Interview with KAWALA
“In 5 years time, I’d love to be able to play on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury”
In the run up to the release of their lockdown-spawned debut album Better With You, North-London based band KAWALA embarked on a whistlestop tour of the UK, playing intimate, unplugged gigs at 9 record stores across the country across only 1 week.
On the 5th March, the day after the album officially dropped, I was lucky enough to sit down and talk with the band’s founding members, Daniel McCarthy and Jim Higson, at Beyond Vinyl in Newcastle as their album played in the background, and ask them about the album, their best moments with the band so far, and what they want to do next!
This was my first gig experience since COVID, I really love intimate, unplugged sets like that- it was awesome!
DANIEL: Your first gig was watching us, that’s horrible! I love playing like this cos it’s kind of like the origins of how we started so going back to this is always quite fun, we like having the chance to do that. Having the balance of that alongside full scale tour stuff is good fun.
Talking about your origins, I was really interested in your name and how it became KAWALA, so how did you choose that name?
JIM: Well Daniel saw it written down somewhere, unspecified place, and thought- well that’s a cool name for a band.
DANIEL: It was Jim’s gamertag on Call of Duty, and he spelled it thinking that’s how you spell the animal.
JIM: He came up and was like ‘woah, yeh Kawala, that’s a great name for a band, like Koala spelt wrong!’ And I remember thinking ‘what do you mean spelt wrong?’ And that’s pretty much when I realised I was very dyslexic.
DANIEL: We had about 2 or 3 days before our first ever gig and in the process of that we needed a name desperately and I saw it written down and thought- let’s give that a go, see how long it lasts; Jim was still bewildered cos he thought it was spelt right and ‘why would we wanna call it after an animal?’ And however many years later…
JIM: Here we are! Can’t change it anymore, too late now!
Obviously you’ve played festivals and gigs, so which one do you prefer performing at?
JIM: Festivals if the sun is shining.
DANIEL: Oooo! That’s a great question because I don’t know the answer.
JIM: I love gigs, I love intimate shows like this where I don’t have to have a microphone or anything, completely unplugged. I feel like for me, maybe it’s the best way I can enjoy our own music. But then nothing beats the feeling of playing at a festival when the sun is shining and you’ve got thousands of people singing back your own words. So it’s a hard choice!
DANIEL: You know what, I’ve had some of my best gig experiences at festivals. I think there’s a lack of pressure with a festival cos you’re turning up and you know you haven’t gotta sell the tickets, you haven’t gotta get people through the door…
JIM: Everyone’s off their face!
DANIEL: Yeh everyone’s drunk, but I think there’s a dynamic at a gig where they’re already onside. And there’s no better feeling than when everyone’s singing the words and that is more present at your own show. So basically what I’ve just done there is not answer the question even at all!
What’s been your favourite festival or gig performance?
JIM: I think Latitude. It was the first festival we played, the first show we played coming back after the pandemic, we played on the main stage at the weekend at like 3 PM and it was just electric.
DANIEL: It was the best moment ever. It was the euphoria of being back mixed with the euphoria of playing on a mainstage at a festival , it was the perfect balance of everyone being so up for it in the crowd. We were playing songs like Ticket to Ride that we’d never played in front of people before, suddenly we’re playing it in front of people and there’s like 10000 people singing it and you’re like ‘What? How do you even know this song?’ So a balance of that and then also gotta say- special mention for opening Reading. We played on the mainstage of Reading and we opened the whole festival and that was so surreal. That was very just like: what is going on. Also Barn on the Farm, I’m just gonna keep going!
What was it like when you found out Ticket to Ride was gonna be on FIFA?
DANIEL: Scenes.
JIM: It’s a weird thing cos it was the first time that some of my family and my friends took our careers seriously.
DANIEL: It was mad, it was so funny. You’re there grafting away, like we’re so fortunate we’ve done some insane stuff- things like opening Reading, but they still won’t take us seriously! You get on FIFA then suddenly you’re getting texts like ‘Oh what you’re really taking this music thing seriously now?’ Being like ‘Ah well, we’ve been at it for years but okay.’ Yeh it was iconic- what a moment! You get on the game that like, the FIFA soundtracks are so famously iconic they’re just what you grew up on…
JIM: Nostalgia.
