Fun Lovin’ Criminals, or FLC if you’re in a hurry, are a busy lot. It’s been four years since the release of their last album proper, Classic Fantastic, and as far as fresh recordings go, they’ve been otherwise occupied with their personal projects.
Frontman Huey Morgan’s BBC Radio 6 Music show’s cult following, his TV appearances and his huge New Yorker personality have made him quite the big deal in the UK and Ireland. The rest of the band, meanwhile, are occupied by their own individual musical side projects.
It wasn’t easy, but we managed to get hold of them for a quick catch-up before they hit Mitchelstown for Indiependence this August. FLC are Irish festival veterans, with a real doozie of a gig at Sea Sessions under their collective belts, they’re looking forward to heading south this summer,”We love the city of Cork and are very much looking forward to bringing the FLC sound to Indiependence.”
FLC gigs are pretty much a sure thing – there’ll be dancing, there’ll be singalongs and there’ll be brilliant craic. We’ve always really embraced the New Yorkers and, “the Irish have a unique way of making bands like FLC feel very lucky to play music.”
They’ve been making music together for a little over a couple of decades now but it looks like they still get the same buzz from performing as they did when they first got together. They try to gig as often as possible, the lure of live shows proving hard to resist. “Its not easy, but we always get the itch to perform with FLC.” Of course, some gigs are more memorable than others but FLC told us about a particularly colossal show that sticks in their heads, “We performed in front of the Colosseum in Rome for 4 million people. That was pretty impressive.”
Huey Morgan and Brian Leiser first met in a nightclub in NYC where a mutual friend suggested that they get together to write music. The fruits of their first hook up were indeed bountiful. “In our first music session we wrote half the songs for ‘Come Find Yourself’.”
Their creative process has changed quite a bit since then. We asked them how they work together now that their lives have taken them in different directions,“When we started we lived in the same apartment and were in our early 20’s. Now we all live in the UK but in different cities. The internet helps us to be able to bounce ideas off each other.” They still rate music as their main passion in life. Without it they, “would probably be garbage men.”
New Yorkers to their core, their hometown remains their biggest influence, “The city is full of diverse cultures with different soundtracks and musical genres. We blended all the sounds we heard on the streets to create FLC’s unique sound.” It’s a case of quality, not quantity for FLC, “Most bands never want to repeat themselves. For us its the opposite. A FLC song has to transcend boundaries. Our style of music is unique to ourselves and we don’t want to change the formula.”
They are currently gearing up to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of their debut record which features some of their most loved songs such as Scooby Snacks, Smoke Em’ and King of New York. The wheels are in motion for a special tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of ‘Come Find Yourself’ where they hope to perform the album in its entirety.
Though there are no new recordings in the pipeline at the moment, they do have a plan to re-release all of their albums to date. Whatever the future holds for them, FLC told us that it’s paramount that they have “no regrets” and we reckon that’s as good a mantra as any.