Cette interview devait se faire l'année dernière mais Tom et ses amis étaient bien trop occupés à jouer un peu partout pour pouvoir me répondre. Je ne leur en veux pas le moins du monde et voici donc l'interview 2025 des Fruit Tones en 2026 (pour traduire, utilisez l'outil 'translate' sous la tête de Frankenstein).
The new album is called Easy Peelers, why have you chosen this title ? Is there a particular meaning ?
It’s a kind of orange you can get here in the UK, like satsuma or clementine style, not sure if they call them easy peelers everywhere else? But we decided to take it and give it an Easy Rider theme with the orange on a motorcycle for the sleeve. With the band being called Fruit Tones it seems there’s an unlimited amount of fruit puns we can make haha
We recorded the drums and a guide guitar in one day with Borja Regueira in Glue studios in Denton, Manchester. Everything else I recorded and mixed myself in our practice room where we did the last album. It took a couple of months of working on it in the evenings after work to add everything else and mix it. It’s the first time we’ve not just recorded the whole thing live but weirdly to me it sounds more like the live show than previous records. I think recording the drums separately meant we could really blow out the guitars without worrying about bleed onto the drums so everything is sounding more like we’d have it live without having to try and contain it. The snare was re-amped by Gareth Allatt to cut through everything and it was mastered by Mikey Young in Australia who has worked on all our albums so far.
Do you play the same instruments in the studio and on stage ?
Yeah but there's only three of us so live we just have drums, bass, guitar and three vocals whereas in the studio I add extra guitar and sometimes lap steel, organ or piano and we put extra percussion on the records too. On stage it's just stripped back, faster, raw and loud.
Decomposed Sam is a legendary Italian tattoo artist we met for the first time at Get Action festival that we played in Sienna last year which he's part of organising but we'd been internet friends before that and he drew the poster for our Australia tour. We had an idea for how we wanted the sleeve to look and we knew Sam would be able to draw it just how we imagined it.
Shinding ! Magazine wrote you have both the Stooges and the New York Dolls stye mixed to the old school DIY punk-rock. Which punk bands are your main influences ?
I'd say New York Dolls and The Stooges are two of the biggest influences really, Ramones of course, The Real Kids, Nervous Eaters, British bands like The Damned and Buzzcocks, we're probably most influenced by the early proto-punk and pub rock stuff like Dr Feelgood, that energy mixed with 60's girl group songs, early country and blues and rock & roll like Little Richard and Chuck Berry is essentially the idea behind the Fruit Tones sound. The DIY recording process is inspired by the budget rock approach of all the Billy Childish stuff and The Mummies.
Yeah especially all the red hot rockin coming out of Australia! We love Gee Tee (& all affiliated bands), Drunk Mums and Delivery and have played with all those bands loads when they tour the UK and Europe and it was great to go rock it over there with them all too. The Nude Party we've toured with a lot and they have a great live show that's very inspiring. We met Patrol at Cosmic Trip festival and have been listening to them loads since. Love most of the stuff that comes out on Slovenly, Bachelor, Alien Snatch, Goner and Total Punk
What do you think of the current bands like Blowers, S.U.G.A.R, The Covids, Split System, Jackets, Courettes ?
Love all these groups!
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| Life on the road? |
We met The Covids in Amsterdam - Sid from the band put on our show there when we were touring the Pink Wafer Factory album. We met S.U.G.A.R at the Berlin show on that tour too but we haven't played together. I saw The Jackets at the Funtastic festival a couple of years ago but we never met.
You started a new tour in september until december. How is life on the road ?
It's hard work but we do it because we love it! The past year has probably been the most hectic touring for us but the more you do it the more you get into the zone and the further you get to go. I love getting to see so much of the world, meet so many like-minded people and play a show every night. I probably find it less exhausting when we're away on the road than in the UK when I'm working my day job then driving to a show, driving home afterwards and straight back into work the next day with no sleep.
It's a whole lot of beer and music! For me one of the craziest things was eating alligator on Willie Nelson’s ranch in Texas when we played his Luck Reunion festival. It was an incredible day and then in the artist catering someone brings out a whole alligator from the BBQ. Was it nice? Not really haha. We have a song about Walmsley's disaster in the bathroom of Willie's original 1970's tour bus that day too.
The worst thing that's happened was losing my car keys swimming in the sea at 1am in Brighton and not being able to get into the car with all the equipment inside to get home the next day. It was a bank holiday and the locksmiths quoted £700 to come unlock it so I ended up having to get a lift to Sheffield with Delivery and then the train home to Manchester from there, pick up the spare keys from my house then get a 5 hour ride back to Brighton to get the car and drive it 5 hours back. We can laugh about it now hahaha.
On the recent tours swimming in the sea in France during a lightning storm after the show was legendary, one of the shows in Switzerland was the quietest of the trip so we decided to try go round and learn everyone in the audience's name by the end of the set which was very funny and actually made a potentially awkward show into a nice intimate experience. We stayed in a lot of haunted houses too, one in Lake Como in particular - all the windows and doors burst open in the night even after we'd locked them and we'd hear people walking round the house then look in the other room to see everyone was fast asleep. Then in the morning cupboard doors that were shut when we went to bed were open...
Last year we toured more or less the whole of France except Paris - we did Relache and Cosmic Trip festivals and a two week lap round the edge of the country in May/June, back for Coucou fest in September then Annecy as part of the big November tour to Italy and Eastern Europe. We just added a show in Paris 31st of March this year to complete it and hopefully there'll be more to come later in the year, it's a wild place to play! Somebody in the crowd broke their foot going crazy at the Annecy show and sent us a picture of the x-ray after the show hahaha.
Is there something more you'd like to tell us ?
We have a new video, it's a B-movie horror based on Creature From The Goon Lagoon featuring two songs from the new LP.
Keep on chooglin!
Thank you guys !
Fernand Naudin
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