After being caught interviewing their support band and not them, the Pigeon Detectives politely asked Why? Anyway, after my boss daily ordered me to interview the band I see frequently as a fan (and bribed me with a bottle of rum) I managed to get them. Although they weren't without their suspicions - see Matt's comment about 'is this a real interview?' at the end. Cheers...
It took some organising - with no help from the PR I asked Oli (in Southampton), who referred me to their tour manager. I found out who he was at the next gig (London), asked for an interview the following gig (Northampton), and caught up with them the next day (Leeds). I was in the area for their show the next night anyway. I missed most of the Live At Leeds festival shitting myself in preparation for this, terrified I would come across as an unprofessional idiot, and the Walk Of Fear up the steps of the Town Hall is still one of my most nerve-wracking moments as an interviewer.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in May 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
THE PIGEON DETECTIVES
Matt Bowman - vocals, Oliver Main - guitar, Ryan Wilson - guitar, Dave Best - bass, Jimmi Naylor - drums
It’s Saturday evening in Leeds. A couple of girls wearing band t-shirts are excitedly babbling outside the Town Hall as they shelter from the weather and wait for the doors to open. It’s grey and cold, confirming everything I ever suspected about Yorkshire.
Inside though, it’s much warmer and there’s no chance of being rained on, unless you count the water which is bound to be thrown around during the next gig. Backstage, all five of the Pigeon Detectives are sat in a semi circle, surrounded by posters they were halfway through signing. You can’t blame them for looking slightly confused; usually I’m stuck on their front row sweating and yelling, today I’m sat dry and polite with a dictaphone to one side. To be honest I was trying to avoid interviewing them because as a fan I thought it would be weird, but then The Boss, able to spot a corrupt journalist at a distance of some three feet across the table, bribed me with a bottle of rum if I did the deed.
In just under two hours, the doors will open for the Pigeon Detectives' first sold out gig at the Town Hall. If they're nervous, they're hiding it well. Singer Matt Bowman’s sat to my right, and next to him is guitarist Ryan Wilson, drummer Jimmi Naylor, lead guitarist Oliver Main and bassist Dave Best, who is looking strangely impressed at the coloured question cards scattered at random. He volunteers to go first.
The Early Years.
“We basically all started learning to play guitar when we were about 16…” starts Dave.
“I were 15,” says Oli.
“He were 15…”
“I was 17,” says Ryan. “That was just wrong really, wasn’t it.”
“That’s why I said about 16!”
“You’ve averaged it out, haven’t you?”
“I took a mean average,” Dave continues. “We started when we were about 16. Me and Oli taught each other the basics and then we kind of taught each other from Beatles books and stuff like that. We taught Matt to play guitar but he didn’t have as good technique as Ryan did, not as natural as Ryan, with his little stumpy fingers, so we just…”
They pause. The tour manager is loudly discussing important band things with some other people.
“Get out! We can’t hear a thing!”
“Get in your production office,” orders Ryan jovially.
“Go on, piss off!” They do as they’re told with a chuckle and a shake of the head.
“Ry decided one day we were going to be in a band, he just told me and Oli,” continues Dave. “After that, we decide we were gonna do some covers in Ol’s bedroom and stuff like that. That’s really it, until Jimmi met Ry when Jimmi were about 12. When they worked at Staples together. He’s only 13 now.”
Young Jimmi sits there smiling and points out he was actually about 16 at the time.
“We needed a drummer and we got him down and we decided to keep him, because we instantly fell in love with him.” Ahh.
“We’ve all been mates for quite a long time though,” says Ryan.
“Us four were mates since we were about six years old. Me and Ry were in the same class at school every year since we were about two,” says Dave.
How long has the band been going full time for? “A year,” says Dave instantly. Someone else says two years. They laugh, try to remember when they quit their jobs and think about it.
“Did you say full time?” asks Ryan. Yes.
“Actually pretty much a year.”
“We haven’t got a full time contract yet,” says Matt, possibly eyeing a legal loophole.
“If you go by us quitting our job and then being in a band for a living…”
“We had our first single out in March,” says Matt.
“…so about a year,” finishes Ryan. That first single was ‘I’m Not Sorry’, originally limited to 500 vinyls which didn’t take long to sell out. A few months later came 'You Know I Love You', which also sold out. The buzz had begun.
Didn’t I read somewhere that one of you got sacked –
“That were Oli.”
- because your bosses heard you on the radio?
“That were me,” says Matt. “I’d already handed my notice in, I had like two weeks left on my notice but they just said get out. Dave never even went back. Dave didn’t even have the courtesy to say ‘I’m leaving’.” Dave starts giggling. “You actually went to London and then never returned,” says Matt with a grin and a wave of his arm. “’I’m off to London’ – that’s the last they ever heard of you.”
