Shouldn't Be Afraid

When UK folk outfit The Bad Shepherds first toured Australia in 2013 most of the attention they garnered was due to the presence of comedy legend Ade Edmondson (best known for his portrayal of psychotic medical student Vyvyan Basterd in cult comedy The Young Ones) as the band's mandolin-toting frontman. That tour, however, proved emphatically that the outfit – who predominantly play frenetic folk versions of punk standards – are far more than a novelty proposition, and this time around it's all about the music.

“There's a benefit about being well known sometimes, and sometimes there's a negative to it. The aspersions of us being a vanity project went on for a number of years, but we have been paying our dues and we're still going and we're still playing rammy little rock crowds – which is where we like playing – so I think everyone realises that it's beyond that now.

“I think once you get three albums in on a project like this you have evidence backing what it is. The truth is that Troy [Donockley – uilleann pipes, cittern, whistles] is a musical genius, and together we work very well. It's all based on that relationship really, it's growing as we get better musically at expressing ourselves.”

The Bad Shepherds' recent third album Mud, Blood And Beer contained the band's first recorded originals, but Edmondson concedes the punk standards that they revitalise in the folk form that really give the band its power.

“How can I say this without being big-headed... it's a bloody good idea, and we do it rather well,” he smiles. “I think that's why it goes down well. There's all sorts of factors going into it; one is the fact that we're nominally playing recognisable songs – even though you don't really recognise them until we've finished them generally – but we have that in our back pocket, that people are aware of what they're listening to, even though it's been transformed and they're listening to it in a different way. And then we kind of surprise them with how good those songs are, compared to how they think they are – a lot of people think that punk songs are just a lot of aggression and shouting and spitting and swearing, but they're a lot more complex than that.

“It was an extraordinary burst of songwriting that era, by teenage kinda gits who were producing a load of adult material, it was just brilliant. It's very hard to find an equivalent these days. Country music is the nearest equivalent to punk I think, it's the only genre that deals with adult stuff, and the only thing that isn't solipsistic – that isn't self-centred. All of today's pop music – all the stuff in the charts – is just so boring! It's devoid of any social context, it has no meaning – it just bores the shit out of me.”