Easynoiz chats to Danny Bastions.

Next week Bastions are heading off to Maida Vale to record a session for the BBC. In doing so they join the company of hardcore bands such as Kerouac (RIP) to have had their music recorded live at the tax payers’ expense. This is a good thing, as it means that the more troll like ‘if it isn’t  Slayer it isn’t good’ members of the Radio One Rock Show (with Daniel P Carter) audience will get to hear something a little more diverse and significantly less stale. Anyway, this seems a good a time as any to pull out the interview with Bastions drummer Danny Garrod that we did when they played in London with No Omega and Goodtime Boys a few months back. Yes it’s a little late and yes any scoops, insider information and gossip contained within said interview will now be common knowledge but if odious little gits didn’t steal laptops you wouldn’t have had to wait so long, I’m sorry.

We talked about a lot of stuff; the band’s first European tour, why hardcore shows might scare the police, spontaneous stage moves, new music and the future of the  hardcore scene that Bastions are a part of. If my rather lame questioning reveals nothing else it is that Bastions are a cut above you’re average and that they have more interesting things to say than you could possibly squeeze into a ten minute chat sat on the street outside the venue.

So, without any more lame excuses here it is. Enjoy.

Easynoiz: So how has it been so far on the tour?

Danny: It’s been really good, a good experience. We haven’t toured since November so we did the four days up in Germany, Scandinavia and Holland and picked up No Omega then came back to these UK dates which have been incredible. Each one has been quite an experience. It has been kind of humbling more than anything. Then we go back out on Monday to France to do the rest of the tour.

Easynoiz: Which is pretty big?

 Danny: It is. Unfortunately we’re going to have to cancel part of it, we didn’t get our visas for the ‘Deep South’ so we can’t get into Croatia or Serbia and we were denied entry into Macedonia. You need home office invitations and they never came, well we’ve been given them now but we need extra documents because we’re a band and technically a business. So we’re having to cut it from the eighteenth unfortunately but that’s still twenty dates, so its still extensive.

Easynoiz: It’s your first time across in Europe. With the dates you’ve done already what’s it like with the shows? Are they similar to shows here or completely different?

Danny: I think… I’m not too sure why everyone hypes about it so much. Maybe it’s because we’ve been part of a community for such a long time where everyone helps each other out anyway. Maybe if a year ago we went across it would be a stunning thing because you’re looked after, you’ve got people there that are into the music and good venues. But maybe because we’ve got a community here already it’s just good fun going across, it’s a different langue and a different culture more than anything but they’ve still been great shows with a great atmosphere.

Easynoiz: What is the attitude in general towards hardcore shows? I was chatting to some Americans the other week and they said that over there you play a hardcore show and the police can try and close it down, simply because they know there’s a hardcore show going on. Is it much freer in Europe?

Danny:  Well from what I understand each venue tends to have subsidies from their governments and councils, they’ve got very big arts budgets so they’re supported by the local community. We haven’t played squats; we’ve been playing for people who run regular shows, not just hardcore but indie so we’ve had no trouble. It’s not been police per se but there’s been security there, it’s not just a bunch of kids putting on a show in a shed. But I can see why the police would be shutting it down, it looks like trouble. A bunch of kids screaming and jumping around? I can’t entirely blame them really.

Easynoiz: Excluding food/clothes/kit, what are the essential items on the Bastions tour bus?

Danny: A sense of humour? More than anything… Yeah, that’s the most essential thing we’ve learnt is have a sense of humour because you go so bi-polar. You know, one second you’re best friends and hugging and the next you want to punch each other’s lights out. Other little things we’ve discovered? Music that isn’t hardcore. Songs you can all get along and sing along with. Its all down to humour and light heartedness and keeping it as mellow as possible. You’re going to shows where you’re blasting it out at a hundered and ten miles an hours so you need to be able to relax as well.

Easynoiz: With the show you’ve just played, whose idea was the moving of the drum kit midway through the last song? Was that something spontaneous or pre planned?

Danny: No that’s the first time we’ve ever done that. It’s a case of Jay picked up the bass drum and I thought ‘Oh shit we’ve got to finish this, I better follow him’ and that was it. I didn’t know what his intention was but this is the thing, we’ve been doing it for such a long time that we kind off riff off each other and we run with it. I saw Jamie’s face and he was like ‘oh no, what is he doing?’ but it works, it was nice and people loved it. I mean it’s not something we’ll do any time soon otherwise it’ll become a gimmick.

Easynoiz: Going back to the album, what is your view on how the record has done. How have people reacted to it? Has everything been positive that you’ve picked up on?

