In my infinite wisdom, of the pre-arranged interviews I’d planned for Truck last weekend, four were over the entire course of the Saturday, whilst four more were packed into a two hour time period on the Sunday. The 30 minute slots seemed comfortable in regimented organisation on paper, however in practice it quickly became apparent that my initial optimism was grossly miscalculated.

Of those that had to be rearranged, Blood Red Shoes were one. We managed enough time on the day to get some photographs to accompany any future piece, and I had a brief conversation with Laura-Mary about The ‘Thick of It‘. Swoon. A few days later Steven called from V2’s head office as part of the band’s press day to go over everything that ought to be discussed; Truck being a main focus point but also the band’s extensive touring plans and future releases. Here’s the raw transcript from our conversation;

I guess the logical place to start would be to ask how Truck was for you this year? You seemed to be having fun whenever I saw you…

‘Yeah, I had a really good time actually…‘

It seems to me as though you can comfortably walk onto any festival line-up these days, was Truck one you’d specifically requested?

‘You know what? That is really weird actually because we’ve been asking to play it for the last 3 years and somehow it never worked, then suddenly this year it was cool and, I guess something wasn’t getting through our lines of communication because we’re really into the festival. Somehow it wasn’t happening but then finally we got to play and they gave us an insanely good slot on the main stage – it’s like we’d stored it up! Yeah, we did specifically ask to play it; it’s just one of those festivals, that’s the kind of world that we’ve come from. We’re starting to play to more mainstream audiences than we did before but the kind of bands that play at Truck are more what we associate ourselves with. It’s real music fans; people that will go out and buy limited vinyl, people that are more into their independent and underground music, so it’s a very ‘us’ festival to do.‘

So you enjoyed your time on the main stage then?

‘Yeah, I found it to be really fun. Generally when we play festivals I prefer to play in a tent or whatever, but it was really cool just to get the opportunity to do it, and there were definitely a lot of people who didn’t know who the hell we were who got to see it, which is great.‘

You also got the chance to stretch your legs a little on the barn stage with Pulled Apart By Horses – is that the usual way you greet your friends? Forcing a can of larger down their throat and stealing their guitar?

[laughs] ‘It depends! The thing with Horses is we’ve toured with them a lot and we’ve done so many shows, so after a while we just started fucking around basically. We started playing on bits of their songs and they played on some of ours, and now when we see each other at festivals we’re like ‘yeah, lets do that again!’‘

I guess it’s largely dependent on your schedule, but do you get much of a chance to savour the festivals you play?

‘We don’t really; recently, because our slots have become slightly better it’s cool because we tend to get to the festival a bit earlier and then we’re not playing until later so we do actually get some time to see some bands. What we used to have for a bit was we’d have so many festivals in a row in different countries that we’d play at lunchtime, and then immediately start having to drive to the next one, so we had about a year when the first album came out where we played all these festivals and I can barely remember half of them! It became van/play/van/different country/play/van and so on, but now we get to hang out more and it’s way cooler. I can actually tell people which festivals I really like now, it’s a lot less blurred together!‘

So, other than Pulled Apart, did you get to see many bands on the Sunday at Truck?

‘Yeah, we watched a bit of Fucked Up, a little bit of Teenage Fanclub… I caught some of the bands on the main stage but I’m not even sure who they were, I think one was Stornoway. The only three bands I made a point of going to see were Fucked Up, Teenage Fanclub, and Pulled Apart who are always a priority. I think I did pretty well overall!‘

Just out of interest, what did you think of Fucked Up? I found the guitar quite abrasive in the mix, although maybe that was the point?

‘I actually thought they were kind of bland. It was kind of aggressive sounding, but I just thought it was a bit flat. It was just a shrill guitar, you couldn’t really hear the singer… It was like the music wasn’t doing much so they’ve got this crazy front-man doing all this confrontational stuff, but that’s kind of compensating for the fact that the music’s really not that interesting, for me. I kind of expected more basically – I thought the music would be as exciting as the presentation, because it’s presented as being really ‘in your face’, but the music’s quite straightforward. It just didn’t go anywhere or do much for me.‘

To be honest, I’m inclined to agree…. So, moving on, we’re still deep in festival season, and of those you’ve still to play there’s two dates in Japan. Dare I say, are you big in Japan?

