Tuesday, 07 February 2012 
August 2010
We interviewed Adrian Edmondson ahead of his appearance at the Watchet festival
I must admit to being something of a cynic when The Bad Shepherds appeared, but actually it's turned out to be quite a clever thing hasn't it? Because you appeal to different audiences and you're in all kinds of festivals from folk festivals to Watchet Fest which is a more rock and roll type thing. Was that intended?
Nothing's intended, there's no plan. It's all, like most of my life, vaguely accidental and a sort of product of working on it to see if there's anything in it. I've always played instruments and found myself with a mandolin a few years ago but I couldn't work with it so I found a few chords and started strumming stuff I knew, which is the kind of stuff the Bad shepherds play. And it sounded kind of different. I know people are cynical about it - well some are, some aren't. I'm a free man!
Well I think you've proved people wrong haven't you?
I like it and I think a lot of other people do. I don't know whether you have to prove people wrong or whether you just play for people who think it's right.
Well, I think it's probably more the journalists that like to grade everything that comes along...but you've got festival promoters falling over themselves to book you so...
Yeah, we're doing about 20.
Did you think it would turn into such a big committment?
At the beginning I thought 'well this sounds like fun', then what it needed was really good folk musicians that knew their stuff so I set about finding some, and I kind of knew Troy so I approached him first and we meant just to have fun really - the aim of the band is to have as much fun as possible. If it stopped being fun I think it would just be rather sad.
But you've come up with some good arrangements, you haven't just done a straight rendition of it just on acoustic instruments have you? And you've picked traditional songs that suit the angle you're coming from.
We think of ourselves as a folk band, my trouble with it is I love the sounds, I love the instruments, but I don't really like folk songs. I can't connect with songs about blacksmiths or people being press ganged into the navy because these things don't exist anymore and although I'm quite happy to keep them alive, they mean nothing to me. So I've got a noise that I like but I need to find something that's a bit more relevant, and I think those songs we've come across are brilliant modern day folk songs.
And what is folk music these days? Is it something that's preserved in amber and must never be changed or is it something that is as relevant now, I mean you could argue that Hip Hop is folk music now - people are writing those songs for the same reasons those folk songs were written 200 years ago...
I think what marks out a folk song is the kind of tradition of passing it on and not being afraid of tampering with it, there's a lot of people doing covers of songs but it's not always the same idea.
What are your favourite kind of gigs?
I think I've had two favourite gigs this year, one was a surprise and that was Glastonbury and I thought that was going to be dreadful but it was just magnificent in the end. And the other one was Larmer Tree that we did a couple of nights ago, and that was really good as well. They're both festival gigs and I think festivals are more fun generally because at the kind of festivals where people put us on as a bit of an anomaly, I think people come along and when we win most people over, that's when it's a really good gig. It happens in the first minute, we always do 'Anarchy in the UK' first and we get a lot of laughs when I first start but about 2 minutes later in the same song they're all kind of nodding away! It's a really nice feeling when you can switch people.
Well that must be a reward in itself. Inevitably with someone that's had such a wide-ranging career, do you get fed up with people referring to your comedy characters, do people still call you Eddie Hitler?
Not fed up, but it is tedious! I'm bored of my responses! It's just endless but at the same time I love the idea that people still like Eddie Hitler and Vivian, it's fantastic creating stuff that lasts but I always have trouble when people start quoting lines to me and I've no idea what they're saying because I don't watch these things.
I think now The Bad Shepherds is being recognised as a serious act that's going to go forward. Certainly serious in the sense that you're gigging hard...
It's seen as a musical act, rather than a novelty act now, which is very pleasing. I think the Folk Award nomination gave us the right kind of steer.
Where next? another album?
Yeah, we've got another album coming out in September, which will be much better than the first one! We started off as a five piece and we're down to three mostly these days and I think next year we'll be three all the time. We kind of like that sound. The more you play togther the more you find out what noises you can make and I'm really excited by the kinds of noises we're making on the new one.
Well we'll look forward to hearing that. Best of luck with the rest of the gigs, i think you've got gigs every month til November haven't you?
We finish end of October.We've got a few dates in December actually but there's only three.
Well we hope to see your new album nominated at the Folk Awards this year...
There's an outside chance!
Playing at Watchet Festival 27 - 29 August 2010 www.watchetfestival.co.uk
