“We had a bit of an altercation with Leicester’s one way traffic system“, Treetop Flyers‘ guitarist/keys player Sam Beer informed me, by way of explanation as to why our interview had been so delayed. He needn’t have bothered. I’ve lived in Leicester for more than three quarters of my life and, while I love my city and will defend it to the hilt when any heathen (I’m not calling Sam one, incidentally) dares to put it down, let’s just say that perhaps ‘road design’ isn’t its strongest feature…
The Cookie itself is a truly splendid venue, very intimate with a capacity of just 130, but renowned for its comedy nights to the extent that performers as illustrious as Jon Richardson, Seann Walsh and Joe Lycett are amongst the listings over the coming months.
At this 19th of April show, the Flyers cruised so gracefully through their blissful, bewilderingly tight set that it is somewhat puzzling as to why the band are not household names already. If Jools Holland doesn’t try to book them for his Hootenanny this year – or, at least, an episode of Later – then he is a fool. A FOOL, I tell you.
Frontman Reid Morrison seemed truly humbled on a couple of occasions – first of all, when ‘St. Andrew’s Cross‘, the devastatingly beautiful tribute to his late father, provoked an elongated applause, and then again upon receiving an encore that genuinely seemed to be a huge surprise to him. “You’re a very quiet bunch“, Morrison had noted earlier, which may have held the key to his disbelief, but what he perhaps had not quite grasped was that when the band were playing, all we wanted to do was listen to the gorgeous West Coast flecked melodies being presented to us, and to show our appreciation afterwards. The sound at The Cookie is routinely flawless, another major feather in their cap, and, whilst still capturing a scintillating live energy, Treetop Flyers are probably amongst the truest onstage reflections of their actual studio sound. Simply put, they are just terrific live.
Earlier that evening, the band gathered round a table just outside the venue to answer a few questions for God Is In The Tv…
A lot of pain and anguish went into the making of ‘Palomino‘, didn’t it? So how did it end up sounding so impossibly sunny? It comes across as a very positive album, considering the circumstances.
Reid: I think that’s the point, you know – you can have bad stuff happen to you, and you can either just be moody about it or try to see things in a positive light. I think we tried to do the positive thing more…
Sam: I’d like to chime in on that and say that, having your mates around you – I mean, I know it’s very basic stuff, but having this journey and something to aim for together, making music and bouncing ideas off each other – it’s just somewhere to go, other than the bad time that you’re in. It’s a way out.
I actually said in my review of the album, about ‘It’s A Shame‘ that it was like “the acceptance of mortality and the determination to make the best of a devastating situation“…
Ned Crowther (bass guitar): That is exactly what we were going for!
Was it? Well good, I’m glad I got something right then! Now, you’ve spent a fair amount of time in America (NB – most of the band hail not from the States, but from London, New Yorker Tomer Danan (drums) the only exception in that respect). How would you say that has shaped your sound, if at all?
Reid: Well, for this album, we actually did it in London, but the first one, we had the songs written already before we went there anyway, but yes, I think being somewhere like that does definitely have some kind of influence on you. Palomino was more difficult, because it was just all done in the studio and took a long time to do, but it was different vibes, because we had like a month to do the first one and for this one, we had more time to experiment, and I think that helped with how it panned out.
You were signed to Mumford And Sons’ label weren’t you?
Reid: For the first couple of EPs, yes…
So…are you fans of…
Reid: (immediately) No.
(Laughter)
Reid: No, I mean, they’re nice guys and all that…
Sam: We wish them well, but they’re not really our kind of thing.
And the new album was mixed by The brilliant Jonathan Wilson…
Tomer: It was all done remotely. We have met him on a couple of occasions but we just sent the album to him – he’d just got a new mixing console for his studio, so the timing worked out really well. And he really liked all the tracks, so he agreed to do it. It worked out great.
Tracks like ‘Lady Luck’ and ‘Never Been As Hard’ are extremely ambitious and epic sounding…
Reid: They’re both kind of basic songs, so I guess it’s just what we put on them afterwards makes them sound a bit crazy, I suppose. We’ll try something and if it doesn’t work, we’ll take it off, and if it does, then great. And I’m a fan of longer songs so…
Hence the many CSNY comparisons, and you often get called Americana or folk rock, but I’d argue that there’s as much soul to your music as anything else. I’ve been playing a fair bit of Charles Bradley in my car lately and, you know, I can easily draw parallels…
Laurie Sherman: Well that is a massive compliment.
Tomer: Yeah, we’re big fans of Charles, and of the “new soul revolution”, I guess you could call it.
Reid: It’s one of those things where the songs are good already, but the production is so impressive that they SOUND great as well.
Sam: And although there’s certainly a lot of influence from these classic acts of the past, we are listening to a LOT of very current music, and there are TONS of people making great music right now. There’s so much under the kind of “Radio One radar”, and those good production values take it one step on from “the golden days”. And there’s a reason they’re called the golden days – the technologies, the techniques and so forth, so while our music is kind of linked to a throwback time, we are very much focused on what is going on around us now.
So what does it mean to be in Treetop Flyers?
Reid: It’s kind of like a second phase at the moment really. Now Ned’s joined, it’s taken on a whole new different thing. We had great times with that old period, Glastonbury, America and all that sort of stuff, but we’re kind of waiting for those kind of things to happen again, and I think we’re better adapted to deal with them now, with the new line up.
For me, the main thing is to be able to keep doing this – to quit your job if you can, but that doesn’t happen too much these days.
Sam: Yeah, trying to survive doing it, and maintaining your job, and all the other things you have to do. You have to keep making choices and raising your game musically, and not just trying to stay afloat.
And if there’s ever a band that deserved a shot at the big time, it’s Treetop Flyers. You can catch them on tour right now. Are you listening Jools?
