For someone who in his own words “wasn’t a big festival goer as a punter” Dan Croll seems to be making up for it this summer with a huge list of festival appearances. We caught up with him at Kendal Calling this weekend.
How did your set go?
It went well, it was a very rushed affair. We turned up about ten minutes before stage time, I think the adrenaline and pressure of having such a short time to set up spurred us on to play well. People seemed to enjoy it. It’s such a lovely festival.
Is this your first Kendal Calling?
It is yeah, it’s the first of many festivals I guess. I was never a big festival goer when I was a punter, I think V Festival 2006 scarred me but now I’m having the time of my life at them. We’ve played Latitude, a few festivals in Norway and last night we were in Switzerland. Tomorrow we’ve got Secret Garden Party and then there’s Reading and Leeds coming up, so it’s a really busy time for us.
Do you get a different reaction in Europe to what you get over here?
Erm, I think so. I think at European festivals they don’t really give a damn how they look so if they’re enjoying the music they’ll go a bit mad. I think the British culture is that you can be really enjoying something and you’ll still just stand there with your arms crossed not moving around.
Do you find that festivals are a good place to try out new material?
Yeah they’re a very good place to test the water. We only ever play half an hour or 45 minute slots but we turned up in Switzerland the other night and they wanted a 90 minute set. I don’t really have that much material so we had to settle on 82 minutes. We played 18 songs and there were 5 new ones in there and as much as I was dreading it, it was actually a really good point to try it all out and it ended up going down really well. It made me a lot more confident in these new songs. So I think we’ll probably try them out at a few more festivals and then hopefully when we get round to touring we’ll be a very tight band.
If you could support anyone who would it be?
There are massive artists I really look up to like Paul Simon, Bert Bacarak, Brian Wilson and I think The Zombies are still touring. But then maybe they’re a bit past it now so maybe someone newer and fresher like Vampire Weekend would be fun. I don’t suppose I really think about that too much. Whoever goes to the most countries I’d love to tour with.
What’s your favourite country you’ve played in?
I think Switzerland, it was just such a beautiful place. We’ve played a lot in Norway too, it’s quite strange, we were all joking this morning about the downer of coming back to the UK from those places flying into London City Airport. Then actually as we were on the motorway, just been in the Lake District is actually really nice.