All Tvvins Interview

alltvvins_headers"You have to  call this article 'Cats and Freddie'. That's really important."

Sitting down with a band before they embark on a highly anticipated mini-tour is always an exciting prospect. But when it’s Conor Adams’ and Lar Kaye’s band, All Tvvins, there’s certainly reason to be very excited.

The first thing it was necessary to address was the change of name from ‘Tvvins’, to ‘All Tvvins’ .After the name change, there was a number of rumours circulating that maybe the band were finished, they were being sued or some other strange reason that came solely from speculation.

"Ah, there’s loads of rumours. But no, we just decided to change it. We’d Googled 'Tvvins' ages ago and nothing really came up, so we went with it. Nobody contacted us or anything, but we looked into the name a bit more and discovered a few bands we shared it with, and we didn't want that to ever be an issue. So we changed it to All Tvvins.” Conor explained. “There are two Ls, so it kind of matched up with the two Vs we already had. We thought it was pretty cool." Lar added.

So no, there was no Japanese band called Tvvins legally charging Conor and Lar with stealing their name, although that would have been interesting.

Both Lar and Conor are of course associated with other bands, Adebisi Shank/No Spill Blood and Cast of Cheers respectively. I asked if there the focus was now to be entirely on All Tvvins, or if they'd split their time between bands. "Adebisi Shank split and I left No Spill Blood, but it’s ok, there’s no bad blood between any of us. We’re all in a good place, and doing what we want to. Adebisi are going to Japan for a farewell tour, and No Spill Blood are recording an album which is going to be great. The stuff they’ve written is really good.” said Lar. “Cast of Cheers are just laying low for a while. Neil (bassist) is doing Extra Fox, he’s gotten Kev (Cast of Cheers) drummer to play with him live and stuff which’ll be really cool.

All Tvvins are a two piece, but use a live drummer for shows. Why they hadn't taken on an official third member, and how they came to the decision that they needed a drummer to enhance their sound? “We’ve have a guy called Lewis, and he's there because we just decided we needed a live drummer to expand our sound. It was weird writing without a drummer too. We hadn’t even decided what we were going to do live really, we just thought it’d work out. Lewis is a really cool guy, he plays music full time, and after our first practise with him we were sold. ”

Both Lar and Conor obviously come from bands that were relatively well known, so starting off up the ladder rather than working their way back up was bound to be a completely different start. I asked what it was like this time, entering the fray as an alleged 'supergroup'.

I did that whole starting off touring and being unknown thing with Cast of Cheers and you do just have to do it. We played loads of shitty venues all around Ireland and England and you end up eating beans out of a shoe and stuff, it’s not pretty. Shoes are good in the microwave too, rubbery goodness.”
“Well, I did it too with Adebisi. It’s very stressful to try and make a name for yourself as a band, and we do feel like we deserve to be where we are now because we did work so hard with other bands before.”

For the past few months, All Tvvins have been periodically releasing videos on their YouTube channel, filmed in different recording studios. This has led to floods of questions about when they're physically going to release music that will be available to buy.

Conor shed some light on the subject:"We've loads written, and most of what we’ve written has been recorded so we have loads there. We don’t know when it’ll be out, but I think we’re going to do an album over an EP anyways, it makes more sense, doesn’t it. We might release an EP afterwards or something.”

"...can we do both?" added Lar, only half jokingly.

"We might release like a triple album, with an EP for our first release, then quit the band and start a new one.

In the past year, All Tvvins have already garnered an impressive following and have played some stellar support slots to the likes of Arcade Fire and Editors. I asked that out of all the gigs and high points with the band so far, which was the one that stood out most.

It didn't take Conor any more than half a second to answer.“Playing The Olympia with Editors was the best. I just love The Olympia. I went to so many gigs as a teenager, it was really cool to play somewhere that I knew so well.”

Lar's answer was a bit different. “Being able to quit my job, and play music every day is really cool. I never thought I'd be able to do it, but it's great so far. I spend all day doing something I genuinely love doing.”
Same here.  I wake up, and then just think ‘what am I going to do today? Oh, I’ll write tunes!’ It’s pretty great.

After chatting for another while about everything from Conor’s cat (who’s gone missing, but is apparently an 'asshole of a cat') to upcoming bands in Ireland that the lads thought were going to do well, we got onto the subject of who they’d love to support. It was a unanimous decision.

“Queen. Definitely Queen. We’re both crazy about them, Freddie Mercury is just the man. Wembley would have been the best gig to support them at.
I actually deleted everything off my phone so I could fit Queen's discography onto it, so it’s all I’ve been listening to." laughed Lar. "It's probably the best thing I've ever done."

"Freddie Mercury is my favourite person ever, there’s nobody better than him. Well, Sting comes close. But not Sting solo, Sting when he played with The Police.” added Conor.

But that begged an important question... who would win in a fight? Freddie Mercury or Sting? Their opinions, for once, were divided. Lar opted for Sting, but Conor felt that Freddie Mercury would win, solely because he was Freddie Mercury.

This went on for almost two minutes, and after discussing different scenarios, weighing up the odds and trying to come to a conclusion, it was clear that we weren't going to.

Well, we’ll never know. But I’m probably going to go with Freddie. I've changed my mind” said Lar.
Under the circumstances, I’m going to go with Sting here.
Oh, and make sure you call this article, ‘Cats and Freddie.’ That’s really important.” laughed Lar.

We talked a lot about music distriubtion, how online media had really taken off and the different ways bands were going about getting their music out into the world. We talked about free music on Soundcloud, and of course, ended up discussing U2's latest publicity stunt;  forcibly giving their new album "Songs of Innocence" to anybody with an iTunes account.

"I did delete it, and it just came back. I like U2, but I only wanted Queen, but I didn’t let it ruin my day or anything, it’s not a bad album.” said Lar.
“I think people just really like to complain about things if everyone else is doing it. It seems to be cool to hate U2 at the minute for some reason.  People started going on about privacy and stuff, but when you’re active online, all your privacy is gone really. If you choose to talk about your life online you’re giving away your privacy yourself, so getting free music shouldn’t be a problem.”

A big talking point at the minute, especially within Ireland, is about whether bands are better off signing to a label, or remaining independent. There's been endless amounts of horror stories about bands being messed around by illegitimate labels and suffering as a result. Conor and Lar weighed in on the matter.
Our goal is to play music, so anything that enables us and helps us to get us to more people is a good thing. If that’s a label or independent, it doesn’t really matter. You just have to do what’s best for the band.” said Conor.
“I’m the same really. All I want to do is tour the world and playing music to people who like listening to us. It doesn’t matter if we have a label or we’re independent, that’s our goal as a band” added Lar.

All Tvvins’ aspirations are set high, and while the final few months of 2014 are looking to be a bit quieter, they plan on releasing an album in 2015, and touring as much as they can. Or failing that, 'going around to Bono’s to see what he does in his spare time'. You heard it here first.