Interview: Don Broco

A couple of weeks ago, Punktastic went to Radstock Festival in Liverpool and had a chat with those brilliant scamps Matt and Si from Don Broco. We covered a plethora of interesting topics, including The Full Monty, their smash hit factory and most importantly, their new single Whole Truth which comes out next week. Fantastic work.

HOW ARE YOU TODAY?
Matt: Feeling good and ready to go. The sun’s shining for the first time in a long time. I think everyone’s in a better mood because of it.
Si: It’s still snowing where we’re from. Bedford. It’s not great weather, but now look at us in sunny Liverpool!

HOW ARE YOU FEELING ABOUT THE SHOW? LOOKING FORWARD TO IT?
MD: Yeah, looking forward to it. We haven’t played a show in about two and a half weeks and we’re already feeling a bit itchy. We haven’t played any festivals yet this year so this is our first one of the year, and they’re always so much fun because there’s always such a mix of people because of all the different bands playing and everyone seems to be up for a laugh and then you get a few drinks inside and see what happens.

UH OH! IS IT GONNA BE A MESSY ONE?
MD: No…
SD: Yep!
MD: Well, we’re professionals…
SD: Spot the loser!
MD: Not before we play…
SD: Never before we play, but after we play!
MD: We haven’t got anything on tomorrow…
SD: And we’ve got a hotel in Liverpool so we can party hard and then roll back in through the front door of our Travelodge. We’re not rockstars yet.

AND THEN THE AFTERSHOW AT THE VENUE?
MD: Yeah, the afterparty is at the venue. There are a couple of hot DJ sets: Harry Radford and The Blackout.

YOU COULD BE AN ADVERT FOR RADSTOCK…
MD: It’s the hot Harry Radford DJ set at 1.30am and Sean Smith at 2.15am, subject to change. Refunds not accepted.

I SAW YOU IN CARDIFF A FEW WEEKS AGO…
MD: Oh, a month ago!
SD: Ifor Bach! That was good. It was weird though because there was no barrier and all the girls in the front row would just fall forward and get their shins crushed into the stage.

ARE YOU HAVING PANTS THROWN AT YOU YET?
SD: Not by people we don’t know. Or by girls. Only boys that we know. One day we’ll upgrade to unknown female underwear.

THAT TOUR WAS ALL SOLD OUT, WASN’T IT?
MD: It was! We didn’t expect it. When the tickets went onsale we had no idea what to expect. And then it ended up selling out in the first few days and a load of venues got upgraded so we ended up playing rooms we’d never thought we’d be playing this early. It was crazy. Amazing.
SD: Yeah, we’re really lucky.

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY ISN’T DOING THAT WELL AT THE MOMENT AND LOADS OF GIGS ARE BEING DOWNGRADED, YET YOU’RE SELLING ALL YOUR SHOWS OUT. WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?
SD: I think we have the looks, the songs, the talent….[laughs]
MD: And modesty!
SD: I think we’ve had a great team of people around us to help build the band. Last year we did so many great support slots which really helped build the profile. We’d been away and we hadn’t done a headline tour in such a long time that when we came around to announcing our headline tour people were quite hungry for us to headline because we hadn’t overtoured. We’d put in a lot of groundwork trying to win people over before we went into venues on our own. I think that probably played the biggest part in why this tour was such a hit.
MD: And not rushing our first album!
SD: And the looks, the charm and the talent.

YOU’RE A GREAT LIVE BAND. I THINK IT’S THAT YOU HAVE A LOT OF ENERGY ONSTAGE.
SD: Quality, thank you so much!
MD: Definitely, that’s what we focus on, just trying to make it a good show and trying to get people involved and making sure people have fun while they’re watching us, because I’ve seen a lot of bands where I’ve liked the songs and really enjoyed them but still gone away not feeling like ‘wow, that was amazing’.
SD: ‘I didn’t have that fun’.
MD: You don’t want to just watch a band. It’s not like watching a TV show, you need to get involved and you need to experience a band.
SD: Or you may as well just listen to the record. You need to give people a bit extra. They’ve paid to come to see you.

EXACTLY! AND YOU’VE GOT THE MOVES! YES!
SD: “These guys are so gay but I quite like it!” [laughs]

YEAH, BUT IT’S KIND OF MANLY AT THE SAME TIME.
SD: We’ve never been called manly! This is sick! We’re breaking barriers in this interview.
MD: It’s like Prince meets Bruno Mars meets…rock?

SO YOU’RE DOING SOME FESTIVALS AFTER THIS…
MD: Yeah, and we’re back on tour in a couple of weeks actually. We’re doing the Priorities tour extra dates, the added due to demand dates, and it’s all looking really good, and we’re playing Koko – Broco at Koko – and that sold out which is amazing. We’re also doing Oxford and Wolverhampton which have sold out, and Preston and Brighton, but I think Brighton has about five tickets to go, so it’s just Preston now.