Are they still looking out for you now? “Thing is they let me have that day off very nicely so I could go to London. And I just never came back,” confesses Dave.
“Coward,” says Ryan.
Oli leans over and snatches up the next card. It's a random one. You’re trapped on a desert island, who do you eat first? The answer is Ryan, because “he’s got the most flesh.” Ryan doesn’t actually look particularly unhappy – or surprised - about having his potential fate discussed this way.
“Unlucky, Ry,” says Matt. “Gingers cook faster as well. They’ve got sensitive skin, like the perfect white meat.” Someone suggests spit-roasting Ryan, and he laughs.
“I’ll leave that there,” says Oli, wisely.
Jimmi takes the next card. Wait For Me. Tell me about your debut album.
“It’s twelve beautiful songs, all catchy,” he says. Got any favourites? “My favourite’s ‘Caught In Your Trap’ and maybe ‘Don’t Know How To Say Goodbye’.”
“I think my favourite’s ‘Caught In Your Trap’,” teases Oli, mimicking his drummer’s pronunciation.
I forgot to ask why a picture of stags was chosen for the cover, but a chance reading of The Fly suggests it’s because stags spend their time fighting and ‘sleeping with other stags’ girls’, much like the late teen experiences of the Pigeon Detectives.
“We recorded it in bits ‘cause we were doing things like supporting Dirty Pretty Things…”
“That’s a lie,” say Matt and Ryan, almost at the same time. “That were well early. Supporting Kaiser Chiefs.”
“Supporting Kaisers…” Jimmi corrects himself. Are you telling me lies, Jimmi? “Yeah, I’m lying to you. We started off, we went in for about two weeks, going in for a few hours, then we went and supported Kaiser Chiefs and went back in; altogether about five weeks, but we spread it out.”
Matt and Dave are sneakily looking at question cards and putting them back on the pile.
“And then we had to go and get it mixed and stuff which took another three or four weeks or something like that,” says Ryan. “Getting it mixed took ages, like you know, it was our debut album, let’s get it perfect in every single way. You’ve got to get it recorded well but you’ve got to get it mixed well as well. Took us a while.”
Matt’s getting impatient and takes a card. Current Tour. They're nearing the end of it now, with loud and sweaty 12 dates across the UK almost complete. How’s it going?
“It’s all right. Picking up some injuries,” Matt winces. He’s very energetic onstage, climbing equipment and forever leaping/being dragged into the crowd.
Ryan starts complaining that they’ve missed his turn out.
“You can go next Ry. Carry on Matt,” says Dave, the voice of calm. He’s wearing a white shirt on which he has sewn a Leeds badge, all ready for the gig tonight.
“Tour’s going well, I think highlights so far are probably Manchester and London Astoria, that were all right.”
“Last night (Northampton) were really good, wasn’t it,” says Ryan, and Jimmi murmurs agreement. “You were at the gig last night weren’t you?” I nod.
“I’m really knackered though. I’ve got the world’s worst fucking dead leg,” complains Matt. Why, what have you done? “Don’t know. Think just a collection of knocks.”
“You know when footballers used to say they were injured for two weeks with a dead leg, I’d be like a dead leg lasts ten minutes, how can you be injured for two weeks!” laughs Dave. They all talk at once about how Matt might have done it. I had to get my glasses straightened out a few hours earlier after a crowdsurfing Matt jumped on my face in Northampton and bent them. The Pigeon Detectives laugh loudly, but don't apologise. It's an occasional hazard of gig-going.
”Headline: Matt Pigeon Sat On My Face,” jokes Matt. “Ry, I’ll get you a card. Which one do you want?”
“Any.”
“So it’s actually… You moan that you don’t get to pick and then…” Matt sighs.
What’s the best lie you’ve told about where your name comes from?
“Fucking hell. The best lie!” says Ryan. I heard somewhere you’re fed up of being asked so you tend to make up bizarre answers.
“The best one’s got to be, there’s a giant pigeon that lives in a shed at the bottom of our garden that writes all our lyrics,” says Matt. “That’s got to be the best one!” he says between gales of laughter. “Or at least the most ridiculous.”
“We do actually come up with some insane things, we find it funny though don’t we?” says Ryan.
“Didn’t we tell someone once we all went to a fancy dress party dressed as pigeons?” says Matt.
“I told someone once that Jimmi were watching ‘The Detectives’ with Jasper Carrott on TV when a dead pigeon fell out the skies outside his house,” giggles Dave.
