Ant: Hi Paul.

Paul: Hi.

Ant: How you doing?

Paul: Yeah, good thanks, how are you?

Ant: Oh, we're great. I'm here with my friend Adam.

Adam: Hello.

Paul: Hello, Adam.

Ant: Well, we wanted to say, well, sorry we're setting up a camera so we can record this.

Adam: That's how nerdy we are.

Paul: A camera?

Ant: Well, we didn't have an audio recording device to transcribe later. Anyway, congratulations on the new album... actually, the US release of your album.

Paul: Thank you very much. Of course, yeah yeah. It's funny calling it "new."

Ant: Yeah, it's been out for, what, 8 months now?

Paul: Yeah, it came out in June, so something like that.

Ant: You might have heard of me and Adam--we're kind of famous.

Adam: Mm-hmm.

Paul: Okay. [puzzled]

Ant: We were in a band called Summons of the Squire.

Paul: Right, good name...

Ant: Degrunder Funk, ever heard of them?

Paul: Uh, No, I'm afraid I haven't.

Awkwardness...

Ant: Oh, that's too bad.

Paul: Oh, I'm sorry.

Ant: Don't worry about it. [Feeling like an idiot] Anyway, we wanted to ask some non-generic The Feeling questions

Paul: Okay, that sounds good.

Ant: All right. So, what do you think of the current state of the music industry?

Paul: It's lovely. We're in it. [Laughter]

Paul: It's good. It's a very exciting time with it being how it is with the internet driving so much of it. It's easy to discover new talent and I think it's changing, hugely, this year from last year and it will be exciting to see how it is next year. It's interesting how the record companies are just trying to keep up with it at the moment. Yeah, it's very good and it's great to be a part of it.

Adam: How has the internet specifically affected your band and your music?

Paul: In terms of sales I suppose that the charts in the UK have only just sort of begun to mimic America in as far as basing things on downloads, as much, if not solely, and we saw Gnarls Barkley at the end of last year getting to #1 on downloads alone, which no one had ever done before. So, that's interesting. And they're phasing out the idea of a hard-copy single here, so you can just release your music into the ether onto the internet. You can write a song that'll get featured in a film and then end up in the top 10 since people will go out and download it. But, for us, the main thing is to have a myspace page and have direct contact with our fans, which is difficult otherwise, because it used to be quite time consuming with the pen and paper. It's great to be able to get on the internet and keep up with myspace messages.

Ant: So, you actually communicate with your fans over myspace? It's not some guy representing you?

Paul: Yeah, it's hard, but it's possible. When we're away on tour, timewise we're really busy and it's difficult to do it. Generally speaking, though, we can get an hour and sit down to reply to things and tell people to stop being abusive on our myspace page. [Laughter]

Adam: What other things do you do on tour?

Paul: It kinda varies. All of us have different things we get up to, though today we had a great day going go-karting with The Fray, which was a lot of fun. This place called Daytona Racing in Manchester, of all places. Yeah, so we went out and we're all feeling a little hung over, we must admit, and had a great go-karting session.

Ant: You guys suddenly became famous out of nowhere. Now you're the biggest band on the radio in the UK. Can you tell us more how you went from being a cover band to a top 10 band on the radio?

Paul: Yeah, I suppose the main thing about it is that it was two bands that contained the same people and they weren't directly connected. Going to the Alps was a way of earning money, which we did. It was the first time that we got together and played together as a five-piece band. It was a way to get us together and cement us together musically and as friends at the time. It wasn't until a couple of years after we got back from the Alps that Dan said, "I've been writing some songs." He'd been writing songs for the last 10 years previous to that and we wanted us to help him record them. So, he goes out and finds a shed at the bottom of someone's garden that we didn't have to pay for because we hadn't any money and we recorded these tunes. So, it seemed natural to get the band together since we knew each other so well and we were such close friends. We made this music which we considered to be radio music, which wasn't something we set out to achieve--it was just something that was obvious to us. Initially, the record companies didn't quite understand what we were trying to do. We just wanted to make music for the radio. That's just what we naturally do and we wanted to do the first thing that came to us. And they said, "Well, what do we do with it?" We said, "Well, put it on the radio. Just put it on the radio and people will buy it." They said, "Oh, that sounds too easy. I wish you could think of more complicated things to do with it." But, in the end, they figured out and came around to our way of thinking. Interestingly, we did become the most-played band on the rdaio in the UK last year. We were proved right and we were very happy about that.

Ant: What do you think is going to happen in the US? Do you have a similar plan of attack?

Paul: It's much the same thing with the power of radio. Certainly with the big radio stations in America. One of te best ways, since it's such a huge place, is using the radio. It also seems evident these days that if you can get one of your songs on one of the big TV shows, Grey's Anatomy or The OC, that can also help. But, that's a blanket global way of doing the whole country. Other than that, we're going to tour around and do as many shows as we can fit in. We'll try to get to the smaller radio stations in each state and meet some people and play some tunes.

