Interviews

A Quick Chat With Les Jupes

• 8th Oct 2013

Winnipeg’s Les Jupes are a committed bunch; hardworking, hard-touring, proponents of a special blend of British post-punk and American folk. We caught up with them recently for a quick chat about new EP Negative Space and their short stint of UK tour dates.

When we first started playing music…
We were pretty shitty but thought we were really good.

We chose our name because…
Mike has a thing for the French, used to live in Montreal, and thought “jupes” was fun to say. It is kinda fun to say. The j and u and p look kinda funny too. It’s a cool word. Phonetics is a great way to pick band names.

We knew we were onto something when…
…Well, I’m still not sure we’re onto something. We’re a band that plays music we love. Not much more needed than that. Hope that some others might dig it too.

Our biggest influences are…
Long walks alone, Bill Murray, hockey, art galleries, suburban bullshit, misguided theology courses, heartbreaks, heart-unbreaks.

We’re most proud of…
The fact that we haven’t broken up despite having had multiple situations that would have quite justified it.

Our ideal support slot would be…
How about who we would want supporting us someday?? I mean, it would be cool to open for __________ (insert classic band everyone loves), but what good is that? It’s their audience, not ours. I want to have people excited to see us, I want to have our own audience singing along. That feels like a real ambition. Who wants to come in second?

One item we can’t live without on tour…
Ourselves.

We can’t stop listening to…
Kanye West. Janelle Monae. We were promised jetpacks.

We’re not ashamed to admit that…
We are shameful people.

Catch us next…
If you can. We run very very fast. Mike has got deceptive speed. Lookout…

UK tour dates:
30th September Pivo, Glasgow
1st October Club Surya, London
2nd October The Windmill, London
3rd October Dublin Castle, London