Ahead of the release of their debut album, Planet Loud caught up with Flood Of Red in Nottingham for a quick chat
Planet Loud – You’ve just started the tour in support of your new album, what are your expectations of the shows ahead of you?
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – We don’t know what to expect, actually!
Flood Of Red (Calum) – I think this is an interesting tour for us, the one we’re doing right now, because effectively our record is released right now. You can get it online on our website, www.floodofred.co.uk, for $1. It’s going to be interesting to see whether people have actually picked it up, or if they’ve learnt the words or anything. It’s kind of like a make or break tour for the record.
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – I’m just kind of intrigued to see the reaction from the album and the songs we play live.
Flood Of Red (Calum) – It’s definitely been a positive reaction every night so far. A lot of people don’t even know that they can get our album yet. That’s the one thing we need to push the most.
Planet Loud – So you’re still trying to get the message out about that?
Flood Of Red (Calum) – Yeah, we don’t even say “Hi, we’re Flood Of Red”, we say “Check out our website and buy our CD”.
Planet Loud – For anyone that has only heard you on CD, how would you describe a Flood Of Red live show?
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – It’s spectacular. I really like to make a show out of it.
Flood Of Red (Calum) – It’s incredible. It’s a visual treat!
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – (laughs) Well, we like to think so. We like to think we add a lot more visually compared to us on CD. A lot of people have come up to us and said, “That’s more than I was expecting”.
Flood Of Red (Calum) – We have a rehearsal studio in Glasgow that we can get access to more or less any time of the day, any week, and we work there and just knuckle down and just make sure our set flows well. We’re super energetic onstage. When we started this band it was just a release, as kids, to get up on stage and jump around.
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – After school, we’d go straight to practise. We’d jump around and go nuts, and it just seemed that that’s what being in a band was all about!
Flood Of Red (Calum) – We do a lot of extra stuff that you wouldn’t be able to find on our album or anywhere else. I really hope that a lot of people come out because we do a lot of different things.
Planet Loud – A lot of improvisation and extra fills?
Flood Of Red (Calum) – Yeah, we do a little percussive outro, everyone of of us just gets a drum a starts banging it. It’s a pretty intense and epic moment, it’s exciting.
Planet Loud – As for the bands history, how did Flood Of Red come about and at what point was it that you were able to tour?
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – All of us were in bands when were about 14 or 15, after school we’d go and practise about once a week, and start playing songs when none of us could really play an instrument. It got to the point in high school, about fifth year, we though, “What if we could actually do this for a living?”
Flood Of Red (Calum) – People other than us had an interest in our band and were asking us to plays shows in other places other than our hometown. We just had to think, “How do we make it work?” I think on Dale’s 18th birthday, we bought a van, I believe we were still in school when that happened. As soon as we left high school, we had that opportunity to tour. People were asking, “Hey do you want to come play that show in Birmingham?” or in London, all over the place.
Planet Loud – So any chance, you took it. You just went for it?
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – We were still in school when we recorded our first demo. We took all of our birthday and Christmas money and went down to London to record it. We had good sounding songs, we were contacting promoters and they took us on. It was incredible.
Planet Loud – What bands would you say influenced your writing, the whole creative process of writing a song and defining your “sound”?
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – That’s really a hard one.
Flood Of Red (Calum) – This is a tough one. This is probably the question we get asked the most often, but it’s always the most difficult one to answer. The thing is, when we were a lot younger, we all listened to the same bands like Brand New, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead, Hell Is For Heroes, Alexisonfire, Thursday and Refused and everything like that. Growing up, we all listened to very different things I think, if anything else, it’s our own personal lives affect how we write music. I can be sitting in my room, having a real crappy day, and I can write a really mean-sounding song. The next day, I could win the lottery and write a really poppy song!
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – The writing process now is more and more about who we want to be. When we younger it was more about aspiring to be that band that you loved. Now it’s just about writing music that you personally want to make. I think we’ve done that with our debut album and we’re all really, really proud of it.Planet Loud – So, obviously, one of the main issues about that is how it’s been made available for download online, for just $1, which is about 65p. Who’s idea was that?
