Bivouac are Back

illustration: Raphael Achache

You are a Derby band and this interview is for LeftLion. Some of our readers might get a bit sniffy about that. What are your Notts credentials?
Paul: None of us were from Derby. Granville and I arrived in Derby to do a photography degree. We didn’t previously know each other but are both from West Yorkshire. Ant’s [Antony Hodgkinson, drums] from Derbyshire – Amber Valley, I think? Granville and I ended up homeless as we were touring so much; I dossed at Pitchshifter’s house in Sneinton, Granville at Ant’s in Lenton. I ended up living in Notts for twenty years. That being said, if anyone wants to make any decisions based upon geography, they can get stuffed.

Why did the band get back together after a twenty-year hiatus?
Paul: Stewart Lee mentioned us in his Guardian column – for the purpose of this interview I will pretend it was favourable, but it’s pretty difficult to tell. Loads of friends got in touch about it and, unknown to us, a conversation in a car led to The Gigantic Festival organisers chasing us to do their fest and the rest, as they say, is a terrible mistake…

Was everyone in the band up for it or were there some reservations?
Paul: I had reservations but they soon disappeared when I asked the other two. Ant’s first response was “What are we going to wear?”
Granville: One of the questions was, “Have you even still got a bass?” I had to check.

What was that first rehearsal like after getting back together? Could you remember how the songs went or did you have to pop on a record to remind yourself?
Paul: There was a certain amount of muscle memory – back in the day we played a lot, I lost count at over 500 gigs. We practised at home and then met. I had to listen back to the recordings for the lyrics particularly. There's a song we have called The Bell Foundry –  it’s got more words than the fucking dictionary.

What was the first song the band played from start to finish during rehearsals?
Paul: Fishes, from one of our first EPs. It was fast and surprisingly good. I found some old desk tapes of gigs from 1994 and listened to them; for the authentic experience there needs to be a lot of feedback and mistakes. This, we can do.

Where in Nottingham would the band play back in the day?
Paul: Our debut show was at a RockSoc gig at Nottingham University. We got signed at that gig to Elemental, a sub company of Workers Playtime, and funded by Alternative Tentacles [American Independent record label founded by Jello Biafra, former Dead Kennedy’s frontman]. We played The Poly [Trent Polytechnic, now Nottingham Trent] with Pitchshifter and Fugazi, but probably our – certainly my – favourite show was at the Narrowboat, the first sold-out gig we played. We drove back from Cologne, missed a ferry, just made the show without sleeping for 24 hours, played a blinder. Good memories, the ones I can remember…

What are you favourite memories from when the band were originally together?
Paul: The touring, the mayhem, the camaraderie, getting asked to leave a swimming pool at gunpoint in case I drowned myself, going to New York for the first time, taking acid in Hamburg when unbeknown to us there was a festival where everybody gets dressed up as clowns – you could not make it up. The acid tabs had Getafix the Druid on them and were the size of postage stamps.

Out of the gigs you played with Bivouac, which were your favourites, and who are some of your favourite bands who you played with?
Granville: Jesus Lizard, without a doubt the best live band I've seen. Touring with a band, you'll watch varying amounts of their set, first night to be polite, maybe a few more. But you just didn't want to miss one minute of a Jesus Lizard set.  Never the same, always tight as a band with added chaos from David Yow. He's a Scrabble master, you know. Seaweed, Jacob’s Mouse, Melvins, Sugar, Foo Fighters, 7 Seconds, Therapy?, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, all great bands and too many more to mention.

We'll probably have different opinions between the three of us, though. The hometown Narrowboat shows, as mentioned, were always a blast, some of the bigger ones, supporting Sugar and some of the festival shows, exciting and memorable. But ones that surprise you too, like a VFW in Missoula or Spokane or somewhere in the sticks, soundchecking to two drunks and a crabby barman, yet come showtime, the place is packed – kids going mad and jumping from the rafters. Or the ones you turn around, maybe only twenty people there, but you play your arse off anyway and those twenty love it.

What can we expect from these reformation gigs? How are you deciding which songs you want to play?
Granville: We’re doing the ones we can remember and that don't tire us out – we are getting on a bit. The new stuff, obviously, and mostly pre-Geffen material at the moment, but we're still knocking ideas about and not averse to reworking some of the later tunes. Overall, just trying to keep the energy and mood up there. We haven't quite got our jazz odyssey mojo working yet.

