Pirate metallers Alestorm will be touring Australia in February. In a meaty interview packed with protein, frontman Christopher Bowes talked to us about the tour supports, the perils of being a keytar player and discussed more about baked beans than is possibly healthy.
Oliver: How are you doing today?
Christopher: I’m fine, life is nice. Just ploughing through a million interviews today in preparation for this tour so, apart from that, great.
Oliver Yeudall: Oh awesome. With the upcoming Australian tour, what have you got planned?
Christopher Bowes: Oh we’re going to do our show as we do. There’ll be inflatable ducks, there’ll be silliness, there’ll be a lot of partying, a lot of drinking and just a lot of fun. And a bunch of shows. Music happens I guess, that’s part of it.
Oliver: Did you say inflatable ducks?
Christopher: Yes! I think these days more people come to our show to see inflatable ducks than they do to see us playing songs. There will be inflatable ducks, yes. One big, giant, inflatable duck in the middle of the stage.
Oliver: That’s amazing I’ve got to say. Where did the idea for the ducks come from?
Christopher: It was a long time ago, few years ago. We were on tour with Sabaton, it was a co-headlining UK tour. Sabaton have this giant tank on stage that their drumkit sits on and we were like right, obviously they’ve got this big cool tank and we need to beat that, what can we do. So we thought let’s get a giant inflatable duck and sit it on top of their tank and it worked. Everyone remembers the duck, they’re all “Alestorm, they’ve got a duck, wow!” It’s one of these stupid jokes that got out of hand and is now really popular, so that’s where it comes from.
Oliver: That’s really cool. I’m curious, you guys started in Perth, Scotland and [I’m] calling from Perth, Australia, I’m wondering how similar the two cities are.
Christopher: They couldn’t be more different [laughs]. Can’t imagine two more different places in the entire universe. I mean obviously Perth in Scotland, we have the incredibly sunny weather, the shining skyscrapers, the beautiful harbour, the beaches, that’s just classic Scotland down to a tee. Haha not really, it’s a dreadfully grey place, so I was very excited the first time we played Perth in Australia. We got on stage going “Evening Perth, we are Alestorm from…Perth,” that was a fun thing to do. I like your one a lot more. It’s a lot sunnier, a lot nicer. Lot more fun.
Oliver: That’s awesome. Do you happen to know who’s doing support for your tour?
Christopher: Yes. National support will be coming from the mighty Rumahoy, who are another pirate metal band on Napalm Records. They live in Argentina and they’re all very mysterious. And then local support, who do we have…you’re in Perth? Perth there will be 9 Foot Super Soldier. You know that band? I was just tole they’re playing, but [I’m] sure they’re good.
Oliver: I know them quite well actually. They call themselves “party violence,” they’re always fun to see.
Christopher: Well that sounds nice, I like parties and violence. So that’s them, that’ll be the lineup; 9 Foot Super Soldier, Rumahoy and Alestorm in Perth. That’ll be nice.
Oliver: When you come to Australia, how do you manage the jetlag? Cause it’s quite a big time difference.
Christopher: It is. For me it’s…your time, it’s 7am tomorrow morning?
Oliver: Yeah, it’s 7am on the fifth of January here.
Christopher: It’s 6pm on the fourth of January for me, so it’s going to be a mess. I think the only way it works is because, when we get there, we don’t really follow a normal schedule. We get up, we go to a show, we play the show. We go back to the hotel for five minutes, wake up at two o’clock in the morning, go straight to the airport to fly to the next city, it’s non-stop. The way we deal with the jetlag is by doing so much stuff you don’t even realise you’ve got jetlag. Day or night doesn’t matter anymore, but there’s a lot of sleeping, a lot of napping on benches, airport floors and things.
Oliver: What’s the best way to catch a nap in an uncomfortable position?
Christopher: If I’m on a chair in a plane I just tend to sit there in misery. I can’t really sleep that well on planes. I just tend to lie on the floor. I don’t care if it’s in the middle of an airport, the street. I wrap up my shirt as a pillow. It helps take some of the misery out of the experience.
Oliver: Fair enough. When you go on tour, how may keytars do you bring with you?
Christopher: I bring two. I used to only bring one and that was a really bad idea as they’re not really easy to get ahold of. So if one breaks I’ll be like “ok, your keytar’s broken, show’s cancelled,” and thankfully that’s never quite happened yet. These days I bring two, I’ve got a nice big case that holds two. One’s white and ones black. It’s the only annoying thing about this band. If we lose the keytar, lets say it gets lost in baggage somewhere or run over by a car, we’re screwed. Obviously a drumkit or a guitar, you can find those anywhere. Drums are drums and guitars are guitars for the most part, but keytars are a bit unique and it’s very annoying. We’ve never had to end a show because of it yet.
Oliver: Oh that’s good. With the keytars, cause I’m not really a keytar expert, is it a bit like a keyboard where you can plug it into a laptop to synthesise a lot of different sounds?
Christopher: You play it like a keyboard, it’s got its own built-in sounds though. I used to use one that you plugged in to an external sound source like a laptop or a little sound module, but that was a pain in the neck due to very various very boring technical reasons. So now the one I use has its own built-in sounds. They sound kind of cheap I’ll be honest, it’s not the most lush sounding instrument, but it works pretty well. For what we do it sounds nice, most people haven’t complained yet.
Oliver: I’ve got a question about your new project, Christopher Bowes And His Plate Of Beans.
Christopher: Yes!
Oliver: I was wondering…how?