Flood Of Red (Calum) – It was something we kind of played around with. Ultimately, in the past five years, the music industry has been in this crazy shift. The music CD is going to become like a cassette tape, it’s just going to die out eventually. We were just trying to find a way to get the music out there and still having people interested in actually getting the music. Originally, we thought about giving the album away for free, but it just kind of fell through. We have a lot of control on how we release our music because we run our own record label. This was an idea that just popped up and we just thought, “Yeah, this is a good idea that we could actually run with”. I think we’ve had a lot of people that have given us a lot of praise for it, it’s been really cool. I think it definitely gets peoples attention.
Planet Loud – So the physical release is October 19th?
Flood Of Red (Calum) – Yeah, you’ll be able to get that exclusively direct from our website and then you’ll be able to get it in the shops in the near future.
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – So it’s $1 until October 19th and then we’ll be selling it in different packages like there’s download, or download with CD, or vinyl.
Flood Of Red (Calum) – There’s a deluxe edition with hand-printed artwork and high-fives included!
Planet Loud – How much of a progression from your earlier, raw material would you say that there is on the finished album?
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – I would like to think a major progression.
Flood Of Red (Calum) – The thing is, we released our EP in February 2007 and the songs on that were two, maybe three years old. We finished touring at the end of 2007 and took all of 2008 off to write new songs, which was something we didn’t have a chance to do, had never taken time off to write before. In 2008, we all turned 21; it was a pretty heavy year, personally, for everyone. We all sat down and listened to some music that taught us how to write songs. We’ve always been aggressive but at the same time with a lot of melody about it. There are so many bands that just have the same chord-structures.
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – We wanted to write an album that we loved.
Flood Of Red (Calum) – An honest album. An album that could speak to people, and that they could relate to through the music or through the lyrics. Maybe even, through the atmospheres that we’ve created on the album, or tried to, anyway!
Planet Loud – What would you say everyone in the band likes to do when they get a bit of free time, on tour or off?
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – Pretty much hanging out.
Flood Of Red (Calum) – Yeah, being at home’s pretty boring, so we pretty much just hang out with friends and make the most of the time we have with our family. We have a few beers but we’re responsible guys.
Planet Loud – If you were to put both of your iPods on shuffle, what would be the first three bands that would pop up?
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – Oohhh, that’s a good one, I would probably say…..
Flood Of Red (Calum) – Meat Loaf, Meat Loaf and Meat Loaf!
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – I’m not really a Meat Loaf fan.
Flood Of Red (Calum) – Why would you even say that? Meat Loaf’s the best dude ever! I only have my iPhone, so there are only about ten bands on there.
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – I’m listening to a lot of U2 right now, a lot of instrumental stuff like “This Will Destroy You”. It’s good to chill out to after a show.
Flood Of Red (Calum) – If I put my iPod on shuffle, it would probably come up with Mutemath, Thrice and probably As Cities Burn, that’s totally what I’m listening to. A bit of Death Cab For Cutie too.
Planet Loud – What’s next on the horizon for Flood Of Red, after the tour?
Flood Of Red (Calum) – we’re going to go home and start making a movie about the life of Jordan Speirs
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – (laughs) I’ve not heard about this?
Flood Of Red (Calum) – We want to literally play anywhere and everywhere. We’ve done the UK for the past four years so we really want to try to get out to Europe as much as possible. At the same time we want to stay true to the UK and push our record as much as possible, we’re going to release another single in November. We want to just tour with band we know, and band we don’t know. We want to go to countries we’ve never been to before. We made a bet with Jordan the other day so that every time we go to Russia, he has to play topless.
Flood Of Red (Jordan) – Not every show!
Flood Of Red (Calum) – Every show. We’ve never been to Russia, but we’re looking to go over in January. Jordan didn’t know before he made the bet!
Interview by Tom Dickins
