We caught up with the one and only Rob Lynch at this year’s Slam Dunk festival ahead of his big trip to the US for Warped Tour 2014.
How was Slam Dunk North yesterday?
Amazing. It was the best set I’ve ever done at Slam Dunk before and I’ve played it loads of times. The crowd were amazing and it felt right. A very enjoyable day and I enjoyed myself a bit too much at the after party.
What’s your favourite bit of Slam Dunk?
I like that lots of good bands get together in one place and you know lots of people and you get to hang out with people you don’t see that often, it just feels like Christmas. I get really excited by it, like Christmas Eve is the Leeds date, then you’ve got Christmas day at Hatfield where you’re a bit hangover and you know you shouldn’t have gone out drinking on Christmas Eve because the next day you have a roast dinner with the family and then Wolves tomorrow is like Boxing Day.
I like the crowd because people have travelled all over and then you get a nice cross section of people that see you in different cities and towns in the country all in one place and it usually creates a nice vibe.
So, talking a bit about what you’ve been up to. You’re pretty big in Germany these days?
Aha, so, I got signed to a German label and they’re like a really respected label over there who work predominantly with German speaking artists and yeah, they like what I do. I got to tour with some of their artists and really connected to the crowds we were playing too. The albums coming out over there and the single went down with people. I dunno, I think it’s just worked really well with the label and people have been coming back out to the headline shows. It’s built up over the last year and I keep on popping over for like a one week tour, I’ve probably done three months worth of shows over there in the last year and yeah, I think it’s just about keeping at it and now it’s time to bring it to the UK.
Yeah, you recently announced you signed to Xtra Mile.
It was something that’s been in the works for quite a few months now, they just got in touch and liked the record and wanted to release it. I wanted to work with them, so we spent the last couple of months finalising the deal and getting ready for the album release. It’s gonna come out at the end of the Summer once I get back from America.
So is the eventual plan to bring the full band to Slam Dunk next year?
Yeah, it’d be cool! I’ll definitely be doing more full band shows next year. I’ll be doing some solo shows around the album release but I think we’ll save the full band stuff for next year.
How does it feel to be finally seeing some sort of result from the hard work you’ve put in?
It’s good. I always knew it wouldn’t be like one of things that was just gonna blow up straight away, it was never really about that. So yeah, to now have the label and agent and management and all that stuff that can help this thing to the next level feels great. I feel ready for it rather than having got that maybe a few years ago and not being the right place for it.
See Rob on the Warped tour this summer, and expect more of our quick Slam Dunk catch ups this week!