We attended LEMONFEST in June and had a chat with a few people whilst we were there. Just before lunchtime, I spotted Michael from Mad Dog Mcrea so I pulled up a deck chair, cracked open a can and we had a chat, here’s how it went down….
Good morning Michael, great to see you, you’re a seasoned festival goer and I believe that this isn’t your first time at Lemonfest?
Correct, we played here the year before last, I think that this is the third time that we’ve played here and it seems to be getting bigger every year!
Do you prefer the smaller local events rather than the larger more corporate festivals?
I would definitely say the smaller events, the shows are just so much more intimate and being a local band, you have a local following and it’s great to see some familiar faces in the audience!
Where do you all live?
I’m in Tavistock and the rest of the band are based in Plymouth so we’re lucky that a=our catchment area is quite wide.
I was chatting to Seth Lakeman recently, I think he lives in Tavistock?
Yes, he’s actually a neighbour of mine!
Which of the acts playing today are you looking forward to seeing?
Alabama 3 are the main one that I’m excited about, I’ve met them and seen them at loads of festivals over the years and we like to think that we can party just as hard as they can! They’re hardcore….
Are you able to give them a run for their Money?
We’re not quite there yet but we’re getting there!
Give me your three top tips to surviving a music festival
Let’s think, so many things to consider, I think the best one is not to mix your drinks, stick to the one thing, drink plenty of water before you go to bed, wet wipes are great but we have a habit of forgetting about them every single time! I guess just bring plenty of alcohol, I drink port nowadays so I always make sure that I have a good stash of that with me and I don’t go far wrong, I find a drop of port goes down really well at breakfast time, it's a very sociable drink! I’ve learned from doing loads of festivals, just not to mix your drinks, once you do that you start getting some pretty heavy hangovers.
And I guess try to stick to spirits or something stronger as if you’re necking beer and cider all day, you’re going to be spending most of the time stood in the queue to the toilets!
Absolutely! That’s the best way!
The moral of the story is to bring your own booze (if you’re allowed)
So, can we expect to see any new music from you in the near future?
Oh yes, we’re constantly writing, we released a new album last year that we perform a lot of the material live and we’re in the process of working on a bunch of new songs at the moment that we aim to be recording next year, it’s just an ongoing thing!
Where do you do most of your recording?
We recorded the last album at studios in Perranporth called Cube Studios, we used Sean Lakeman to produce it, he did a great job, made it sound all professional!
Will you be using Sean for the next recording that you do?
Not sure yet, we’ll get a load of songs together first and then see who’s available to produce it for us and go from there. We’ll whittle it down to say the best 10 tracks and that’ll be what’s on the album. We don’t have a manager so we’re not pushed to do anything that we don’t want to do, we have an agent who gets us gigs and that works out fine for us, this is what we do and living down here in Devon just suits us down to the ground! We haven’t done our best album yet so for anyone out there, the best is yet to come!
Thanks for your time Michael, we’ll be watching and grabbing some pics
Thanks very much, we'll no doubt catch up again at another festival in the near future!
You can keep up to date with the whereabouts of the band on their social media sites, all listed below;