Gareth Murdock – Alestorm – Interview Exclusive
Written by Matt Phelps
Sunday, 11 March 2012 05:00
The Useless Drunken Bastards Tour was the moniker given to Alestorm’s latest trek around the UK and with a name like that for a tour it sounded like the perfect place to down a lemonade shandy or two. So I set sail for the Fleece in Bristol and once there got the chance to meet up with bassist Gareth Murdock and talk about the Chuckle Brothers, Devon Monks and Batman costumes…all in the name of Uber Rock N’ Roll \m/
Gareth, thanks for talking with us today, we really appreciate your time. Let’s start with the recent 70,000 Tons Of Metal Cruise. You’ve just got back from that so run us through how that went for you. It sounded like it was quite a blast.
Well I haven’t really been able to sum it up to people since being home because it’s hard to describe this most incredible experience. It is utterly ridiculous but yes it was amazing. A floating heavy metal festival in the Caribbean! It was utterly unbelievable, nothing but good experiences. Obviously it nearly killed me, the day afterwards we were all dying but a brilliant experience I’d do it again.
How long was it for?
It’s 4 days. 2000 tickets sold, 800 crew, 40 bands. It was a big big big ship, like a 12 story ship, just a proper cruise ship but the amount of money they must have made was horrendous (laughs). Everything was included so if you’re a band you’re lucky because you’re flights were paid for and being on the ship was included but you still had to pay for your own alcohol and you don’t pay with money there’s a card that opens your room and also you can pay for drinks with it at the bar (laughs). That’s dangerous, very dangerous indeed. Absolutely wonderful couple of days though.
Quite a few of those cruises going around now, I know there’s a Kiss one…
Yeah, there’s a Kiss one and I think Sabaton have their own one too in Sweden. It’s gonna be a barge to hell which I think is gonna be a more black metal / death metal kinda thing, all on a boat which is even funnier.
Shame we haven’t got anything like that in this country I suppose.
On the Dover to Calais ferry or something (laughs)
Back to this tour now though, started the other day in Plymouth, sold out. How was that one?
It was wonderful. Obviously the very start of the tour everything’s gonna be a mad rush and no one really knows what’s going on, first day nerves and that, but it was wonderful. The whole place was packed out. 400 tickets sold I think and it was a good start to the tour. Luckily the other two bands with us (Darkest Era and Claim The Throne) we already know from playing with them before so everyone just got on perfectly. Wonderful tour to be on, having a great time.
Going to Plymouth you would have gone down the A38, straight past Buckfast Abbey. Did you stop in and sample the goods?
No, but Darkest Era did. I really wanted to but bus driving regulations and stuff meant we couldn’t. But Darkest Era stopped there on Sunday and there was worship so the gift shop wasn’t open and there were no tours. I’m not sure they do tours anyway but there’s a gift shop where you can buy Buckfast by the crate, but day of worship so alas… No Buckfast for us.
How did that song (‘Buckfast Powersmash’) come about on the new album then?
You know we’d done Rum, Vodka, Beer and we were running out of booze to sing about and Buckfast, being an English drink… You see, half our band is from Scotland and the other half is from Northern Ireland so those two countries I think are the major sellers of Buckfast worldwide even though it’s a drink that’s brewed in England, we just had to sing a song about it. It was a bit of a joke at first but ended up being track 5 on the new album.
I really don’t know how that came about (laughs). We just like Buckfast!
How did it end up with the Chuckle Brothers theme as an ending?
Chris I think just started playing it on the keyboard. “Isn’t that the Chuckle Brothers?” “Yeah it is!” “Well it fits in perfectly to the end of this song!” (laughs) But I love it, it’s such an in-joke that song, if you’re not from England, Scotland or Northern Ireland you’re just gonna be like “What the hell is Buckfast? What the hell is this Chuckle brothers outro?” It’s over German people’s heads which is amazing because you can play a gig in Germany and they’re all shouting “PLAY BUCKFAST POWERSMASH!” They have no idea what it is (laughs).
On the new album then you’ve got ‘Scraping The Barrel’ as well, based on people saying that you must be running out of ideas for things to write about. So how easy was this album to write because without sounding like a kiss ass I think it’s the best one you’ve done so far…
Yeah, it’s my favourite as well but I think we could do another 10 albums, you know? I think basically the point of ‘Scraping The Barrel’ is people say “Well you’re gonna run out of material eventually” but we’re saying “Well we can write a song about you thinking we’re running out of material.” So I think we can do another 10 albums doing the same thing.
Another song on there, talk me through ‘Midget Saw’.
‘Midget Saw’ was actually put together by our drummer, he wrote the main melody. A friend of ours wrote most of the lyrics to it, he just came up with a ridiculous idea and put it on the internet and we just laughed our asses off. I don’t even know where he got the inspiration for that one.
There’s a couple of bonus tracks on there too… The Wurzels ‘I Am A Cider Drinker’… How did that one come about?
I bet that’s a popular one down in this part of the country (laughs). Well Chris used to live in Bristol actually and I think The Wurzels have a bit of a regular slot down here, don’t they? Again it’s just another song about booze. The cover songs aren’t meant to be too much of a thing, you don’t want people to notice them too much, we just thought it would be hilarious and just for our benefit but of course lots of people seem to like it which is cool as well.
