Nic Toupee, Journalist

Let's see what happened in Nic Toupee's year.

"It’s a weird paradox. If you are a one-man band you do a lot of travelling; it’s not just a shtick I adopt, it’s a definite part of my life."

"The money is a lot better over there than here, people are prepared to pay to go out if there’s a decent show on offer."

"I collect a lot of vintage gear...I’ve got a massive collection of amps and drums and stuff, and we use it."

“I got a recording grant from Thirty Mill Studios – that’s pretty lucky. Also, a lot of musicians are featured on the album, and people were happy to come in and help out.”

“I won’t be taking any time off the band apart from my [current] solo tour… at least in the immediate future… For the remainder of the year I’ll be promoting my album and writing album two with Boy & Bear.”

"Under these circumstances it is incumbent on us all to be a bit of a rebel, to question authority. Music – ska music – is one of the last platforms where people can raise these things and complain about them."

"It’s not like a pop album, and there are no obvious ‘radio songs’. It’s melodic, because that’s who I am."

“We got up on crates and sang a French song in harmony, and it was so exciting, and made us so happy, that when it was over, we decided we were having too much fun to stop now.”

"I think we’ve learned to cut the fat when it comes to songs, learned to emphasise hooks – not that we’re trying to learn pop songs – and the lyrics are a lot more thought out."

“In the end, it just happened, after ten years of a friendship. We had no previous discussion about it, we’d never mentioned it at all before. I’d always played in other bands and I knew she played keys, but one night we just decided to play together for fun, a spur of the moment thing.”

"We are crazy people."