Why do INTERSTELLAR BLUES CRUISE think they are the “MOST IMPORTANT BAND IN THE WORLD!” The Mumble caught the inside track…
Hello boys, so, where are you from & where do you reside these days?
Jonny: Howdy folks. Well I hail from around Bristol originally but landed up in Scotland in the 80’s as an uncouth youth. Was kicking around Fife in my 20’s and the Edinburgh area ever since, I can certainly think of worse places to end up.
Damo: Burnley boy currently living on the Isle of Arran. I bounce between the two still – great journey of the Pennines, Lake District & southern Scotland – loadsa hills!
Daniel: Grew up in Erskine, London and a highly plush farm house in the Netherlands. 1990 moved to Glasgow, where I’ve lived a majority of life, now almost a homegrown native.
So, Interstellar Blues Cruise, how did it all begin?
Damo: Well, me & Daniel had been knocking about 3 or 4 years, during which time we began jamming through some songs on acoustic guitar. After a while I’m like lets get a drummer on board, & luckily at the turn of 2024 I contacted my drumming comrade & luckily he was up for a jam…
What’s your version Jonny?
Jonny: I’d been away from bands for a decade when I met Damo one April day in 2012 and since then we’ve played in 3 bands together previous to IBC. After a hiatus while our other projects took precedence he called me up to suggest a blues jam earlier this year with Dan and it’s grown arms and legs from there. We’ve always connected through humour and enthusiasm and I instinctively lock onto his inherent sense of groove.
Cool – so what instruments do you play in the band, lads, & when did you first pick them up?
Daniel: I play rhythm and lead guitar and a few songs on bass. We always had guitars in the house growing up. I picked it up for myself at the age of 11, giving me 35 years playing to put into this band.
Damo: I mainly play the bass – I started playing it when I was 17. The bass player in our band had left, so I figur’d I’d have a go myself. It took me about a year of practicing before I realis’d I was born to be a bass-player all along. I do play guitar sometimes, too, I swap roles with Danny. I’ve been developing a nice wee style these past few years on a classical guitar, which I’m slowly translating onto the electric.
Jonny: Playin’ live I’m the drummer in IBC, in the recording sessions percussion and a bit of backing vocals and keyboards. I started drumming at school, I got to use the kit in the music room at lunchtimes to keep me out of mischief. Wangled my first tubs when I was 16 and paid them up on HP after I got the shout to play in a local punk band.
Who have been your inspirations in your individual instruments and why?
Damo: Well, for a start, I don’t play the bass, the bass plays me. It’s like some arcane, shamanic sh!t! I think my overall style is a blend of the melodic runs of Paul McCartney & Jack Bruce, with the groove of Mani & the funk of Flea. I’m all over the place sometimes wi’ mi’ twiddly bits.
Daniel: I was part of a good generation that happened in the 90’s. I learned to play covers with my brother. We played every day full of youth, songs like Welcome to the Jungle, Enter Sandman. After the hits of Appetite for Destruction, it was Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page’s work that lifted the top for me, that rock sound was enough to ignite my enthusiasm for guitar.
Jonny: I grew up with hearing a lot of 70’s prog rock and jazz in my family and I’d try and follow the melodies while tapping out complex rhythms on my teeth, something I still do. Ska and punk came next, I’ve always admired Stewart Copelands’ energy and commitment to the song though our styles are quite different.
I generally don’t listen to drummers and tend to lock on to the melodies and bass in music to suss what I would do or do differently. I think I’m more inspired by the musicians I’ve played with past and present and with what I wake up with rattling about in my head.
Where & when was the band’s first gig?
Daniel: The first ever Interstellar Blues Cruise gig was on the Isle of Arran in July. There is a popular hotel there for locals and tourists to enjoy a bar that buzzes with a conservatory for gigs. Our set list, and sound cracked open our first blues cruise live show to a crowd enlivened giving our boogying speciality a good chance to come out. It was an interesting night from my point of view being my first ever gig in a band and I was playing with two guys with years and decades of musical history behind them from recording to concerts. I thought there was a little magic at this gig as I followed and took lead from Jon’s drum and Damo’s vocal and bass. It was fun and went well, with a great feeling of giving everyone a good time. There’s a even cool video of Bonaparte Bloodline from the gig.
Bonaparte Bloodline! What’s all that about?
