We heard rumours the New Wine had set up camp at the festival camping site, so we felt obliged to invite ourselves over for a chat. Nice blokes as they are they accepted us into their temporary homes with open arms, gave us a guided tour of their mates’ tent and almost completely managed not to badmouth any other bands playing this years Hove festival. In between that, they gave us stories of their growing ambitions, coming tours and album plans.
For the record, this interview takes place before the death of Michael Jackson…
Nö Music: What does your summer look like? Many festivals lined up?
The New Wine: Yeah, we’d love it to be more, but it’s nice to get a bit of a break in between shows too. In Norway there’s Øya, Træna – that’ll be the sexiest… It’ll be gorgeous, and Bygdalarm in Øystese. Then then there’s Melt! Festival in Germany, that’s huge, and three Dutch Festivals.
So we’re more or less spending a month doing festivals from now on, with a couple days break here and there. A month of festival holidays. But we won’t get to bring the camp along, most of the festivals don’t have campsites. At Træna they’ve promised us a boat house! Proper Norwegian comedy show style…
At the notion of this, The New Wine start serving up utterly untranslatable one-liners and puns, apparently a legacy from Geir Hermansen’s father, after all Norway’s kitchiest televised comedy show takes place in a boat house. We try to get back on track…
NM: So, why should we check out The New Wine this summer?
TNW: We’re so real! No backing tracks, and very danceable.
Geir Hermansen: I dunno… I think I’d check the others out.
TNW: Shh! Okay, this is a turning into a bit of an ego-trip, but I mean… I’d go see us? We put you in a good mood. But I mean, it depends what we’re scheduled against…
NM: What bands would you dropped your own concert for, and gone to see them instead? Who’d make you go «Fuck it, I’m watching Prodigy»?
TNW: Well, Prodigy is a rare opportunity, especially in this setting here. But I dunno… We have a pretty unique sound. I’m thinking Michael Jackson anno nineteeneighty… three — with a bite. Rougher around the edges.
Michael Jackson of course! I’d snub us to see MJ. Jeez, why didn’t we think of that immediately! But that’s the only one… — Except Prince. All our own influences in other words. It’s not like we’re particularly exclusive… I’d drop us for quite a few of our heroes.
NM: What’s been the highlights of Hove?
TNW: Lykke Li’s been the coolest so far. That was incredibly good. Casiokids were really great last night. Golden Silvers were good. Fleet Foxes sang beautifully. We gotta catch Prodigy, that’ll be crazy… rave. And we’re counting on seeing Fjorden Baby!.
NM: You are Toffen for a day; what does your Hove line-up look like?
TNW: MJ! And Prince.
Adrian Søgnen: I think I’d go for a bit more of an alternative route than the general hipster way. Add Jaga Jazzist, Herbie Hancock, Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac. Bruce Springsteen…
TNW: Ey, fuck that! Haha, we’re just kidding you. We need some smaller acts too. From Bergen, we already have Fjorden Baby!, Lars Vaular and us, and then there’s only John Olav Nilsen & Gjengen missing. Then I’d want to see Empire of the Sun, ‘cause they’ve never performed live before. Few more Norwegians acts? No more Bergen hipsters that’s for sure, Kråkesølv! There’s a lot o great stuff at Hove this year like Hockey, they’re really nice guys. Gest and Spetakkel reunited. Not that I ever listened to Spetakkel, but I guess that’s why they should reunite…
NM: What’s your favourite festivals?
TNW: Øya is way up there, musically it’s the best. But at the same time it’s pretty snobby. Roskilde is the ultimate festival experience for me, the camp life, music, everything. That’s what a perfect festival should be. None of that indoor stuff, club festivals aren’t proper festivals. Træna will be spectacular…
NM: What plans do you have for the future?