[laughs] ‘We’ve been out there 5 times before, but we go everywhere that much though, we’re just one of those bands who play live a lot, everywhere we can.‘

Do you find that you’re spreading yourselves a little thin sometimes then, or do you generally get the same kind of reaction wherever you are?

‘It’s definitely different in different places; we’re definitely more popular in some places than others, and also you get a lot of cultural differences in the audiences. For example, in Japan they’ll make loads of noise when you’re playing, and in between they’re very quiet and polite which is really strange because between songs you can get this deftly silence sometimes, and it’s not because you’re going down badly, it’s just because people are so polite they don’t like to speak or clap in case you address the crowd or something, which is really weird. It took some getting used to! But then you go and play somewhere like Germany and it’s just mental throughout. There’s definitely different reactions, and we’re definitely more popular in some places than in others ‘

After the festival season you have a pretty mammoth European tour from November through December, all culminating in Brighton, which I thought was a nice touch…

‘Yeah, we suddenly realised, we’re doing the UK shows and then we’re in the US and Canada throughout October promoting the album out there, then a load of European stuff, and we realised ‘man, we need to put in a Brighton show, we need to have a homecoming in Brighton!’ It was an oversight that we hadn’t already booked it so we put it in because we could and it’ll be fun!‘

Have you heard much about the plight of the Freebutt in Brighton at the moment?

‘I’ve heard the big shits have tried to shut it down…‘

Effectively, yeah. They’ve had a sound limiter installed which effectively renders them unable to house live music, which is a sorry state of affairs I think. I never grew up in Brighton but I’ve been there plenty for gigs, from your perspective how integral is that venue to the community?

‘Very, we played all our first shows there, and a lot of Brighton bands do as do a lot of touring bands. The other small venue which is comparable, the Engine Room, that’s also shut down recently, so there’s basically one decent small venue in Brighton now [The Albert]. It’s really tough; a town with such a cultural background in music, it’s very unsettling to think that there’s so few outlets. It’s happening across the country, and these smaller venues are the ones that are going to find it harder to get the money to fix the sound implications imposed on them. ‘

The Brighton scene’s still strong though, I guess it always has been?

‘I don’t think it’s so much a scene, more a general enthusiasm for music, and usually in very different forms. For as long as I’ve know it it’s been a healthy thing, lots of different things going on consistently really.‘

Do you still live down there?

‘Yeah, I do – Laura-Mary’s in London but it’s an easy train. We’re still based in Brighton, we have a rehearsal space where we record our demos and other bits and bobs, but we still see ourselves as Brighton based.‘

Excluding the 70% of the year you’re away on tour… Just thinking now, considering how much of your time is spent on the road and the places you get to see, do you get much chance to document it at all?

‘We’re trying to more than we used to actually. Recently we’ve been taking a lot more video and photos – Laura-Mary does all our album artwork so she started to get into film photography and I kind of caught the bug from her, so we’ve been doing that a lot more… Actually, for the last tour we brought a guy from Belgium who’s really into film-making. He’s quite young and still learning but he was really up for coming with us and he filmed loads of stuff to make a short documentary which should be cool. It’ll definitely help us to remember!‘

Sounds good. Are you able to find the time to write when you’re on the road, or is that a facet of the band which takes a back-burner?

‘Yeah, we actually have a real bee in our bonnet about that sort of thing. Within the limits of us not feeling like we’re going to go crazy, we try and use our days off to write and then jam bits in soundchecks and stuff. We’ve already started writing and demoing songs for, maybe an EP or the third album. We’re pretty on it. You hear all these stories of bands that fuck up because they’ve been on tour for so long and they don’t write for 2 years or whatever, so when they get back they’ve forgotten how to do it. It freaks us out, so almost out of sheer paranoia we make a point of writing as often as we can. We’re balancing that with using the days off to actually be a human being as well and see some of our friends or family, but we’re quite dedicated to making sure that we keep on it really. It’s just so easy to fuck up; if you haven’t been writing for that long you lose the chemistry and connection. It’s a fragile thing to be in a band.‘

Are you ever conscious of your fans when you’re writing new material?

