Hey Luke. What have you been up to today? I’m in Wales with the band, in the middle of nowhere, in an old manor house that’s sort of all falling down. We’re recording demos for the next album. It’s a pretty weird place. It took us about six hours to drive from London and when we got here it was pitch black. There was a light on, the door was open, the fire was on… It’s pretty creepy.
Cripes – good luck out there. I wanted to start with some quick ones: what’s in your pockets? A small amount of money – and I mean a small amount. A pair of leather gloves [laughs nervously], some guitar plinths and a lighter. Nothing too exciting.
Do you have any tattoos? I don’t. But it’s something I’ve thought about quite a lot, especially when you tour America and you see some of these great tattoo artists. As to what I would get I’m not entirely sure… But I have thought about getting a Lady Godiva, on a horse. She came from my hometown of Coventry and there’s quite a lot of folklore around that, so it’s close to me in a way.
Cats or dogs? Dogs. I’ve always been around dogs. I’m not against cats and I’m standing right next to two large stone lions at the moment, all covered in moss, so I don’t want to offend them.
What’s your favourite spirit? It changes a lot. But I’d probably say gin. I’ve been drinking quite a lot of that lately. It’s the British ruin really.
And your favourite duke – the Dukes of Hazard? No, I’ll go with Duke Ellington.
Do you get many crazy fans – any underwear in the post? Haha. No underwear yet. But we’re rarely home long enough to check our mail, so you never know there might be some waiting for me. In terms of obsessive fans, not really, but there’s a lot of interesting older guys. I think that’s a symptom of being a female-fronted rock ‘n’ roll band who play with – hopefully – the passion and intensity that we do tends to stir certain feelings in an older male generation. But no real crazies.
We’ve had the Grammys and the Brits recently, but they often just reward those with the biggest sales. What’s your take on award shows? The British music industry, and press in general, is pretty corrupt and un-noble. Everyone seems to be prepared to do anything to get into the music press and even into the really lame street press that London is rife with at the moment. The Brit Awards is the high end of that really. To win an Oscar never meant you’d made the greatest film and the same with the Brits. It’s all opinion really. The Mercury Music Award prides itself on being more left-wing and more real but again that’s been a very safe setup too, often. They are what they are. Everybody’s obsessed with being retrospective too. TV shows are obsessed with the top 100 this and the top 100 that. It doesn’t mean anything to me.
What music are you listening to at the moment? A really great album by Joe Gideon & The Shark, another band called Weird Al, Crystal Stilts are really good and the Heartless Bastards, the Vivian Girls and a band called Peaches.
You’re coming Down Under to tour soon – your first time in Oz… We’re all really excited about going there. We’ve actually got lots of Australian friends and we like quite a lot of Australian music.
Will you see much of the country outside of gig venues and hotels? Yeah, we’ve got a couple of weeks off. We’re talking about doing different things, some people might hang around in Melbourne, some are talking about going up to the Great Barrier Reef, some want to go down to Tasmania, a couple of guys want to go to New Zealand. We’ve managed to get a bit of a trip out of it. We thought it would be a great place to stop and have a bit of a break, finally.
The Duke Spirit play Brisbane’s The Zoo on Wednesday 25 March; Sydney’s Oxford Arts Factory on Thursday 26 March; Melbourne’s East Brunswick Club on Friday 27 March.
