Music: Catfish & The Bottlemen

The Latest’s Jeff Hemmings and frontman Van McCann chat big dreams, and revving up generators in the rain

Hard work and self belief. Two essential ingredients for making it in the world of music. It seems that the four piece – named after a busker in Australia, where frontman Van McCann was living at the time – from Llandudno, in North Wales, have this in spades, as they continue on the upward trajectory, a long sold out tour of the UK in process.

“Just graft, man,” says frontman Van McCann. “We played a couple of hundred shows a year before we had a deal. When bands like Stereophonics played at Echo Arena, we’d put a CD on every single car in the car park. We went to a Kasabian gig once and when everyone came out we revved up a generator in the rain, and played to all the people coming out. And we used to turn up at universities with a generator, and play.”

Sounds old fashioned, doesn’t it? But playing constantly, and with few inhibitions (plus some great songs and a welcoming personality) it’s heartening to hear such stories. And it’s all paid off for these superb anthemic indie-rockers, first by signing with Communion and then with its much older big brother, Island Records. “It appealed to us at the time,” says Van. “‘We love you as you are’, they said, ‘we don’t want to change anything’. The label is run by musicians; they know what you like and what you don’t like.

“Ben Lovett (of Mumford & Sons, and who set up Communion) took a listen, thought we were great, and before we knew it we were making an EP, and they thought every song was a single which is what they released. They then signed us to the Island deal … it’s overwhelming really, I always used to dream about playing arenas. I could see us doing that. But I couldn’t see us getting a deal. We just wanted to play live.

“We signed off the dole when we signed with Communion, and got a wage, but we worked out what we could afford and it was still only £8 a day!” McCann laughs. “We signed off the dole, to get on the dole, but without having to sign on and lie about trying to get a job.

“You’ve got to be careful, you could be one of these bands who get all over magazines and pay to get on TV. At the time we were pissed off, thinking ‘why is nobody signing us?’ We felt like we had something good. But, now I’m made up, everything we have done has led to this. We’ll just carry on playing gigs, listening to people singing and go crazy. It’s still dead exciting.”
Concorde 2, Tuesday 9 December, 7.30pm, £9.50, SOLD OUT

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