Again, I’m a 45 year old white man in a Patagonia so I can’t do it that well but that’s the idea. So I wrote a lot of lyrics trying to come from like a hip hop perspective. With that in mind, we wanted to make a little more urban, or at least as urban as we get.
So we went into this album without a drummer, so we knew it was going to be a drum machine album. Our long time drummer joined Flogging Molly, amicably, you know – it’s a bigger band and he definitely needed a change of pace. This time around there were a couple of things. So of course you’ve got your new album Fresh Blood for Tired Vampyres, what has Electric Six done differently for the new music? That said, the actual town seems like kind of a snoozer, so I think the one in England has a little more going on. Our experience in Birmingham is coloured by that because it might be the best place to play. It’s like a spa for bands and he can do that because the rent in Birmingham, AL is so cheap and so forth so. He sleeps the band, he can sleep up to 16 people. The green room has every possible thing you could want. It really is, it’s a guy who was in this band and he’s from Birmingham and he’s spent ten years touring with Man or Astroman and he decided he was going to make a venue that bands would want to play in and that’s what he did. I’ll start by saying, and this is no joke, the venue we play in Birmingham, AL is the premier venue in the US. Live: Electric Six, O2 Academy, BirminghamĪs somebody who has been to both Birmingham Alabama and Birmingham UK, how do the two compare? I walk through there and I look at some of the Chinese objects. Then there’s the old Birmingham, there’s the china town. You can feel your heart start to palpitate. I circle Birmingham just for the Bullring honestly. It’s brightly lit, there’s a Starbucks there if you need a cup of coffee. When you tour and walk through a mall as nice as that you realise the possibilities of what your life could be. Oh that’s easy go to Pizza Express, go to Wagamama, to go Nandos, I was walking through the Bullring tonight. What are some of your favourite things to do in British cities? I listen to less and less music the older I get and I’m losing connectivity with the fans and yet there seems to be more connectivity coming back to me so I don’t understand.
I keep thinking somebody need to take it out to a field and shoot it.īut yeah the ticket sales have been through the roof and people seem to know the new album already so I don’t understand anymore. I don’t know what to chalk it up to, I mean you’re looking at me I’m a 45 year old man dressed in a Patagonia so I don’t understand why this is still going. Well I can assert with great confidence that this has been the greatest tour in a while we’ve had more sold out shows than we’ve had in recent years. So you’re just about over half way through the UK end of your tour how has it been for you so far? Completely standard stuff for an interview with this rock’n’roll treasure… But we also spoke about underwater rollercoasters.
The lead singer of the ever-prevailing Electric Six gave us a raw, unfiltered insight into the unforgiving realities of the music industry and coping with being an artist for a career. You think you’ve interviewed interesting band members, and then you get to interview Dick Valentine.