Strange Brew presents.. Stoat

“There’s only really one band story – labour in obscurity followed by acclaim. If a band’s been going a while the story might have repeated once or twice, but it’s the same every time.

That’s not our story. For a while we kinda hoped it might be, like when Jamie asked the double bass player from his orchestra (i.e. me) to join him and John’s band, and we’d sit around and whine that our parents didn’t take music seriously as a career (this was in 1987). Or in the early 00s playing The Lower Deck with Delorentos, or The Róisín Dubh with The Redneck Manifesto, or getting the bus down to Limerick to play with Explosions in the Sky, and it seemed like the Irish underground scene was gonna take the world by storm.

We’re like a middle aged 5-a-side soccer team. We’re never gonna play for Barcelona, but we still take a childish joy in doing the thing for its own sake. Nothing to prove, and nothing to optimise for except fun.”