The (English) Beat

The English Beat, or just the Beat when they’re in England, play the Gothic Theatre this month as they prepare to release Here We Go Love, their first studio album since 1982. We chatted with mainman Dave Wakeling to get the lowdown…T

Yellow Scene: You’re just about to put out your fourth album, Here We Go Love…

Dave Wakeling: I was working on it in the studio until 4 a.m. this morning. To get some extra time out of the studio, we took the graveyard shift for the past couple of weeks, working through the night.

YS: The last record came out in 1982, so why now?

DW: It’s been seven years in the thinking. I started playing shows outside of California when my kids had grown up a bit and I lost my job as coach Dave on the soccer team. The kids are all bigger than me now. I played around the country, and each time we started selling out or playing two shows at the same place. I’ve got some new songs, some of them more formed than others. I played one in the set, and people started going to the t-shirt counter and saying that they wanted a CD of the new song. I started looking for a record deal, but they’re very different from what they were. They don’t even give you enough money to make the record, so it proved difficult. I was introduced to the people at Pledge, which is kind of Kickstarter. We ran one of those drives and funded the album with that. I didn’t want to make a vanity record – some of my 1980’s buddies had done that.

YS: Do you like playing Colorado?

DW: I love Colorado. It’s one of the most interesting states, most liberal and most traditional. It’s almost two states. It’s like a hotbed of social engineering, and the people of Colorado are big-hearted enough to take it on as a project. The rest of the country is getting to learn lessons about getting along.

YS: What can we expect from the set?

DW: It should be about two hours-worth, and it’ll be all of the Beat songs that everybody remembers, and couple that they don’t. Depending on how well we know the crowd, they’ll be two or three new songs. For the most part, people want to come to concerts to hear music they’re familiar with.

YS: When this tour’s done, what’s next?

DW: It’s really the whole year. In June we mix the album, but there’s a vinyl shortage. We played some of the demos for some of my friends at radio stations, and they were thrilled with them. We seem to be heading in the right general direction.