TNW: We’re going to Hamburg to record a single or two or however many we can really. Then tour Norway in the autumn, thirteen gigs or so. After releasing some singles, we’re aiming to have an album out in springtime. Even though albums seem more and more redundant by now, for the fans anyway. It’s just a norm, really, you simply have to have an album to even be considered by major newspapers and so on… It costs a fortune to make, and we’re not going to earn any money on it, but hopefully it’ll get us other places, other opportunities to make a living out of this music – that’s what we want, to do this every day all the time!
Geir Hermansen: You didn’t used to say that..?
Stian Iversen: Hehe, well, it’s developed a bit… Your ambitions just get higher and higher for every show. Like when we played that insanely huge stage at Hove! Stadium! That was crazy… It was a bit too big for us, to be first band on as well, but a lot of fun, and very motivational. We’re so happy we invested in our new, huge banner, though — it was expensive, but worth it. I mean I’m sorry to say it, but take Montée… («haha, there he goes again, we were just dissing them in front of Clash Magazine!» the rest of the band adds) No but seriously, I’ve been thinking about this..! Instead of spending ten grand on four extra musicians to sound good («and then they don’t even sound good…» someone fills in), we spent ten grand on a banner to look good, and still sound great! Let’s make one thing clear, though: Not a bad worth about Montée’s album! It’s just too bad they don’t sound anything close to that live, ‘cause then people get disappointed.
TNW: So if everything goes according to plan, we’ll have even more gigs next summer and fall. We’ve been really lucky to get our name out there now, but we gotta maintain that, not just lean back, make sure we live up to it, build on it.
NM: You’ve recently been on a tour with The Whitest Boy Alive, what was that like?
TNW: That was an amazing experience, to get to travel around with those guys… We learned a lot, and were treated exceptionally. People were like «Do you get to sleep in the same bus as them..?» They’re great, the crew was great, the fact that we had a crew, that we got soundchecks even… Amazing. 21 gigs in 23 days, all the gigs were sold out, except for one, so we played for 18,000 people. Fantastic. That’s a lot of people…
NM: So, give us some dirt on The Whitest Boy Alive… any juicy stories?
TNW: Hahaha, we have plenty! But we can’t tell you. We went to this bar, hehe… Maybe we have half a trashy story, but there’s a lot that doesn’t stand well in the light of day. There were a lot of ladies… Tell the one about Fjorden Baby’s friend…
NM: Are you sensoring yourselves here..?
TNW: Of course we are, we’re scared shitless! Okay, let’s put it this way… We were in the bus late at night in Berlin, with A Certain Guy, while this couple where standing outside the bus and our driver says «These people claim they know you, should I let them in?» So A Certain Guy says, yeah, let the girl in, but the boy has to leave. Even though he’d been hanging out with us all night… And she actually ditched him. Things like that.
NM: What was the highlight of this trip?
TNW: Copenhagen! For sure. Everybody was dancing, even those too-cool-for-school-hipsters you usually see at the back, and it ended up with us playing, while all the Whitest Boy guys went crowd surfing all over the room. We could have probably kept it going for an hour, we were just going on to join TWBA for their last song.
NM: And the worst experience?
TNW: What, on that specific tour or overall? Dragging probably 100kg of equipment through London for ten days wasn’t exactly cool. On buses and tubes and whatnot. And playing for zero people… For some reason we had to play Madonna’s favourite club, this members-only place. I mean, who do we know in London that we could put on a list, and we were on at eight. So we played for one man, that was the technician…
And, relatively speaking that is, we’d been spoilt silly all over Germany, Whitest Boy get this luxurious treatment with delicious breakfasts and everything, and then we go to Manchester… They give us some sliced meat and Tesco so-called mature cheddar. And there we were, used to three-course meals… aah…
As we leave their camp, the boys start planning their rehearsals for the fall, their five-star tour style calls for pimping up their rehearsing rooms with waffle iron, espresso maker, fridge, Playstation… by the sound of it, I might invite myself back – just to make sure they keep that album plan on track.
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