I caught up with Daniel and Jim from KAWALA ahead of their set at this year’s Barn On The Farm Festival in Gloucester. We talked everything: from an exclusive of the name of their next single, to writing music, touring with George Ezra and Koala’s/Kawala’s.

How did you form?

J: Once upon a time…

D: It was when we were both about 19, and we realised we both wanted to do music so we got chatting and jamming, and it started to come together and work okay, and here we are

J: Pretty natural

Who did you listen to growing up and inspired you to get into music?

D: All sorts really

J: One of the most difficult questions!

D: I think its one of those things where I don’t think there was ever just one genre that I used to listen to. I remember growing up I used to always listen to endless sessions of like old bands. I grew up on a lot of old music but then obviously listened to everything – I’ve never been metal fan, apart from that I listened to a lot.

In terms of what got us into music I don’t know, all sorts.

 

Where did the name come from?

D: Now thats a funny one

J: It pretty much comes down to my inability to spell! Koala. I mean, I’d like to just leave it at that haha

D: Nah the story was we were at uni and living in halls (we were only there for a year). I remember going down to his room to try and get him to rehearse because we had our first gig – didn’t have a name. Anyway I went down to his room and walked in because it was open, and he was there playing some computer game, and like his name on the screen was Kawala something, and he’d spelt it wrong. I thought I quite like that you know.

What’s funny though, is we once had a meeting really early on with this PR guy, and the first thing he did when he sat down he went ‘first off what a sh*t name’ haha

J: He’s not wrong, but you know we’re stuck with it now so…

D: It’s too late to change it!

Have you played BOTF before?

D: No – quickly for the camera this is water in a can and not beer at 10am! No never first time.

J: No not before

D: It should be good, it’s a nice early set. I think there might be some sore heads in the crowd, but yeah it should be fun. It seems like a nice chilled festival.

J: Yeah absolutely, people are gonna listen which is always a bonus haha

If you could collaborate with anyone on this years BOTF lineup who would it be?

J: Oh good question!

D: That’s actually really tough, maybe Maggie Rogers that would be quite fun. Japanese House are incredible. We’ve actually got a few pals playing this festival so its worked out quite well – quite a lot of bands we’ve done stuff with before so Orla Gartland, Zak Abel etc.

Lewis Capaldi as well we could do a fun little tune with-

J: What a dude!

D: We’re on the same label as him, and basically every meeting they just go ‘you know Lewis was doing this not that long ago’ – forever in his shadow. What a man, what a hilarious guy – did you see his Glastonbury set? That was one of the best things I’ve ever seen.

He’s the basis of every PR/social media person’s dream – the London Tube campaign and the toilet plunger video, I remember crying with laughter watching it!

What can people expect from your set?

J: Ups and downs, little bit of everything.

D: By ups and downs you mean good songs and bad songs (haha). We’ve got the stripped stuff, more chilled stuff like how it was when we first started writing, and then bigger dance tunes that come to life when you put a band behind it.

J: We’ll try get people moving at 12pm.

How’s it been on the road with George Ezra?

J: It’s been a dream

D: Oh pretty chill… not a big deal you know what I mean. My mate George. Actually we did a gig with him in Germany the other week and I said on stage ‘George is my friend now’ in front of everyone and he could hear me – he wouldn’t look at me after haha.

J: He’s such a sweet man

D: His band as well are so nice, we did some shows with them and The Vaccines and it we just got on really well with them – had a five a side football match against them. But yeah it was a crazy experience, almost like surreally unnerve-wracking though, did you not find that?

J: You feel slightly more disengaged from the crowd when there’s such a large audience of like 5000 people than 40 people in a pub you know.

D: It’s a lot easier because you’re not questioning your performance in a way because you know when you’re in a small venue you can see the yawns, you can see people checking their phone. But when you’re looking out on a massive crowd you don’t see that, I think the biggest one was 25,000, obviously we didn’t have that many people because we were first on so it was maybe around 15,000 people there, and I don’t think any of us felt the nerves which I was really surprised about. But we have been gigging a lot recently so maybe it was that.

J: It’s been a great experience for us.

D: It’s been incredible, and then being able to go back to Ireland for our own shows in October off the back of that – I think the Dublin show sold out in like a day. That’s insane, I mean we have no connection to Dublin apart from performing.

Do you write all your own music?

J: The lyrics definitely come last! We basically sing noises until the right moment

D: I’ll come up with a guitar part, and then we come together to make noises to find the melodies and the harmonies, and then the lyrics come and fit around that

J: We’ll have a near-perfect finished song, with no lyrics and we’re just making noises. We pencil in what it sounds like it should be

D: You get moments of inspiration – I always find I get really inspired while we’re recording another song. Honestly I’ve been writing so many guitar parts at the moment when I’m just in the booth and we’re about to record my guitar part, and I just start a new one.

But yeah you do also get inspired by places and themes, and certain settings. But I struggle to work at home because there’s so many distractions – we’ll start writing a song together, next thing you know you’re like ‘did you see that Jools Holland last night?’ or ‘want to get some lunch now?!’.

What else have you got lined up for 2019?

J: Well we’ve got our tour in October, which is going to be our longest tour that we’ve ever done. Two weeks-

D: Longer than two weeks!

J: Oh my God! So really looking forward to that…

D: But then we’re doing a lot of recording, our single’s coming out real soon.

What’s it called?

D: Are we allowed to say?

J: Yeah…

D: It’s called Play It Right. That’s an exclusive, so be ready for that.

Will there be an album?

D: There will be, we’ll probably work towards one more EP, just to make sure that when we actually make an album it’s the best album we can actually make, and reach as many people as we possibly can. Hopefully another tour support as well, because that is the best way to gain genuine fans. On Spotify you can get a millions of streams but that doesn’t add to seats at gigs.

Do you like being on the road together?

D: Yeah!

J: Can’t stand him!

D: Nah it’s alright! There’s obviously five of us when we go away, but we’re all friends. It could be so much worse. Probably the only thing that really gets to you is Dan (who plays electric guitar) whistles constantly.

J: He’s only got one volume as well which is piercingly loud.

D: You’ll be there relaxing and he’ll be there like *whistles*. If you weren’t aware of it then it’d be fine, but when you’ve got a 13 hour drive ahead of you…

KAWALA’s single Play It Right will be out very soon… and make sure to catch them on their UK/Ireland tour in October!