What changed for the band when Bivouac went from being signed to the independent Elemental to signing for the major Geffen? In many aspects, that mid-nineties/post grunge-era was the last throw of the dice in terms of larger labels taking a punt on underground bands and guitar bands. How did it feel to be part of that?
Granville: Hindsight is a wonderful thing… In practical terms it was pretty good having a place to live again, to not have to decide between eating or guitar strings. But we were naïve, we didn't realise how much control you lose when you get swallowed up by the industry. One example sums it up for me – we went to New York to sign the contracts with Geffen and they sent a limo to pick us up from JFK airport, phone in the back and everything.

To three lads from the provincial backwaters, it was unreal. “Hello Mum, I'm speaking to you on the carphone. Yes, a car with a phone in it.” A couple of years later we were signing off accounts and noticed an entry for £500 for limo hire. They'd charged it back to us. Decisions got made by other people and you'd bear the cost, financial or otherwise. Recording budgets, videos, everything had to be signed off by someone in an office who most likely hadn't even listened to the band. Contrast now and people are making amazing music in their bedrooms. We recorded the forthcoming single on a shoestring and all the headline dates are completely DIY.

Paul: I thought I could make a living out of the art that we love, we were three working-class lads and this looked like our opportunity, but we weren’t prepared for the machine. It soon dawned on me that we were in the wrong place and in trouble. We were marched into a massive office to see an old gent who informed us, “I signed the Eagles” – we stood and looked at our feet. On another occasion, a guy was flown to a show to “see how marketable” we were. He was wearing white snakeskin cowboy boots.

A friend of ours was a film student and she had a showreel of a fellow student that we really liked – no budget, funny, clever, charming. We met him in The Angel (RIP) and he was totally into making a video for us. We asked Geffen for 5K – peanuts considering MTV was all powerful at the time – to make the vid with him. Geffen refused because they “hadn’t heard of the director.” It was Shane Meadows.

The band is putting out a single, including a brand new song. What was it like recording with the band after all of this time?
Granville: It looks fucking lush, limited run 7” vinyl, every sleeve unique, will be available at the shows. Sweet Heart Deal is a brand new, very up, Hüsker Dü-ish, some have mentioned Seaweed, kind of show opener, a “Hey, we're back” notice. Deep Blue Sea Surround was from the last set of demos we did twenty years back, for what would have been the third album. I personally think there is some good stuff in there. We've reworked it a bit and we're proud of both of them. Recording was a breeze, a day tracking in Johnny Carter's gaff in Nottingham, then Paul took them home to do vocals, a lovely bit of cello by a friend of his, Jenn Chubb, and then Paul mixed and mastered them all nice and shiny. Both Paul and Ant have done a lot of recording – themselves and other people – since we last recorded so it was a good, no stress experience.

Paul: We are cruising at 55mph in the slow lane of the super-highway of least resistance. Recording was great, mixing it was pleasure. The good people at Reckless Yes asked us if we wanted to do a single, “Yeah, why not?” Sweet Heart Deal was written as a mission statement, a new song to open the shows with. Deep Blue Sea Surround is a song that has haunted me for twenty years; good to have it trapped in wax, like an insect in amber.

Have you heard any Bivouac influences in music that has come out since the band split up? Anyone that may have been listening to the band the first time around?
Granville: Crikey, I'm not sure that's for us to say really. We've had a few comments from people telling us that kinda thing, maybe it was a case of “If them fools can do it, then so can I.”
Paul: I get messages from a few people who cite us as an influence, mostly unknown. I joke that that’s probably the kiss of death. Several people have said Biffy Clyro share a similar sound to us. Who knows? Biffy?

This band (bivouac.bandcamp.com) have stolen your name. Could you give this link a listen so that we can have a ‘Bivouac reviews Bivouac’ feature?
Granville: [Laughs] I had no idea. That first one's not half bad, hearing a bit of Forget The Swan by Dinosaur Jr in there. We'll prolly wait 'til they get big then sue their ass for half their earnings. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.
Paul: Deffo has a nineties vibe too, second song has a touch of Codeine. Overall it’s nothing a decent chorus couldn’t sort out… Good luck to them, but change your fucking name – all them vowels are ours.

Bivouac + Mannequin, Stuck on a Name Studio, Sunday 29 May, £6.

The band will release the double A-side 7” Sweet Heart Deal / Deep Blue Surround via Reckless Yes Records on 16 June 2016.

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