Adam: Before you guys made it to where you can tour full-time, what'd you do for full-time jobs?

Paul: Well, this is the thing: none of us are good at anything else. There weren't many options for us to do. I think that French Alps thing was our "day job" way of earning money. So, we were job-ing musicians in various different bands and different types of music just to pay the rent. And that was the thing about doing The Feeling stuff because when record companies became interested with us, we all had to give up working on other recording projects for 6 months. We had to concentrate on our music and we realized that if we didn't give ourselves to that in that way, it would never happen because it needed our time and energy to push our career. So, we all saved up enough money to not work for 6 months and scrape by. Then we went for it and hoped it worked out. Otherwise, we had to go back and do whatever paid the rent.

Ant: You guys lived the dream band story. Being able to work your butt off for your music, save money, then make it. It's great.

Paul: Yeah, we feel very lucky that we were able to do that. It's quite funny as bunches of people who look at their wedding tapes, they see, "Oh, The Feeling played at our wedding!" I like to think of how they feel when they see that.

Ant: We have some not-so-serious questions for you.

Paul: Great. Okay.

Ant: Cottage cheese, yea or nay?

Paul: Yea, definitely yea. It's kinda ploppy, soggy, which is nice. And mealy [?], which is also good. So, I'm definitely in the "yea" camp.

Ant: Mullets?

Paul: Mullets! Excellent, brilliant. Tells you a lot about a person immediately by their haircut and it's similar to other haircuts to tell a lunatic or crazed person. Someone with a mullet is quite clearly giving themselves away. So, that's pretty cool.

Ant: My wife and I are pregnant and deciding between two names, Gabriel and Grant. Which do we go with?

Paul: Gabriel and Grant? I'm trying to think of a rock star with Grant... Eddie Grant, no, that's no good. Peter Gabriel is brilliant, so that's good. And there's a holy connection in there, which is always good.

Adam: Do you have a favorite T-shirt?

Paul: Not especially. We tend to be more of a gentleman's outfitted band. Shirt and trousers, belt and shoes.

Ant: What's the best/worst joke you can think of off the top of your head?

Paul: Oh, we really like jokes. I can think of one... this is a good one and one of teh band's favorites. What did the fish say when he swum into a concrete wall?

Ant: Dam?

Paul: Yes! That's wonderful.

[Laughter... though, I felt like an idiot at this point since I stole his punchline... oh well]

Ant: What's your favorite junk food on tour?

Paul: Oooh.. probbaly kettle chips. Do you have those?

Ant: Yeah

Paul: Chips, dips, and peanuts with varying sorts of roastiness, immersed in honey, all that stuff.

Adam: What's your favorite song by another band right now?

Paul: Me personally, I think it'd probably be... hmm... we're touring with The Fray at the moment, which is really great. When we knew they were coming over to support us, and we would go support them in America, we didn't know how it would go down. They hadn't actually released anything here, but their album How to Save a Life, was released a few weeks before the tour. And it turned out that it went into the UK chart at #4, so it goes very well with them. so, I'll say "How to Save a Life."

Ant: Yeah, I love that song.

Paul: They're a top band, yeah.

Ant: Have you heard any feedback from any of your influences?

Paul: Yeah, we've heard a little bit, really. It's been really amazing. In fact, last time in America, we had dinner with Richard Carpenter, who came to see us in LA, so that was an amazing experience to find out that he was a fan. In several of our interviews, we've mentioned that we love the Carpenters, but we've also mentioned that we love Metallica as much as we love the Carpenters. He couldn't quite wrap his head around that. Then he came to the gig, which was really funny, because we were talking about harmonies and stuff over dinner and the gig in general, saying, "Look, see, we are equally influenced by rocky stuff. It's a pretty loud gig." "Really? Loud?" "Yeah, it's pretty put on." Then he started to look pretty concerned. So, he turned to his wife and said, "Hmm... it's pretty loud, do I have any ear plugs?" Me and Richard could see his face, later, at the end of a song called "Helicopter" [my favorite song from the album], which goes into a bit of a Rage Against the Machine thing. It looked like he'd just gotten out of a wind tunnel. He was looking like, "Whoa there! I thought you liked our music!" We also heard from Elton John, which was stunning for us since we love Elton so much, and he just called up and said, "I really like your band. Come and meet me when you come to Vegas." So, we met with him in Vegas. It was great.

Ant: That must have been really great.

Paul: Yeah, that whole thing of playing in Vegas was such an amazing thing to do. To say, "Well, I'm off to work," and work is right there, playing in front of 5,000 people every night.