INTERVIEW: I Am Kloot
- Posted on November 27, 2007 6:16 PM
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Interview by Katie Spain
When I called John Bramwell he was walking through some Manchester greenery with his dogs. It was a freezing mornin and although I could hear the frost forming on his breath, he was in remarkably good spirits. It's no wonder really, the man fronts 'I Am Kloot' - a band on tour with a trail of sold out gigs behind them. Punters at their upcoming London gigs can expect something a little bit special; Their new album 'I Am Kloot Play Moolah Rouge' is available at gigs in November as a Limited Edition of 2000 copies, before going on general release early in 2008. Collectors items all round!
When I pick up the phone I expect to find a mysterious character at the other end - one who'll keep me in the dark. What I get is an intriguing man with a chatty and refreshingly honest demanour about him. As we chat musicals, eccentric tour bus drivers and East London, I get to know a bit more about the man and the band. I'm sure you'll agree... this is one threesome worth knowing a hell of a lot better.
When did you first pick up a guitar?
Well, my sister was having guitar lessons and I got it out from under her bed. I was six or seven I think. I taught myself; by the time I was nine it was in tune and I could play some songs.
Do you still have it?
Uh, no, it got broken. I put the wrong kind of strings on it and it broke the neck. The one that I got when I was about twelve, well... we still have that one but it is broken badly and all the bits are missing. All the frets have worn away but it looks quite good in a way! It looks like some kind of historic artefact.
What did you grow up listening to?
It’s not so much the first album that I bought, it was my older sisters record collection and my parents; we had a real mix. Music was on all the time in our house. I had a strange mix of musicals like Carousel and things like Godspell along with usual: Rolling Stones, Beatles and that kind of thing.
Godspell hey? I went to see that a while we back. Stephen Gately was in it...
Really! The music seemed like it was coming from all over the Universe – it is such a magical thing. Of course, as a kid you don’t really break things up into genres. I was into Carousel the musical just as much as the Sex Pistols.
I hear you like to keep a lot of mystery about you. I think it is good... it makes us journos work harder. Do you like being interviewed?
I’m not minding this one!
You have a tour and a brand new album release coming up. Are you looking forward to touring? I know it is not the exciting ride that most of us like to imagine.
We are yeah. It is not a massive tour; we are doing three nights in London and three nights in Manchester, then Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam. We are going to the places we love going to most. It is kind of a tour that we have booked ourself. We are going to release another album next year which will be a proper studio album. The record in this tour is one that we have done ourselves. We did the LP ourselves and paid for it ourselves and – more or less through out agent - set the gigs that we wanted to play rather than it being a huge machine, like it has been in the past.
We have made an album, a straight forward recording and kept the gigs we wanted to play. So, it is going to be a very enjoyable tour. We have kept two travel days in between each gig with about five hundred miles to travel. We will be able to spend some time in Paris, Amsterdam and Vienna, which are all great cities. I think we are going to really enjoy this. At one point, we were doing two hundred gigs a year – we did go a bit strange then. This is very light for us so we are looking forward to it.
Is there an I Am Kloot tour bus?
This has been. It is run by a guy Alec Best who actually started tour buses in the UK. He is about seventy seven now. When we stop at motorways, we go in to the bit where drivers go. One guy said to me, who is driving your bus? I said "Alec Best" and he was like "What, THE Alec Best?!"
He is famous within the world of bus drivers. He is amazing. We have reversed out of places literally – and I am not using the word literally falsely – with a centimetre each side. He has quite a lot of stories. A good one is when I got locked out of my own gig. We were trying to convince the security the I was in the band. Alec goes, "Yeah yeah, I know another guy like that - he did exactly the same as you... he has done well. He has a guitar like you".
Alec doesn’t know anything about music. So, for ages, we are trying to work out who it was that locked himself out of his own gig; we were naming all kinds of people. So, we pull over and there is this Bob Dylan poster on the wall and he’s like, that’s him! Bob Dylan was on the bus and he was constantly scrawling on paper writing songs and stuff. On the gig days, Alec likes to clean his bus and he would clean them up and throw them away.
You have a couple of sold out gigs in Manchester and East London. Is it going to be a show case of the new stuff?
We are not having a support act because we are going to do about an hour and forty minutes. There are eleven new songs and about fifteen songs that people are familiar with. Today is the day to work out what order to play them in.
It sounds like the gigs are going to be quite intimate and you have got the special edition of the album at the gig.
