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-- An INTERVIEW with: The FLYING PENGUINS

The Flying Penguins. A little apprehensive for their first interview maybe, and most likely wondering why I’ve taken an interest. When I mention I believe in the spirit of documenting all things Glasgow and music though, they seem to agree.

I approached my friend Kieran Stewart, Northern Irish drummer of the Flying Penguins, to name his fellow band-mates, and he came up with the following:

‘Matt Jamieson (Beardy), Andrew Gilmour (Awkward lead singer), Calum Tregaskis (Awkward violinist), and Stephen Brackenridge (Chirpy bassist).’

What’s interesting is that they haven’t been together for very long as a group, but they bounce incredibly well off each other already. I caught the band before their gig at the Queen Margaret Union last October, and in truth, it was one of the best interviews I’ve ever received. Bawdy humour included. Take one for the team and get ready to swallow a nice big pill of Glaswegian sarcasm…

Click through the link below to listen to their audio interview, read the full transcript, and watch more videos of the band performing live at the QMU:

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Kieran Stewart: Do you have interview insurance?

Jeremy Fraser: Hah!

Kieran: Just in case the interview goes badly?

JF: Hmm, not quite… Could you introduce yourselves and what you do in the band?

Andrew Gilmour: Should we start in some sort of logical order? (looks over his shoulder) ...From the back left!

Stephen Brackenridge: Back left?!

(laughter)

Stephen: I play bass and I sing backing singing… sing backing singing?? (laughter) I sing the backing singing, which is grammatically correct in every way. And write some songs for the band as well.

Calum Tregaskis: I’m Calum, and I play the violin.

Matt Jamieson: That's it?

Calum: (laughs) That's it. That's all I do in the band.

Andrew: And moral support!

Matt: Yeah, moral support!

Kieran: I'm Kieran. I bring the profanities to the band. Um, and I hit things with sticks. Some people in the normal world call that a drummer… I call it a lunatic.

Matt: You're a drummer when you're on stage. The rest of the time you're just a guy hitting things with sticks.

Kieran. Yep. Yep.

Matt: My name is Matt, and I play guitar.

Andrew: I'm Andrew. I play guitar and I sing.

Matt: I sing as well!

Andrew: Oh yeah! He sings as well.

JF: How and where did you guys meet?

Andrew: We formed over—

Matt: Just Gumtree.

Andrew: We need a better story than that.

Kieran: This is the genesis. This is the first interview. You're allowed to say the truth!

Andrew: Okay. It was about a year ago. Pretty much to the month (of October). We'll say to the day because that's more dramatic. A year ago to the day!

Matt: Yeah, I just didn't really have any friends. So I thought, 'I'll go on Gumtree and find some!'

(laughter)

Andrew: (touching Matt’s shoulder) We're not friends, I don't know where you got that idea from.

(laughter)

Kieran: So what was the ad, Matt? (turns to JF to apologise) Sorry, I'm not trying to be Quiz Master here, but… What was the ad? 'Lonely guy looking for another depressed soul to write music with'?

Matt: It was kinda something like that, yeah.

Kieran: We're all learning in this interview.

Andrew: I think it was me that put the ad up, wasn't it?

Matt: Yeah.

Andrew: Saying, 'Looking for a lost soul'.

(laughter)

JF: On Gumtree?

Andrew: Yeeeah. I know that's not very glamorous, is it?

Matt: And then we found our bassist.

Andrew: Found him. Found him at a bus station. (laughter) Sorta wandering aimlessly.

Stephen: I was singing in stranger's faces looking for change.

Kieran: 'Excuse me, sir. Couldn't I have a place to play bass??’

Calum: And I was the newest.

Kieran: You came during—

Calum: Exam time. It was just a way of getting out of doing work.

Andrew: (to Calum) Is that all this was to you?

(laughter)

Kieran: The first time I went [to rehearsal], I got in the car with these two (motions to Andrew and Matt) who are quite crazy at the best of times. And their place… I didn't know where I was.

Matt: You had no choice but to come with us and drum whatever we told you to drum.

Kieran: I think I got off at Bridge Street [subway station]. We went through a very dangerous car park and got into a car.

Andrew: This sounds more like Cops.

(laughter)

Kieran: See, the worst part of it was, I was expecting to go to someone's flat. Just a flat. No, no. You drive into like a skyrise, but into the basement. You drove into the basement.

