Johnny Foreigner Interview

• 28th Apr 2008

Festivals, wireless internet and living in a transit van: the glamorous life of Johnny Foreigner.

Since Johnny Foreigner moved into their van, it’s been a bit difficult to get hold of them. Yet after months of surveillance and a Starsky and Hutch-style car chase, Heather Parry eventually caught up with them and thrust some questions in their general direction.

GW: How’s the never-ending tour going?

Fun! The gigs are getting better and we’re adapting to living in a van. If you were to ask our van this question it would probably break down again tho.

GW: Who’s your favourite band that you’ve played with?

That's a hard question, we’ve been very very lucky with who we’ve played with. Meneguar, William, Sunset Cinema Club, Los Campesinos!, Tubelord, and The Youngs Plan have all stolen our hearts at various times in the last 6 months..

GW: How have things changed for you since you got signed?

We’re poorer but we have to spend less, if that makes sense. And obviously we quit our jobs and we live with our tour manager in a converted transit van. We’re losing weight even though we’re eating worse, I don’t know how that works.

GW: Do you see yourselves as part of any scene/style in particular? If so, which one, and if not, why not?

We don’t really think about it too much. Bands that we share record collections with are certainly getting more recognition now than a year or so ago, so maybe that’s a start of something. But a real scene only gets recognised after it’s died, so who knows. We’re all for rock mythology.

GW: Who, in that charts at the moment, makes you wanna smack your head against a wall in anger?

We don’t really look at the charts much so we don’t really know. There’s a few bands whose heads we’d like to smash against a wall but more for fun than anger. Ignorance is bliss.

GW: What’s been the most exciting moment of your career so far?

Doing this interview on our new laptop in the van. Yay for constant internet!

GW: In ten years do you still want to be touring constantly, or do you see yourselves signing a huge deal and enjoying semi-retirement in the south of France?

A happy mixture? Its weird, most of the bands we love and obsess over still have to work proper jobs, so getting so successful we can retire isn’t something we want to do really.

GW: What reception do you think the album will get?

Um, a good one? We’re the worst people to ask, we’re well happy with it so hopefully everyone else will be to. We’re very aware how fickle the industry is tho, we’re probably due a backlash soon enough…

GW: Do you think it’s easier for new bands to get recognition since social networking sites have become more popular or do you think it’s led to the market being swamped with artists?

Yeah, myspace levelled everything; a kid in his bedroom has the same canvas as a massive famous band on a major label. It puts more emphasis on people having to make good songs that stick in your head and thus has improved humanity as a whole.

GW: Is there anyone you’d love to work with in future?

In a band sense, we’d love to get cameos from our friends on the next album, in a BSS style. But realistically, we’re too busy to arrange something like that now. There are a few producers we’d love to get in. but we’ll have to see.

GW: Are you doing any festivals this summer?

Yeah, we did SXSW earlier this year, we’ve just done the Camden Crawl, and we’ve got Truck, Lovebox, the Geat Escape, Redfest, Lounge on the Farm, Summersonic in Japan and maybe a few more coming up. Going to be a hectic summer….

GW: Cheers guys!

Thankyou!