Basing their sound on an instrumental rock basis, Belfast four-piece And So I Watch You From Afar have been moving rapidly through the music industry in both Ireland and the UK.
Banking themselves a slot at this year’s Indiependence Festival, Cork- I caught up with Johnny and Niall before they headed to the Big Top stage.
So you guys are here to play Indiependence later- part of a massive line-up. Are you excited?
Johnny:Yeah, anytime we’ve been here in the past- this is our third time- it’s been an unbelievable experience. The atmosphere out there in the main field there is absolutely brilliant, and the fact that there’s a really nice stage this year for the first time is quite exciting! A lot of our label mates are playing tonight with us and some amazing bands, and then they stuck us on after all of them so it’s going to be quite nerve racking but we’re psyched to be gigging again and doing another show.
Are you expecting a good turn out for your set?
Niall: We certainly hope so! It’s hard to tell with these things- it’s the first day of the festival as well isn’t it? But hopefully. It’s usually pretty good for us.
How did you start making music? I mean, your sound being essentially instrumental, it’s quite different to what’s out there at the moment- is that always the direction you’ve wanted the music to head?
Niall: Johnny would probably be better at answering this seeing as I’ve only been in the band a couple of weeks!
Johnny: Yeah, I think going back to the year dot, the whole And So I Watch You From Afar idea that Rory and I had came out of a couple of partying real hard and listening to a lot of bands that were around at the time and were predominantly instrumental, and kind of had a feel g0od factor attached to them. The first time that I heard ‘The World Is Not A Cold Dead Place’ by Explosions- there’s bits in that that’s just like a joyous release of things- and that’s kind of the original idea. We ran with that for a couple of jam sessions, trying to emulate, in a way, other bands we were listening to, and I’m so thankful this happened! It was kind of like- you know what, maybe we should tweak it this way, and this tune and whatever- and that was the start of us finding our feet with our own sound. The band has been together for about a year, but not officially really. We played a few shows, and we learnt from them what we wanted to be playing as opposed to what we thought we wanted to be playing, so we kind of went down the complete opposite avenue in the end. Obviously there’s a predominant instrumental sound throughout the first two records. We’ve just always had this thing where we write and play music we want to hear ourselves.
Has there been a particular stand out moment for you in your career?
Niall: For me it was…. Eh, I dunno! I was going to try say something funny there, but no!
Johnny: We did a weekend of festivals last weekend and the weekend before. We did four festivals in four countries in four days- Spain, Belgium, Ireland and England. That was really really good fun. The crowds were amazing and it was just great.
Who in the music industry would you take inspiration from? Or, if you could collaborate with someone- would there be any definite person you’d choose without question?
Johnny: Well, the thing is, I know my answer would be completely different from Niall’s and different from Chris’ and Rory’s, so that’s how it works. I don’t know- that’s a good question! It would be fun to do a Desert Sessions. I’d love to just riff out with Jack Bruce from Cream because, you know, big hairy ginger dude! And before he came along, Bass players just sort of stood back and was behind the drummer just playing. But he was co-front in Cream and just riffing out and writing songs. I think he was on an even par with Clapton even. I’d love to have a jam session with him and just be totally owned and schooled but I’d learn from it! That would probably be a definite for me.
Sweet! Finally, is there anyone you guys will be heading along to see tonight?
Niall: There’s so many bands playing this whole weekend that I would love to see, and I honestly don’t think we’ll get to see any of them. It just happens when you’re in a touring band and it’s festival season. You arrive somewhere and you have to set up, then a bit of press, then it’s playing time and we’ve to leave straight away.
Johnny: I’d love to see De La Soul tonight but I think they start five minutes after us and the chances of trying to get everything away and get over to see them are slim to none.
The downsides then eh?! Well, thank you very much for that interview- I’m sure you’ll smash it at the Big Top tonight.
Johnny: You’re very welcome!