(laughter)

Kieran: That was probably one of the scariest experiences I've ever endured.

Andrew: You wouldn't change it though, would you?

Kieran: No. I don't remember when I actually met you though. Was it…

Andrew: Oh I do.

Kieran: Oh shove it. See, I don't know if it was your brother or my sister. I don't know which. 'Cuz I started going out with his brother, and he started going out with my sister.

(laughter)

Andrew: There's been a wee bit of a sorta running tension between the two.

Kieran: Incest is best, you know. Put the family to the test.

Matt: I don't think you can say that.

Kieran: No?

Matt: Not on camera.

Andrew: What's the age rating for this interview?

JF: Ehm, 16 and above.

Matt: The internet.

(laughter)

JF: So when was it that you guys formed?

Kieran: As we are now, six months ago.

JF: Musically, who and what would you say are your biggest influences?

Kieran: We have an influx of different music tastes.

Andrew: Would we agree on everything collectively?

Kieran: I don't think we would.

Matt: (to Stephen) Ok, you start. Top left.

Andrew: Top left, as always.

Stephen: Jesus, it's always the top left here!

Calum: (to Stephen) What's the grooviest band you listen to?

Stephen: Well I love the Cardiacs. We're nothing like the Cardiacs.

Matt: That's a good thing.

Stephen: The Cardiacs could have been one of the biggest bands of the 80s.

Matt: If they'd been good.

(laughter)

Andrew: You sound like their PR man.

Kieran: This is an interview about the Flying Penguins, not the Cardiacs!

Stephen: They're incredible! But… I suppose Belle & Sebastian made me want to write songs years and years ago. So I think I just like indie pop. I'm in a punk band too, but that's another thing. I like the acoustic melody pop that we do [as Flying Penguins].

Calum: I like bands with violin lines. Bands like… Blazin' Fiddles. Bit of a mixture of melodic and very, very manic violin playing.

Kieran: The bands that I listen to mostly would probably be Foals. I'm in love with Local Natives at the moment-- band of 2013! I don't know drum-wise. I don't think our music has anything drum-centric that sticks out.

Matt: Well I think it'll get there. There will be a change in the songs now that we've got a drummer. Because we didn't have a drummer for six or seven months. So I think the songs are starting to sound a bit more Local Natives. The National, hopefully… or, a slightly worse version of that. (laughs) My favorite bands are Arcade Fire and The National. So I wanted to be… like that. But whether that's achieved or not, that doesn't matter. That's probably why I got as many band members as possible. When we had the opportunity to get a violinist, we took it, because we wanted to sound a bit like Arcade Fire.

Andrew: You wanted three violinists.

Matt: I wanted as many violinists as possible.

Kieran: (joking) He actually wanted four violinists. One for each string.

Stephen: As many as form the constituent parts of a violin.

(laughter)

Stephen: In my school orchestra, I used to play the violin actually.

Matt: I used to play French horn.

Stephen: Did you?

Matt: Mhmm. That was my instrument. I never actually learned musical notation though, so I just sat there and played along.

Stephen: (mimics horn noises)

Matt: It was absolutely appalling.

Kieran: I played football, and I got some really good notes when I got like kicked in the shins and stuff like that. So that was kinda my melodic background.

Andrew: For me, I guess John Lennon, David Gilmour, and…

Matt: Is David Gilmour your dad?

Andrew: No!

(laughter)

Andrew: I do have a brother call David John Gilmour, which is exactly David Gilmour's name, but not him… Also Elli Peri, who is my friend. Somebody I know, and if I hadn't met her, I'd still be playing in silly blues-rock bands pretty much.

JF: Cool. How did you all end up in Glasgow? Are you from here? Studying? How'd it all work out?

Kieran: Calum, you're not from Glasgow, are you?

Calum: I'm from near Fort William.

Kieran: I'm from Northern Ireland.

Andrew: (shocked voice) Really??

(laughter)

Kieran: Yeah, I came here for university, to do History.

Andrew: I'm from Glasgow, the East End.

Matt: I'm from the west side of Glasgow.

Andrew: You're from a farm basically.

Matt: Yeah, I'm from a farm.

Calum: It's like West Side Story. (starts snapping his fingers)

(laughter)

JF: Do you think you gravitated here because of the music that comes out of here? Or was that something else that was exterior?

