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	Interview with Manfat Voodoo page 3
	Damo: But it's not really what it's about. It just so happens that the words and stuff, it just so happens that it's quite amusing. But a lot of it comes from not very amusing stuff though, doesn't it? Paul: And some good tunes too. Damo: Just normal stuff, isn't it, quite boring stuff. Dav: Presented in a certain way. Damo: Just stuff that people don't sing about, ain't it. Train tickets, letters ... Dav: Yeah, train tickets, letters. Damo: Turds. Paul: "Fly Like a Budgie". Damo: Budgies. Dav: Budgies, shandy. Damo: Shandy. Paul: Small town animals. Dav: Small town animals. (laughs) Paul: Who is that one about? Which is a very good question to ask, but you wouldn't want to hear the answer. (laughs) Pete: We'll let the songs speak for themselves. Paul: Yeah, why not, let's not split hairs, let's not go too far. Dav: Let's not spoil the magic for the people at home. Paul: Dead rock stars do turn up. Pete: You've had some assistance currently with the website. www.manfatvoodoo.com. It's quite an off-the-wall ... Dav: The guy that was the singer with The Vikings, which was the first band I was in, that was a pretendy band, that we'd mime and stuff. The singer, he went his way after Junior School, and I went my way, and off we went. And we got back in touch, and he was designing web sites. Damo: You're going grey, man. Dav: You're joking. What, am I? Damo: No man. Full head of brown hair. Dav: And he was doing websites for Sothebeys in New York. Like you do. From being at school in Thornaby. And we got back in touch, and he came through to see us, and we got out and got pissed, and he agreed to do this thing for us. And we sent him loads of stuff and he put the site together, and it was fucking top. What more do you want? Damo: Next question Pete: Recent gigs then. Dav: Recent gigs. Pete: Yeah. Any stories? I mean, the timeline ... when I say recent, I mean subsequent to those first ones at the Talbot and so on. Recent in the sense of over the last eight years or so on. Like your trip down to London, for instance. Damo: (laughs) What? The trip down to London? Cairo Jack's Extravaganza. Dav: Oh that. Not Brixton. Yeah, Cairo Jack's, go on, Cairo Jack's. Damo: No, you carry on. Dav: No, bollocks. Damo: I'm absolutely smashed. Dav: I don't know what you mean. Damo: So, how did we get it? Dav: We just got it because we answered an advert, I think, I think. Or somebody sent us something, because we got reviewed in Melody Maker. Saying we were a bunch of old wank, a fucking pile of shite. And then somebody said, "Do you want a gig? It's in Cairo Jack's, in Oxford Circus. Everything's alright, and you get some A&R people there, and everything will be great. Damo: A&R for A&R.; Dav: Oh, and by the way, can you bring some people, and it's going to cost them x amount of money. Damo: And this is what we found, isn't it? Dav: Yeah, it's a big fat fucking con, all of it. So that's what we did. So we blagged it. So we went down, Potts's dad drove us down, and we knew some people in London, and we said, "If you turn up and pay the entrance fee, we'll pay you back." Which we didn't. (laughs) Damo: Yeah, we didn't did we. Dav: You were there as well, weren't you? Damo: Did you come down there? Paul: I was working in London. I got the 73 and walked. Dav: And so we got there, and we played, and it was full of people from York. Because there were bands from York and around York, that had done the same thing, they'd brought their own crowd. That's who we played to, a load of people from York. We didn't get introduced to anybody, of course we didn't. Did we think it was going to be anything different? It was all bollocks. Damo: We thought it was fantastic though, didn't we. Dav: We were shitting ourselves, because maybe, just maybe ... but after we left and we were in the car back home, and we thought ho shite what a load of fucking bollocks Damo: With guitars across our legs, and Steven's feet stinking the entire place out. Dav: And then we thought, ah shite. Damo: What was all that about? Dav: What was all that about. But we did it. Damo: Come and get yourselves a record deal. Bring fifty people, it's eight quid each. And you're thinking, "Oh, what's in it for them?" (laughs) "Oh yeah, oh yeah. I see". Paul: Five quid a coke. ------------------------- Damo: How silly of us. (laughs) It's bollocks, isn't it. No, there's been a few ... no, all the gigs are weird. Every gig was weird, wasn't it. Do you remember the one we played at whatsit? Some horse riding college out in the sticks, in a sports hall. Dav: Yeah, Burton something fucking bollocks Damo: "This is where you're playing". It's a sports hall. Dav: We were booked by a Student Union person ... Damo: It was massive. Dav: ... that thought they