Damo: It’s about the day in 1811 when Napoleon’s first & only child, a son, was born. Josephine had fail’d to give him an heir, so he divorc’d her, married a young Austrain princess, & bingo! One could say that losing Josephine’s love & wisdom & replacing it with a megalomaniacal thirst for imperial, dynastical power, led this eventual downfall. It makes a nice ditty either way – here’s the lyrics…
There’s a boy born
Sitting by papa’s throne
In the star zone
Written in rock-stone
He’s so fair, everywhere
There’s a prayer in the air
For the heir of the Bonaparte pension
It’s a sacred sign
For the Bonaparte Bloodline
O what a wonderful time
For the Bonaparte Bloodline
I have never felt my fate more
This auspicious day
Put the crown down, put the round crown down
To the sound of the cannons as they pound, pound
Put the round crown down put the crown down
To the sound in the town of the cannons as they pound pound
Ah, Mother Earth, has chosen it’s tigers
Ah Fontainbleu’s exploding in fireworks
I have never felt more feted
This your greatest day
Epinal & Aubusson
Firminy, Antibes, Lyon
Montbeliard, Montpelier
Sancerre, Sedan, Saint-Dizier
Limoges, Toulouse, Cambrai
La Trinite, Nancy, Douai
Chantilly & Chatillon
Angouleme & Tarascon
Montelimar, Marseille, Morlaix
Announce this happy holiday
Brittany & Briancon
The Emperor has sir’d a son
Saint-Etienne to La Rochelle
Please do not fret the Queen fares well
These tidings take to every home
For France has won her King of Rome
Hear the rhythm of the cannon as they pound pound
The Champ De Elysee never listen such a sound sound
Folk are flooding from the fields going down town
Wine is flowing like a fountain in the ground ground
What other songs do you guys play?
Damo: Well, it’s a mixture really – half covers, half mine, tho’ eventually we want to just play originals. I mean, look at the Beatles in Hamburg & the Doors on the Sunset Strip, in their early days – they’d know about 50 covers. It’s important for a band to have a wide repertoire, all the songs feed into each other, including the orginals.
As for the covers we play now – there’s some old classic blues like Going Away Baby & Gallows Pole; some rockers for Daniel to sing, like Whole Lotta Rosie by ACDC & this mad extended Doors melody; a couple of 90s numbers such as yje perrenial Pump Up the Jam. As for the originals, they’re all mine, cherry picked from my orchard, let’s say, of fruitful songwriting over the years – there’s some right bangers in there like!
You’re having three rock stars over for dinner (living or deceas’d), who are they and what do you cook; starters, mains and dessert?
Daniel: If I were to dine 3 rock star guests I would like to introduce Elvis to Neil Young and my third would be Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. The idea would be to get them talking with a Polo Frito entree, and drinks of cold beer. After introductions and some deep hello’s I would have a secret list on how I want discussions to go, leaving everything to nature of course. I think the conversation would be of real interest as I serve a special lasagne made to a family recipe for them to enjoy with a little cognac, water and beer. It will be an enlivening evening of comparisons and a sharing of the massive land of rock set apart for the twentieth century. For dessert I would like to see how Elvis and Neil Young’s experiences evolved and Eddy Vedder’s response to it all with a light strawberry or chocolate mousse for flavour and lightheartedness. Shame Jim Morrison couldn’t be there or Freddie Mercury, but the night would still be a page turner for me, so enjoy friends.
Damo: I reckon me, Shaun Ryder, Betty Boo, & whoever’s available from Bananrama that night, any of ‘em’ll do, would have a top night. I wouldn’t want to give ‘em too much food, cos we’d be getting right on soon after, so maybe prawn cocktail with salad, then a cutlet of veal with some asparagus, & then some reyt strong ecstasy for dessert.
Jonny: It’d have to be Stewart Copeland (obvs), Nina Simone and Charlie Parker.
Aldi’s Tomato soup with a slice of white in it for starters, a pimped up Rustlers burger for the main (my speciality) and a choice of banana or strawberry Angel Delight for afters. Lush nosh for lush company.
How do you pimp up a Rustlers Burger?
Jonny: I’d normally be reticent to share but since it’s the Mumble;
First off bang the burger in your microwave for the regulation 70 seconds and stick the bun in a toaster (if your kitchen has one). Then ditch the rubber slice and grate some Gruyere, preferably from the Friebourg canton.
Fresh greens and sun-dried Andalucian tomotoes are prepared while an egg and some Ventreche bacon sizzles on the hob ( if your kitchen has one).
