Don Broco Interview

It’s been a busy summer for DonBroco, although the band have been together since 2008 relentlessly touring the country, the release of their debut album Priorities saw the crowds get bigger and their shows reviewed in Kerrang! Lead singer Rob Damiani took the time to talk to us about his writing process, dealing with doubters and doing it DIY.

It seems to be very important to you guys to do it yourselves, what are the advantages and disadvantages of doing it DIY?

We have always had a quite DIY ethos, it’s almost quite hard to give that up in a way. Since we signed to Sony they have been great, obviously they have had more ideas for us, there is a bigger team behind us but we still get to keep our individuality and any ideas that we want to put forward come first, which is great. I think it’s important because it means you don’t turn into a standard band in a way you still get to get all your original ideas out.

If someone came along and said they could guarantee you a No1 album and lots of money but you would have to change the band would you do it?

No I don’t think so because everything has happened so naturally for us, I don’t think we could ever change things up dramatically. The way things are going they seem to be working all right. It’s nice having other people involved, with anything really. With the album, we wrote that ourselves but we are also taking advice from our producer, collaborations are great but when anyone comes in and tells you what to do it’s not going to end well. 

How did you guys know when you found your sound?

It’s definitely a more gradual process. When we first started writing songs three years ago they don’t sound anything like the songs we are coming up with now. It’s a learning curve, learning how to write songs and learning what we liked about our own music. It defiantly wasn’t straight away. We’ve all got such varied influences, it was quite hard to pick what is was we wanted to do as when we first started we just wanted to be a band, we wanted to play anything. When we wrote our mini album Big Fat Smile we saw that as a definite turning point, this is what we like, this is what we want to do. Writing the album it really came together, now it’s finished it’s still quite diverse in the sense that we cover a lot of ground and we have tried a lot of things out on it but it’s a way more focused release. Looking back through the progression of stuff it’s definitely changed and I don’t think when we started we could have written that.   

When you were making a name for yourself did you have people that doubted you and if so how did you deal with that?

You do get that, when you are doing stuff on the low levels and you are spending months on the road, touring venues and then you come back and your mates, they’ve all got real jobs. We did have one or two mates that were like ‘guys what the hell are you doing, what are you thinking, you don’t have any money, it’s a nice dream but grow up and get a real job.’ We had one or two friends like that but we also had way more support from friends and family who saw what we were doing. They saw the in and out of it and that we were growing as band, that sort of faith and the faith in yourself makes you carry on. There has never been a time, and hopefully there wont be in our careers, when it ever slows down. It was always building, with every gig you would see a few more people come over or see more people getting in contact through Facebook and Twitter. When you see it sort of translate at a show, the gigs are getting busier and more people are singing the words back, that’s the stuff that really inspires you to persevere and carry on as there are definitely hard times, but I think if you can come through that that’s all the better.

Do you have a favourite festival to play?

Both Download and Reading festival were amazing this year. They were both real landmark moments in terms of the crowd getting ridiculous. We have done both festivals before but on smaller stages. This year at Download we did the Pepsi Max Stage, which was huge and the tent was massive. We were a little nervous going into it especially as the Download crowd isn’t exactly are usual fan base, more of a heavier crowd so we were a little nervous but the reaction was just amazing and the crowd knowing the words and getting down to it made it.

Reading is like our festival. That was the one we went to as kids growing up and we got to do that last year for the first time on the BBC Introducing Stage and we didn’t know what to expect from that. We turned up and the crowd was just huge, there was no actual tent, it just people expanded for miles. This time there was a tent and there is nothing worse than playing to an empty tent so again we were a little nervous before we went on but we didn’t have anything to worry about as it was one of those shows were there were people queuing to get inside the tent. Not everybody could see us because it was just too busy, we tried some of the new songs out and they went down amazingly. That’s the festival we will take away from the year as the highlight.

You have done a lot of touring in the past few years, do you think it’s sustainable or will you need some downtime?

At some point we are going to need to take a break and have some down time to write the next album. Currently we just want to be full speed ahead and we feel most like a band touring. I think it most comes together and comes across in the best way live. We are a live band we love playing live, we love the buzz of gigs, we love travelling around and meeting new people and playing to our current fans. It’s definitely going to continue in probably the most hectic times we have ever seen over the next few months. We aren’t able to announce anything yet but I think we are going to have the busiest touring schedule over the next six months that we have ever had, we don’t want to slow down in any way. It’s going to be a pretty crazy few months but that’s the way we like it. 

You are all very good looking lads but do you enjoy photo shoots?

To be honest I really don’t, I don’t know about the others but I really don’t, as I never know how to look. Personally I would much rather be playing shows, I love doing video shoots. I love them as you are moving around but photos I always find a bit weird, as you have to stand in the same position for ages.

Lyric wise do you come up with an idea and then write the lyrics or do some lyrics come into your head and you build on that?

It really changes from song to song, sometimes the lyrics will start with the melody, the guitars going down first and I try a few melodies to them and we build the song, depending on what melodies work and what’s good enough. Sometimes phrases pop into my head and they fit the melody and I change them from that. It starts off as something that might make a bit of sense and that’s what sparks an idea to write a song about that. Other times in day to day business I come across something that I find quite interesting, whether it’s one of my friends that’s text me in a predicament or something happens within the band that I think is worth writing about. I just sort of write loads of draft messages down on my phone so I don’t forget them and then when it comes to putting them together I read through all these random notes and build from that. It really depends from song to song which I really like as it keeps everything interesting.

What five words you would use to describe the album?

Energetic. Fun, it’s quite a fun album. Catchy, I like to think it’s quite catchy. Instant, I would like to think that when you first hear it you are going to get it straight away. Layered, as there is definitely stuff that you won’t pick up on when you first hear it, which is almost the sweeter stuff because on more listens you find out there is other stuff going on. 

What’s the aim for the band?

Now the albums out in the UK, that was the big thing for the summer and that again surpassed all our expectations. We were hoping it might do well as you want to sell albums because that’s what it’s about and we thought we might get into the top 40. Then in the first week we actually went in at number 10. We had had an album release show on the Monday and woke up on the Tuesday and management had called us and said it was actually in the top 10 of the UK charts. That’s something we never thought possible, we were over the moon with that. Looking forward we want to continue to grow and make more people aware of the band and get out to more countries. It’s the first step next month where we are getting to go to France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Netherlands and Belgium then looking forward from that we are really keen to get out to other places. There is talk of going to Australia and America, hopefully that will happen next year. Just get the chance to travel and just enjoy the ride.

 Published in Agogo Magazine