Interview with Pog

I catch up with founding member Paul ahead of nu-folk quartet Pog's set at Big Session festival...

Hey, are you looking forward to playing at Big Session this weekend?

Certainly are - there's loads of festivals I keep meaning to go to every year (including Big Sessions) but never get round to it, either owing to poverty or laziness, so playing some of them is a really good way of getting there on a "two birds with one stone" basis. Also the nice thing about playing festivals is all the familiar faces you don't expect to see. Particularly looking forward to seeing Chumbawamba again, and Kerry and Wob are setting off immediately for The Proclaimers.

Tell us a bit about how the band formed – it's been steadily gaining members from various other musical outlets since the beginning of the decade right?

Well Pog started off being just me, back in 2000. I never wanted to go under my own name when I played because I liked the idea of it being able to expand into a band without having to resort to names such as "The Paul Stapleton Experience" or "The Paul Stapleton Big Beat Bonanza". It operated as a duo for a couple of years, then in 2006 doubled in size to what it is now, which is a lovely line-up and lots of fun.

Do you think that your participation in side projects and having your own solo work on the side helps you all to contribute fresh and different ideas to the band?

Wob has a very good ear for structure, and as I tend to throw everything in from the outset, it acts as a handy countermeasure. Whole verses and passages get ripped to pieces in front of my eyes, but it always turns out to be for the best, irritatingly. Kerry and Deacon also have a lot of background in playing classical pieces, which surfaces here and there. Listening to the two of them noodling together in rehearsals is pretty splendid.

Now I need to ask, and I'm sure you get asked about it quite a lot... but where did the name come from?

I really don't remember. It was sort of a short-lived nickname, and I remember it being a toss-up between Pog and Stickboy. Now I'm wondering if we made the right choice - now the internet is such a defined starting point for finding bands by their name, and Pog isn't the easiest to track down. We have talked about changing it, but I think a better idea would be to make POG an acronym and dream up something to fit it. So any suggestions...

You've been described as an electro-punk-folk-indie hybrid... does that sound about right? If you could describe your sound in three words what would they be?

The electro bit is a little outdated; it comes from when we used to have a drum machine in the lineup. The rest is on the money though - there's bits of all the stuff we like in there; tons of twee indie (too much listening to Sarah Records), a dash of classical, some gypsy punk which has come pretty much straight from our Tiger Lillies obsession, and an underlying punk-folk foundation. It's always really hard to describe your own band without sounding like a blowhard - three words though... Melodic, shambolic, danceable. Someone once said we sound like The Violent Femmes playing Belle and Sebastian songs, which I like a lot.

Aside from the music do any of you have any other creative talents?

Deacon is a tattooist, Wob maintains and restores vintage bikes, and I'm a cartoonist. And all four of us work as carers!

So after Big Session (which I'm sure you'll love playing, it's a great little festival) what's the plan for the summer? I hear you're possibly playing Latitude?

There's a few more festivals to round the Summer off, then Kerry and Wob are having a baby, so it'll be a probable quiet Winter. Latitude is exciting though - Robin Ince asked us to play his Book Club stage after we played together in Brighton last year. It's a great festival that one.

Tell us a bit about your latest record, "End of Season"... why should people go out and buy it?

Because I need to clear my massive debts! Also, it's a nice album that we're all chuffed with. The handful of reviews we've had for it have been really favourable, and my mum thinks it's our best one yet. In fact, you don't even have to buy it - you can download it (along with some of our other albums) from www.corporaterecords.co.uk/artists/Pog - the great thing with that is that you can decide how much you want to pay for the album, and even better is that you don't have to pay anything if you don't want to! I probably shouldn't champion anything that brings about the demise of the compact disc, but it's a great website. Otherwise you can buy the real thing via our own website (www.pogband.co.uk)

And finally, why should people come catch your session on the Sunday of Big Session?

Because it's right up Big Session's street! Fast and melodic folk punk with lots of harmonies, and even when we get it wrong, we make sure we have a smile on our faces!

http://www.myspace.com/pogwash

Special thanks to Gail Cooke

By Rosanna Pound-Woods