Stick it all together with Aldis mayo and some Walkers crisps on the side and hey presto! you have a classic main course fit for the most discerning of palates.
So you guys aren’t just musicians, some of you like to paint, right?
Daniel: Yes I paint to a certain level. I have a studio space free for me to use. My levels now involve canvas, wood and oil, painting pictures of landscapes, portraits using ornamentations inspired by Gustav Klimt and geometrical shapes that create spaces. My colour journey for my palette has a fascinating world surrounding it, my life in painting is intensifying nicely at this point, as I’m allowed to step further in Art’s romantic dream.
Damo: Well, I got into painting via finding the house I’m living in on Arran was own’d by a painter, who’d left loads of canvases & paints lying around. So I got stuck in, created a few paintings, & one drunken night chatting to Daniel during a jam round his place, we form’d an arts movement. A mate of mine in Edinburgh, Tam Treanor, also painted, so then there were three of us. We call’d ourselves Continualists, cos we were, like, continuing art, or summat. With Daniel’s contacts in Glasgow we put on a bona fide exhibition through July, 2023, at the Six Foot Gallery in Glasgow. We set up an arts movement call’d Continualism – it was a lot of fun. For 2025, I’m just about to get into doing large collages, & Daniel’s exhibiting all his work at the Six Foot again in March, I think we’ll be playing a gig to support it
OK, enough about food, it’s making me hungry… we have to ask, why do you say you are “The Most Important Band in the World?”
Damo: I think it’s a case of watch this space, Mumble. We’re a very innovative bunch, like – after we’d done the album, we’ll be doing Oratorios, Musicals, Rock Operas – we’re hard core artists with expansive ambitions. It’s nearly 60 years since Sgt Peppers, 50 since Tommy by the Who, but since then nobody’s been pushing the art form beyond these models. There’s a massive potential for what band music can achieve, but no-one’s doing anything about it – except for us that is!
Tell us about Roger’s Golden Ratio?
Damo: It’s our debut album! I see Roger’s Golden Ratio as the third part in a trilogy of classic albums, & aplatform for all our futire endeavours. So, the first part of that classic tryptch was Sergeant Peppers, the second The Stone Roses first album, & Roger’s is clearly the third. Every tune on a classic has to be an anthem, & only Peppers & the Roses album are (of you ignore Don’t Stop)- plus the musicianship has to be bangin’ to seal the deal. I think we’re achieving that with gusto!
How long did it take to record RGR1, & can you describe the process?
Daniel: Our debut album was recorded at ‘Substation’ Record Studio between early September & mid – December, 2024. We arrived fresh and excited, and our music has a fresh instinct behind it. Taking 24 hours over 6 4-hours sessions, we’ve put together RGR1…. or it’s full name Rogers Golden Ratio part 1. Substation is a very fine recording venue, where laying the tracks down was easy, and we marvelled at our sound engineer’s skills, Atholl, a guy with long standing experience. Normally a trio, we had a guest musician, Michael Scott, from Arran, join us for on of the sessions, who added some nice parts to the mix.
Overall it went really well and we all created a fast flow for the songs, with good passions rising. We went deep into this fascinating process and gave our technical proficiency the chance to arise. The songs were works through which souls seemed to be born, and there it was an ecstatic pleasure listening to the overarching progress.
The album’s front cover is interesting – where did it come from?
Damo: Well, I was walking along the coast in Arran, & scam across pools where sewage was making cool colour’d oily bits. I took a photo & sent it to the lads saying it’s a good image. Jonny then said he’d took photos of a similar entity, which were better than mine. So I painted a logo for Roger’s Golden ratio Part One, photograph’d it & then did a bit of computer art, & bingo! Part Two’s gonna be red, btw!
So, just exactly who is this Roger geezer?
Damo: You’ll have to ask him yourself! As for his Golden Ratio, I can answer that. All nature’s ruled by the numbers 8 & 5, even music – y’know, 8 white keys & 5 back guys. It seem’d apt to do it in two parts 8 & 5 – the first 8 tracks, ‘Part One, have just been completed at Substation Studios in Rosyth, with our new best mate Atholl – he was great to work with. Then in early March we’re off to do part 2 in Malta, at a place call’d Temple Studios.
Which are your favorite songs from RGR-ONE?
