It’s always a special scene when an artist returns to the Place Where It All Started, and that’s what we’re witnessing in this latest edition of “Live From My Den.” The British quintet — which released its third album, the intriguingly titled “Food for Worms,” earlier this year — return to the Windmill and Queen’s Head Pub in the Brixton district of South London, which are the venues where the group initially formed, played their earliest shows, and brought their friends and fellow musicians along.
“That was an amazing thing to do,” says guitarist Sean Coyle-Smith, “to be given that kind of free rein, that early on, to curate stuff that you like and champion people you think are really good. So we put on bands like Goat Girl, HMLTD, and Sorry back when they were called Fish. When people traditionally think of places where music scenes have started, you kind of immediately think exclusivity or gatekeeping, and there’s nothing like that here. You know, if you started a band tomorrow, you could get a gig next week at the Windmill if you really tried.”
Guitarist Ed Green says, “It’s probably the only place in London where, in the space of a week, you could see a local lineup, a touring act, and then an international act doing a secret set. There’s no real limit to the caliber of artists who will play here…”
“… Because they keep getting you back on the bill,” singer Charlie Steen weighs in. “When you start out as a band, you need to be allowed to make all of the mistakes that are gonna happen when you’re on stage: all the tripping over a mic cable, unplugging of an amp or the guitar strings breaking, all those things.”
Bassist Josh Finerty says, “On our first album, we tested all the songs and heard them live, and for the third album, we wanted to go back to that.”
Steen finished, “So two gigs were booked for us at the Windmill under the name Almost Seamus, and we had to come up with 30-plus minutes of new music to play, and it worked!”
Watch the full interview and performance here.
This season of Live from My Den is made possible by Hard Rock and in partnership with Fujifilm North America Corporation.
