just feel like a fine wine yeah really yeah a nice like a 2003 burgundy like a real nice burgundy
from a little rank vine in liverpool somewhere back in 2000 really ranked behind scouse burgers
hi i'm ross b cannon and i'm here joined by the wombats who just did an ace session
for us how's it going guys very good thank you yes good what's been going on with you we just
it did a cracking uk tour and then possibly one of the best we've ever done i think it probably
could be it wasn't it was the best it was the best tour we've ever done what made it so good
just you said it so you know well yeah
maybe it was made extra special from the fact we had like two years there where we didn't do a live
show yeah so the our energy the crowds energy um was like through the roof and we played a
couple of iconic venues that we haven't played before yeah so no but it was just just a really
a real good crack i mean you guys look like you're absolutely having the best time of your life right
now you've been a band for like 18 years but you just scored your first uk number one album
first of all congrats secondly how does it feel you're good just feel like a fine wine yeah really
yeah nice like a 2003 like a real nice burgundy from a little
rank vine in liverpool somewhere back in 2000 really ranked behind
that must have been like really cool for you guys you've done a lot of festivals in the uk
to large crowds before but you've never played a venue of that size in london how was that yeah
it was pretty magical kind of yeah that certainly felt like you know almost 20 years in the making
um so yeah it was pretty mad and can't wait to do it again all our friends and family
came down from liverpool and well from wherever um well yeah family came from everywhere from
oslo from norway yeah yeah and there was just loads of people there yeah the back stage was yeah
it was chaos it was like it was like easter weekend as well
when you started off saying like yeah it was the biggest party i wasn't expecting you to be like
yeah there was just kids everywhere but like i guess that's what happens when you're a band 20
years in the making getting to that point i was saying that on the night i was like i'm sure like
before the pandemic there was no kids hanging out back here and like everyone was just doing
ridiculous things everywhere and then all of a sudden it's just like you're glowing hearts onto
your forehead it was like a full family party yeah i looked around at one point and murph's
little one was like that dude twerking basically like on stage and runs over 11 000 people and
just like playing with i think it was with our manager's niece or something as well just like
just the pair of them just dancing they'd run on the stage and the moms were they're going like
and they were just like she's staying out there to watch any songs from out front but she got on the
back of the stage and i was dancing do they just have triple a's just like knocking about the back
of the ot just like the scary just like go on then i don't think anyone did they even have a pass
no i don't think she had a plan just an aura yeah well she's she's just a baby icon she'd just be
like i'm an icon see you later as you're saying kind of like 20 years in the making
to get to that point do you guys feel like you've followed the standard model of a band
do you guys feel like what is that what does that even mean i know exactly
i would say it was a kind of a more traditional maybe like
you know just touring touring touring touring and just gradually kind of building up fanbase from
um from just playing shows non-stop basically around the country and around the world it
hasn't just been like we had a song in the first album that went absolutely crazy and then we were
playing stadiums you know it's been a hard craft it felt very um it's been like a nice gentle uh
nice gentle gradient yeah rather than any big kind of um massive dips and spikes yeah yeah do you
think that's like maybe the reason a lot of bands kind of forming in 2004 in that period of time
didn't make it as far as you guys have made it do you feel like that's maybe the reason why
potentially i mean i do i do think bands that blow up very early on in their career like not that the
the doomed in a way but it's like you kind of gotta can i say [ __ ] yeah
you've kind of got to have your beep together in order to be able to deal with that kind of
stuff i think yeah yeah i don't know i think it probably feeds into it a little bit because it's
it's such a strange like world and life being on tour loads and
playing big shows and all the rest of it that we really did start at the bottom and just like play
tiny little venues all around the place and we did all our own like driving sleeping on promoters
floors you know we're talking lugging our own gear around he was the only one that could pack
the back of the van mr tetras over here we're talking like three to four years of just like
you know slugging it around and i think like having that kind of background make you maybe
like appreciate it more maybe like when things started to actually like you know happen but
satisfying when you get to this point in it don't have to load out yourselves yeah
you guys live in completely different parts of the world do you think that's maybe been part
of the the kind of process of you guys getting to this point as well yeah i mean inevitably because
that happened you know dan and todd came over to la a lot and i've flown over to oslo and london
a lot and we just that's kind of how it works now yeah and the new album recorded separately
from each of your own places right not all of it but okay um a lot of it yeah the three of us three
of us were never in the same room like that's mad but toad managed to get over to london just before
the november before the lockdown um and then we were just we were basically and murph was in a
bubble over in l.a in a studio um and we were just sending files back and forth and some positives
some trickier things like trying to keep it all organized but fortunately we had
really good producers like in engineers who were very anal at like keeping everything
in the right you know i mean considering you guys were never in the same room the record still feels
like really intimate i don't think that like i've lost out on anything from that being the
process no no no that was our aim as well you know we were like we wanted it to feel like
like we were there like there's loads you know loads of energy and to be honest we've been making
music for so long we just kind of we're used to working in whatever way we need to to make the
song feel as good as possible so um we wouldn't do it again though i think if we got a chance to
choose i always say i'd do it one more time i'd do it one more time but probably not a second
i was gonna ask you about um kind of getting back together and being a band and doing all these
shows and stuff have you found it difficult you know being in separate parts of the world and then
coming back together is there anything that you've struggled with at all not for me not not really
the only kind of thing that i noticed after the pandemic was when we did reading and leads