Jonny: It’s an interesting question that – it’s rare I’m asked it. To be honest it’s very hard to choose a favourite out of these songs, each one tends to arrive in me head unbidden regular likes, especially when I freshly wake up. Without wanting to appear too analytical, I think I’ve been tuning in to the spaces where I’m not playing; I’ve engaged with restraint with minimal fills and flamboyance (converse to my usual drills) and instead trying to find and ‘sit in the pocket’ of each groove.
Sayin’ that, in the moment of recording Going Away Baby I found myself subtly tickling the hi-hat in a new way while all my limbs worked independently at the rest of the rhythm. It’s marvellous when on occasion your body just takes over in the moment of the beat and yer brain is just hitchin’ along for the ride.
Can you tell us about the songs on the album, why choose them?
Damo: Part One has seven originals & one cover, Going Away Baby by Jimmy Rogers. This one is older 70 years, so it’s copywright free. As for the other tunes, Shirley’s Bouncers is a cheeky rap number, I wrote the lyrics over a bit of dance music a couple of years ago. Shoe Shine Blues is about 2011, I think, a nice true bluesy number which comes in at only 1:40 minutes, but seems longer. Freedom’s next, I wrote that in August 2023, during a wee escape on Arran away from reviewing the Edinburgh Fringe. The fact that comedians were being cancell’d just for their opinions that year was the initial catalyst for the song. I wrote Seminal Lives on the rooftop of an Indian orphanage near Gwalior, in 2006. Here’s the lyrics…
We spend our chemical youth
Lookin for love & seekin truth til
We’ve had our fill of the feeling
But now I’m towing the right line
Findin the time to free my mind
& findin’ love so appealin’
Cos when I heard
Stop, stop runnin around like a time bomb
Dont seem to give a damn about anyone
stop or you’re goin to blow
Then I heard
Stop, stop runnin around like a time bomb
You dont seem to give a damn about anyone
Stop or you’re going to blow
I bet you dont feel like I do
I bet you dont feel like I feel
I get this feelin when I get outta bed
I’m gonna do the damn things
That are runnin’ inside my head
Running around in the life that I know
I’m like a drownin man & I’m caught in the undertow
We spend our seminal lives
Lookin for ways to woo our wives
When we’re ready to settle
All our criminal past
Hide it away in plaster cast
Or wrap it in precious metal
Cos when I heard
Stop, stop runnin around like a time bomb
You dont seem to give a damn about anyone
Stop or you’re going to blow
Then I heard
Stop, stop runnin around like a time bomb
You dont seem to give a damn about anyone
Stop or you’re going to blow
I bet you dont feel like I do
I bet you dont feel like I feel
I get this feelin when I get outta bed
I’m gonna do the damn things
That are runnin inside my head
Running round & round in the life that I know
I’m like a drownin man & I’m caught in the undertow
She-Ra was also written in India, in 2013. Bonaparte Bloodline was written in 2023, as part of my musical on Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, call’d The Flight of the White Eagles. To finish Part One there’s The Bawlin’ Blues, I wrote the main lyrics for this again in India about the same time I wrote She-Ra. The last lyrics are a late addition – I recorded the tune in the wrong order at Substation, so I suddenly had some lyrics to cobble together. I also added a bit from another song, Psychedelia, to enhance the final jammy bit
You’ve been making some videos to support the album, can you tell us about it?
Jonny: Sure. Well, we recorded the first one Shirley’s Bouncers, over a couple of days, in between mixing at Substation studio and near our practice room in Mussleburgh.
It was a good laugh, Dan and I did the doorman thing, then I filmed Damo boppin’ about the studio in his Burnley top. It was our first and it’s received a good response so far.
Seminal Lives was filmed in various places, on Arran, Glasgow, La Rioja in Northern Spain and in the bus depot where I work. There are more use of subtle effects on this one as Damo (who created, edited and synced up both of them ) learned more of the process. I was doing a security shift on my jack jones early on New Years Day so me and my hip flask took advantage of the surroundings. I played the song on one phone whilst recording on another to synch up, it was a new process for me and worked very well.
We’re talking up filming more this year and away to March to record 5 songs so we will likely come back with summat a bit tasty for our fans
OK, one last question, what does 2025 hold in store for IBC?
Damo: Well, there’s the rets of the album in March, which we’ll do a few gigs to support, then send both parts in for remixing to create the final version. At the same time we’ll be starting on the Oratorios & my Operalla on the 16th century Italian Poetess, Isabella de Morra, so we’ll be busy!
LISTEN TO THE ALBUM
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