PRESTON IS QUITE CLOSE TO LIVERPOOL SO YOU MIGHT WIN SOME PEOPLE OVER TONIGHT…
MD: We might win over some newbies!
SD: Represent the Preston hardcore! HXC. We are pretty HC. People don’t give us enough credit for our HC roots.

DXB.
SD: Ooh, DXB. That’s a t-shirt. Don Hardcore.
MD: What’s that?
SD: Matt’s not as hardcore as we are.

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM TONIGHT?
MD: Gaffa tape on the nipples, full frontal male nudity, potential animal sacrifice.

WILL IT BE LIKE THE FULL MONTY?
MD: I reckon we could pull that off onstage.
SD: I reckon we could do it.
MD: We’ll walk onstage and the lights will be off and the lights will flash and you’ll just get glimpses of us in a Full Monty get up.
SD: You remember You Me At Six’s latest tour when they did that but holding those prison boards?
MD: They didn’t do the Full Monty though! Amazing.

YOU COULD DO A MIXTURE OF THE FULL MONTY AND MAGIC MIKE.
SD: Magic Mike!
MD: I’ve not seen it.
SD: I saw about half of it before I had to sack it off.
MD: Channing Tatum is a handsome man.
SD: My girlfriend loved it!
MD: He wins for general aesthetics.

HAVE YOU PLAYED IN LIVERPOOL MANY TIMES?
MD: Yes! Quite a few. Hub Festival last year, Sound City last year, we’ve been here on tour, various tours – My Passion, LTA, Fei Comodo. Most of the time we’ve ended up in the Academy, but today will be our first time on the Academy 1 stage so that’s quite exciting.
SD: Normally there’s two stages but today there’s three. They’ve got a weird balcony stage too.

WHEN DOES WHOLE TRUTH COME OUT?
MD: It comes out on the 22nd of April. It’ll be the hottest song in the world.

THE VIDEO WITH ALL THE LADIES LOOKED FUN…
MD: It’s more fun in my memory than it was at the time because of the stress factor. But looking back it was a lot of fun but I couldn’t enjoy it fully. There’s limited time so you have to get everything shot in a day.
SD: Basically there were about 20 birds who were desperate to hang out with us so that’s cool. If you pay us then we’ll put you in our music video. So we came out really on top and got loads of money and made a great video. That may not be true. That’s what it like, everywhere we go. Loads of babes.
MD: Babestation.com.

DON BROCO ON BABESTATION?
SD: That’s the dream! That’s the ultimate goal.
MD: Stream our set tonight on Babestation.

THAT’S WHERE THE FULL MONTY COMES IN.
MD: All our talents come down to one digestible segment on Babestation.
SD: This theme is dominating at the moment. It’s alright, we feel quite comfortable talking about The Full Monty.

HOW MANY SINGLES DO YOU THINK YOU’LL HAVE OFF THE ALBUM?
SD: 11!
MD: Every song is a single.

HOW MANY HAVE THERE BEEN SO FAR?
MD: This is number five. We had the smash hit Priorities.
SD: Then the subsequent smash hit Actors.
MD: Super smash hit Whole Truth.
SD: Ultra smash hit Hold On. The underground smash hit Fancy Dress.
MD: And now Whole Truth.

YOU ARE SMASHING THOSE SMASH HITS.
SD: Smashing them right out of the park, yeah! Got a smash hit factory in my bedroom, churning them out straight on to the radio. Like that!

WILL THIS BE THE LAST ONE?!
SD: The last smash hit?!

NO! THE LAST SINGLE SMASH HIT!
MD: It has the potential to be the last one for a little while.
SD: Until we decide to release Yeah Man next week.
MD: We still have some fun things up our sleeve. You never know when one of the singles might get a rejuvenation, because they’re all smash hits you know.
SD: I don’t think some of them have reached their smash hit potential yet so we might re-release the smash hit on the world and see how hard it hits the second time around.

DO YOU THINK YOU MIGHT DO A GREATEST SMASH HITS?
MD: Or revive Smash Hits, the magazine, and put our CD on the cover. Smash Hits compilation.
SD: Which is our album, repackaged, in a different order.

THIS IS FANTASTIC! DID PRIORITIES COME OUT LAST YEAR?
SD: August. It is quite a lot of singles to release, but there are just so many great ones on there that the record label were like, ‘Fuck! Why would we stop releasing all these singles? There’s no filler here’.

DO YOU HAVE PLANS FOR THE NEXT ONE?
SD: We’ve got a big sheet of paper which just says ‘smash hits’. That’s the blueprint for album number two.
MD: What Now That’s What I Call Music album are we on now? 117? We’ll go back and listen to all 117 and study what makes a smash hit.
SD: And then rip them all off.
MD: Rip off the more obscure ones.

LAIS MW