Yeah, they are on sale exclusively at the gig. It is a record for our real fans. We are doing three nights in the places as they hold about three hundred people. The venue in Manchester and the 93 Feet East are both really atmospheric. They are just the right size where you can blast it out but if you are doing something quiet, it's not too big.
It’s a great part of London too.
Yes, we like it. There is a lot of contrast in our set between the subtle and gentle stuff and the scary and intense stuff; anything too small and that will just blow people's heads off. If it gets much bigger, it still works but I like the idea of dong three nights, it’s like a residency. It is great when you are away but there is a lot to do, I like staying in the same place.
There is less chance of getting locked out!. I wanted to ask you, how is Peter coping with the smoking ban? I saw some footage and he was puffing away.
It has obviously hit Peter pretty hard. He said to me the other day that he was beginning to appreciate it. We all like change. He has been smoking twenty a day for about seven years. The gigs are a different experience for him. I think he quite likes it.
I bet he is seeing a lot more of the outside of venues?
Yeah! We did some gigs - just me and him – recently in some out of the way places like Hastings and Blackburn so we could play together. He kept calling for intervals though to smoke; we had about three per gig. There will be no intervals this time.
What can we expect from the new tunes?
Well, there is some very gorgeous atmospheric kind of ballads. A good friend of ours, Bryan Glancy, died two years ago and the LP is dedicated to him. He was my closest friend really; we spent a lot of time with each other. He was a great song writer. Some of these lyrics are from the conversations that Bryan and I have had and drawn upon. Then, there are the usual physchotic ones that I keep. The first song is called 'One Man Brawl'. It is about waking up frequently from dreams and fighting myself. That’s quite odd isn’t it?
I was expecting you to be very quiet and reserved. It must be the fresh air?
It is. Well, this is the first day of winter really. It really is bloody cold out here now but the sun is just melting the frost on the fields. It looks terrific.
That brings me to my next question actually. What is it that inspires you? Is there any where you go that you find particularly inspiring?
I usually write when I’m walking or driving; movement is useful for me. I like to get out of the city even though it I usually urban stuff that I write about but bring symbolism in from nature. Recently, it has been more to do with the night sky and stars, planets and the idea of gravity.
I am from a Dairy Farm in Australia so I completely understand wanting to get out of the city...
Yes, I think the rhythm of your walking helps with writing songs. I sound like a hippy but I don’t care anymore!
You guys have been together for a while now. Do you enjoy it as much as you used to or more?
Like I said earlier, we did do one hell of a stint. We did two or three years like that. Last year, we did a twelve month time out. We say each other and played together occasionally. I was writing a lot of songs and felt that in the past, what with dead lines, I didn’t get anything finished properly. I did a lot of gigs on my own and lined up a lot of songs. Now that we have come back in the studio and recorded them all live, it’s as exciting as it was when we did our LP. We definitely took the foot of the gas in those twelve months. We feel really excited again now. You need to have it taken out of your life again to appreciate it.
It sounds like the break has done you good?
For me it has. That last LP – you could see it in the songs. A lot of the songs sound like they are from someone who is going mad and paranoid in their office.
I can’t wait to see the new songs' progress.
The atmospherics which came from the church we used on the last have changed. This time, instead of using that ambience, we have created our own ambience from instruments. It has got that same kind of spookiness and space.
What’s the worse thing about life in the industry?
I always wanted to write – it’s what I set out to do when I was small. It took me a long time to get to the point where I could do it full time and professional. It took me so long that I haven’t really got any complaints. I’m happy just to be doing it. I have a whole manner of awful jobs and being broke and being very despondent and depressed really… it would seem churlish to complain really.
What’s the most memorable gig you’ve been to as a fan?
Um, f****** hell; Morrissey’s first solo gig. It was free in as long as you were wearing a Smiths T Shirt. The reason it was so memorable is because we got there – the capacity for the room was about two and a half thousand – and he had about ten thousand people turn up. We were miles away and were probably not going to get in. But when he showed up – they were such mad Morrissey fans – everyone ran to see him and we got in (at about the twentieth in!) It was good memories because it was a great day. Thinking that you weren’t going to get into the gig and then getting in, heightened the whole thing. Everyone was doing everything they could to wrangle their way in.
Were you there for I Am Kloot's London gigs? Tell us all about it in the comments section.
We were there for their 93 Feet East gig in London - check out the gig review.
Find I Am Kloot listings and tickets on Seatwave.
I Am Kloot on MySpace
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