You clearly love football and music. Can you share any early memories of how you fell in love with each?
My dad is big into all bands and always listened to records quite loud on a Saturday morning so I'd hear the bass bouncing into my room. He also always had stuff on in the car. We had a beaten up second-hand piano and were made to do lessons and I used to mess around and make up instrumental nonsense songs on it. Did violin at school too but I didn't enjoy that, mostly cos we had to do exams and I disliked those strongly. But then one day I discovered Radiohead and then Oasis, and then Stereophonics appeared, and after teaching myself to play on a battered old classical string guitar, eventually I was given an Epiphone SG as a big present. I practised that thing for hours every single day, was absolutely hyperfocus obsessed. Basically repeat all of this except instead of dad listening to music he had the football on. I didn't fall in love with that until Euro 96 and then everything clicked. A new obsession! Video games definitely got me deeper into it, kicking a ball was fun, collecting stickers, but mostly video games. There wasn't much fitba on the TV if you didn't have Sky back in the 90s.
Did/do you play much football? Have you been in a band before?I can just about get by to a very low standard at middle-age 5-a-side but used to be much much much worse. I played for a local team but would always be a sub, and I'd be subbed off after coming on as a sub. You've gotta get that technique locked in early, and I started way too late. I used to play in a band called 10 Easy Wishes, we played gigs around the UK and had some very small radio play on Radio 1 and some other film soundtracks stuff. It was like a power pop version of The Hives and I loved it. Did a couple of other things after that which did OK too and were also really fun. The Welles was one. I had a tiny bit of success as a solo artist doing Frightened Rabbit rip off FEEEELINGS type songs in my mid 20s. Then recently I had a band called Husband Duty but the other lads live in different cities. I think playing in a wedding band called The Sellouts alongside all of this helped me get much better at it.
When did you start writing songs inspired by players / games / moments? What was the inspiration (musical and football)?Me and some university friends got absolutely hammered (a not uncommon event) one night and started making up a song in the living room about Michael Ballack having a skull on his head and farming salmon. This was around 2011 and I know that cos I made a stupid video which is still up on YouTube and from there things have escalated ever so slightly.
The more recent version of this came about cos I needed a creative outlet, and wanted to write songs again. But the problem is that I just like things being silly or funny or nonsense, anything serious just comes across so try-hard and lame and twee. And I love football. So if I write at my most honest, the things that come out are naturally going to be related to football cos that's what I'm surrounded by all the time, and it'll be funny cos I can't be serious. And cos the best creative stuff you can ever write is in flowstate and I find these parameters help me get in that zone, that's what comes out. Then I can sneak emotions, thoughts, questions, etc in the songs. There's stuff in some of them that I recognise is what I was thinking subconsciously when I listen back later and I've been using a football analogy to hide it. That is less true for songs about John McGinn saving the world from dinosaurs.
I discovered you via your Very Unofficial Scotland World Cup Song. How quickly did that happen? Did you create the music first? Or write the lyrics?Genuinely wrote a version of the whole thing in my head in late November/early December, tried to play it live on a livestream and didn't sound how I thought it would, so I just waited until I had the right energy to make it and then spent some time redoing it to make it sound more like what it did in my head. And then some stuff happened in the world later that made me write the second verse and find the actual 'what is this actually about' that I needed to (hopefully) make it work! Whole thing probably took a combined... 4 hours. Maybe less.
What did you make of our performances to qualify and that night against Denmark?Thought we were mostly dreadful and incredibly lucky - especially in games against Greece - but are overdue that same good luck and positive thinking by about 30 years. We were brilliant against Denmark. Or were we? I can't remember, I just remember the goals.
What are your hopes and fears for the World Cup?We win the whole thing in a very funny, completely lucky way. Vs. We lose 1-0, 3-0, 5-0 in the group games.
Who are your top 3 favourite bands/artists and your top 3 players?Radiohead, Phoenix, The Hives/LCD Soundsystem
Lionel Messi, Ronaldo (Nazario), Alan Shearer
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