knew the crowd they were booking bands for well, actually, she was trying to get into Ste's pants. Damo: Yeah, that had been going on a long time. Dav: That had been going on a long time. Damo: Descending into sleaze. Dav: Sleaze. Dav: He was trying to ... I don't know whatever relationship they had, but we got this gig. And there was about two hundred or three hundred students there, and they didn't give a shit. They were in the next room. We were playing in the sports hall. And every time we stopped, and this DJ came on, they all came in and had a dance. And then when he stopped and we went back on, they all went again. They put us in this sports hall though, and you couldn't hear anything, could you, because the sound just went round ..and round like we were in a fucking washing machine. Damo: The sound was insane. Dav: You could hear yourself two or three, five, six ... Damo: I didn't know which beat I was playing to, the one behind me or the one coming off the far wall. (laughs) Dav: It was a racket. We'd go "wing" and it would go "WHAAAAANG", everything was just churning around ... Damo: That was a shit gig. Dav: It was fucking hilarious. Because we got a load of money. Nobody give a shit. Damo: Did we get money for that? Dav: We got loads of money for playing ... well, we didn't get loads of money, we got about a hundred…..never you mind how much we got smart arse Damo: That's loads of money. -------------------------- Dav: Is the taxman listening? We got some…. we got nothing. It was alright. They gave us the money and we went. Damo: Oh…. Fuck. (laughs) Pete: It's mentioned on your website, and it's in brackets here, "Don't answer this if you don't want to", but you split up for a while. Big fall out. Do you want to talk about that? Dav: Yeah, these lot wanted to go to London and I didn't. As simple as that. Damo: I remember when I joined the band, there was always talk about moving on to bigger and better things. I didn't think it would happen. Dav: Yeah, but this was coming from Ste, it wasn't coming from me. Damo: Yeah, but it was the talk that I heard. I never thought it would happen, and all of a sudden it was, "Right, we're off." Dav: James had got his van ... Damo: Yeah, we'd got a van. Dav: ... we were upwardly mobile. And that was it. We were all going to sleep in the van. Damo: Yeah. And when it came down to it, the three of us that went were all so geared up to go that we had to go. And Dav decided he didn't want to go. And that was that really. We all wanted Dav to come down with us, but at the same time as understanding why he didn't want to come down, we still had to go, because we'd built it up for so long, and we couldn't just get to that point where we were about to go, and then not go. So we went. Dav: The Talbot shut ... Damo: Yeah, the Talbot had shut. That was a big thing, actually. Pete: A big blow for a lot of bands, wasn't it. That place was a real canny spot. Dav: It was. Where are we going to play? It was like, shit. Damo: It was weird. We went down to London and spent three years down there doing fuck all. We were down there for three years, and it must have taken us eighteen months to two years to actually establish a line-up again. It was difficult. When you've played in Manfat Voodoo for so long, and you're so used to Dav writing all these ... Dav: ... great lyrics. (laughs) Damo: I'm being complimentary and stuff. Lap it up, lap it up. It was just a massive hole to fill, even though he's….. quite small. (laughs) We had all sorts of folk coming down. We had this gay lad called Greg, who used to come over and practise for a weekend, and who was really allways quite keen at sharing a room with Steven, which Steven wasn't really too keen about, because he was shitting his pants. He didn't have good body odour control, and that was poor. Girls used to answer the ads and say, "Well, I'll rehearse with you, but I'm not coming to the East End of London and practising in your cellar with a load of blokes, (laughs) because you're going to kill me." So eventually we found a bloke and he was really good, and we had maybe three or four maybe decent gigs down there, and that was that. It was weird. All the time we were down there we'd think, "Why isn't Dav here? It would be so much easier if he was here." Dav: What a cunt! (laughs) Damo: No, it wasn't like that. We totally understood why he wasn't there. If any of us had been in the same situation, we wouldn't have just upped and left either. But the three of us…..James had just finished his degree, Steven was waiting on at some hotel somewhere, I was working at a theme park in the summers and signing on during the winters. And we all had nothing up there, but Dav did. Dav had his job, and he had Mel, and they had their own place, and it was different for them. So we had nothing really, so