Interview: Little Tents
During the week I had the pleasure to sit down with members of the promptly emerging Indie-Rock group Little Tents. Sitting across from me in a dimly-lit cafe in a Limerick side street is drummer Conor Wallace and guitarists Aoife Donellan and Cian McGuirk. Unfortunately, between other commitments and rehearsals members: Aisling O’Connor, Gill McNamara and Laura Duff weren’t present.
Who are Little Tents?
To put it shortly we’re a recently formed six-piece Indie-Rock band, we’re all great friends and want to make music equally as great.
What’s the story behind Little Tents?
Well, we were all experimenting with music for years and then one day with all got an email form a man named Borris from Limerick’s division of the Music Generation project which all of us were apart of. He put us six together with the intent of travelling to Dublin in which we would ultimately be performing in front of U2’s legendary guitarist The Edge, I guess you could say he lit a fire under our ass and we had such a positive experience together that the momentum never stalled.
You’ve been extremely busy recently, can you tell us a little about what you have in the works?
We’re just back from the hugely prestigious Cauldron Recording Studios in Dublin with three whole songs that we’re incredibly excited to share with you! Just, not quite yet! But really soon, we promise.
So what now?
The last thing any one wants right now is to stop, we’re like Voltron when we’re together is when we’re at our best. Right now it’s a LOT of practice peppered with song writing! We played a few gigs already which were all well received and like a kid in a candy store WE WANT MORE! And we’ll get more!
What defines indie?
Expressing yourself without censorship, or fear of it. Also, not signing a million-dollar contract for a superfluous label. Although a million dollars would be nice…
So if a record-label offered you a million-dollar deal, would you take it?
Are you assuming that we would sell out our – yes. Yes we would. Everytime. Unless there was a two-million dollar contract elsewhere.
Have you encountered any obstacles?
Nothing severe, although the obstacles we do face spurs from song writing. We don’t want to slip into monotony, and like the kid in the candy store we want to try everything! Maybe it’s my personal bias (Conor) but we aspire to be like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, none of their ablums are in any way similar to each other – they’re radically different. Or maybe they’re just rad, either way we want to be on the same level.
Are there any rituals you must do before a rehearsal or a gig?
The singers like to go and, well, scream their heads off and shout and make as much noise as they can while the rest of us jam out to whatever we want. This goes on for quite some time and you really got to hear it to believe it, it’s like an orchestra of loud, obnoxious noise. While this seems terrible it gets all our energy out and from there we’re extremely focused and cover a lot of ground. Before gigs it’s the same thing really but noting can get rid of the nerves!
If you could do the soundtrack to anything, what would it be?
Oh Pokemon is awesome! It would be an absolute dream come through to do instrumental covers of the soundtrack and to hear them in-game! Forget the million-dollar contracts give us Pokemon dammit!
Where can we find you?
We’ll be playing a bunch of gigs throughout the summer so make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up! (@LittleTent) Also we’ll be dropping those songs we recorded on Soundcloud very very soon so watch this space!
Dry-ice or a curtain pull?
Conor: Dry Ice!
Cian: Dry Ice!
Aoife: Curtain Pull? Guh! What is this the 1920s?!?!
