Transatlantic Travellers - The Dead 60s

“We’ve been to a few one horse towns,” reveals Dead 60s frontman Matt McManamon with a smile almost as wide as his face. The singer is referring to America, where the Dead 60s are, much to their own surprise, quite a hit. “It’s weird when you’re out there for so long, because we really started to make a splash on the west coast first, and, the more and more that you’re out there you can literally kind of see it filter through wherever we went so that was really cool. We just wanted to go out there and play and we did. We played so much out there but it was cool.”

Some bands waste the most fruitful years of their lives trying to forge a career in America, suffering much heartache and accelerated aging in the progress. The country might be labelled the land of the free, but when it comes to the right to release music, America becomes abruptly undemocratic – particularly to British artists. That’s exactly what makes the story of the Dead 60s all the more fascinating. Not only did they succeed in getting precious radio time in America, with their single, ‘Riot Radio,’ becoming the third most played song on alternative American radio (behind Coldplay and The White Stripes) in 2005, but they found themselves sweeping back and forth, from State to State, drizzling Americans with their ska influenced, self-titled debut album, along the way. Yes, that’s debut album.

Picking up from where McManamon left off, as he often does throughout the conversation, bass player Charlie Turner continues: “It was early doors to go over there. I mean, we never expected to go over there that early. I mean you expect your album to come out over here first – it was one of them,” analyses Turner, as if he were talking about a freak event in a football match. “‘Riot Radio’ just started playing on the radio over there and when that happens you just go don’t you? Know what I mean?”

Both McManamon and Turner - like the rest of the band – hail from Liverpool. Consequently, they suffix many of their sentences with the rhetorical question, “Know what I mean?” It seems, you can take the scouser out of Liverpool and give him support slots with the likes of The Bravery and Garbage, but you can’t take the Liverpudlian out of the scouser. And why not? America, like both of them suggest, was never a dream.

With all this talk about America, on the day I meet up with McManamon and Turner, they couldn’t actually be in a more British place. Sitting on some dusty grass just off London’s Mall, the pair are a stones throw from Buckingham Palace, waiting excitedly to showcase some new material off their forthcoming album, ‘Time To Take Sides,’ at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. After spending so long on tour with the last record, it’s hardly surprising that when conversation turns to, ‘Time To Take Sides,’ both their eyes light up collectively.

Those who are familiar with the Dead 60s will know them as a predominantly ska and punk band who fused ghostly Specials synths with guitar stabs that were sharper than their Fred Perry polo shirts on their first record. That, however, was then. Like a musical chameleon, it seems that a few years on the road playing to a more worldly audience than their home city’s typical toilet venues has caused the Dead 60s to shed a layer of skin or two.