Hair today, Glasto tomorrow: East of Ealing fly the Eel Pie flag at this summer's festival.
Jay-Z might be making his Glastonbury debut this summer, but when Twickenham-based East of Ealing take to the Somerset stage, it will be as festival favourites.
"We're Glastonbury regulars," chuckles Jim Bean, co-founder of the band and resident squeezebox champion. "If you can call once every 10 years regular, that is. The last time we played was in 1999 on the World Music stage. We were 10 years younger then and now we are 10 years wiser."
In fact, the band will be celebrating their 10th birthday in Pilton this summer. Bean first met frontwoman and fiddle player Stephanie Graffitti in the mid-90s, when they were both working at Eurodisney. "We were English musicians playing traditional American music in France", he says "Try and work that one out."
Returning to London in 1998, they began putting together a band combining Graffiti's Russian roots and Bean's "folkie acoustic vibe" with the pure London rock of guitarist Nick P and the drumming of country fan Paul Castleman.
No Mickey Mouse act, then. But what to call the music? Bean considers: "World music is just a convenient tag for record companies who like to put everything into one bag. And folk is now the F-word - all Aran jumpers and wooly beards. I prefer the term roots. It's often used in reference to reggae, but roots for us is about taking traditional folk instruments and using them in a more creative and modern way. It's what British musicians have been doing for years."
The East of Ealing moniker represents the band's specific roots in Twickenham, where they return to play a headline set at Filthy's next week.
advertisement
"Most festivals we play at, we'll say we're from Eel Pie and everyone's heard of the place. We're very proud to come from the area. And although we don't play blues, we play in that vein - using acoustic music in a rockier way."
This year's Glastonbury call up came from the Leftfield Tent - home to the likes of Billy Bragg and Tony Benn - perhaps because of the overtly political nature of East of Ealing's latest album, Blackship, recorded at Skyline Studios, a converted toilet block of Epsom High Street.
The track Not in my Name features recordings from the London Anti-War march of Februray 2003 and the instrumental number, Axes of Evil, is overlaid with George Bush's famous speech.
"It really sums up for me how ridiculous his comments were," says Bean. "What we do won't change the world. We're not politicians, we're musicians. But this music says we're aware of what's going on. And you can't start wars if people are dancing around to your music."
That sounds like a Glasto-worthy sentiment. What is Bean's festival strategy this year? His last four festival have been sunny affairs, but after the mudbath of 2007, it pays to have a plan.
"I've got an extremely old camper van," says Bean, "VW, of course and rust-coloured. As far as I know, they are not flying in proper toilets for us, like they did for the Manic Street Preachers. We've got to use the same old chemical ones as everyone else."
Will he be going to see Jay-Z on the main stage? "Unlikely. But if he wants a bit of banjo, we'll be up for it. He can come along and join us on a small stage in the Glastonbury backstreets. Tell him he'd be more than welcome."
East of Ealing, Filthy's @ The Lion, 166 Heath Road, Twickenham, Friday, March 14, 9pm, free. Visit eastofealing.co.uk and myspace.com/eastofealing
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
Print
Email this
Comment