we left, and we had a knock. But that fell on its arse, so there you go. Dav: And my version is ... [laughter] Damo: They're all a bunch of cunts! I thought I was quite good there. Dav: It was alright. A little one-sided. Damo: It was one-sided ... well, it's from my point of view. If you'd like to hear Dav's point of view, he'll continue. Dav: Yeah. Write to this address. (laughs) Pete: Dav@ManfatVoodoo. Dav: Yeah. I'll email you it. Pete: And then, fairly recently you all got back together again. Dav: Yes we did. Well we did. Pete: How did that transpire? Dav: James died. Damo: Well, no. Before then. Dav: Before then, we'd chatted about some stuff, and it was all a bit icy. Damo: We'd just started to contemplate doing more stuff. Dav: Doing a gig. "Let's do a gig". Pete: Did you move back up north? Damo: Yeah. It was probably a good, probably knocking on a year after I moved back up to Scarborough that me and Dav actually started talking again. It was weird because all the time I was thinking, "It would be nice to get back in a band again". And our lass was saying, "Why don't you give Dav a ring, he won't kill you." Dav: (laughs) Did Sue say that? Weird! I thought she hates me. Damo: We were never on bad terms, were we. There was nothing ever really horrendous between the two of us. Dav: There is now. (laughs) Damo: There is now, yeah. So yeah, our lass said, "Get in touch with Dav". And Dav was like, "Yeah, come on then, we'll do it. We'll just go and play a load of pubs and stuff. Why don't we do a gig and get everyone back together again?" But at this time James was quite poorly. And so, you can carry on now. Dav: It was…… right, Damo's coming round our house for the first time ever, because we'd moved house, and he was going to bring Sue, and Ste was going to come up for the weekend. Spot on. We'll get our kit out, we'll get pissed, thrash it all out, and James was going to come as well. James was going to come as well, I reckon. Damo: Yeah, I think, yeah. Dav: We're all going to go out, we're going to get pissed, we're going to make up, and then we're going to do a gig. And then they all turned up, and James wasn't there. And we sat down, and then Ste said, just told us…. that James had died that night. And we just decided……. that's a pretty big thing ... We'd just thought about getting it ... Damo: Get it going again. Dav: Get it going again and see what happens. And that was it. We just decided that was such a big thing, and it just wasn't worth ... our petty differences just didn't matter any more, because that was such a big….. in the face of that. So we just did that. We just decided to - I don't know what we decided to do. What did we decide to do? Do something. Because somebody had mentioned a tribute night to Potts in Brixton, with all the bands that he was in, so we went down and did that. And we thought, we were hearing all these things from ... It was alright, and it was odd, but we went down to do that gig because everybody down there, we thought, was replacing the drummer. And we didn't want to replace the drummer, because the whole idea of our band was, you all contributed to the song. You were all part of the music, nobody wrote anything. You all wrote your own bit, but you didn't go along and say, "I've got this song. It goes like this. Fucking play that." You all did your own input. And you all supported each other with what you were doing. And that was the nature of the band. And to go down there and take another drummer down there, it just didn't make any fucking sense. So we thought, "Right. We're going to go down there, and we'll be fucking stupid for half an hour. We're going to play what we normally play, and we're just going to be missing a drummer, because the drummer's not going to be there." So we did that. We went and played with a guitarist and a vocal and a bass, and it was all very quiet and very strange. And I think that's how it went down. I think to the Londoners, it just seemed to be three northern fucking monkeys come down and look like fucking idiots, who couldn't really play. So they put us on first. You know what I mean? As if we were idiots. And I thought, "Well, yeah, spot on, but at least I'm not replacing the one we're coming to play a fucking tribute to. Daft cunts. You know what I mean? So that's what we did. Damo: Yeah. So we cracked on from there, didn't we, really. Dav: So we cracked on from there, and we wrote ... "Erasmus Darwin and the Chicken Ladder" which is shit hot. (laughs) And off we went. I don't know. Which was me and him. Pete: Can you tell us a bit about the writing process, then? You already have done there in the fact that it's definitely collective. I remember we were down at the Tap once, Damo, and you said, we were talking about drums and basses and things, and what you had in mind was people