‘We’re not really conscious of much to be honest. We write by improvising, and it’s such an instinctive way of how you lock your instruments together and what comes out from that, you can’t really be conscious of much. It’s always operating on an instinctive level, so often the stuff we write is out of our control in a way. We’re aware of our fans when we, for example, put the track-list together for a record or mix it in a certain way because we want it to be engaging to the public. It hasn’t just got to work for you anymore, when you put it on record it has to have the impact you want on others so you definitely have to factor in other people, but when you’re actually writing you kind of can’t. We do certain things live and people will respond to it so somewhere in your brain you think, ‘that’s cool’, so I’m sure there’s all these subconscious processes that affect the way you’re writing through the experiences you’ve had playing live, but it’s never something that we think about consciously. If you try and steer it too much it becomes really contrived and it’ll sound shit, and everyone will know that it’s shit because people aren’t stupid. People know when someone’s written a song just to be liked or whatever, it just doesn’t work.‘

You got some fans involved with the shoot for the ‘Heartsink‘ video, that looked like good fun…

‘That was really fun, although it was quite awkward as well because we had loads of people who had never done a video shoot before, and we find them uncomfortable enough ourselves, but they didn’t know each other and had travelled from different countries, so for ages everyone was really quiet. It was quite a strange environment to do it in, but as soon as everyone got to smash stuff, everyone loosened up and it was quite chaotic and really fun.‘

Definitely a good ice-breaker…

‘Completely! Until then everyone was just looking around awkwardly and everyone was a bit shy and the director was barking orders so it was quite stiff for the first couple of hours. ‘

There’s probably some underlying poetry in all these people being unified through a mutual love of your music…

‘…and a mutual will to destroy something!‘

Please excuse my ignorance with this, or if you’ve covered it elsewhere, but there were 2 years between LP releases – was that a conscious decision or more a product of circumstance?

‘Yeah, that was just how it worked. It was the point at which we felt ready to record, the songs were ready but then of course there’s the whole bullshit of the label having to map out when they can release it with regard to the other bands they work with, and in which countries etc etc so there’s a delay of around 3/4 months which is usually inherent in that. We’re never going to put a timeline on ourselves and say ‘we have to do it by X’, because then it becomes contrived or rushed, so it was just the natural cycle for us with the touring and everything that goes with it. I reckon it’s probably going to be about the same for the third album as well.‘

You’ve worked with Mike Crossley on both records, so would it be fair to say you have a good working relationship with him now?

‘Yeah, it’s great, we work really well. If there is a third member of this band then it’s Mike. We became conformable with him on the first record and now we have a working set up that is so in tune with each other, so we get a lot out of it. I can’t really see us changing up anytime soon, that’s for sure.‘

So ‘Fire Like This‘ is a record you’re pleased with overall?

‘Yeah, definitely. I mean, I find fault in it because you always do; that’s the nature of progression, if you don’t find faults you can get stuck. I’m much happier with it that I am with the first one, definitely. ‘

…but not as happy as you’ll be with the third obviously…

‘Exactly, that’s it! Once you start seeing the flaws then it makes your path clearer for the next record I think. That’s just the nature of being able to improve, so it’s going in the right direction at least!‘

So when you came into the studio for the latest album, was there anything you’d learned from recording previously which transferred to that session?

‘Pretty much everything to be honest! We’d learned a lot about making it an album rather than a collection of songs, a lot more about recording techniques, we had a much clearer vision of how we wanted it to sound… We wanted to record it in a way that captured the chemistry of us playing live, that was the main aim and we’d learned the best way to do that from previous sessions, so hopefully it came through on the album!‘

The album comes out in America in October – rather surprisingly given how much you tour, you’re still quite alien to the States. Are there any worries or nerves when approaching new terrain?

