Catfish and the Bottlemen Give the Lowdown on Touring and Living the Rock Star Dream

Matt Matasci

With the success of their debut, one would imagine Welsh rock group Catfish and the Bottlemen felt immense pressure writing and recording the follow-up, “The Ride.” Instead, the band members put commercial and critical expectations behind them to create one of the most exhilarating guitar-oriented albums of 2016. Lead singer/guitarist Van McCann and lead guitarist Johnny “Bondy” Bond spoke with Entertainment Voice about why the band didn’t feel pressure to avoid the sophomore slump and why they hold live performance above all other aspects of being a musician.  

As the adage goes, you have your entire life to write your first album and six months to write the second. How did you approach the pressures of creating your sophomore album?

McCann: I think when you know what you want, it comes easily and everything falls into place. You know what moves to take and what steps are next. We’ve always had a plan and a script since the very start, before we even had songs. We always had a plan of what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go with it. With the first album we toured around the world two times, so we started understanding how crowds react to certain songs, when they sing and when they move, crowd-surf and all that stuff.

So the way we wrote this second album, all the music and structures were based around the way people were going to move and react to the songs. We just had a very clear plan. We wanted to make an album to take out on a live stage and make people react and feel like they are being pinned to the back wall. We want them to go crazy when the solos drop in. We kind of mapped it out like you would a theatre show in your head and then when you get on stage you watch it play out, and it becomes hilarious for us.

When we are making records, we always think that if it charts and if it sells a load and if you win an award, that’s a perk. It’s already a class lifestyle, the thing that we do. So everything that we write is always about selling tickets, making people want to come out and see those songs live. When people want to go out and watch it, it’s more of an attachment. You’ve struck home and people are getting in their cars with their best friends or family or girlfriends and they’re using their nights out with your music as their soundtrack. I loved going to watch a band when I was younger, and I don’t think you get any better than going to see live music.

You clearly put a high importance on touring.

Bond: It’s everything really. It’s the entire ethos of the band. The albums are sort of like a vehicle, to keep the live thing going. The necessary way to carry on doing what we love, which is actually getting out and playing as consistently as possible. When we stop is when it starts to feel weird. If we could we would probably be out gigging every single day of the year.

McCann: It’s harder for us to have a weekend off. We much prefer getting up knowing we are playing and being that soundtrack for people’s nights. There’s nothing I’ve found, anyway that is anywhere near as good a buzz as that. We don’t like being off the road, we love traveling around, waking up in a different place every day, meeting people with different accents, different stories.

Bond: There’s some sort of gritty kind of spirit when you start to feel tired in the middle of the tour and you push through it that’s when you feel like you just start getting going. It’s how Springsteen must feel when he’s doing his three hour sets every night. It’s a really long tour and when you see him push through those are some of his most iconic moments, someone thoroughly doing what they love.

McCann: We got to see Paul McCartney last year and we were talking about how he had a couple hundred dates on tour and we were just saying something like, ‘If he had to cancel a few shows people would understand.’ But he doesn’t. He goes on and he plays all the time and it’s not about money because he’s obviously got enough of that. The guy’s obsessed with music. It’s the same with Springsteen and the Rolling Stones. I think we love that old-fashioned mindset where everything we do across the board is old-fashioned inspired. We didn’t know any other way of being a band other than going out and playing live, people seeing you and wanting to buy the record and not buying the record and wanting to go see you live.

How did recording “The Ride” in Los Angeles with Dave Sardy contrast with the recording process for “The Balcony.”

Bond: It was a lot of fun, we loved it. Working with Sardy was effortless, it was like we were chipping away a little bit and then all of a sudden the record appeared out of nowhere. It was complete and utter bliss. The studio he’s built there has such a relaxed atmosphere, the way it looks and the set-up. It’s up in the hills in Hollywood; it’s sort of like a paradise on earth, for a musician anyways. It doesn’t feel like work. Dave’s style as well, he sort of makes you push yourself as opposed to feeling like he’s pushing you. He has a way of not berating you but getting his idea across really well and making you push yourself harder. The whole thing felt easy really, to be honest.

McCann: Like Bondy was saying, recording in a studio like that, in the States, we’ve watched documentaries on that kind of thing. Having the opportunity to live that out, like Bondy said, doesn’t feel like work. You just kind feel like you are running parallel to the dream. So yeah it was just bliss, it just flew, and it was great. I’d do it again 100 times.

Your song “Postpone” will be featured on FIFA 2017 and “Cocoon” was included on FIFA 2015. Are you all fans of the game?

Bond: Yeah we love that. We’ve played it ever since we were old enough to hold pads. From little babies we played that game.

McCann: Like we said before if any of the songs or albums chart or you get an award or something, it’s like that really but a childish, personal one where the kid in you goes mad like, “Yes! We’re on the footie game! That’s quality.” Yeah we had one on that last one and this one, so we’re going for a third one, get the triple on there, be three-for-three.

Van, you’ve mentioned that the line, “When things are never looking up, we were brought up not to notice,” from “Postpone” sums the band up well. Would you elaborate on how that attitude has an effect on your sound?

McCann: I liked it because I wrote it and I spoke to my dad back home a couple weeks later and we were talking about something and he said that line almost word-for-word. He hadn’t heard the song I was writing. It’s just something that must be instilled in how I’ve been raised, from being kid with my mom and dad and my family. We were never a family of… it was never hard to get motivated; we were always positive and loved doing what we did. So I think the whole thing goes beyond songwriting and distills across the whole band. We kind of don’t notice when things are going wrong, because they aren’t going wrong with us. We get to tour the world, play guitars and get on a plane.

We don’t get down by any of the stuff we do because the whole thing is just beyond a joke. It’s hilarious that we get to do this and go out and see these people. We don’t take for granted that we come to the United States and see that many people singing songs and all that kind of thing. So it’s this whole ethos of not getting down about anything. Everything comes from a positive place. My favorite bands and my favorite music have always taken you from feeling down and put you in a good place. Made you want to go out for a drive and get the windows down, turn the music up loud and enjoy yourself. So I think generally, as a band, we come from an easily motivated and easily excited place and we’re all still fans of it all. I think that line just about not letting anything touch you really, do what you want to do and do what you love doing.

Catfish and the Bottlemen‘s U.S. tour kicks off Sept. 18. They will play LA’s Greek Theatre (w/ Mumford and Sons) Sept. 20 and The Wiltern Sept. 22, Austin City Limits Oct. 1 & 8 and NYC’s Terminal 5 Oct. 18.