who would actually work together in constructing things, rather than people just sitting in and whatever. Damo: Yeah, because that's the way it always was. Pete: Can you tell us a bit about how do you do these tunes? How do you make them? Damo: Well, that's the way it was, but it's different now, isn't it. Pete: On "Erasmus", perhaps you could talk specifically about "Erasmus". Dav: It is and it isn't, because I think it's like ... sometimes I'll have a set idea of what I want to do, and sometimes I'll have a list of phrases. If you have a phrase, and you think, "That's alright, I like that" ... the one I had the other day was ……. I'm not going to tell you. (laughs). You put down an idea, and out of those ideas you could put other ideas down, that remind you of that. So you'll have the whole idea of a song, but it's not written. A couple of phrases that are a bit lyrical, and then ideas of how it could go off. And I'll have a couple of them. And then if he comes up with a couple of guitar licks, or a couple of chords, or a couple of tunes, they'll lend themselves to how I think the melodies of these might go. So that I'll have a couple of things to choose from. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. We've done a couple of songs which we've just fucking said "No… it's a big pile of shit, it just doesn't fucking work". It's tried to work, but it gets to a certain point where you think, "No, fucking leave it." We did a ... what was that one ... Damo: "Sarah's Sound Advice"? Dav: We did this thing called "Sarah's Sound Advice" where….. we did that gig in the Tap and Spile, and James' wife had said, "That was fucking brilliant. You and Damo should kidnap Ste, and bring him to Scarborough." And then she'd gone to Ste and said, "You should kidnap Damo and Dav, and bring them to London." So we did this song about how it could kidnap and drug someone you know, like "The Prisoner". Drugging somebody, and then persuading them that they're living in a certain place, but they're not, they're actually living in a fucking dungeon you know what I mean. That kind of idea was alright. But we put it to music we had melody, and we had the guitar and stuff like that, but it just didn't work. Damo: It works most of the time though, doesn't it. Dav: It did, but that just didn't work out it got to a point ... Damo: I mean, that's how it can go wrong. Dav: It got to a point where you didn't know where to go, and that was the problem with it, so we just decided to shelve it. A lot of things like that happen, but sometimes, like "Treats from an Edwardian Country House" was like, "Where the fuck did that come from?" You just get out the way of it, and just let it, whatever it's going to do, just let it happen. And it did, and it's top. It's a nice little pop song. Damo: So I'll write stuff that I think is ... what I'll tend to do is write three parts that will go together. I'll write like a verse, a chorus and a bridge or something, just something that I think might be nice chord progressions. So I'll go, "Here we go Dav, here's a verse, yadda yadda yadda, here's a chorus, and we'll stick them all together". So I'll write what I think is a three minute pop song stroke chord progression type thing, and nine times out of ten it kind of coincides with what Dav's got ideas for. Even if he hasn't, I'll say, "I've got this and this and this," and Dav will just stitch something together, even seemingly unrelated stuff might actually be brought together. Dav: But if you go, "This is the verse, this is the middle eight, and this is the chorus" ... Damo: It'll end up getting switched around. Dav: Switched around. I'll want the middle eight. "I've got more for the middle eight than I've got for the verse - can you make the middle eight the verse?" It'll go like that. You follow it lyrically if the lyrics are enough, or follow it rhythmically, or follow it ... it's just like that. Damo: It is difficult. Dav: Each thing's got it's own little life, and you just try and make a song out of whatever you've got. Damo: I don't write to what Dav's got. I just write stuff, and then we kind of…. just patch it all together, don't we. Dav: Patch it all together and see whats what. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it just takes fucking ages, and sometimes ... Like "Erasmus Darwin", the song, was two or three minutes to make. "Treats from an Edwardian House", two or three minutes. But "Sea Monkey"….. fucking six months. It was easy, but there were things wrong with it, and we didn't know what to do with it. Just little things like that. Some things take ages, and some things are like that. Pete: Likewise, some are coming from….. where the impetus is from the lyrics, but sometimes where the impetus is from the riff. Dav: Yeah. Definitely. Like "Reboot" came from a riff, when, say, "Bus Times for Mandalay" ... no, that was a bit of both, "Bus Times for Mandalay". Damo: I'd written "Bus Times for Mandalay", hadn't I, the chord structure and everything. That just happened though, doesn't it. Actually I think that was probably one of the few ones where you'd heard it ... Dav: Oh, yeah, yeah, that was right. I'd heard it, and then took it away and thought, "Right, I'll write something to that". Damo: And that was one of the few ones where the feeling of the words and stuff, they're quite tight in it. Because the guitar melody and everything's quite sombre, so Dav went away and wrote something quite sombre to it. But it doesn't happen like that all the time. I can write something that's completely up or completely sombre. If I write something that, as far as I'm concerned, is quite miserable, then Dav will go away and write something about Lucozade or something, I don't know. But something completely opposite of what I was thinking when I wrote it. Pete: Something fizzy. Damo: (laughs) Yeah. If I was down when I was writing it, the chances are that Dav will get a bunch of lyrics together that don't reflect what I wrote, but when they come together they work really really well. It's quite interesting, I quite like the way we do stuff. Pete: Let's get onto something pedestrian, equipment and stuff. Dav: Oooh. Pete: Damo. Damo: Equipment? Pete: Yes. Now. What do you use? This is like trainspottery stuff, that sometimes people like to hear. Dav: (laughs) Damo: Right. What I use. From working in a guitar shop for years, I worked in a guitar shop for two years down in London, and I was lucky enough to get to play - Dav: Where was that? Macaris? Damo: Yeah, Macari's down in London. And I got to play loads of good gear. Macari's, in London. www.macaris.co.uk. (laughs) Pete: Any donated equipment would be welcome. Damo: 92-94 Charing Cross Road. WC2. I got a chance to play loads of good gear. (Get yourself down.) I use what I use, but I use a Strat for my electric work now, and I've got this Marshall Combo that I bought off a bloke, and that's really cool. It's one of the old first edition valvestate combos. (Whispers): For any tech-heads out there it's a 40 a side stereo chorus. And it's very nice. And I use a Mexican Strat…. because all the stuff that I played when I was working in a guitar shop, all these lovely guitars and stuff, all these proper 60's Strats, 50's Strats as well, we used to have this 58 Strat in the window for ages, very nice to look at and they've got a lot of history behind them, but as far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter who makes them or what kind of pedigree they've got attached to them, it's… as long as it works, it works. And I was lucky enough to pick up this Mexican Strat for a few quid, for nothing, and it's fantastic. So I've just stuck with that ever since. And acoustic-wise, I've got this new acoustic, a little elecro-acoustic made by…. what are they called? It's not Taylor, it's Turner. It's like a Taylor copy, but they make them so well, and they make them out of decent wood. Anything really, I use anything I can get my hands on. But basically, electric-wise I like my Strats and my Tellys, and acoustic-wise….I'd obviously love a big J200 or something like that, but it's all about cash, isn't it? I use whatever I can get my hands on. Pete: What about pedals and things? Damo: Pedals, yeah. I don't use a lot of pedals. I always think that the sound that you can get off plugging a guitar into an amplifier is about as good as you're going to get. And if you can't get the sound out of that amp, then you get another amp. You don't mess about with pods and stuff. Everyone's going on about digital emulation and stuff is really really cool, but the best thing I ever used was a big old Fender Bass head with a 4 by 12 ….for guitar that just sounds awesome to me and I can't think of anything better. But I do use one pedal occasionally, I use a Colour Sound Tonebender, designed by the late great legendary Dick Denny, the guy who designed the Vox AC30. And that's just really cool, it's just a couple of wires and a little thing, and it makes your guitar sound really really good. (laughs) Basically, anything I can get my hands on, anything I can use. I'm not a devotee of anything in particular. Pete: With "Erasmus" in a way, I don't know if it's happened before but you have two alternatives currently don't you, where there's a band, full-on Manfat Voodoo, but also the potential for, and not only potential because you've already done some, really interesting duo work. What's your views on those two things? Dav: I think we want to concentrate on acoustic stuff at the minute, because that's the way that we're writing. Because we thought, with this Vivaz gig we thought, that's still the big question, how are we going