On your marks, get set, Crawl!

PERU MAY have the Inca Trail and Spain the Camino de Santiago, but for three days next weekend, Ireland will host its own sacred ramble. Well, if you’re a music fan, that is. The Camden Crawl has become something of an institution since its inception in London in 1995, giving stage time across a multitude of venues to both established and up-and-coming acts and simultaneously kicking off the summer festival season with a crash-bang-wallop.

This year, it will expand from its north London environs for the first time, with Dublin chosen as the city best suited to contain the sprawl of bands that will invade over the festival’s three nights.

A variety of Irish acts will mingle with their international counterparts in venues and “fringe venues” from Camden Street to Middle Abbey Street, with the running order for each spot being announced on the day.

“It’s always been on the agenda to bring the Crawl concept to another market, but after looking at the feasibility in several UK and continental cities, none completely fitted the bill,” says co-founder Lisa Paulon. “An important part of the success of Camden Crawl in Camden Town has been down to its musical heritage and its wealth of closely linked live venues. It wasn’t until we took a trip to Dublin late last summer that we realised the most perfect place to host our sister event was right next door all along. [Dublin’s] not only a city with a renowned music history, great music venues and pubs, but one that is undergoing a renaissance and flourishing, with amazing, innovative talent.”

It’s going to be a hectic few days, but remember: it’s a crawl, not a race.

Mystery Jets

The genre-hopping Mystery Jets have been through several line-up changes since their 2004 inception, the departure of frontman Blaine Harrison’s guitarist dad (yes, dad) several years ago being the most unusual. The London band’s fourth album, Radlands, is out now.

* First things first: the album’s title treads a thin line between “dodgy” and “deadly”. Why Radlands?

Ha, ha, it does! I’m a big Badlands fan, I love the film and its imagery. I think when we decided to go to America [to record], we starting talking about what we wanted this album to sound like. We knew we wanted to go to Texas because we were watching a lot of American films, and I’d never seen Badlands, although I’m a big Terrence Malick fan. And when I did see it, the way it looked was somehow just the way I wanted the album to sound. I don’t know if “rad” means anything to us, but it was the idea of inverting something – like a sort of “back-to-front, upside-down” look at America, which is what the album is to us, really.

* The album loosely follows the adventures of a fictional character. . .

All the songs happened to us as people, but we created a character called Emmerson Lonestar, who we chose to project all the stories on to. We’ve made a three-part comic book which is coming out with the record, so you can follow it through with that, too. Lonestar, the character himself, is based on someone who kind of just appeared in our lives. He’s a German travelling dobro player, and we knew him in a previous incarnation when he was in an Irish band, actually, called The 747s. And then he kind of went off and saw the world, and he married a Texan girl. We were out in Austin and we bumped into her, and she said “He’s called Fred, you should meet him”. And he turned up at the house in his cowboy boots and cowboy hat, and it felt like he’d stepped out of a western (laughs). He’s a mystic, really. He doesn’t really belong anywhere, just travels around the country in this gold Mercedes, plays gigs and then leaves in a puff of smoke.

* Mystery Jets’ bassist and founding member Kai recently left the band.

It’s a massive thing. Anything you do with your creative output – in our case, at least – has always been the sum of its parts, and when there’s one person who doesn’t feel like they belong there anymore, something strange happens. For a while it was strange, but I think Kai’s in a much better place now that he’s on his own path. But we are, too. We feel really re-energised with the new record, and there were some hard times making it, but I think anything of worth comes out of some kind of struggle. The main thing is that we’re still very, very good friends and there’s no hard feelings whatsoever. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were reunited at some point, to be honest.

* You started off as a proggy sort of indie rock band, turned a bit poppy, and now you’re back at a more measured, considered sound. How did you get to this point?

I’ve no idea, to be honest. There have certainly been different phases of the band, and I’m really happy about that, because all of my favourite bands and artists do that – from Bowie to Pink Floyd, to King Crimson – they were always on the cusp of something new, and changing, and not feeling tied to the time that they were in. And I think we feel like that; fashions come and go, and whatever we do is just what’s exciting us at the time. If people like it, they like it. And if they don’t, well, they can listen to . . . Rihanna.

The Rubberbandits

They inadvertently began their career by uploading prank calls to YouTube, but The Rubberbandits have become one of Ireland’s most famous comedy exports in recent years – mostly thanks to a hit song extolling the virtues of equine travel (Horse Outside) and an album of sharp, hip-hop-based satire. Their Channel 4 pilot will be aired later this year.

* Hello, Blindboy Boat Club. What’s the story with your name?

It’s an old blues name, like Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson or Blindboy Fuller. It was given to me because I can play slide guitar like a 120-year-old black man.

* Rubberbandits started out as prank callers, and now you’re playing sell-out shows in fancy places such as New York and making TV shows for Channel 4. How do you keep yourselves grounded?

We stay grounded by refusing to travel by air. We only travel by boat, canoe or catamaran. The process through which an airplane’s cabin pressurises turns people into spoilsports. It’s the root of Michael O’Leary’s problem.

* Talk us through the Rubberbandits songwriting process. How does a song take shape?

