James caught up with Michael Waters from The Answer to talk about their success as a band, that massive AC/DC tour and their current album and tour.

Thanks for giving us this time to talk to you, can you first give us a brief history of your band with details like how you formed and came up with the name?
Started about 10 years ago, started out first with me and our guitarist Paul playing in a lot of bands since we were kids all around Ireland in cover bands and stuff. We decided to try to put a proper band together and start writing songs, around that time we heard about this great blues singer Cormic, he was living in New York at the time on a year off from university but he then came back and was in Pauls music class so they met through that. Then we got together and got James involved, we’ve had 3 albums out and we’re touring the latest one right now, been touring for 6 years solid had the privilege of playing with AC/DC, Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Deep purple. The name was James’s idea and we’d been called a few pretty awful names at our first few gigs and the manager was calling us like “I need the answer now as to what your name is for the advertising!” so James was like “Erm, eh, The Answer” we didn’t know if we were going to keep it but after we had some logo’s done it looked cool so we stuck with it.

What would you say has been the best moment you’ve experienced as a band?
Doing our first album “Rise”, we’ve had some real massive moments but I think that has to be the best, we come from a real rural part of Ireland and to actually get this album out was a great moment.

Alright then how about the worst?
I think the end of the last tour when we came back, I was absolutely destroyed. I got weighed about 9 stone and I was a sickly yellow colour, I wasn’t very well due to the length of the tour. When your health starts to go thats always a bad time.

You’re debut album “Rise” was extremely successful when it was release, did you even suspect you would achieve that much success with your first release?
Never, it was just an accumulation of songs we had from our first few years but we’d toured them for 2 years before we even recorded the songs so I think that helped us out a bit there.

You landed a tour with AC/DC, arguably the biggest rock band in the world, can you please explain how it felt to a) be playing to that many people per night and b) travelling around with AC frigging DC?
It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, they’re my favourite band. To go on tour with them every night is so hard to explain, playing those huge stages with 90,000 people so now when we headline tour we’re like this is so small haha. The best part of it was having the big American tour bus making friends along the way experiencing the country.

Other than that tour who has been your favourite band to tour with?
The Rolling Stones were some of the best couple shows. I’m probably going to say Alter Bridge, we played with them here in 2004 and they’re really good guys, I’m such a big fan. We see each other most summers as well so those tours are pretty magical.

Your new album “Revival” has been out recently, how has this gone down with the press and your fans?
With the fans, they seem definitely happy with it, musically it’s definitely our best work and everyone seems happy.

The promotion was very minimal in my opinion I didn’t realise it was out till it already was.
Those have been issues with the band but times have changed, we’re already working on album 4 and that will be rectified with the new one I assure you.

You’re currently headlining a tour of the UK, how have the dates been so far?
They’ve been brilliant. Aberdeen was wicked and Leeds was great too, we did a couple of shows in Ireland which were pretty rowdy as they usually are over there but I love this part of the country as its the proper rock part, here and Nottingham are my favourites because I love it. Brighton too as its a Saturday and its St. Patricks day so we’ll enjoy that.

What are your plans for the rest of 2012?
We’re working on album 4, we’ve got a big thing going on in May that I can’t really talk about, festivals but I’m not sure what we’re on yet we’re doing a lot of European festivals as well, at the minute in the UK we’re after Download, Isle of Wight and maybe some cross over festivals for us.

One last random question that we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a zebra or Giraffe which one would you be and why?
I was thinking giraffe but now I’m thinking zebra, I like the stripes you know? I like the zebra because whats the saying in Shrek, “I dunno if I’m a donkey with stripes or...” I can’t remember haha. I’ll say zebra because giraffes necks are too exposed to lions and things at least zebras can just run haha.

Thanks for your time, is there a message for your fans reading the interview?
Please check out the new album and our new single which has a wicked b-side, see you at the shows!

Interview by James Webb