Riding Shotgun with Noisettes

oise is good. Loud noise made by a fierce lady-fronted trio from the British Isles is even better (because everyone knows good things come in threes). As coincidence would have it, that very sentiment can be applied to this week's guests, the Noisettes. What's it like to be in a band that's rapidly gaining popularity, you might ask? Never fear, Dan Noisette (he of the spectacular guitars) has come to enlighten one and all on the rapid rise of the three-headed force known as the Noisettes. Read on and get your fill of Noisette-ness (Handclaps! Da Vincis! Pita!).

Touring is: Disorientating at first but when you get used to it, any other way of life is alien and lonely. I try and make my room at home feel as much like a generic hotel room as possible

Our first gig was: The day after we recorded our EP, Three Moods Of The Noisettes. It wasn't set in stone that Jamie would be our drummer or that he would want to stick with us, but at the Mother Bar, in Old Street where we played our first gig to a packed upstairs bar with wonky floorboards, and where at one point, all our amps blew so that we were reduced to drums, handclaps and a cappella vocals and still the audience were howling at how natural it all felt, Noisettes were consummated, pre-nupped and trilogised for keepsies!

Our favorite venue to play is: That venue that doesn't exist yet. The Hotel Utah in San Francisco is great though!

Hygiene on a tour is: Under threat by my sweaty Jackets. Don't stand downwind from me after a gig!!

Our favorite thing about touring is: Sightseeing, free booze and fleeting encounters. There's three of us, so there has to be three things...

And the least favorite: Travel Days, P.T.I's and S.T.I's...

City with the best audiences: Leeds.

Band member most likely to disappear after a gig: Shingai- That's before AND after.

The tour bus/van smells like: Apple and Kiwi room spray, Cigarettes and Cognac.

Laundry is: a) washed regularly, b) washed irregularly, c) we go shopping a lot: B and C

What's the most unusual item on your rider? 24 pita breads with Quorn Slices.

Who controls the music in the touring vehicle? And what do you like to listen to while tooling around on tour? There is never music on in our van, though there are endless DVDs. Jamie is the remote hog.

What's your favorite new watering hole that you've found while on tour? And/or the best place to cure late night cravings? The Hotel Utah in San Francisco on 4th and Bryant is the best watering hole, although the Old Duke in Bristol is JUST as good and Big Nicks on 78th and Broadway in NYC is the best food craving cure-all.

Most amusing memory from your current or most recent tour? Wrestling with the Foals to prevent the sun from going down on our grievances.

Favorite tour activity (other than the gigs themselves): Driving Range Golf. Hitting balls really hard.

What bands have you most enjoyed touring with? And what band/s, past or present, would the Noisettes most like to tour with? Bloc Party, TV on the Radio, Slow Club and Mayor McCa. Would love to tour with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Gogol Bordello, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and The Minutemen.

Please name the city you wouldn't ever play in again? Or if not a particular city, which venue (if any) would you not mind seeing razed to the ground? I refuse to play that game any more. None deserves that fate.

Apart from the obvious CDs, what's the merch item of yours you think people should shell out for? T-shirts but I would like to say skillets.

It's been happening to you rather a lot lately, but what did it feel like to sell out a gig for the first time? "No WAY!"

Any pre-gig (or post-gig) rituals? Pacing, Smoking, Stretching and then post-gig, staring, lying down in pools of sweat and people watching.

What do you miss the most about home when you're out on the road? A decent, homey cup of tea. I'm sorry, but in the U.S, they don't make the water hot enough (It has to BOIL or the tea doesn't infuse but maybe there are lots of customers that are lawsuit-happy and that's why...or maybe not!) and in Continental Europe, the tea bags are weak and in Japan, the tea is GREEN!

Have you been to the top of the Washington Monument? No, but when we are out there, you will take us won't you?

What would you like people to be saying about the Noisettes in 50 years? Don't ask me to articulate the full extent of my ego when properly inflated, it's not pretty- I don't want people to be saying anything really. PERIOD.

If we weren't in the Noisettes, we'd be: in the Polyphonic Spree.

Please recite a line of poetry: In Amongst the silver Birches, Winding ways of tarmac wander And the signs to bussock bottom, Tussock wood and Windy Break, Gabled Lodges, Tile hung churches, Catch the lights of our Lagonda as we drive to Wendy's party, Lemon Curd and Christmas Cake.

And finally, it's BigYawn's round. What's your poison? Three Da Vinci's please. Jamie the drummer was allowed by Damien at The Hotel Utah to serve drinks for the night and he made up a cocktail called the Da Vinci. It might explain why one of my hands is now smaller than the other.

More Noisettes can be had here at www.thenoisettes.com, or www.myspace.com/noisettesuk.

© 2007 BigYawn, all rights reserved