That’s a fairly abstract question. It would start off a bit like pentagon, but you then eventually manage to get it more like a triangle, or even a square. We made a hexagonal song once, but it was shit. Sting is great at writing songs in the shape of a hexagon, though.

* Your song Pure Awkward mentions hanging out with Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg in LA. Who’s the most famous person you’ve met?

David Suchet, who was in Agatha Christie’s Poirot. We met him near Melbourne and we helped him siphon petrol from a generator.

* Speaking of Snoop Dogg, you know he’s playing the Phoenix Park in July?

He’s invited us along, actually. He wanted us to come to his afterparty and have the craic with him and his boys, but we can’t go because my niece is getting her confirmation that day.

* You wrote a song about your pet Spastic Hawk. Do you keep any other animals as pets?

No. After Spastic Hawk gained freedom, I realised that it was unfair to keep animals trapped. He’s doing well for himself now, actually – he applied for an accounting course in Sligo IT.

* And finally, a bonus question: who would win in a race between a cheetah and a dolphin?

The dolphin. Cheetahs are the victims of a genetic bottleneck, so they are mad hot into riding their cousins. The cheetah would inevitably get distracted by his aunt’s tail or arse, or whatever cheetahs are into, and would thus lose the race.

Gaz Coombes

Best known as the frontman of Oxford indie-rockers Supergrass, Gaz Coombes has spent most of the last two years, since the band split, working on his first solo album. Here Come the Bombs is released on May 18th.

* Your solo debut, Here Come the Bombs, is out next month. Is it daunting to be on your own for the first time in your career?

I wouldn’t say it’s daunting, no. It’s a combination of a few things . . . exciting, challenging, and it’s kind of tough, with all the decision-making and stuff. You just have to be on the ball, really; there’s no delegating to other band members when you’re feeling a bit ropey, that sort of thing. I’m glad that I don’t have to have any band meetings anymore, anyway.

* You’ve been in a band of some sort since you were 15. Why go solo now?

I think it really just stems from the writing. After Supergrass split, I just kind of carried on as normal. I’m lucky enough to have a decent studio with some good gear, so as soon as the first few songs started coming, I just started recording and writing at the same time. I didn’t have any expectations in the beginning, I just thought “I’ll do a bit of writing and see where it takes me.”

* Musical differences were cited as the reason for the split, and this album sounds quite different to most Supergrass stuff – was it you who wanted to take the band in another direction?

No, not necessarily. It was just a general thing; all of us, to a degree, were unhappy with elements of the recording that we were in the process of doing [Supergrass’s unfinished seventh album]. I think we always prided ourselves on real quality and focused music, and it wasn’t feeling focused. I know it’s a pretty lame reason to give – it’s such a cliche, “musical differences” – but it pretty much summed it up. There was a little bit of argy-bargy at times as well, and arguments between a couple of us . . . I think when you’re playing really well and writing really well, you can look past those things, those arguments. But the music wasn’t really happening, so it was a case of “this isn’t really good enough” and time to be different.

* How did your songwriting process differ with no bandmates to bounce ideas off?

I was focusing a lot more on beats and stuff, which was kind of interesting; there was a lot more experimentation with beats and drum programming. Drum programming was never something we’d looked at before – and why would we?

We had Danny Goffey on drums, and he’s one of the greatest drummers around. But I was in a situation that was really liberating and I suddenly found that I could do things differently, that I could write in a different way and use all of my influences – whether it was soundtracks that I love, or people like Lalo Schifrin and John Barry and Morricone . . . or even just more far-out, weird bands that we didn’t explore too much in Supergrass. When you’ve got four members in a band, you don’t always like the same things, so you tend to meet up in one place where you’re all happy. But there was none of that on this – I could basically go wherever I wanted to.

*  You played almost every instrument yourself, too.

It crossed my mind a few times to call in favours; I’ve met a lot of great people over the years, a lot of great musicians who’ve become friends. It was tempting for a while, but I just found that I could really easily get across what I wanted to on my own. I think it’s quite common on first solo albums – like McCartney’s first solo album, he played most things. For me, it was just to get it out quickly and not have to co-ordinate a series of different musicians.

* You’re playing the inaugural Dublin Camden Crawl – what can we expect?

It’ll be a great festival. I’ve done it once before, and I love the vibe – you get big artists turning up at tiny little pubs. I approach it with no ego, and I hope other bands do the same. It’s a fun party vibe, so it’ll be great to see how it goes. I’m playing with a full band and the stuff’s sounding great at the moment. The rehearsals are going really well, so I’m just really excited for people to hear it.

Keeping up the pace

More than 100 bands and artists of local and international repute will play in 15 venues in Dublin next Friday and Saturday, May 11th and 12th. Apart from the fine examples detailed on these pages, the likes of We Are Scientists, Fionn Regan, Jape, Ghostpoet, Cashier No. 9, D/R/U/G/S, We Are Losers, Tieranniesaur, Dutch Uncles, Sway, Funeral Suits, Becoming Real and Rhob Cunningham are also on the bill. See camdencrawldublin.com for the full line-up.

* The Meteor Dublin Camden Crawl takes place in various venues from May 11-13th. See camdencrawldublin.comfor the full line-up