‘Wolves Of The Sea’ was another cover wasn’t it? A Eurovision track that for you has become extremely popular.
Yeah and I think our version is more popular than the original now (laughs). These poor people from Latvia saying “Who is this Alestorm band and why have they done our song?”
Bristol you mentioned there briefly, big with Piracy, home town of Blackbeard. How did the whole Pirate gimmick get into the band in the first place?
Again, back to Chris, I think the first song he wrote was for a power metal band he was in about 6 years ago and his first song was ‘Heavy Metal Pirates’. I don’t think it was originally supposed to be a pirate metal band. It’s not like he woke up one day and said “Right, I’m gonna start a band all about pirates!” He just wrote a song, ‘Heavy Metal Pirates’, then he wrote another song also about pirates, then another one, then another one… There’s a theme going on here (laughs).
One thing I was thinking of when we were talking about the 70,000 Tons Of Metal stuff and festivals is that we’re not far here in Bristol from Tredegar House over in Wales. Not far from Newport, big sort of country estate and it was actually the family home of Captain Morgan himself…
Really? You’re kidding me?
No really, he used to live there. It’s a huge estate, used a lot in the Doctor Who stuff now but it was the Morgan family home for hundreds of years and he lived there..
Interesting. That’s fascinating.
So if you’re ever thinking of an Alestormfest in the UK then Tredegar House would be the place to do it.
(laughs) I’ll write that one down in my little note book. An Alestormfest? That’s a good idea…
You got the idea here!
You can get in for free! (laughs)
Cheers! You also describe yourselves as the “Second best Scottish pirate metal band.” Now I believe that the first best is Rumahoy. So tell us about Rumahoy and why they’re better than you…
Rumahoy are better than us in every single way they’re better looking, better song writers, better musicians, cooler people, friendlier, better in bed. They’re what we’ve always dreamed of being. They have a song on youtube called ‘Blackbeards Lost Treasure’. Actually it’s a corker of a song. They’re great so unfortunately we’re only the second best pirate metal band in the country but still…
There can’t be that many pirate metal bands out there can there?
Well, there’s two in Scotland and we’re the second best which is unfortunate but I think there’s about five in the world.
I’m struggling to think of the fifth one, I’ve got Running Wild…
Swashbuckle.
Oh right, and I was thinking Zed Yago…
I’ve not heard them at all…
They’re a German band, they were sort of semi-big in the late eighties but they have piratey themes on albums like ‘Pilgrimage’ and ‘Pirates From Hell’.
We’ve encountered a few on our travels. Sometimes you get local support bands, pirate theme bands being stuck on the bill with us. We’ve played with Scurvy Dogs in New Zealand. There’s a Scurvy as well in Australia. There’s been a few we’ve bumped into along the way but apart from us and Swashbuckle no one seems to be releasing albums.
Niche market then, got a lot of appeal if it’s getting you over to Australia and New Zealand.
Yeah, that’s where we found Claim The Throne. They did our first Australian tour in May 2010, they were our support band on that.
What’s it like for them being over here at the moment with the cold weather?
(laughs) We were in Stoke the other day and some of them had only seen snow for the first time then. So it’s intriguing for them to be freezing their asses off all the time, bless ’em.
One thing I was thinking about, although you’re probably not allowed to do stuff like this what with health and safety these days, but have you ever considered putting a plank off the stage for the divers?
Yes, we’ve talked about that so often. We want to do this thing where we have the plank and then pick the sexiest girl in the audience, put a blindfold on her and make her walk the plank and crowd surf but I think there are some…uh… issues. There must be some sort of law against it? And where would the plank go? It would need to be on a raised platform or something. Probably logistically quite difficult but I’d love to do it. That’s a great idea though.
I’d also like to know what your favourite pirate film is?
Favourite pirate film…. Does Hook count? Either that or Pirates.
For me I’d say The Crimson Pirate.
I’ve not seen that one…
It’s an old Burt Lancaster film, supposedly the inspiration for Disney’s Pirates Of The Caribbean ride, or so they say. I doubt Disney would admit that. Any last words you’d like to add for the fans?
Just the usual thank yous. I think this is this our first time in Bristol? I think it is… well it’s not. Did you ever hear about the Christian Balestorm incident?
No, but I’m intrigued… what happened?
Well we did a tour in 2009, a co headlining UK tour with the band Tyr from the Faroe Islands and Chris lived in Bristol at the time. We wanted to play in Bristol but no one had offered to book a show so we were going to put on the gig ourselves and take the money from the door as payment. But because of that we were going behind our booking agent’s back so we couldn’t do it as an Alestorm show. So we had an idea… Christian Balestorm! We all dressed up as different Batman characters and changed all the names of the songs. ‘Commissioner Gordon’s Revenge’ was one of them and we played in the Bierkeller. So technically Alestorm have never played in Bristol before I have played these songs in Bristol before, just dressed as the Joker (laughs).
To pick up some of Alestorm’s fantastically piratey back catalogue – CLICK HERE
