Interview with Fizzy Blood

It’s 2023 and here you have it; the first RW interview of the year. YES! And it’s with none other than Fizzy Blood*, who just happen to have one of my favourite band names out there…

RECORD WEEKLY’S INTERVIEW WITH FIZZY BLOOD

Hi guys, how are you all?

We’re good thanks, happy to be back and putting out music again.

So, 2023’s set to be a big one for you. But what were your highlights of 2022?

Well, we just did a run of dates in November and we haven’t been on the road in a few years, so I think for me [Jake], that was the highlight for sure! It felt great to get out there and see how people would react to the new music, as well as us just being together in the back of a van again and remembering why we love doing it so much.

If we take things back further than that, how and when did you meet and first form Fizzy Blood?

Fizzy Blood was formed from the embers of Paul (guitars) and Ben’s (vocals) old band. They were on the lookout for a drummer and I saw Paul’s ad in our university ‘band page’; he was listing the likes of Weezer, Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys and I wanted in, so I auditioned, and the rest is history. Then over the course of a year or so, we pulled in various pals to make up the line-up we still have today.

What have been your career standouts so far?

I think it’s a battle between SXSW and Zandari Festival in Seoul (South Korea). Some of my happiest memories have been formed bouncing around the world with my best mates and, as difficult and gruelling at times the music industry can be, I have it to thank for that.

Which three venues have been your favourite to play?

As always, The Brudenell Social Club, of course. We had a great time at the Deaf Institute in Manchester on our tour last year, and we really love playing the Tunbridge Wells Forum, too. Hopefully we’ll play there again soon.

Your debut album ‘Pan Am Blues’ takes quite a departure genre-wise from your original sound and first few tracks. Talk us through this change in direction.

Because we’ve been away and writing for a while, for us it’s been a pretty gradual change. But to everyone else, it must seem like we put our riffs away in a little box under the bed and vowed never to open it again. Honestly though, we’d been touring pretty extensively for like six years without much time for reflection or writing new material; when we did eventually stop and decide to go write a record, we realised our tastes had changed and we’d changed as people, too. It took us a while to figure out what that meant for our music, but when we did, the songs started pouring out.

Now, we’ve all got pretty disparate tastes in music and we’re all inspired by different things, but I think we managed to capture a little piece of everyone on this record, which we’re really proud of.

Can you tease any other plans for 2023 yet?

We’ll be doing some more shows later in the year when the album’s been out for a little while, and we’ll be announcing something cool in relation to the ‘Pan Am Blues’ series too!