Alan Sparhawk, one of the founder members of Minnesota rock group Low, talks to Ben Gallivan ahead of their debut Cardiff gig, next week at the Tramshed.

 

Buzz: Hi Alan – whereabouts are you speaking to me from? Are you in Denmark for the Heartland festival yet [editor’s note – the interview was conducted in mid-June]?

Alan: Yeah we’re out kind of in the countryside, here in this little house in Copenhagen. The city is totally booked – all the hotels near the festival are booked, so we’re staying in this weird farmhouse but (laughs) it’s cool.

I guess you’ve just got there from playing Istanbul with PJ Harvey? How did that go?

Yeah, that was great. It was our second time in Istanbul, it was pretty cool; meeting and playing with PJ was great. We get a return performance with her in Germany next week – we’ve got a lot of connections with the guys in the band too.

You’re looking forward to touring with Sun Kil Moon and Explosions In The Sky on this leg of the tour. Do you prefer touring with bands you’re friendly with or do you like it when you end up with local supports?

A bit of a mix. I mean, it’s nice to see other bands and honestly we don’t get to do that as often as you’d think. It’s usually just us and we meet locals that’ll open for us, but yeah, you don’t really run into peers or run into bands who are also touring – even at festivals it’s very rare that there’s a place where everybody can meet up; schedules cross. But yeah, every once in a while… I was in San Francisco a month ago and was sitting with Mark [Kozelek] so it’ll be weird to run into him again so soon in a completely different environment. But yeah, we’re always up for a surprise.

You’re playing the Tramshed in Cardiff on Tue 2 Aug– will this be your first time playing in Wales?

Probably yeah! I think we’ve been down there or close by, but yeah you’re right, I think this might be our first time playing in Wales.

Ashli from Spillers Records has invited you in for a cup of tea when you’re here…

Oh wonderful, that’s good! Yeah I think I follow her on Twitter and get to hear odds and ends here and there from her so that’s nice. They get quite a few bands playing in the store there from what I hear.

You’ve got a month-long break in between the two legs of the European tour – any plans for that or are you just using it for down time?

No, we’re actually going back home; I’ve got a few things at home to do and we’re trying to put together some music for this documentary that we’ve been asked to do. So I think we’re gonna go back and then bring the kids over for the UK trip.

You said in an interview some time ago that your eldest was experimenting with music at age six. Are the kids still into their music?

Yeah! [laughs]. Our daughter Hollis was quite young and just banging around on instruments, but she’s 16 now and she’s taught herself a bunch of things on guitar and she’s starting to play the violin, plays piano – a bunch of different things, but she’s very smart and doing really well at school. We’re kind of sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to see what she ends up doing – she’s definitely smarter than any of us. We have a son as well, who’s 12 – he plays the drums and has hair that sticks up into the cosmos.

So the month off touring coming up isn’t really ‘time off’ – do you take many rest days whilst touring to check out the towns/cities? Any particular favourites?

Oh wow, there’s so many. Copenhagen’s nice, we have a lot of friends over in Amsterdam – the record label that we’ve worked with forever there, we spend time with them whilst we’re there when we’re ‘off the road’. We have good friends in Sheffield, so such as maybe people aren’t that impressed, I think it’s really, really nice and we’ve got to know it well through friends there. But yeah, there’s a lot and it’s hard to pick. We’re playing in Bergen this coming week and we were there maybe a year and a half ago and it’s just a beautiful city – interesting in many ways. It’s funny, it was a couple of months later and we were in Anchorage [Alaska] and it’s really strange how similar the two places are.

Hopefully you can add Cardiff to that list when you visit!

Yeah, yeah I’m really curious – should be interesting. We played with Super Furry Animals for a few shows years and years ago over in the States, and they were really cool. I distinctly remember playing in Portland, OR and there were a couple of guys who were part of their crew that we’ve run into numerous times over the years. But yeah, I’m looking forward to visiting and playing Cardiff.

What should we expect from the Tramshed show? Do you stick to a particular set list when touring or do you mix it up a bit?

Well, I don’t know – a lot of the songs from the new record [Ones And Sixes] we’re really happy with – they seem to go well with the way we play live so we’ll be playing a load from that. But usually on tour, in any given period we’ll have a core of songs that we really like playing or that we’re more inclined to play at that time and then we’ll change it up from night to night, mixing in different songs. Sometimes we’ll do requests, sometimes we’ll learn up a few obscure old ones.

My fingers are crossed for Two-Step [from 1999’s Secret Name].

Oh yeah, we get asked for Two-Step a lot. Well maybe you should embarrass yourself by shouting out early in the set to remind me.

 

Low, Tramshed, Cardiff, Tue 2 Aug. Tickets: £22.50. Info: 029 2023 5555 / www.tramshedcardiff.com