Danny: I hate to sound arrogant but I’ve not seen a negative ‘scene thing’ about it. But what’s really cool is we know what its about, its about the state of affairs in mental health and everything about our guitarist and vocalist, Jamie and Jay who wrote it but its how people are finding different meanings within it and seeing different angles we didn’t think of which has been really cool. It means people have taken the time to actually read the content and maybe that just means that people accept us as a ‘music band’ and opposed to just a ‘hardcore band’ and that there’s a whole scope and musicality to it. It has been really humbling and it was a slow burn but recently people have started to kind of catching up to it and we’ve really chuffed about that. 

Easynoiz: Yeah, I was going to say that when you played here on the Tangled Tour in November and you played a load of stuff that hadn’t quite been released yet. People, even though they didn’t know it I guess, people weren’t as into it whereas tonight people went bat shit for it. Does that sort of change make it easier to play shows as well?

Danny:  Well we do play for ourselves mostly and it does kind of get to the point when you’ve like ‘how can I push myself further?’ but when like in Augury when that kicked off it does give you a boost… I mean you can’t help but love it. We’re trying to be a ‘moody’ band and I’m trying to suppress a grin on my face like ‘no, no I don’t want to look happy! I’m meant to be stroppy about this’ but actually…its not an ego thing its incredibly humbled that something that we wrote for a laugh for ourselves…there were fifty people in there that all knew the words and they loved them enough to shout them along.

Easynoiz: You played a new song tonight and I remember last time I chatted to you guys you said you were thinking about writing some new stuff. Is that going anywhere?

Danny: (Laughs) yeah…

Easynoiz: Am I allowed to know?

Danny: Well we are writing with the view to record. But I can’t say anything more than that…

Easynoiz: There’s a big ‘but in there…

Danny: There is a huge ‘but’ in there. I’ll start getting into trouble if I tell you…

Easynoiz: Moving away then. Do you think that you could ever see a point where shows like the one tonight were being put on in venues that are say, specific music venues? I don’t want to say ‘go mainstream’ but…

Danny: I think the way things are moving and progressing people understand perhaps the musicality behind it. I mean this may sound silly but my Dad didn’t use to support us but he started listening to it and all the other people around us like Goodtime Boys and Kerouac and he’s been telling me that it reminds him of the bands in the 70s, he tends to use Pink Floyd as an example in terms of kind of dark and brooding but there’s a musicality beneath it that people are attuned too. I think recently, and I don’t know if its just the direction we’re all going in but, I don’t want to say mainstream but I think its becoming a little more accessible. Its still vicious but theres that sort of ‘come and join in with us’ open armed sort of thing. Before it was a bit closed off, sort of ‘no this is our, fuck off’ and now I get the feeling that people are more embracing and want to come and be part of it.

Easynoiz: Even the numbers of shows have gone up a lot recently, over the last two years in London its changes. Last year it would be once every couple of weeks there would be a gig like this where as now. Well there have been five or six in the last three weeks .

Danny: I think its that community thing building again. I would say there are twelve to fifteen bands that all work together. Because we’re all on the same page and the promoters are on the same page too there is more of a push to put on shows for everyone. We’re all getting to a level where we’re all nicely recognised and playing each others shows. It’s a Catch 22, the problem with that is its going to burn out very quickly but we can enjoy it while we’ve got it.

Eaynoiz: Burn out unless some more bands come along…

Danny: Yeah or something changes all over again. It’s one of those things.

Easynoiz: Final question then because I know you need to get off and pack up. Could you ever imagine life without being in a band, not necessarily Bastions. Just life without making any form of music?

Danny: Interestingly enough Bastions was my ‘last shot. I made an agreement to myself that Bastions would be last go I have at being in a band. After this it was going to be it and we were bloody lucky. I mean my Wife has been very tolerant and she kind of said ‘I’ll let you have this one last one’, with Jamie it was, and we made an agreement that once every year we’d go ‘how far have we gone, have we moved forward?’ and if we hadn’t moved forward we would stop. Maybe its that drive that helped it I don’t know but yeah, after this I’m done. I’m out. It’s stressful as all hell mate, it takes a lot out of you.

Easynoiz: I guess the people in the crowd only ever get to see the side with you having fun.

Danny: Well you travel and work for twenty three and a half hours to play for half an hour. That’s what we say. But the half an hour is absolutely worth, especially on a night like this. If its fifty or five hundred and fifty people we don’t care because someone somewhere feels something about it and that means the world to us.