“The best ones though are when you do the foreign interviews,” says Matt. “And you go (odd accent) ‘There’s a giant pigeon that lives at the end of our garden and writes all our lyrics” and they just go ‘Que?’” He’s putting on an interesting Spanish accent, though a native would probably disagree that it’s Spanish at all. “What? What is it, pigeon and the lyrics?”
“And they go ‘oh, ok’ and write it down!” says Dave. Fools.
Radio 1’s Big Weekend. How was it?
“It were good,” says Dave.
“Big,” says Oli.
“It were big,” confirms Dave.
“It were at the weekend.”
“On Radio 1,” says Ryan, quite rightly. They start chuckling.
“Er… no, it were good, it were like a really big festival crowd, it were quite a good warm up. They were quite a tame crowd but I think that’s because they weren’t generally loads of massive gig goers. But the front ten rows were like really having it, so it were really good.”
“The single ’I’m Not Sorry’, it went nuts right to the back, but I think that’s because it were a Radio 1 song,” says Matt.
“Someone threw a Cornish pasty at me,” remembers Dave. A Cornish pasty? “Well it were still in its packet.” Oh that’s all right then.
“We had a message on MySpace the next day, going ‘oh, I’m sorry if I offended your bass player, he looked really pissed off. It was thrown out of good’,” explains Ryan.
They all start talking over each other again, but I can hear Matt say about Dave “He volleyed it!” Were you upset you couldn’t open it because you were trying to play?
“No, I just picked it up and kicked it, but I really connected with it and it landed right back of tent.”
“I broke a £20,000 BBC TV camera that we’ve not had a bill for yet,” says Matt. “My mic lead got wrapped around it.” Anyone who’s been to see the Pigeon Detectives live will know this is not an unusual occurrence, with the lead often becoming entangled with Oli’s guitar, the drum kit and the mic stand, sometimes all at once.
“It was on them moving runners. It started running away from me and it was pulling me and I had a bit of a tug of war with it. I won and the camera lost and it just went [makes crunching noise] then ground to a halt. All these guys came running over. I was like, ooops-a-daisy.”
What sort of time were you on?
“Half one,” says Oli.
“Which were a shit time ‘cause I got out of bed at one,” says Matt. “So I got out of bed all sleepy-eyed, half one it was just, get on stage in front of three thousand people and I was like ‘Eh… what?’”
Did you have many people going along just for you?
“Yeah the tent were rammed and it emptied when we left,” says Matt. “Who went on after us? Biffy Clyro? No it weren’t, it were Cold War Kids. They looked like they had a bit of a tough time of it.”
Did you stand round and watch them? “I did,” says Ryan.
“I watched a bit,” Matt says.
“They’re pretty good,” says Ryan.
“They made me feel like I wanted to go to bed. I thought they were boring.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but I watched a couple of bands, and the crowd seemed quite curious towards almost every band, even massive bands they weren’t going as mental,” muses Ryan.
“Best band of the day were Kasabian, I thought they were fucking ace,” says Matt. For some reason he then starts making high pitched noises at Oli, who fixes him with a hard stare before taking a drink.
I’m Not Sorry is Oli’s card, which Dave thrusts at him. “I thought it was your go,” says Oli. It's their third full release on Dance To The Radio, after 'Romantic Type' earlier this year and 'I Found Out'. I hope you’ve all bought copies of it. “I bought six so far,” he says.
“I just went out and bought three,” says Matt. “Me and Ol got busted by about ten kids in HMV buying ‘I’m Not Sorry’, then they followed us around town for about an hour...”
“Were they girls by any chance?” asks Ryan.
“Girls and a lad. Until they got the courage to ask us for photos,” finishes Matt. “Then they went to Ol ‘Are you in t’band?’ and he went ‘No, I’m the fucking guitar tech.’ It was like this 12 year old girl and I was like, oh Jesus!” They all laugh.
“This girl asked for a picture yesterday,” laughs Dave. “Jimmi came in to the end of it and I went ‘Who’s this random?’ and she was like ‘Oh it don’t matter, I love it when randoms come into pictures!’ Jimmi just looked at me and went [grumpy face] and turned around.”
“She tried to apologise later and you were just like, fuck off. She proper offended you didn’t she,” says Ryan.
Jimmi’s being called out on stage to set up the drums, but he stands up and grabs one last card saying “I’ll get this.”
“You haven’t even answered that one yet,” says Ryan. Jimmi dithers.
“Just fuck off, no-one wants you here,” says Oli.
“We don’t want randoms playing this game,” says Ryan. A few kicks are aimed, and poor Jimmi departs for work. Back to ‘I’m Not Sorry.’