DANIEL: Yeh and to think that our song, and also it seemed to have connected to the people on FIFA and the fact that it’s stuck with people and has been a big part of people’s history… I was in a shop and it was on and it was very surreal anyway. Then these two little kids ran up and were like ‘It’s the FIFA song!!!’ And I was thinking, kinda pointing at myself (laughs). But it’s just crazy, thinking that we… I think being on FIFA is lowkey one of the best things for natural reach ever and to connect with people.
JIM: It can go either way, it can become the one that you wanna skip because it’s really annoying, but fortunately I don’t think that’s happened with Ticket to Ride.
Your sound is very unique, I struggle to pin it to a single genre and there’s no one band who you can obviously say are like KAWALA, so who is your biggest inspiration?
JIM: I guess in the same way it’s hard to pinpoint what our genre is, I’d say we gather our inspiration from loads of different places.
DANIEL: Yeh it’s hard to pinpoint one real out and out inspo, but I think if we had to come up with one it would probably be Bombay Bicycle Club cos they’re North London as well, they’re so iconic. They set a precedent for a sound that just changed the whole indie scene. We’ve tried to take elements of them and a load of other stuff as well, but they were definitely in terms of what we looked up to, less than inspo, they were the forefront of what we aimed for. We were like ‘We would like to be the next band from North London, like Bombay Bicycle Club, that everyone could kinda go, ‘Oh well my brother played for a bit with them and they did that’ Do you know what I mean? I think we looked up to them more than anyone else.
Desert Island Disc, one song for eternity, what would you listen to?
JIM: Mighty River by Kawala (laughing)
DANIEL: I think I’d go insane! They’d use that as like torture methods! (they both begin singing guitar part)- Never resolves, just like that for the whole song!
JIM: I dunno, oh gosh, my favourite song, maybe, of all time errrrr…
DANIEL: I’m gonna go Marquee Moon- Television. The best thing about it is it’s about 10 minutes long, it’s absolutely brilliant and it’s absolutely genius but it changes so much that you wouldn’t get bored.
JIM: Can I go Nils Lofgren- You off his live acoustic album. Specifically that version.
DANIEL: That’s quite classy answers. In my head I was just there going ‘Don’t say Jason Derulo…’ (laughs)
When you began, did you have one specific goal in mind that you wanted to achieve, and have you?
JIM: Kind of yeah, and we’ve already achieved it so we’re kind of at a loss at the moment. We grew up equidistant to a venue called Kentish Town Forum in North London, just up from Camden and when we were 16 that was, if you’re playing there you’re pretty much the most famous person to ever live. That was like the pinnacle of success for us like ‘Oh my god, one day that would be the dream.’ And we had the pleasure of playing there, a sold out show in December.
DANIEL: It was weird, very surreal. What we’ve found is that as we go the goals adapt and change over time. There’s little things we had when we started- the first thing we ever wanted to do was get on Mahogany Sessions, which is this acoustic youtube channel and that’s all we wanted!
JIM: That’s where we had our first break- getting a Mahogany session. Funny thing about that was that we set up an email account called ‘kawalaofficial’, there was no other Kawala though! And we never looked at it cos we only had 3 songs and didn’t realise anyone would email us. Mahogany had emailed us and we literally found it 6 months later and it was them asking ‘Do you wanna do a session?’ We messaged them back like ‘Is it too late?!’
DANIEL: That is wild when we think about it, and we have a chance to reflect on it. We wanted to get on Mahogany and we got on Mahogany, we wanted to play Kentish Town Forum and we did that as well.
JIM: We need to start setting ourselves some goals! We’re doing ‘em!
DANIEL: Takes a while…
JIM: Alright goal, 10 years time from now. DANIEL: 10 years time right now? I would like to do a photo like East17. JIM: We could do that tomorrow. DANIEL: I’d like a christmas song. I want to be the new East17!
JIM: No I don’t want that to be our goal! In 5 years time, I’d love to be able to play on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.
DANIEL: I’m gonna go 3 years, no I’m gonna go 2 years. Maybe 3 years time. Yes, 3 years time.
Massive thanks to Daniel and Jim for taking the time to talk to me and I’m extremely excited to see what they do next, after, in their words, a ‘mahoosive UK tour in April’ to properly showcase the album in all its musical glory!
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