Next Sunday (8th March), The Bodega will be treated to a good old Rock ‘N Roll show in the form of a headline set by The Dough Rollers. For those of you unfamiliar with this band here’s a little breakdown; they’ve worked with the likes of Jack White and Josh Homme, toured with Billy Idol, Bob Dylan and Queens of the Stone Age and lead singer Malcolm’s dad is the one and only Harrison Ford. Oh, and they are an excellent band, of course.
We spoke to Jack the guitarist about coming to play in Nottingham for the first time.
You’ve worked with some impressive names (Jack White, Josh Homme etc.) over the last couple of years. What have you learnt in the process?
To hurry up and get things done and don’t think about things too much…time is precious. Both Jack & Josh were great to work with and both so different in personality and style that you cannot help but learn even if subliminally, but also it can be hard waiting for the various studio processes to work, so don’t count on anything to happen quickly unless you do it yourself in your own timing.
Obviously blues and whiskey go hand in hand, and we’ve got quite an extensive range of Whiskey here at The Bodega, but what’s your ultimate favourite?
Mine is Hennessy but that’s not whiskey. Malcolm is the whiskey connoisseur and he loves a good bottle of Oban, however on our last European Tour when we supported Billy Idol, it was customary for him to hit the stage each night with a bottle of Jameson, Kyle will drink anything as he is a drummer!!!
Have you ever visited Nottingham before and if not what have you heard about it? Are you excited to come and play here?
We have never been to Nottingham ever, but our friend Jake Bugg is from there as you know and we’ve heard only good things from him about the place. Our UK tour manager informs us that the place has a ratio of 8:1 women to men which seems very interesting especially after the Whiskey from The Bodega has kicked in, as we do like to party after each show. We know that the venue is the place to play on the circuit and really cant wait to come, seriously. Maybe Jake will pop down to jump on a couple of songs if he is in town?
When can we expect another release from you guys?
Well, we are repackaging and re-releasing our current EP in April whilst we record our new material/album in New York at the Famous Relic Rooms (where we are at this precise moment). We are really excited about the new material. It keeps on evolving and we are looking to showcase and launch it in the UK before the USA, around mid summer we expect….How about that then!
You’re about to go on tour with Black Keys and play some huge arenas – how do arena-sized shows compare with smaller shows like the one you’re going to play here?
Actually, we unfortunately have been recently told that the Black Keys tour is being rescheduled for later this year as the drummer injured himself whilst on holiday, which was a shame as we were all ready to rock n roll all over the arenas. That’s why we have been free to come over in March to play at The Bodega and the other venues in England, hence ‘don’t wait for other people to dictate your route…we make things happen ourselves if need be’.
As for the difference between arenas and smaller venues, it really is a more difficult question to answer than you think as both are amazing in different ways. Yes the arenas size, the buzz of being on a big tour and stage, scale of productions and crew, crowd attendance, noise, even catering is INCREDIBLE, especially if you’re a headline act. As a support act its a fight to win over the headline act’s crowd but one we have luckily enough been able to do so far. We, in general, get on with all the people we work with and have fun and maximize any opportunity we can.
In the Smaller venues we work in the same way, we try our best to get on with all the local production and other bands so we all have a good night, its a good chance for everyone to learn our craft and importantly engage with our audiences. In fact the smaller venues are often some of our best gigs as we are upfront and personal with the crowd, so much so that they can smell the whiskey coming off the microphones.
Technically some of the smaller gigs can be interesting but we thrive on that, in fact on the last arena tour we did we especially filled our days off with filler gigs in really small pub like venues and we had the best fun. For example one night we played to 2500 at the Manchester Apollo supporting Billy Idol and the next night we played in Halifax at the Puzzle Inn to about 17 people, just us and a few local bands. The smaller gigs rock and we find so many new fans that way. We also get to try our new material easier as opposed to the big venues as support slots are where we only have a limited stage time.
Get your tickets for their show on 8th March here.