Idol Dead Interview

Polly & KC of The Idol Dead granted AATR a very brief conversation.

You guys played the fabulous SOS Festival. How did you guys find that?

Polly – Brilliant. We played it a few years ago and thought it was fantastically organized and a pleasure to play. When you have a great experience like that you obviously worry the second time won’t live up to it but it did. The crew is incredible and treat every band like professionals; it’s about as efficient as it gets! Everyone is friendly and, – probably most importantly – the crowd is full of real music fans looking to enjoy their day. Set wise we thought we were pretty loose but having a great time and getting off on the energy of the audience. It was the first real Idol Dead gig I took my thirteen-year-old daughter too as well. She had a great time, always felt safe that showed just how family friendly the whole affair is.

KC – Smooth and easy, and ridiculously fun. We’re usually dragging our gear into the three square foot of room at the side of the stage and playing to people stood a couple of feet away with not much room onstage. Playing an event this well-organized meant we had assistance with everything, there was no rushing around, and the stage was a playground to run around on! That translates to a much more energetic and fun show for the audience, who in turn were extremely friendly and receptive.

You guys have the RACPA event in Derby coming up. Have you got anything special lined up for this?

Polly – We’ve recently been rehearsing a good portion of our back catalogue, blowing the dust off some old tunes. We invited about twenty fans to our rehearsal space a few weeks back and did a set based on requests. We had a great time and as a consequence we’ll add some older songs into the set. As a band you tend to favour the newer material but the fans like it all. So we should listen to them really.

KC – Playing a RACPA gig sober. I think I’m going to give that a go…

Do you guys regularly rehearse your set in order to perfect your performance?

Polly – We do. We will vary rarely play a set we haven’t rehearsed. Practice time is divided between playing a set, re-learning old songs, working on new material, and taking the piss out of each other. Obviously that’s a fundamental part of being in a band. People sometimes ask if we rehearse stage moves and stuff: we don’t, and anyone who saw KC smack me straight in the face at SOS can testify to that!

KC – You can’t rehearse a performance; that’s the difference between practice and a show. We go through the set to make sure guitar tunings match up between songs and that all the bases are covered but anything else that actually happens onstage just happens.

Would you say you have a strong fan base, and how do you promote your band to your followers?

Polly – We have a small but very loyal following. We love the Idol Army and have become good friends with a fair few of them. The ‘fans and rock star’ dynamic is so dead now and good riddance to it. We all have skills in life: some people can fix cars, some can build houses, some can write code, some can play in bands. We treat our fans with that kind of respect. No one is better than anyone else nor should they act it. Sure, for the thirty minutes I’m on stage I’m a sex fuelled alien with the world in the palm of my hand, but the minute I walk off I’m just another bumbling arse from Yorkshire! That in mind, we try to talk to our fans as much as possible, online and off, to make sure they know what we’re doing and when. We also utilize the Pledge dynamic to create a buzz around our releases.

KC – We are fortunate enough to have a solid following in a real sense. Our fans have crowdfunded thousands of pounds for our last two albums and routinely spend a lot of money on travel and hotels following us around the country, as well as voting with their wallets to get us at shows and on the road. Bar the usual social media/ onstage patter advertising, we have a good word of mouth reputation too which I’m very proud of. That’s better than any paid promotion!

Do you create opportunities before/after events in order to interact with your fans?

Polly – We go drinking with a fair few of them! I wouldn’t say we create opportunities as that’s the old ‘Rock Star’ dynamic again but we always interact with the fans. We’re fans of live music and we love the underground so we’ll be watching the bands at any gig/festival we play anyway. Plus as I said, our fans are very loyal, so they travel to see us and book hotels etc, We try to do the same where we can and hang out with them for drinks and bonding.

 
KC – Do bands at our level have to do that?! We’re just there at the venue watching the other bands and having a drink so it’s not like we purposely engineer any meetings with our fans. I usually sell merchandise before and after a show anyway so if someone wants to talk they just come up and say hi.

Do you guys have jobs and/or the lifestyle that enables you to tour regularly?

Polly – Not really but we do our best. Me and Nish have kids and we all work full-time, except KC who does a bit of teching and stuff. We try to play decent events and occasionally do little tours. Playing the Rat & Handbag on a rainy Tuesday night to six bar staff isn’t the way we wanna roll any more.

KC – I probably have the most adaptable schedule in the band but as a team we’ve always found ways and means to tour when we want to. I don’t have children or a career so I find it easy to jump in a van but it’s not that easy for everyone. I think even if we could, we wouldn’t. When we first started we accepted any gig that came our way and a couple of years of playing to three people four times a week and getting up for work the next day gets old. Now we try to cherry pick the shows that are going to be worth it in terms of good attendance and what will be most fun. Once it’s not fun, the desire goes despite what all the clichés tell you. Now we try to play smart rather than play often.

