Welsh alternative rock three-piece group, The Joy Formidable, knows how to make an entrance.
During the group’s Oct. 30 set, the intense strumming of guitar strings could be heard before the trio were seen. Throughout the weekend, The Joy Formidable has proven to be one of the most memorable acts of the 2015 Voodoo Music and Arts Experience. The Daily Reveille sat down with trio Ritzy Bryan, Rhydian Dafydd and Matthew Thomas to discuss the weekend, new music and working with artist Martin Wittfooth.
The Daily Reveille: This your first time in New Orleans?
Ritzy Bryan: No, it’s our third time here, but it’s our first ever festival. We haven’t played a festival in NOLA before.
TDR: What’s it been like?
Bryan: Well we’ve toured here before, so we feel people from the South and NOLA are welcoming, chatty, they like to get involved, quite quirky and we love all of that. I think this festival is an even bigger chance for people to have a great time, listen to great music, lose their inhibitions and we’re really happy to be here. It’s a bit of a crazy weekend.
TDR: What can you tell me about the new album?
Bryan: Well we finished it about two weeks ago. We built a little studio in North Wales called The Red Brick, we’ve been there for about 12 months. It’s got a very live aesthetic, and we’re really not feeling any pressure, just enjoying the vibe of being back together as three people in a room. We’ve engineered it ourselves, produced it ourselves and we’ve had it mixed by the master of all mixers Mr. Alan Moulder. So it sounds f****** awesome.
TDR: How do you include all of your influences? Because I’m sure the three of you have different influences.
Rhydian Dafydd: I think to all of us, music is music and there’s good and bad. I don’t think there’s a particular genre that we say “oh that’s my thing.” I think it’s just about good and bad, things that are soulful, something that’s real and touches you.
Bryan: And I think this record as well, has obviously got that three people in a room vibe. You know, there’s a real sense of just feeling, it’s all about the feel. I think that’s the thing that runs through the record. Even though we probably all express ourselves in different ways musically occasionally, we know when something feels good as three people. I think it’s really captured that side of the band. Anybody who’s seen us live, this record more than any other probably, captures what we do when we tour and when we play live shows.
TDR: What’s your preference between festival performing and smaller, more intimate venues?
Bryan: I like both, I don’t think there’s any difference. I think you can create intimacy and a conversation in a field as big as this, or the same in a tiny, kind of sweaty basement club somewhere. I think we’ve always said that the main thing for us is about the audience not just being there physically, being there in terms of ready to go through a lot of different emotions. It’s not just all fun, there’s a lot of songs that are evocative, they’re emotional. It’s being there for the full range of the band that we are. We do have fans like that. They’re not there just to see one song, and we’ve got a big back catalog, so it’s about keeping that exciting and dynamic.
Matthew Thomas: I concur.
TDR: How do you go about winning over a festival crowd that may not have heard you before?
Matthew Thomas: We generally don’t have to do anything, they love us, you know.
Bryan: He walks onstage with a shirt like that.
Thomas: That’s it, and they’re hypnotized. This is Voodoo Fest after all.
TDR: So you guys have a really live feel to your recorded music. Is that instrumentation something you always want to incorporate or will you ever venture away from it?
Dafydd: I think it’s kind of all-encompassing. It’s not just the live feel, for us everything is important. All great artists work on record as well as live. If it’s something to be talked about that the live thing is all of a sudden different, or that it sounds a bit different than the record, then that just seems bizarre to us. All you can do is give everything to each discipline, and we do.
TDR: This may be random, but you worked with artist Martin Wittfooth for the cover art of “Wolf’s Law.” What was that like, and why did you decide to have him come in and do the art?
Bryan: I think we both met each other at pinnacle points in the making of the record. He was literally just half way through an exhibition, painting for an exhibition later that year. So we went into his gallery, we saw the sort of stuff that he was painting and drawing. He was explaining the vibe and I think there was just a real kind of meeting of the minds in terms of thematically, visually. That cover is very evocative, something growing from something that’s dead, you know. We loved working with him. The artwork visuals and music, always have to be very connected to us, they have to emphasize and evoke the same thing. They have to tell the story. So it was wonderful to meet somebody who we love and we’re really fans of his work.