Kieran: Personally that was one of my main things. Everybody that asked, 'Why you going to Glasgow? Because I'm from Northern Ireland and everyone goes to Queens [University Belfast]. And if you don't go to Queens, where the hell are you going? …It's really good humor. Belfast is a shithole.

(laughter)

Kieran: I think once I was told that Glasgow had the second biggest music scene in the UK outside of London, I was like, 'I'm not paying to live in London'.

Andrew: Second best!

Matt: That's pretty good!

Kieran: Glasgow, you've got it going on.

Andrew: Aww, that was nice.

JF: Fair enough. That's why I ended up in Glasgow, too… I saw that you were recording recently but, any plans to record some more? And what have you already done?

Andrew: Mostly just home recording so far. But if we can afford it, we'll record more. Our songs were essentially recorded in what was a glorified porta-cabin.

Kieran: I thought more a bomb shelter.

Matt: It was the underneath of a bridge, wasn't it?

Andrew: Yeah, underneath of a bridge.

JF: Where did you go exactly?

Andrew: Oh, it sounds bad, but we don't wanna name-drop the place. We're in good hands though, weren't we? (winks at the other guys) The guy, the recording engineer, was called Hans.

Kieran: And he looks exactly like the drummer from Biffy Clyro. And he's a drummer too! …So far we have two songs fully recorded. And another two to go. Then we're gonna release a four-track EP.

JF: Digitally? Or do you want to put something else out eventually?

Matt: We'll probably put it on CD and just give it out to people.

Andrew: We're not really looking to make back the money it costs to record it.

Kieran: It's all about the music, you know…

Matt: We're not in it for the money, man! We're in it for the music!

Andrew: (joking) And the drugs.

Matt: And the drugs.

Andrew: There's no drugs yet. We can't afford drugs.

Kieran: For every CD, we want a pack of Paracetemol. That is the going rate.

(laughter)

JF: You need a patron.

Matt: We're trying to think of a name for our EP just now, because we can't think of anything good.

Kieran: What was the one name? Hamp-- Hamps--??

Andrew: Oh no. (his voice fades) That was just a suggestion—

(laughter)

Andrew: (to Kieran) Why? Did you like it?

Kieran: I thought it was funny.

Calum: It was 'hAMPsters'.

Kieran: Yeah, with the word 'amp' in the middle in capitals. Because tonight we were presuming that our amps wouldn’t work, so we'd have hamsters running on wheels to power them, and that I'd spent the last five months training them.

Matt: The amps did well in sound check though.

Kieran: They did.

Calum: That might be too much of an in-joke for our first EP.

Stephen: We should just call our EP 'totally inappropriate in-joke title'.

(laughter)

JF: Apart from tonight's QMU show, what gigs have you've done in the past couple of months?

Andrew: We were on a bit of a hiatus because everyone was away home for the summer holidays.

Matt: We were kinda organizing lots of gigs ourselves. Or organizing them with a fairly shady guy…

(laughter)

Matt: He was nice enough. Basically, I had to sell enough tickets to make the show happen, so it was a quite stressful thing. But we've got more opportunities coming up.

Kieran: No paid gigs but… I mean once again it's not about the money--

(laughter)

Matt: I don't know, I can see dollar signs in your eyes, Kieran. They light up… ! We had about six or seven gigs for the first few months or so. And we've just started gigging again.

JF: What's been your favorite gig to date?

Andrew: My favorite gig was that one in the swimming baths. It was in a sorta local community hall.

JF: Oh! Were you at Govanhill Baths? That seems like a really interesting venue.

Andrew: It was a nice atmosphere, sort of the way it should be, I think. People were genuinely happy to be there instead of dragged to see bands because their friends are in them.

Kieran: There were families as well. Kids running around with balloons.

Matt: It was for the charity of Govanhill Baths, wasn't it?

Andrew: Yeah, it was to keep the venue open. And also, there was beetroot cake or something. I mean… beetroot cake??

JF: That sounds about right. There was this series of EPs put out in the 90s in Glasgow called 'Club Beatroot'. That was in tandem with The 13th Note and this clubnight they used to have on called 'Club Beatroot'. Every EP was a split single recorded live, and then on the back of the sleeve they'd have a recipe for vegan beetroot dishes.

Matt: Oh wow!

Andrew: That's cool!

JF: We have a couple in our flat and I'm trying to collect all nine of them.

Matt: How can you think of nine vegan beetroot dishes?

JF: You can get pretty creative.

