Recently, I made the trek up to Uncasville, Connecticut where my friends at Mohegan Sun invited me to head backstage at (the other) Mohegan Sun Arena and interview the band Bastille.
It was the first time the Grammy-nominated quartet played the venue; lead singer Dan Smith and company were fresh in to the North American leg of the “Wild, Wild World Tour” in support of the band’s sophomore effort “Wild World.”
Here are five takeaways from my chat with the group, which was initially broadcast live on Mohegan Sun’s Facebook page, with a bonus fan-submitted question answered on Twitter:
1.) If Bastille could pick one artist to collaborate with at the moment, it would be Rihanna. “We’ve been asked this for years. We keep saying Rihanna and we haven’t heard a word from her,” drummer Chris “Woody” Wood (unrelated, but a fan) joked.
2.) Smith confirmed that just as the band released a companion remix album for “Bad Blood”, Bastille will give the same treatment to “Wild World.” “It’s just a question of finding the time,” he elaborated after jokingly evading the question.
3.) Bastille is currently writing its third album on the road; they have a designated “Writing Room” backstage. Although last Friday, “Woody” primarily used the space more to play FIFA on Xbox than craft Bastille’s next big hit. The band traveled to Connecticut following a show inside Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, and New York certainly played a large role for the group during the making of its second LP…
4.) The album art for “Wild World” was not snapped from One World Trade Center in New York City, but rather “an undisclosed building, somewhere, maybe.” Smith didn’t discuss further, but did mention that the cover’s creation is actually a focal point in the show’s production. In one part of the concert, a video is played in the venue that shows the creation of the photo, or at least the journey to it.
5.) General consensus among the band members led them to designate guitarist Will Farquarson as the laziest member of the group, although Smith did mention that there are different genres of lazy. We wanted him to elaborate on this too, but perhaps he didn’t feel like exerting himself.
Bastille’s tour is currently out west but heads back east to wrap on May 12 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The following night, the band will play a show for a Philadelphia radio station in Camden, New Jersey at BB&T Pavilion. Bastille will spend its summer touring Europe.