BY CORIN PYE
Once again, The Pigeon Detectives have returned to Lincoln to perform in The Engine Shed. The Linc managed to speak to Matt and Ryan before they went on stage.
How are you guys?
Yeah, we’re good and ready for the show. It’s a late one which is always very trusting on the part of the promoter. We used to go on stage at around 9’oclock, so dumping us on at half 12 can go one of 2 ways. If you’re the right side of drunk it’s always a great show but if you’re the wrong side it’s a disaster.
Let’s hope you’ll be on the right side then! Could you give me a brief history of the band? Like how you formed and why?
The brief story would be that we were best friends at primary school, we went to high school, we went to sixth form, we tried to be professional footballers but that didn’t quite work out so we decided to start a band.
At the moment you’re doing a small UK tour for Propaganda, how are you finding it?
We’re veterans of Propaganda, we’ve been with them for quite a few years now, DJ’ing and partying their nights in our local city and wherever we’re touring. So when we got the opportunity to do it we were like “that’s cool”. We were on a bit of a break so we thought why not, lets go and do it. It’s always guaranteed a good crowd so it was an easy decision for us to come and do the tour. It’s good fun, we’re enjoying it so far.
Would you say it’s preparing you for next years tour?
I think it’s keeping us sane during this 12 month period where we decided not to tour. We’ve gigged non stop for the last 7 years which is the reason we decided to take a year out, but then 10 months into the year everyone’s getting a bit cold turkey and we’re gagging to get back on the road and do what we do best.
Is there any information you can give about next years tour?
We will be touring but we don’t know exactly where and when. It’s just a concept at the minute. We know we will be touring, we’ll be hitting all of the usual kind of places like Manchester, Birmingham, London and Edinburgh, but we always say we’re one of those bands that will go to your slightly more unusual places like Hartlepool and Stoke, mainly places where larger bands slightly overlook. They turn out to be some of the best gigs because people are starved of that kind of live touring band and those kind of gigs always work out well.
I know you’re working on a new album now, is there anything you can tell us about it?
Not really. It keeps heading in one direction and then taking a huge u turn in a different direction. We feel like we’ve settled on a style or a sound and everyone’s happy and then someone will come in with a different idea. We’re just having loads of fun, writing songs with no kind of end goal. We’re not writing songs to be specifically played live or on the radio, we’re kind of absorbed ourselves of all the pressure of trying to write songs to please anybody else but ourselves. Obviously we always write songs with the fans in mind but on this occasion we just seem to be really enjoying writing for the sake of writing. It’s been a long time since we had that sort of luxury.
You’ve played at big festivals such as Glastonbury, but you also play at smaller venues like tonight. What do you prefer?
It’s weird actually, because when playing a smaller venue it’s good having the people in your face and you feed off that a lot more, but when you play in front of 50,000 people at Glastonbury, it’s quite a big deal, especially when you’re used to just playing Smith covers terribly bad in your bedroom to then playing your own song in front of that many people. That memory will be with us until our dying day.
You’ve been to Lincoln quite a few times, and this time last year you performed at the Engine Shed, what do you think of the venue here?
This is a very good venue. We’ve played all over the world and universities always seem to have larger budgets to spend on the infrastructure and the sound systems and we think the Engine Shed seemed to have nailed it.
We’ll leave it on this question, are you excited to be playing tonight?
We’re always excited to be playing gigs, but we’ve never had a bad experience in Lincoln so I assume tonight to be nothing different, and it’s a Saturday, people are always up for a good time.
Thank you for taking the time to talk to me, good luck tonight.
Thank you.