by Kaja Kryda
Missed The Big Moon’s Edinburgh gig? Good news – the cool girls and their guitars are coming back to Scotland soon, this time to Glasgow’s King Tut’s venue on October 29 for their solo tour. Brig’s Kaja Kryda speaks to Celia and Fern and finds out what lies behind their great onstage energy.
Q: You’re on tour with Mystery Jets at the moment, and you have one with The Japanese House coming up. How would you say touring with other bands differs from doing solo gigs?
C: Touring with other bands that you love is so much fun and it’s exciting to play to people who’ve maybe never even heard of you before and try and win them over. But being a headliner means you get a slightly nicer rider, so it’s swings and roundabouts really. But I cannot wait for the North America tour with The Japanese House. It’s going to be unforgettable.
Q: In terms of musical inspirations, are you mainly influenced by other guitar bands, or do you also find inspiration in listening to groups or singers whose style differs a lot from yours?
F: I think a combination of all those things. We each individually are into different music, but then have some bands and singers that we collectively love. So I think that all influences and inspires what we sound like as a band.
Q: You’ve been praised for your great onstage chemistry. How do you maintain a good atmosphere while touring?
C: I think we’re just very understanding of each other. If you know someone’s having a s**t day then you do their interviews so they don’t have to, or set up their gear for them and then when you’re having a shit day you can duck out for a bit. I’m currently in the middle of a really bad cold so I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping over the past couple of days and the others have been completely amazing and bringing me food and hot lemon and honey drinks. We also all really love playing shows and it’s so important to us that they’re good and people enjoy them so we do whatever it takes to make sure that that time on stage is amazing. It really is the funnest thing and always makes you feel great.
Q: You’re going on your first North American tour in November. Do you expect performing for an American audience to be much different from what you’re used to?
C: We played a festival there last year called CMJ which is kind of like New York’s version of The Great Escape in Brighton. We’d just come off a UK tour and ran around the city playing shows totally jet lagged and drunk and hungover all at the same time. It was one of my favourite things we’ve done as a band. We weren’t sure what they were going to think of us but we got some pretty good responses!
Q: Is there one place you’re particularly looking forward to playing in on your North American tour?
C: Oh my god I think all of them. We’re hitting all of the dream cities.
Q: Your music videos look like they’ve been quite fun to film. How involved were you in making them?
F: We’ve been lucky enough to have worked with some super talented directors and generally the way we do it is we send them the song and they send us a treatment of how they think the video should go. If we like it then we just have a good ole chat, talk through what we love and what we think could be a bit different and then kind of leave them to it.
Q: And lastly, could you share who you’re listening to at the moment?
C: Forth Wanderers, Frankie Cosmos and Beat Happening.
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