 Do you base any of your songs around dreams/memories? If so which songs were inspired by these?

Polly – Memories and real life, no dreams or stories or fantasy stuff. Just emotions. I write a lot of the lyrics and I use them as a cathartic kinda crutch, spilling all my feelings onto the page and then wrapping them round the music the band come up with. KC is the other lyrical contributor and I think he does more or less the same. Some of it’s really personal and you can tell the story of our lives through the music.

 
KC – Memories definitely, events in my life, thoughts about situations and so on. Bones of You was written on New Years Eve a few years ago when I was counting my blessings, Six Feet Under a bit before that about a bad night’s adventures. I like to start songs for Polly to finish off, or give him a point of reference such as Silver Bullet Cocktail where I gave him the title and the music. We have a song on the next album called Heart on Sleeve which I gave him the music, chorus and first verse then told him to fill the gaps.  That song is a bit meta as it name checks others songs we’ve written about memories and past events.

What is your favourite song to play live?

Polly – Personally at the moment, Everybody Knows Your Name as it’s heavy and melodic. I like that.

KC – Currently Bar At the Edge of Time. It’s easy enough to play whilst running round but constantly changes musically so it’s very interesting, and it has my favourite middle eight of all our songs that lets me go up against Tim. We don’t play set designated rhythm/lead parts in general and that middle eight is a whole mishmash of different hooks, riffs and melody that I love being part of.

Have your ambitions or goals changed since first starting out in music?

Polly – And how! Yes. I wanted to be a rock star; now I realize that’s all bollocks. I suppose when it boils down to it, the main thing any real band wants to do is make a living off doing the thing you love. That’s getting harder and harder to do. That’s the goal though these days. And if we can’t have that then making music we love for people who agree with us is more than enough. Hearing someone else sing something you created back at you will never get old!

KC – I think I found clarity more than the cynicism which is very common. Teenage dreams of ‘wanting to play rock music for a living’ had to change pretty quickly when I found out how the business worked. Now I’m not so fussed over making a living out of it but I’ve got a better focus on what I want my band to accomplish. We put a lot of time and effort into it so I don’t want it to go to waste.

 How would you say the music industry has changed since you first started out?

Polly – Me personally, loads. I’ve been at this a while. It was million pound record deals and rock stars, and now it’s not so much. I prefer it now. I think the idea of paying someone stupid money to play guitar while people starve is a bit weird. A good living is perfectly acceptable, and should be available if you work hard, but Rolls Royce’s into pools and smashing up hotels? FTS, clichés and idiocy: someone’s bloody mum has to clean that room! There are other rock star clichés I can get on with, but they don’t pat so well 😉

KC – I’ve discovered how rewarding it is to put the effort in and see where your hard work goes rather than signing to a label that removes a lot of your legal rights and choices. I was on a small label in my early twenties that did nothing for my band at the time and that soured me a little as our hands were bound. When Idol did our last two albums we came away with no debt, the rights to our songs, a tonne of happy fans clutching quality merchandise and a buzz in the air about what we’d achieved. I know which I prefer. Now the whole system of releasing music has changed and that set process has become a lot more fluid and DIY. That’s made it more of a black highway at night rather than a well trodden road. Everytime someone has said bands at our level can’t achieve something because of XYZ reason, we’ve bumbled our way through it.

As a band is there any obstacles that you have had to overcome and if so how have you overcome these?

Polly – We’ve been pretty lucky really. We had a line up change but it was undramatic: the bass player just wanted to move to London to study jazz. Dan fitted right in after that. We had the demos (along with Nish’s laptop) stolen as we geared up for the 3^rd Album but we managed to get through that with a mixture of bloody mindedness and Nish’s genius.

KC – Any problems we’ve had we usually resolve by going one step back and seeing what was working that changed. We had a curse on the last album where everything broke, got lost or stolen. Nish’s car got broken into, Dan broke his wrist, the studio flooded, the list goes on. You just have to be flexible with it and bend rather than break (unless you’re Dan’s wrist).

What has the band got lined up for the future?

Polly – We’re just writing for album four and will hopefully be launching a pledge later this year. This means we’ll be a bit quiet on the gig front for the rest of the year but we’ll be doing as many festivals, gigs and possibly a tour too.

 Is there anything you would like to say to your fans?



Polly – ‘Thanks’ is it mostly. They know how much we appreciate them, and how hard we work to make sure they are included in whatever it is we do, so we promise to keep doing that. 

KC – Bring someone to our show with you, copy our music for them, get them involved. Sharing is caring!

All photos used with kind permission