to go on ... we've got a band behind us that's going to do an hour and a bit or whatever, but we're going to go on and support our own band, to do our own album launch ... Pete: Open for. Dav: Open for. To do the stuff from the "Erasmus Darwin and Chicken Ladder" album. And do it acoustically. Now Vivaz is fucking huge. So how is that going to look? How is that going to come across? Half of the band's concerned about it, but the other half of the band aren't interested. Because we're playing to mates. The people who are going to turn up, most of them are going to be mates, so we'll see what happens. But I don't know, I think it will be interesting. ------------------------------- Damo: It's a funny thing. You say we've got the option of being a two-piece or a four-piece. The whole kind of cool thing about the four-piece was that we all wrote together. Everything that came out of the four-piece was a bit of everybody. So with just the two of us that's fine, it's just us two. But now, when ever we want to play as a four-piece, it's like, do we try and recapture what we had before, or do we …... it's tricky. We're considering getting in other players and things like that, but the whole point of Manfat Voodoo was that line-up. I can't imagine now, or it's difficult to imagine, getting into a room with another drummer and another bass player, and writing the same way that we did before. So it's like, do we write as a duo, and then basically get hired hands in, or do we take some time to try and find two people that we really click with, that we want to write with? Because what I enjoyed most about being in a band with a bass player and a drummer is the fact that you can knock ideas around. And I don't feel too comfortable with going to a couple of musicians and saying, "Play this". I don't feel comfortable doing that. I'd rather just keep it in the two of us. But if I could get in a situation where we could find two other folk that would really get into it, and get us, and just drop their guard for five or ten minutes and just let themselves rip a bit, and we could bounce off each other, that would be fantastic. But that's ... I don't know. Pete: This of course is bearing in mind that Ste's living in London, and got a fairly high-profile job down there. Or a very demanding job. Damo: That's right. The forthcoming gig we've got, we've got literally a couple of hours to rehearse. Old songs as well, it's old songs. Some of these are ten-year-old songs that we're going to be playing. Pete: Not all of them. Damo: Not all of them. Pete: But some ten-year-old songs. Damo: Yeah, there's going to be a lot of old songs in there. Before, if we'd have played as a four-piece, we'd nine times out of ten get up and play a bunch of new songs that we'd written a week or so before. Pete: Or up there on stage. Damo: Yeah. It's a weird situation we're in at the moment. There's no problem with us ploughing on and just writing songs the way we're doing at the moment, but at some point we're going to have to decide… do we try and find two other people that can actually write with us and be part of what we're doing, or do we just stick with what we're doing now and stick with the duo thing? And maybe occasionally do a four-piece thing just for old time's sake. It's good doing stuff for old time's sake, but how often can you keep doing that? It's a weird situation at the moment. It is up in the air. Pete: That must be really interesting, because to put that into perspective, the "Erasmus Darwin" album, to my mind anyway, is a smashing album. It's great and it's right ... all of your stuff is timeless, by the way. Again, this is personal opinion, I can put that cassette on, which I have done this afternoon, or put "Voodoo Moods" on, and listen to ten years of work, and I don't think, "Ah, this is ten years of work." It's like, "That happened yesterday". Damo: Yeah, it could have been any time, couldn't it. --------------------- Pete: Yeah, I think so. Damo: But we know that it was something that we've written six, seven, eight, nine years ago. Pete: So from the point of view of someone who's playing it, it's a different experience. Damo: It's great, it's great playing the old stuff. I think it's fantastic, like you say, I think it's all really really good. A lot of the stuff as well, because I joined Manfat Voodoo so late, a lot of it is fresh to me as well, because I didn't write the songs. So I'm quite pleased to play all these really cool songs, because I never got a chance to play a lot of them. When I was in Manfat Voodoo originally, we used to just concentrate on new stuff all the time, so playing some of the old songs is really good. ------ But I like writing stuff, that's what I like doing, I just like writing new songs all the time.
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