Music Q&A: Bandante

What informs your music and songwriting?
I’m a very restless person. I need to see and do new things all the time. Every place I go to, wherever it is in the world, I’ll go out and walk around for hours and connect with people, with life. It’s a compulsion.

How have you evolved as an artist over the years?
I’m constantly evolving, from working with people like John Squire (Stone Roses) to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds to doing my own thing with Bandante, I don’t think you ever stop. It would be pretty boring otherwise.

What are you up to at the moment artistically?
I’m working on a Bandante EP, which should be out at the end of September. We released our debut single Bang Bang in January. It’s exciting to live in an era where you can put stuff out yourself and make the music you really want to.

What’s on your rider?
A bottle of whisky.

Tell us your most embarrassing or surreal experience.
One of the most surreal experiences I had was playing the guitar for an Arabic singer on a TV show in Montreal, Canada, in front of one of France’s most legendary singers, Charles Aznavour. Born in Stoke with Serbian-Croatian parents I should have known that life was never going to be straight forward!

What song do you wish you’d written?
Femme Fatale – The Velvet Underground

What’s your worst lyric?
“At the time who would have thought that God could be a cruel twat.”