Hard to pin down as they might be, with a sound that feels deeply personal, themes that draw from everything from Medieval spirituality to the ancient history to the British Isles to the childhood experiences of band members, and a stage presence that it would not be an understatement to call unforgettable, it’s very easy to find yourself excited about what they might do next - and it turns out that their plans for the future include, among other things, new music, unusual festivals, and their biggest headline gig to date, next Autumn in London. We sat down with them and tried to disentangle the many threads running through their songwriting and their artistic project as a whole - reconnecting with the ancient story of the sinking of Doggerland, exploring their relationship with folk music, and trying to picture what their ideal gig would look like.
MITB: You’ve been introducing some new music. Could you tell us about it?
Bishopskin: We have three new songs that we first played at our Great Escape set -‘Doggerland’, ‘Caledonia’ and ‘I Am I Am’. Caledonia is actually the ancient Roman name for Scotland, and for that first one, the full title should be ‘The Drowning of Doggerland’. ‘I Am I Am’, that’s from the Bible, Moses and the burning bush… when he talks to the burning bush, he asks, but who am I talking to? And he says, I am I am - I am the phrase I am, I am the concept of something that is. It’s so nice, isn’t it? To get sort of, in just a few words, an idea of what an infinite being would be, it’s just so perfect. I am the concept of I am. That’s super universal. But it’s also kind of like Descartes, I think therefore I am.
MITB: Didn’t David Bowie reference that too? In ‘Blackstar’, where he says “I’m the great I Am”.
Bishopskin: Yeah, so we are following in the same tradition as David Bowie. And Jesus, and Moses, and Descartes. The great rock stars of humanity.
MITB: You’re also still sticking to this theme of British folklore, that you have explored before - what with the drowning of Doggerland.
Bishopskin: It’s kind of the British Atlantis, Doggerland.That bit of land that used to connect Britain to Europe and then it sunk. So it’s like the original Brexit. Not that that’s a good thing, it isn’t. But, here’s the thing, if Doggerland still existed, if we were still connected, all the sequence of events that happened since then, it just wouldn’t have happened. It feels quite significant, doesn’t it, that we have the Channel sitting there between us and everyone else. It is in the British psyche. Island mentality, you know, we’re suckers for it. It’s kind of a dangerous topic we’ve wandered into.
MITB: Folk music too, I think, for a while it was perceived to be quite conservative, or an old people thing. Now there are a lot of new bands working with it.
Bishopskin: It’s the same in the States, also - it’s seen as a bit more conservative. But we’ve got to reach further away from that, in the past, and find our own folk roots. Folk music has very rarely belonged to the upper class. Not that you have to be upper class to be conservative, of course, but it’s just recently that it’s maybe got a bit confused with nationalism. But there’s also a lot of hippies who play folk music.
MITB: Do you think as yourselves as a folk act? Folk rock, something like that?
Bishopskin: It’s hard to fully know whether the label even fully applies to what we do. When people ask us, what type of music is it?, we definitely say folk, it’s one of the words. But is it folk? We often say that there’s some sort of, like, medieval, old school influences, but is it truly medieval? There’s an element of hymns, and pastoral things, that is definitely related to folk.
MITB: Would you say there’s some performance art in there, too?
Bishopskin: We like to have a show with a narrative, something that’s more than just going up on stage and playing the songs. We try to put a sincerity into it, something that should feel authentic. That’s what you want when you go to see a show. You want someone who feels like they care what they’re singing about. Not many bands cut their own hair while on stage, that’s for sure. That’s a new one. Maybe we need to start doing that with every new gig - a different person every time until we run out of hair.
MITB: Speaking of new gigs, do you have any planned?
Bishopskin: We’re playing Tiger’s uncle’s wedding - no, aside from that, we’re playing Farmfest, which is honestly just a great festival. It is on a lake in Rickmansworth, it’s a little difficult to get to, but you get there and it’s just fields, and lakes, and cows. It’s like, have you ever seen this footage of the 60s before Glastonbury became a big thing? That is what Farmfest is like. There’s people sitting on the floor making quilts. It’s like before a festival becomes a festival. And it’s in aid of refugees as well, so it’s a really great thing. That’s in August, end of Summer. It’s the only gig we are doing over the Summer period, but then we are doing a really big headline gig in October, at the 100 Club in London.
MITB: What would be your dream venue? If you could play absolutely anywhere
Bishopskin: Outdoor venues are the best. Ever heard of that Cornish theatre that’s carved into the side of a cliff? It’s like a cave, you go down and it’s open. They do Shakespeare there. Not sure whether they do bands there, it sounds quite prestigious, but it would be the most epic concert ever, because it’s carved into the base of the cliff and you sit out in the open, looking over the sea. Or Red Rocks Amphitheatre, which is a very similar thing, in Colorado, absolutely gorgeous, just carved out of the rock. We should do a little random tour of rocky amphitheatres.
MITB: What would you say to convince someone to attend? What’s the best thing about a Bishopskin gig?
Bishopskin: We’d just put them in the back of the car and drive them there. Or offer a free buffet. No, jokes aside, if we were to make a pitch for our own music, it’s probably that we like listening to our own music. It doesn’t even matter how big the audience is, we wouldn’t mind doing it for two people. If the two people are into it, then it’s good.
MITB: We’ve talked about the theme, let’s talk about the sound: what’s the direction with the new music?
Bishopskin: It’s all been really different, actually, from when we did our first album, because the first album was mostly just James and Tiger. They wrote most of the stuff, or did most of the work on it at any rate, in one of our bedrooms. We’ve got some excellent people now, like Anna, who’s new, she was not on the first album. ‘Doggerland’, for instance, came from one of her ideas, it’s one of her songs, it was called ‘The Jig’ originally. ‘Caledonia’ is a demo Tiger did together with James Moss, who is a great multi-instrumentalist, and he really made a big contribution to that one. He took that song and went, ‘this is what it would sound like’, and really nailed it. So there were more cooks in the kitchen with this one. Which is often a bad thing - they say, you know, too many cooks. But for us it was really nice.
MITB: So you all get along?
Bishopskin: It helps to get your ego out of the equation. But generally we are really very lucky, and we do get along. The dynamic is generally very good. Everyone is pretty good at just not getting too stressed. It’s because everyone wants to put their part in, they’re like, ‘I came up with this bit’, and if the reaction is an unanimous no, then you’ve just got to learn to let it go.
MITB: Any other plans for the near future?
Bishopskin: To sell some vinyl, probably. If we could shift something like 100,000 copies of the first album, that would be great. But mostly we are going back into the studio and recording. We have some really good material we are working on. Exciting times are coming.
Chiara Strazzulla
Images: Aoife Hyland
