name!
J: My own personal name? I didn’t change it!
M: We just started calling him Jackie for no reason at all.
J: Everyone in Glasgow has a nickname.