‘Erm, there can be. We’ve never played SXSW which may be seen as a hindrance, but we usually try and avoid those industry ‘battle of the bands’ style competitions. So far all we know is the first record didn’t get much interest from anyone wanting to put it out, but for this record we’ve had much more interest and also more promoters trying to book us, so it’s been a good initial response. We’ll just see how it goes when we actually get over and start playing everywhere. Ironically, it’s a place we’ve wanted to play for ages now – we kind of see it as our spiritual homeland. A lot of the bands we really look up to and are really influenced by sonically and ethically are American, so for us it’s been a big thing that we’ve wanted to get there since day one. It’s taken five years but we’re getting there now!‘

Best of luck with that then! I just wanted to ask a little about V2 as a label, because all I’ve really heard are stories from the days of Yourcodenameis:milo…

‘They’ve been really cool. Even though they deal with the UK, Europe, Japan and Australia for us, it’s still a very small group of people, we know everybody face-to-face. We’ve worked with a few labels and with V2 it’s worked a lot more comfortably for us, it feels a lot more human and people feel a lot closer to the band and understand us better than working with, y’know, a really big fucking label!‘

So you’ve no plans to set up your own label in future? More sustenance for the DIY ethic?

‘Not really actually. We could do, we’re pretty ‘hands on’ about a lot of the elements already, but to start taking over other aspects would probably be too much work. Based on how much we tour, I don’t think we’d have enough time to organise that side of it to a satisfactory level.‘

Right, yeah that figures. I meant more, in 10/15 years time…

We won’t need to in 10 years because everyone will just sell like, 500 copies of something on vinyl and the rest will be downloads… Or not even downloads, you’ll just stream it on your phone from a futuristic Spotify where the quality’s really good, so nobody will buy anything.’

I wasn’t expecting you to be so Orwellian in the bleakness of your outlook Steven! Are illegal downloads something you’re made aware of in relation to your own releases?

‘I probably shouldn’t say this as I’m in the label office, but I don’t really care to be honest! I like it if people want to get our music, that’s cool. At the moment, this record’s doing better than the first, despite there being a general downward trend in record sales everywhere. I think that’s because this one is better though, and also the band’s been building up for a while so more people have been interested enough to buy it, but however people get hold of it doesn’t really bother me. People are always going to love music, and if you’re a good enough band then people are always going to come to your shows or buy your records. As long as there’s a way for us to organise it so that we can make a living and keep doing it, then that’s ideal isn’t it? We always make a point of releasing everything on vinyl anyway, and it’s nice that our label’s behind us with that because a lot of labels just think it’s expensive to make and no one buys it.‘

In a more general sense to close then, although I think a lot can be drawn from what you’ve already said, but what would you say was the main drive behind doing what you do? Is it a hobby that has swelled or…

‘It’s never been a hobby for me, it’s always been my whole life. All I’ve been interested in since I was about 8/9 years old I reckon, all I wanted to do was be in a rock ‘n’ roll band. Even though we’ve come up through the DIY scene and the majority of people do it in their spare time or self-fund it through other jobs, for me it’s always something I’ve wanted to do with my whole life. Travel the world, day-to-day and be in a band, and that’s what I do! I think the reason Laura and I were drawn together was because we both wanted the band to be the best it could be. It’s a life commitment, it becomes everything.‘

Although I’ve heard it now many times (many ways), I still get a slight flutter in my heart when I talk to musicians who are truly passionate about their craft. Releasing records, touring, all that comes with being a musician ought to be a privilege, not a God given right, right? Well, this is how I feel anyway, although I fully understand it’s more a backward way of thinking now money has irreversibly perverted this sonic course of justice (despite a recent declines in sales across the board).

Steven was palpably enthusiastic and upbeat throughout the course of our conversation, which is admirable as he’d already endured numerous face-to-face interviews as well as a few phoners that day before we had had the chance to speak. However his zeal, it seemed, came from the mere fact that he had the opportunity to talk about something he loved, something he was living, and in my opinion something he had earned.

Blood Red Shoes may be awakening to a mainstream era, however in some cases I guess this is the natural byproduct of a hard working act. There are, of course, countless bands we can name who have devoted their lives to touring, pressing their own records, funding everything from petrol to snare skins, and still their names wouldn’t raise the faintest flicker of recognition on most faces. I suppose this is why the genuine appreciation that came over the phone in Steven’s own tone brought a smile to mine.

Monochrome – Beth Saunders