Tell me a bit about yourselves, what have you been up to over the past 12 months?
The past 12 months, I mean just making a new record really, it took a lot of time. We made it in May 2022, well I should say that we finished it off in the studio to do the last third of it in May 22 and then there's mixing and production and the art work we had to do and then making videos at the end of 22 and all the promo. Then releasing it in May, so yeah, it's just been non stop divine machines for the past 12 months.
Has the writing process changed from the early days to now?
I think the way that I write has probably changed. It still always starts with maybe a riff or a little melody idea or some chords and thing. In the early days I was only really doing it on guitar or bass whereas now, there's a wider pallet of stuff that I'm using to write on like piano and using synths and things like that. So it has, its kind of evolved but there's still that core, a riff is always going to be a good riff so its kind of evolved.
What is 'Sweet & Sour America' about?
It's about the sort of strange dichotomy of America that we see a lot when we tour there. It's a mad country because there's such wealth and there's such extremes of poverty as well and then there's such incredible beauty, like the national parks and things, and then there's some really sad and deprived areas. You just see this mad array, this spectrum of stuff and for us it was just this kind of idea of Sweet and Sour America, this kind of both sides. It's a country that we adore but also kind of afraid of.
Where did your band's name come from and how did you form?
So we formed in 2007 and the band name actually came from my Mam because my Mam was suggesting names. Even when I was 13, like 20 years ago or something, I was trying to think of band names and my Mam one day was like 'what do you think of Demob Happy?' and I was like 'Ah shut up, I'm not taking a band name from my Mam'. Then it hung around and hung around in my mind and then really it was a few years later and me and the lads were like 'what should we call the band?' and we thought well Demob Happy has been knocking around as a name so lets use that. It grew to mean a lot to us, it sort of means well it's short for an old English war term which is demobilisation happy which means the feeling of relief when you come out of the army. For us it began to have a lot more meaning for us because it's very much the feeling in my lyrics that kind of things are a bit shit but it's going to get better and that's kind of the feeling, the just of it you know.
Have you got any pre-gig rituals?
Well you know, nothing like that exciting, I don't drink when I'm touring just because it fucks my voice up and that's something I've just started doing recently because many years where I'e drank and toured and I wondered why I couldn't sing. To be honest it's fairly boring, I'll do my vocal warmups and then we'll put some tunes on. We will probably have a dance around in the dressing room and like get a bit excited and get in the mood, just have some fun. Shake it off.
What's the funniest thing that has happened whilst touring or performing?
Where do I begin? The amount of daft shit that we've done over the years. The first time that we toured America, we were in a. clapped out RV and that thing almost killed us multiple times. To tell you one story, we had to change the back tire on it so we pulled into a Walmart to try and get a tire, ended up having to try and jack it up ourselves to try and change the tire. To the point where we were underneath the RV and the fucking jack actually broke from the weight and collapsed and we were very close to being crushed underneath that thing. That is the tip of the iceberg, there was a lot more.
What's next for you as a band?
Well we are going to do this tour and then we are going to work on the new record and we don't want to leave it as long as we kind of had to because of covid, you know, a lot of different reasons because the last album was 5 years ago. We've put a lot of singles out in that time but we love albums so we re just going to make a new album and hopefully put it out as soon as possible really.
By - Katie Graham
Photo- Jack Hope
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