Dutch Uncles

By Charlotte Stones

Chatting all things Derbyshire, festival essentials and French bar bust-ups, Dutch Uncles provided a much welcomed sense of cheeriness despite the low temperatures outside. We caught up with lead singer Duncan (‘looks like a butterfly, dances like an angel’) and guitarist Robin ahead of their performance at this year’s Y-Not festival.

So how are you feeling about playing at Y Not today?

D: Really good! Yeah, I remember hearing about it last year, actually a few years ago!

Have you ever been?

R: Nope, Futureheads played last year didn’t they?!

D: And Dananananaykroyd!

R: We knew them and we knew they were playing here, so yeah we’d heard of it!

D: But, yeah it’s great being here!

Have you ever been to Derbyshire before?

D: Yeah we live in Marple which is pretty close, near Manchester too. Our violinist and backing singer also lives in Matlock, so we’ve been a few times before – we feel local!

Did you like Matlock?

D: Yeah it’s good!

R: I like Matlock, Matlock bath – great place!

D: Good shops and vintage shops. When I say vintage, I mean antique. I mean come on, it is Matlock after all!

Are there any other bands you’d like to see today?

D: We did want to see Egyptian Hip Hop, but they pulled out! We were going to merge sets together half way through and create this really weird interesting sound, would’ve been awesome! Don’t know how the crowd would feel, but shame that can’t happen now!

Is there a bit of a Manchester band rivalry between you? Who would win in a fight if there was a Y-Not showdown?

D: Well, we would of course!! Anyway, there’s more of us! We’ve got an advantage of 2 probably, and really, a few of them could do with a meal! We always joke with them about it. We always tell Louis (from Egyptian Hip Hop) we’ll give him a hot bath…

R: And a fish supper!

D: Yeah! A hot bath and a good fish supper!

R: He always looks like he needs some major TLC.

For people who don’t know just how eclectic your style is, how would you describe it in as few words as possible?

R: That’s really difficult, (to D) what’s your latest one that you say?

D: My pitch for it at the moment is ADD indie because it never really stays on one rhythm or one melody for too long. It’s always moving on quite quick and I think the way that we write the music is not so much, I don’t know, it’s kind’ve like anything could happen in a track! It’s not very predictable, which doesn’t always work in our favour, but we’re getting better at it!

What made you decide to be in a band? Did any of you have any interesting back up careers if it didn’t work out?

R: Not really. We’ve been doing it for so long now, we’ve just always known.

D: The bands always been going on just enough to make us feel like it’s worth carrying on. Even when it’s dark, you know, even when it’s looking like we didn’t have any friends or fans and no one turned up to our gigs.

Where was the worst gig you’ve played?

D: Probably Cardiff. We’d never played there before and it just went really badly, the crowd were really awkward and yeah it was just so bad.

Where did the name dutch uncles come from?

D: It’s from a book that my dad had in his bookshelf, back when we were using it as a free house all the time. Well, it’s a play really.

R: (to D) Have you read it?

D: No haha. I don’t think it’s very good, just looked good on the front cover! We didn’t think about the meaning before, just put an ‘s’ on the end. Then when we actually looked at the meaning of it, it worked out quite well, it means ‘negatively honest people’ which in a way is the truth.

Deep!

D: Haha very!

Have you got any musical guilty pleasures you’d like to admit to?

D: Well ever since Fleetwood Mac has become not a guilty pleasure, I’d say mine is probably early Missy Elliot stuff. She’s awesome. There’s a track called ‘Super Duper Fly’ and her earlier stuff is really good and really underrated but her style of, the way she rhymes so slowly, it’s really weird, I like it!

R: I like some classical stuff.

D: You have the most boring iTunes ever… I say boring, I mean different.

R: Very different. I mean, come on, there is Stravinsky AND The Strokes!

What’s your essential item at a festival?

R: As long as we’ve got nice beer, or just beer full stop.

D: I think, I mean latitude was a bit messy for us, we played Friday and left Saturday morning when it was absolutely torrential rain, so I’d say umbrella! Or moisturiser. You gotta have the cream if you’re camping.

Finally, have you had any embarrassing tour moments you’d like to share?

R: Errrrm far too many! Difficult! We played a festival in the south of France, and there was an after show party in this nice French bar. We got a bit tanked up, proper Brits abroad, Andy (drummer) and Sped (guitarist) started having a bit of a bust up in the bar…

D: It was about Man City, cos Man City and Man United were playing!

R: We got taken back to our hotel by a chauffeur and the guitarist vomited all over him. Awkward!!

Thank you! Hope your set goes well!

D: No, thank you! This has been fun.

R: It has indeed, cheers!