“Shit song, shit name,” Matt says, which I don’t believe is the promotional tag they’ve gone with. We have a guess at where it will chart the next day. The band are going with 12, seeing as that’s what they’ve heard today. They were spot on.
“I had a dream last night that us album got to number one,” says Dave.
“I had a dream…” sings Matt, the fifth member of ABBA.
“It were pretty good.”
“What, the dream or the album?” asks Oli.
“The… dream.”
“I had a dream that I were in London and there was a massive riot, so when I woke up the next morning in London I were going, were I rioting last night? It were one of them proper did-I-riot-last-night dreams,” says Matt. And did you riot? “I didn’t. It was a dream.”
“We haven’t actually answered the ‘I’m Not Sorry’ thing yet,” points out Dave.
“We have,” says Ryan.
“Got any more questions about I’m Not Sorry?” Oli asks me. Er, no. “OK.”
Ryan picks up an orange card. “I think it’s going to say South By South West,” says Matt, who is either psychic or has been cheating. “It’s in Texas.” Shedloads of new bands playing to keen music lovers and industry bods, all in the sunny United States.
How was it? “It were ace,” says Ryan. I didn’t hear much about it – I know pretty much everyone in the industry goes, but you never seem to hear much about what happens.
“Well basically like we only played one gig out there, and some other bands paid the NME to go out there and stuff. We didn’t, so NME wrote about these other bands who paid for them to go out and just overlooked us, so you probably wouldn’t have read much about it,” explains Ryan. “We actually played a gig and it were really good.”
Oli is still proudly sporting his sheriff badge, all the way from Texas. “I’m not even sure we went, according to the press,” he comments.
“I’m not sure we did, did we?” says Ryan.
“To be fair, it were a bit of a holiday,” says Matt. “We went out for a week, played one gig and then just sat around watching bands like Kings of Leon, Buzzcocks, Paolo Nutini, Albert Hammond Jr…”
“I think our manager said you’re out for one week playing one gig, enjoy yourself,” says Ryan.
“We got our publishing company to pay for it,” says Matt, “and we signed a publishing deal out there as well, which were nice.”
“Some great burgers,” says Dave, who knows what’s important. Worth going all the way just for that? “I love a burger.”
What do you think of your fans? asks one of my friends. “Tell him I’d like to have sex with the male fans and go shopping with the girl fans,” says Matt.
Dave reaches for the next card as fast as he can while trying to keep a straight face.
“Swiftly moving on…” says Oli.
Favourite film. Dave is happy he’s picked up this card. “Quite funnily enough, I’m the perfect person to ask that question to.”
“Mine’s Pirates of the Caribbean!” shouts Matt excitedly. “Ohh! Ohh!”
“Disregard Matt because he’s a film pleb and he doesn’t know anything about the medium,” Dave orders.
“Pirates of the Caribbean!”
“Mine’s Usual Suspects,” says Oli.
“Usual Suspects is my favourite…” begins Dave.
“I’ve already chose it. You can’t have it.” A few punches are thrown.
“Ow! Or maybe Shawshank Redemption,” Dave continues, between thumping Oli. “Or maybe True Romance…They’re my three.”
“Did you read that in a magazine?” says Oli, who I’d always assumed to be the quiet one, but who has turned out to be something of a cheeky so-and-so.
“Yeah.”
“Or do you have any opinions of your own?”
“I like Gladiator as well,” says Matt. “I like the bit where he goes (does tough Yorkshire Gladiator voice) ‘Husband of raped wife… father of murdered child…’…”
“What, that cheesiest bit in any film ever?” asks Dave.
“Yes. Then he goes ‘I am Maximus Decimus Meridius.’ And then he kills them all. Gladiator. Right film.”
“I’ve only seen it once all the way through. I just don’t like Russell Crowe, I think he’s a dick,” says Dave, and they discuss exactly how awful Master and Commander is.
“I got bored, I was like I don’t really get this,” admits Oli.
“I did but I committed 40 minutes of my life to it, I wanted to find out what happened. And I actually found out what happened,” says Matt.
“So Suzy, level with us, is this actually an interview or did you just want to come and sit in the dressing room and talk to us?” says Matt, looking at me sideways. Yes, you’re onto me. I can’t get enough of stealing Doritos from your crap rider.
Oli quite rightly points out there will be a bottle of rum waiting on my desk when I get back to work, and I think they’re a little jealous they just have warm beer. I get the feeling that after the Town Hall gig in a few hours, it will be a long time before they have to buy their own drinks again.
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The Pigeon Detectives debut album ‘Wait For Me’ is released on May 28th through Dance To The Radio.
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