Ben Kweller: I’ve had a great time. I love playing with the Kings (Of Leon), they’re great friends, and it’s always such a pleasure to travel with people you are friends with and that you hang out with all the time. It just makes for really good concerts.
LK: Has there been a lot of crazy rock n roll antics?
BK: Well, we pretty much party every night but there hasn’t been any serious memorable antics that I can think of. Just a bunch of people getting pissed every night, y’know?!
John Arnold: How long have you been here for?
BK: Just about two weeks. We started in Paris, we had a show at the Zenith with me, the Kings of Leon and The Strokes. That’s how we started off the tour, which was awesome.
LK: Oh, I was in Paris a few months ago and I saw the adverts for that.
BK: Awesome.
JA: We saw the Strokes a couple of weeks ago.
BK: Yeah, they had their biggest show here right? Where was it at?
LK: Right here.
BK: Oh Alexandra Palace, that’s cool.
LK: Boring question, but what’s your favourite place you’ve been to in Britain so far?
BK: Favourite place? Well, I love London so much. I like going to Manchester to get some curry. I don’t know. I really would like to explore the countryside. I’ve always wanted to go to Liverpool for the obvious Beatles reason, and I’ve never been to Wales, I wanna go down there and check that out.
LK: And check out the sheep.
BK: Yeah, and check out the sheep!
JA: What have you got coming up next year?
BK: I just finished my new album actually and that’s gonna come out in April and I think it’ll come out here around then or in May.
JA: What’s the new album like? Is it similar to Sha Sha?
BK: Well, everything was recorded totally live so it’s a got more live feel to it. There’s two piano ballads and this anti-folk song early on in the album, and then the guitar songs are way more garagy.
JA: Is there any more collaborations?
BK: No collaborations actually. But I have this country song called On Her Own and Nathan and Caleb from the Kings of Leon were gonna sing on it but we decided not to do it and we’re gonna save it for another record. I want to do a country album eventually.
JA: You’ve been in the music business for about 10 years or something now?
BK: Yeah.
JA: When you first started out what was the approach of your parents? Were they sort of like ‘You’re throwing your life away!’? Or were they supportive?
BK: They were actually supportive, man. I’ve really been lucky to have cool parents. My father was a drummer when he was younger. When I was about 7 I remember him bringing his drum set out of the attic and setting them up in the living room, he taught me how to play drums and he would play guitar while I would play drums. So, music was always around me, y’know?
LK: Did you graduate high school?
BK: Well I dropped out in ninth grade and then we had a lot of time off and so I went back and took a G.E.D. test. I can’t remember what that stands for but we call it the ‘good enough diploma’ [laughs].
LK: Is that the equivalency thing?
BK: Yeah, exactly. It’s basically you’re smart enough to graduate high school. So I just took this test and passed it, luckily.
LK: Shall we go on to my ‘funny’ questions?!
BK: OK
LK: Justin Timberlake, hero or villain?
BK: Oh man. Villain. I don’t know much about him, but I would say. . . I can’t really tell if he, like, keeps it real or not. I’m sure he’s probably a nice guy but I certainly don’t know much about his music. I’d probably say villain.
LK: In England he’s so credible, he really is. In NME they had the cool list of 2003 and he was number 1!
BK: Really? Well, if the NME says so he must be a hero! [laughs] Believe everything you read!
LK: Oh definitely in the NME. My friend wanted me to ask you: What’s your favourite Back to the Future movie?
BK: [Instantly] Oh the first one! My God are you kidding? I love the first one so much. It’s probably one of my favourite movies of all time. Michael J Fox is one of my heroes. He is definitely a hero. And I like (Back to the Future) 2 because of the fuckin’ little skateboards. What are those called? The hover boards. Then (Back to the Future) 3 was cool just ‘cause it was a little Western shit and I’m down with that y’know?!
JA: So, Back to the Future or Wayne’s World?
BK: Back to the Future is way more classic I think [John looks offended]. I love Wayne’s World dude don’t get me wrong! Mike Myers is funny as shit, and Dana Carvey. . . because a lot of people say I talk like Dana Carvey.
JA: That’s what I was gonna say. On a couple of your songs it’s like ‘is that Garth?’
LK: I’m not sure if that’s an insult or not.
BK: No, I think that is totally a compliment. But I have to say Back to the Future is good because it hit me earlier on in life and I just feel like it’s gonna last. I dunno, I just feel like it’s more of a classic.
LK: Would you rather have dinner with Queen, the band, or THE Queen?
BK: Queen the band. If I was English maybe it would be the Queen.
LK and JA: Noooo
BK: OK, definitely Queen the band. With Freddie Mercury if he was still alive
LK: Is it correct to say you got dropped from ATO?
BK: No.
LK: Who told me that? [For our readers’ benefit ... IT WAS JOHN!!]
BK: Was there a rumour I’ve been dropped? Well, I’m on RCA and ATO. I’m with ATO, they’re an indie label that goes through RCA, and then RCA sort of steps into gear once my albums are out for a little bit. Like, Sha Sha came out and ATO really promoted it a lot and once I had sold a certain amount of records RCA kicked in. Now RCA is really involved because I guess Sha Sha was successful enough for the major label to care and give a shit.
JA: There was just this rumour that you got dropped and The Polyphonic Spree got dropped.
BK: That’s 679, the UK label. Yeah, we left that label. They were really nice guys but as a label they couldn’t get their shit together, that was the problem. Polyphonic Spree left, I left first actually because I couldn’t take it. It was funny because I saw Tim DeLaughter (from the Polyphonic Spree) at one of our shows in L.A. a while back and he was like, ‘Man, 679 are the best label!’, at that time I was really pissed off at them because they were sort of dropping the ball, and I was thinking ‘...well y’know..?’ and he was like ‘I LOVE 679!’ and then I heard they left but I haven’t seen them since then so I gotta talk to them about that.