INTERVIEW | BEANS ON TOAST

Beans On Toast (aka Jay McAllister) is one of the UK's most loved folk musicians, dealing with a wide range of political and social issues as part of his memorable and well written tunes. Ahead of his new album 'Spanner In The Works', out at the end of the year, our own Dan McGrath caught up with Beans to discuss touring, his love of Kate Tempest's upcoming record and his forthcoming release...

Dan McGrath: How's 2016 been for you (apart from all the stuff mentioned in your song named after the above year)?

Beans On Toast: Well apart from all that stuff, yeah it's been good. I guess that song was about the feel of the year for everyone, which has been pretty hardcore. I've been keeping myself busy as usual with touring, festivals and writing songs.

DM: Your new album 'A Spanner In The Works' is out in December, what can we expect from that?

Beans On Toast: You can expect a brand new album, recorded on a laptop computer. So pretty different from any of my past releases. Musically the songs are programmed synths and beats rather than guitars, I'm really proud of it and it was very interesting and different approach for me. It's still very much a Beans on Toast album though.

DM: You're going on a tour of the US in October, what kind of response do you get playing abroad when some of your songs are based on British politics/culture?

Beans On Toast: I'm here now, I just played an epic festival in Northern California and my tour kicks off tonight in San Fran. People are fine with the British culture references - I think the ideas of the song are clear even if people are not 100% sure whose name you just dropped or what the NHS is. I've also got a quite a few tunes about my time here in the States, so I'll throw them in for good measure.

DM: You toured with Frank Turner on his arena tour a couple of years back, how does playing at venues like that compare to the more intimate gigs you're used to?

Beans On Toast: Yeah, Frank has sorted me out no end over the years. The arena shows are brilliant, I like to treat them exactly the same as every other show I play which has worked out this far. I think there's hilarity element of me playing them huge arena gigs as well, like how the fuck did that happen??

DM: Are there any artists that you're are listening to right now that you'd recommend?

Beans On Toast: Kate Tempest, her album Let Them Eat Chaos is out next month. I can tell from the tunes I've heard that it's gonna be an amazing album that will go down in history.