Christopher: Did you perhaps see, when we announced the signing, there was a little video of me sitting at a table reading a newspaper, announcing the signing. Basically it was all a true story. I was talking to my friends about the record label, the industry and bands and stuff. We said Napalm Records, they’d probably sign anything, they’d probably sign some beans. And we thought, you know what, let’s make this happen. Let’s actually make a band that’s some beans and get Napalm Records to sign them. They, in fact, signed it straight away. I guess they relied on the fact that it had my name attached to it. And yeah they signed this plate of beans and we released an EP. We’re going to do some more, we’re going to keep going hopefully. We’ve got plenty of ideas, there’s no limit to what we can sing about or do with this stupid band about beans and it’s not really limited in any sense of the word. [We’ll] see what happens with it. Some people like it, it’s mostly gone unnoticed but hopefully we’ll build up a profile.
Oliver: Excellent, cause I listened to the EP and I thought it was awesome. We are fans of beans down here as well, so do you have a preferred brand to influence the writing of the music?
Christopher: I mean the best ones are still…do you get Heinz beans there?
Oliver: Absolutely.
Christopher: Yeah, cause they’re the best ones. I live in American right now and beans aren’t quite the same. They’re nice but it’s a different sort of thing. You can get Heinz beans but they changed the recipe here and the tomato sauce is all weird and, I dunno, it’s not right. So yeah, good old fashioned Heinz beans in tomato sauce.
Oliver: That is always best, cause here they actually have cans that have written on them “The British Recipe” [correction for bean enthusiasts – the cans are advertised as the “English Recipe”]. That might be what you’re looking for.
Christopher: Oh wow, that’s what I want!
Oliver: What’s your opinion on Spam in beans?
Christopher: Spam in beans? I’ve never had that, but I can see that being good. Spam in beans on toast, I’d enjoy that.
Oliver: Apparently it’s a very Yorkshire thing.
Christopher: It is, those Northerners.
Oliver: Haha yeah. With all these different side projects you’ve got on, how do you find the time to participate in them all?
Christopher: With great difficulty, I’ll be honest. Obviously Beans doesn’t do very much. Gloryhammer, my other main band, I’ve essentially hired a body double to take over from me in that band. Like, I still write all the music myself, but there’s someone else who goes on stage and pretends to be me and that works pretty well. They’ve actually got a new album, they’re going into the studio today [5th Feb] actually. I spent most of the last year writing that. Now that’s all done I’m very excited that’s going to come out and I can finally concentrate on writing the next Alestorm album, which is planned for 2020. It’s going to be non-stop writing for me for the next year, see how it goes. It’s very much a full time occupation doing all the stupid stuff I do.
Oliver: Yeah, cause I was going to ask about the new Alestorm album. How much of it is written at the moment?
Christopher: Like a song, song and a half. But I decided that 2019’s going to be the year when I’ll write that album. We’ve already got a song and a half, so that’s pretty good going so far. We’re just going to sit down, force the rest of the band members to come up with some riffs and I’ll throw together this album. Yeah, it’ll be good, just gotta write some more catchy songs.
Oliver: So what is your general process in the band? Do you all sit in a big circle and throw riffs at each other?
Christopher: We all live in different places in the world, so everything we do is over the internet. But for the most part I write the massive bulk of the music and occasionally I’ll tell the rest of the guys “Someone, write a song, write a riff, write anything,” [they’ll] send it to me and I’ll incorporate it into the whole mass of things. But yeah for the most part it’s just me writing stuff. I don’t want to write it all, cause it’s hard and I run out of ideas. It’d be nice if someone else wrote some stuff, but until then, we’ll see.
Oliver: I’ve got a question regarding the Magnetic North music video. The video has a lot of Lady Gaga influenced imagery and the song itself to an extent. Did Lady Gaga or her people ever find out about it?
Christopher: I don’t think so, they haven’t said anything about it. I’m sure they would have. I believe that it’s all fine. The thing with that song is it’s not a cover or a rip-off of Telephone by Lady Gaga, it takes a lot of structural cues from it. The chords and melodies are different, but the way the song flows is the same. It’s more of an idea than an actual bit of songwriting, so it’s kind of weird. You can play them both at the same time and they match up nicely, but not in a simple cover sort of way. They’re like parallel songs. It’s like a pair of rollercoaster trains on side by side rollercoasters racing along, if that makes sense. But a lot of people didn’t notice that. Cause it’s kind of funny, you go on YouTube and there’s always these metal nerds saying “Urrrgghh, fuck the Justin Bieber and fuck the Lady Gaga, the Alestorm is the true metal,” like they don’t realise that one of the songs they’re singing is heavily inspired by Lady Gaga. I dunno, it’s just funny to mess around with dorks.
Oliver: Very true, very true. I have to admit I like Lady Gaga so it was good for me.
Christopher: Well that’s good!
Oliver: I think we’re just about out of time, so is there anything you’d like to say to the Australians for the upcoming tour?
Christopher: Get some tickets and come to the show. I think Melbourne sold out yesterday, I’m sure the others are going to do the same. So act fast to avoid disappointment, as they say. See you soon I hope.
Oliver: I’ll be at the Perth show, so I guess I’ll see you there. Thank you for the chat and you have a lovely day.
Christopher: You too, buddy.
ALESTORM performing at:
Feb 6th – Perth, Capitol
Feb 7th – Adelaide, The Gov
Feb 8th – Sydney, The Metro
Feb 9th – Melbourne, The Croxton
Feb 11th – Brisbane, The Triffid
Feb 13th – Auckland, Whammy Bar
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
PERTH, ADELAIDE, MELBOURNE – http://soundworksdirect.eventbrite.com / www.oztix.com.au
SYDNEY – www.ticketek.com.au
BRISBANE – www.oztix.com.au
AUCKLAND – Undertheradar.co.nz