Matt: Definitely more creative than us, who can't even think of an EP title.

(laughter)

JF: In light of the upcoming holiday, here’s a random question. What's your favorite Halloween film? GO!

Kieran: Mine has to be Nightmare on Elm Street. Saw it when I was about seven with my brother and my two cousins. None of us slept that night. We had to chaperone each other so that we could go to the bathroom.

Matt: I don't think I've actually seen that.

Stephen: They're putting it in the cinema again actually. In 3D I think.

Kieran: Pffft, no. I would soo-- I was gonna say 'I'd sooner die' but that's a bit much.

Stephen: You'd sooner die than watch a film that makes you scared of that film?

(laughter)

Matt: For me, ehm, probably Scream.

Andrew: Stuart Little 2.

Matt: Is that a Halloween movie?

Andrew: It is now.

JF: What are you most looking forward to during the show tonight?

Kieran: Andrew awkwardly talking to the crowd, knowing past experiences.

Matt: Crowd banter is something we need to work on…

Andrew: Yeah, it's hit or miss.

Matt: Because we just do in-jokes, and nobody gets it. And then we find it really funny.

Andrew: We should get a writer.

Calum: Script it?!

Matt: We might end up sounding like we're trying a bit too hard! I don't know. There's an art to it, I think. It helps if the crowd likes your music as well!

Andrew: Well yeah! (laughs) That often helps.

Matt: So, the crowd banter is probably the thing we're least looking forward to! (laughs)

JF: Are you doing anything different tonight with the set?

Andrew: It's only half an hour.

Matt: Yeah it's a bit shorter tonight. So, less!

Kieran: Usually we have a manic violin solo for, like, ten minutes.

Calum: It's not ten minutes.

(laughter)

Kieran: Maybe not ten minutes. Maybe five minutes!

Matt: It kinda adds to it all, none of us really know what to expect. But I don't think we've got time for it tonight.

JF: Where can we go to hear more of your tunes?

Matt: We have a couple of things up online at ReverbNation right now.

Kieran: (joking) I was gonna say all the shops on high streets, because they play all our songs.

Matt: Also on Soundcloud. And Facebook if you follow us.

JF: Backslash 'FlyingPenguins'?

Matt: Yeah, you'll probably find it.

Andrew: Probably find it??

(laughter)

Matt: I mean, if you find another band called Flying Penguins, they're probably really good too!

Andrew: You'd think choosing a name like that would mean you're the only band with that name, but no.

Stephen: Well, you know me. I like my funny band names. Morgan and the Freeman.

(laughter)

Andrew: Fat Alpaca.

Stephen: Fat Alpaca, I'm proud of that one... The Incredibiscuits. That's my favourite.

(laughter)

Andrew: We might rebrand.

Matt: Nah, I think we've decided to stick.

JF: It's great imagery. Flying Penguins.

Andrew: I thought you meant Fat Alpaca.

JF: (laughs) That too! By the way, where'd you get your recent album cover art from?

Matt: That was my brother that edited that. He's an artist, a portrait painter. Sam Jamieson.

JF: Is he based in Glasgow?

Matt: Yes, in the same flat that we practice actually. It's a complete mess, but it's very creative… We got him to do that picture ages ago. And we'll probably get him to do more.

Andrew: As long as he's there for free.

Matt: Yeah.

Andrew: Or beetroot cake.

JF: On that note, thank you! Anything else you want to let the world know?

Stephen: I'd just like to take a minute to talk about the wonders of Scientology.

(laughter)

Matt: I just have to say, at the moment, I feel like we're bigger than Jesus.

Andrew: Is that really a safe thing to say?

Matt: Yeah. Or at least getting there, you know.

Andrew: We're about up to Jesus's knee. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since speaking with the guys, Flying Penguins have gone on to play gigs for Amnesty International, UNICEF and The 13th Note Café.

You can catch them again at MacSorley’s Music Bar on Jamaica Street, Glasgow this Thursday, 13th February, and again at Broadcast, Sauchiehall Street later on in February.

For all the latest news on the band, visit their Facebook page at:

https://www.facebook.com/flyingpenguins22

And of course, make sure to check out and download their music at both ReverbNation and SoundCloud:

http://www.reverbnation.com/flyingpenguinsuk

https://soundcloud.com/mattjamieson-1

#flying penguins #glasgow #glasgow bands #interview #october #2013 #february #2014

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