Scottish rock band Glasvegas are just starting a European tour promoting their second album Euphoric /// Heartbreak \\\. I wanted to find out what it was really like for a rock band on tour, so spoke to bassist Paul Donoghue to find out.
What the best thing about touring?
That’s such a hard question as there are so many good things about it. Getting to travel around the world, we are lucky enough that what we do for a living takes us around the globe. There was a time two years ago when we did festivals in ten different countries in nine days. You get to see quite a bit of the world, though usually from the window of a tour bus.
New York has always held a place close to my heart. We recorded the first album there and as soon as I got off the plane it was just like everything you see in films. An hour after we arrived we had sore necks as you are constantly looking at skyscrapers. When we went there people were saying we would really hate it because it’s so fake but we actually liked it so I don’t know what that says about us.
Who has got the worst habits on your tour bus?
At the moment Rab keeps beating me at football on the Xbox and he keeps gloating so that’s probably the worst habit. That and I’m apparently quite smelly, I don’t mind that though.
What can’t you live without on a tour bus?
One thing is definitely a laptop, if you don’t have a laptop you are kind of cut off from the rest of the world. We have internet on the bus so we can find out what’s happening with music and watch films. If we didn’t have laptops we would have to talk to one another and nobody would like doing that!
Do you ever get time to relax?
We don’t really; we are lucky enough that when we are on tour there are beds on the bus so we can sleep if we want. You just kind of get used to it, this is our life for the next two years so if you don’t get used to it you will crack and end up going over the edge. We are all pretty relaxed on tour now. You have your life in a suitcase, that’s the weirdest thing. Everything you own is in a suitcase and your like that’s all my life’s work, two pairs of black denims and a black t-shirt.
What can people expect from your second album?
I don’t really know. The word everyone seems to be using is ‘epic’ what ever that means in music. I think it sounds very big and it’s a progression from the first album. It’s a hard one to say as everyone has their own opinion with music so it wouldn’t be very nice of me to force mine down their throat. I hope people enjoy it once they hear it, we like it anyway so that’s the main thing.
With the first album doing so well do you feel under pressure for this one to do better?
Not really, the only pressure we feel is the pressure we put on ourselves. All we can do as a band is put our heart and soul into a record and as soon as that record is out in the shops it’s out of our hands. We can do shows and we can do all the press we want but eventually it’s up to the person who buys it to decide whether they like it or not. We will always be proud of this no matter what it does, if it sells only one copy. Actually it will probably sell four because our mums will buy it! We think of it as a success already because we can go to bed at night thinking we have put everything into that album.
What are your live shows like?
A real electric atmosphere, are fans really connect with us, we feed of that and they are usually really special occasions. There is always, for us anyway, one moment that we can lose ourselves in.
What would you say to bands just starting out these days?
Don’t expect to be multi millionaires through your music because it’s unfortunately like any business in the world right now, there is no money in it and its sometimes a real slog to put a show on the road. Also you have to be careful when you go to Europe as the traffic comes from the other way, James nearly got hit by a bus once, he stepped out to see is anything was coming and the bus missed him by about 3 inches!
Published in the Yorkshire Evening Post and Metro
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