Exclusive – An Interview With Kevin Baird

Amidst the Manchester phase of the NME Awards tour, I had to privilege of interviewing 1/3 of Two Door Cinema Club – Kevin Baird, the bassist. Prior to the interview we asked you what questions you’d like to ask him, you responded in your masses and we couldn’t possibly have asked him everything. Nevertheless, we put out favourites to him – and here’s what he said:

Preface: I conducted the following interview on 09/02/2012 over the phone, unfortunately Saoirse and Larissa were unable to be on the line due to technical difficulties, but should still be credited with assembling, planning and transcribing the interview. 

Joe: Hiya, how are you?

Kevin: Not too bad, how’s it going?

J: I’m fine thanks! Thanks for having the interview with us, sorry that Saoirse and Larissa can’t be here due to technical difficulties. But what we’ve done is we’ve asked the basement people what questions they’d like to ask you, the ones that they don’t think you’ve been asked before so would you be alright to answer some of them for us please?

K: Yep!

J: Ok, the ones that were overwhelming were the amount of marriage proposals from girls, for one, and simply how is your leg after your accident and are you ok?

K: How’s my leg?

J: Yeah

K: Uhm well, it’s ok, I’m currently on crutches and I’m playing the gigs sitting down at the moment. Dr. Larry Franks wasn’t so confident for me but I’ve set myself the target to stand for the gig in Manchester this weekend so I’ll definitely be sitting for the next couple of days anyway. Which f*cking sucks.

J: How did it happen?

K: In the venue in Glasgow we had a rehearsal on production day and I got it trapped in a sh*tty little walkway thing. I thought I’d cut my leg so I’m glad I didn’t.

J: Yeah, you’re lucky in that sense.

K: I basically just tore all my ligaments in my ankle

J: Ouch! Well, best wishes for you for that! Ok, next question was what band or singer influenced you most to become the person that you are today?

K: Okey dokey, well I guess we kind of met over Biffy Clyro, we were super fans pretty much, that’s embarrassing, you know we used to do covers of their songs and go to their gigs and all, this is really strange for us cause now we’re like playing festivals and they would be there and we would just kind of weird for us that we would be having lunch with them or something and talking and just never quite mentioning how much we used to love them. And bands like At The Drive In were probably the biggest influence for us.

J: Do you actually manage to read all of the tweets that get sent to you cause I can imagine that you get quite a lot now as well?

K: We try to get through as many as we can, though it’s quite a high volume obviously. So I would say like we probably get to read about 90% of them. Unfortunately it’s impossible for us to reply to all of them and we do try our best but you know we’re pretty busy!

J: I know that you’ve seen the basement people website but what do you think of it?

K: It’s great; it totally f*cking blew our minds to be honest! You know it’s kind of like for people kind of just like to be involved and that and just totally on their own accord and just because they love my music and they love the band, it’s like a massive honour I think. Sometimes we find it quite hard to express how much it means to us. I guess we don’t ever consider ourselves being “famous” people or whatever and I would say we’re still pretty down to earth so it’s really kind of weird for us but it’s still amazing.

J: Well, it’s a joy to run!

J: Do you actually have your own music on your iPod?

K: Well yes, I do, but I don’t listen to it! The only stuff I have at the moment is our new demos that I try to listen to as much as I can to try and think of new ideas and things I want to change. So it’s kind of embarrassing to walk into a shop or something and be listening to my own band. I haven’t listened to Tourist History in… I don’t know how many years, probably since about 6 months after it came out I haven’t listened to it.

J: We’ve all heard a really old song called Too Much Coffee on YouTube by you, lots of people have responded positively to it, have you ever considered recording it, even as a B-Side?

K: Erm… No, you know, we talked about a couple of times. When we write songs and when we release things, when it came to doing the first record we picked all the songs we actually thought were the best songs and if it wasn’t good enough to be on the record, it wasn’t good enough to be a B-Side at the time. We don’t want to go back and try and do that. We’d rather be trying to put out new things, you know? If we don’t think it’s good enough, we don’t want it to be like: “But we released it anyway”.

J: Do any of your tattoos have meaning?

K: Yeah, most of them have meanings. Yeah most of them have. The first couple I got were like f*ck you tattoos, the first one I got especially because we came from a very small town in Ireland and we had a lot of people who were like: “You guys want to be in a band, you’re never going to go anywhere” or whatever, and just: “Go to University like everyone else and get a job” – that kind of thing, so we had a lot of people doubting us at first. One that means something was like originally going to be our artwork for Tourist History, but we ended up not using it – a friend of mine designed it. One of them is like a really old lines one which is like a really old t-shirt design we used to sell in Belfast and the cat’s eyes were from the album and some other kind of things which are just really nice designs that I liked.

J: Do you have a favourite bassist at all?

K: I dunno, I’m a pretty zany base player, I kinda like the bass, I like playing it, but I dunno, I often try not to listen to bass players too much in fear that I might start copying them. So I prefer to just play like me, I think I play quite differently to many others, so I try to have my own style.

J: What’s your favourite song and band of all time?

K: I would say At The Drive In are probably my favourite band of all time. And there’s a song called Rolodex Propaganda, which is probably my favourite song.

J: Do you have any pre show rituals?

K: Erm, not really. We kind of just get a bit pissed and we give each other a high five and then I kiss our tour manager on the head, as he has a bald head, kind of like Fabien Barthez and Laurent Blanc.

J: If you hadn’t formed two door what do you think you would be doing now?

K: Well… I don’t know man… I think when I was 18 and leaving school and deciding to be in a band and go on tour and stuff, my fall back option was to go to university and study History but you know, if the band ended today there’s no way I’d do that! If the band ended today, I’d probably go into management or start a record label or something.

J: What is your favourite Two Door song?

K: Ehm..it changes all the time, consistently I think playing live it’s always been maybe You’re Not Stubborn or I Can Talk, but you know at the minute it’s changing a lot into the new songs we’re writing so… yeah.

J: What was your first album?

K: Erm, I think it was something by the Spice Girls to be honest. My first single was Celine Dion – My Heart Will Go On.

J: Brilliant, thanks a lot Kev. Best of luck for the tour, the NME Awards, the album and, of course, your leg!

K: Thanks a lot dude, are you coming to any of the shows?

J: Yeah, I’m coming to the Manchester ones, tomorrow and on Saturday.

K: Well, I’ll stand up for you!

J: Nice one, thanks!

K: Alright dude.

J: Right, I’ll look forward to seeing you play! Thanks again.

K: Awesome, nice to talk to you dude, speak to you later!

We’d like to thank Kev once again for his time and the band for their outstanding performance at Manchester, the lively crowd on the Saturday certainly reflected it. I hope you all get to see them on the NME Awards tour. The supporting bands were also excellent, a special mention to Metronomy for an amazing set.

The photo at the top of the page was taken by Larissa. A big thank you to both Saoirse and Larissa for helping me prepare and transcribe the interview.

Best wishes,
Joe