Meet: DMAs at Leeds Festival

BM

So have you just got to the festival?

DMAs

We arrived last night from London on the tour bus and then just woke up here nice and early, it’s a beautiful morning.

BM

Have you had a chance to have a look around the festival or anything?

DMAs

Yeah yeah we have!

BM

So have you been taking it in and things like that?

DMAs

Yeah, we walked around before it had opened, just sort of stretch our legs. I went to see Grace. She’s umm.. Mallrat, she’s a singer from Australia. Yeah, she’s great, she’s just released an album and you know, when you go see someone and they play the song I want to see, that happened. I hate it when you go and see an artist and you’re like, argh I wish you’d played that one.

BM

Yeah. That’s always like the highlight, isn’t it? When you want to go see someone!

So obviously you’ve not played yet. You’ve got the mid afternoon slot and Reading and Leeds. We’ve got a little bit of rivalry between Leeds and Reading… Like an unwritten rivalry. Obviously you’ve played the UK before. How do you find the difference between the Northern and the Southern crowds?

DMAs

Okay, so we were embraced by the north early on, so we used to focus on the north. When we sold out Ally Pally in London, that was a huge shock to me because I didn’t think that South would ever sort of call us their own. We were kind of like Northern kind of band, Tommy’s got Liverpool ties, we first toured with the Courteeners when we first came here so that kind of pigeonhole us a bit, but we’ve kind of branched out and I’m super happy because of that. The crowds are different. But you know what? The north are troublemakers, that’s the difference. They throw stuff.

BM

Yeah and it’s expensive for a beer as well if throw that!

DMAs

Is it?

BM

Yeah.

DMAs

Every time I see someone throw a beer in a mosh pit, having a beer is like treasured so why would you throw it?! You know what I mean? Like you gotta line up again!

BM

Unless it’s not beer…

DMAs

Well, okay, so in Glasgow there’s a gig slogan that’s like, “if you get hit by a pint and it’s cold, you’re good” and when I first heard that, I was shocked.

BM

So you’ve got the tour coming up for the end of the year and you’ve got your loyal fans coming to your gigs and you’ve sold quite a lot of tickets for those so far. In terms of the set list for today, you’ve got obviously a shorter time so do you put more of the radio friendly hits on the festival set? Like are we going to get the Believe cover?

DMAs

Yes! We didn’t do that for a long time just because Tommy could never remember the lyrics. So we didn’t play it for years after we did it and then I remember we were doing a show at a festival and some girl had passed away. She was quite young, and her friends messaged us saying that was her favourite song. Can you play it? We’re all going to be there, it will be a moment. So we said of course we would play it. And that was a really beautiful moment for us and we thought, this is really resonating with people. So after that day, we actually do play it quite a bit now. And for years it wasn’t in our set that kind of opened our eyes and we were like, maybe we should play it cos obviously people like it, so we play it all the time now. And Tommy has learned the lyrics.

I mean that always helps. I think the crowd will probably know them though. You know what?

DMAs

You know what? Maybe he hasn’t. I honestly think maybe he hasn’t. I think he has them printed out. He was reading them off piece of paper in the original video.

BM

So I listened to your new track I Don’t Need To Hide. I love it, it’s massive.

DMAs

Oh, yeah, for sure?

BM

We’re talking, it is quality.

DMAs

Really you think so?

BM

It’s not only sounds huge. Like, the actual song just sounds massive. But you translated that into the video as well, it was quite trippy and it looked like good vibes in the video. I really liked it.

DMAs

Do you know what? I don’t think I’ve seen it

BM

It’s really good. You’re in it, give it a watch! But yeah it’s massive. How do you translate that, then, onto stage? How do you convert those really good vibes onto the stage?

DMAs

We have a quite big lighting scene.

So I met a bunch of them last night at the rehearsal and we’re just putting on a really big live show, which is hard to do in the afternoon.

BM

It is, because it’s bright today.

DMAs

It is bright today. So we’ll see how well that goes. But I don’t know, I saw the screens, they’re quite large.

BM

Have you ever done this festival before? This isn’t your first time here is it? The set up is completely different. Like, having the two main stages is quite different.

DMAs

I can’t say I remember too much.

BM

So it used to be like the big main stage and then, like, tents.

DMAs

Yeah.

BM

So have you done the main stage so far or has it always just been like the tents?

DMAs

Yeah, I might have done it early on, like opened up the main stage. I prefer playing in tents sometimes.

BM

Do you get that sort of more like intimate vibe from it and things like that?

DMAs

Yeah, I think sound travels better, more intimate and like the lights look better during the day. If it’s raining right and you’re on early, people come to the tent. It’s almost like it could be a good idea to do like a rain dance before you play.

BM

We don’t want rain at Leeds fest. This is going to be the first year without rain in a long time if it stays nice fingers crossed! So, yeah, I’ll let you go because obviously you want to get back out to the festival. What other bands are you looking forward to catching up with? Because you’ve got obviously you’ve got today and then it’s Sunday, isn’t it?

DMAs

I was really hoping to see Rage Against The Machine but I like the 1975, I’m a huge Charli XCX fan, Denzel Curry there’s a few other people Run The Jewels are good!