in 2021 which i i didn't really think was ever gonna happen i'd written it off i was like
yeah there's no way that's happening anyway it did we got together rehearse for a bit
and then about an hour before or two hours before stage time i just got this huge kind of like
feeling in my chest and i was like has am i about to have a panic attack or has someone
like spiked my drink but it was just adrenaline yeah yeah i've never felt
that i hadn't felt for two years yeah i mean i haven't done an interview in two what i'm feeling
right years no but it's that thing because when you're on top you know you just get used to this
feeling and then having having not had that for so long the whole process of being on tour and like
the physical toll that it does take like because we're all very energetic on stage and stuff and
like that was the one thing i think i noticed that after a week on tour especially in america like
we did five and a half weeks in america i was like ah all the old aches and pains started coming back
that i hadn't felt for two years yeah you know and i was like oh yeah i need to do more you know just
so the new record as well uh fix yourself not the world it's a great album at points does feel quite
apocalyptic like kind of this this scary view of the world is that a reflection of how the world
is or do you not i'm classic music journalist just imprinting my own ideas onto your album
but how do you feel about that album i haven't heard the term apocalyptic about it yet i mean i
mean one of the tracks everything i love is going to die yeah you know but i feel like that song is
potentially like the happiest one it's like maybe when you realize that everything's going to end
you start enjoying the little things a lot more and yeah but you know we're all really proud of
the album and so happy that it came together even though it was recorded in a very silly
way one of the lyrics which really screwed me over um was it's not paranoia if it's really there
yeah that i've just wrecked me for for a couple of weeks i'm sorry about that
um anything to say on that at all no there's some good meditation apps you might want to get
maybe i can link you up with some good therapists oh that'd be nice tell me about your nfts they're
you've sold 3 000 actual wombats in the sandbox which for people who aren't
involved in that kind of thing sounds absolutely baffling um what made you guys get involved with
that it was baffling to us as well to be honest our manager got in touch and was
like right this is all quite new um but let's have a chat with this company that are doing it
so we had a few um zooms with them and uh yeah to get our heads around it but also the whole
metaverse thing the idea of doing like a gig online um in this virtual reality kind of world
academy yeah recreating brixton like us three as avatars on there and then people been able to
get an nft which is an avatar of a wombat that the you know the designers had like made all
unique ones and like the way it can be used as just a digital key essentially that's how it
was explained to us that it's like you know you can buy a ticket essentially for that gig but
it's just called an nft and with that you also get like backstage access and various other things and
signed guitars and like a rubik's cube game all this stuff we were like this is pretty pretty
mind-blowing um but and yeah we've kind of done we did one thing like that before yeah back in like
2008 i think was it cool and second life second oh yeah so you guys were way ahead of the game which
was obviously not as polarizing as all this stuff now yeah but um you know i think we just thought
of it as an experiment and sometimes things that are polarizing soon become the norm and
sometimes things that are polarizing just die a death and we're kind of happy with either way
um i know you're not on twitter but did you guys get any kind of
flack for getting involved with the nfts at all i've seen other bands kind of getting a little
bit of a yeah it was a real mixed bag to be honest there were loads of people who were dead excited
about it and um but there were some people who a i think a mixture of didn't actually you know still
it's so new don't actually understand exactly what it is so they were saying some you know i can't
believe you're doing this because you know pyramid scheme yeah ponzi scam whatever and we were like
but obviously having spoken to like the designers and all the rest of it and the company that do
this we were like well no no no hang on wait you need to just speak to them so then we got
to you know the people who work there to try and explain to the people who had concerns but
and then there was there were different angles that people had issues with and
stuff and it was like well in the same way that we make cassettes you know of our album
i don't think any of us actually listen to our cassettes but it doesn't mean that we're not
going to do that because there are some people out there who really like listening to old cassettes
or they like having on you know everyone's got a different angle and there's loads of
gamers out there who love like the idea of taking an avatar and like winning offender
guitar and like running around and smashing zombies on the head with a wombat avatar
like i don't think any of us three are going to be doing that anytime soon that's happening
there might be someone out there now beating a zombie to death with a virtual fender guitar and
all power to that person and if they are having a great moment and then fair play yeah so adam tiger
yeah and as much said it's like new things that come along there's always controversy around them
it'll go one way or three then we'll see where it goes you've done it before no one gave you
any flack for second life so yeah yeah exactly yeah have you seen the avatars of second life
you can see it on youtube we're all very gangly kind of strange-looking
so you've got uh loads of tour tour dates coming up loads of festivals coming up is
there anything in particular that you are looking forward to i'm myself i'm going to be at kendall
calling i really can't wait to catch you guys is there anything you're really looking forward to
to doing this summer kendall calling will be here that'll be really fun we've never done that before
um you ever tried uh kendall mink cake oh yes oh yeah oh yeah yeah we'll crack that out yeah it's
a staple on a nice long hike as yeah why why why do hikers like um kendall mint cake again
sugar probably yeah i thought you were setting up for a joke then you know what no no pretty
certain like if you know no no no i'm pretty sure you're walking in the lakes you haven't been a cat
like most people walking in the lakes or they did back in the late 80s we'd have some um
kendall mint cake not that i was going on lake district heights when i was four but
yeah i'll bring some for you anyway yeah yeah these do that's great i haven't tried it before
so yeah oh it's classy don't get your hopes up well nice one guys thank you so much for joining
me today and thank you for the session i really can't wait to watch that back thanks so much