 Hi, I'm Megan Brady and you're watching DCUTV and I'm now here with the Stripes. Hello, how's it going? So, yous are playing the Academy tonight, are you all set? Yeah, very excited. So, yous have a kind of blues sound, I suppose. How did you get this arm where you're coming from? Well, really it's from Evan's parents' record collection. It was the music we initially got into. It was when we were younger. The Southern Pete spent a lot of time in Evan's house and we were always just surrounded by, I suppose, guitar music. And so we had a lot of bands like the Stones and the Beatles and people like Chuck Berry. So, we were naturally interested in playing and there were instruments always around. So, we gravitated towards that and then started jamming together. And then, I suppose when we hit like 14, we really got into like proper blues bands like Dr. Fairgood and the Yardbirds. And that's kind of where the sound originated from because we really got really heavy into those bands. So, what does that bring me onto my next question? How did the four of yous kind of get together to form the Stripes at such a young age? Well, we all go back quite a long time. Three of us were in the same primary school. And then Russ, Josh and Russ' parents knew each other and kind of had different connections like that and parents had all done things together in the past. So, you are now going to be onto your second album? Yes, I'm just kind of finishing it now. So, what kind of things can people expect from it? I suppose it's kind of music. Yeah, more music from us. Yeah, it's kind of a continuation of just what the band sounds like when you maybe just brought it on another stage. We'll hear a lot of it tonight. We'll have heard it before. We're actually privy to the song. We actually kind of know how to go. So, tonight we'll hear a lot of the sample of new songs and stuff like that. So, we'll see how people react to it. And what is your songwriting process? Do you have a certain way that you write your songs? Yeah, generally it's been myself writing the basic tune, just something on the acoustic or whatever and music and lyrics. And then we all sort of jam in the room and do the tune electrically and then it just sort of comes out as us. It's kind of been the way it's mostly been a piece with a couple of tunes on the next record. We've got 20 tunes written for the next album. We'll record it for the next album. So, we're going to pick the best 12. So, there's tunes for me and a couple of them for Peter's album. You have played the Freshers Ballad, have you seen it? Yeah, we have. So, what do you think of College Geeks? College Geeks are cool. Yeah, really cool. Yeah, because it's kids are on it. So, when people get into it, it's great. We've done as many as we kind of hoped we were going to do. I think before this tour we were kind of taught about doing College Geeks. But then this came up and so we said we'd do this instead and do some times that we've never done before. But no, they're generally really good. It's generally like obviously because in College there's so many different people doing different courses and you get a good sort of mixed crowd, which is cool. So, we are DCTV, we're in DCU, but if yous weren't in a band, would you know what you'd like to do in College or just as a job in general? No. I was thinking journalism or something like that. So you could come to DCU? Yeah, it was going to be like last degree. Probably the same with me. As far as the plan went, I had done something really boring. Like, I can't even say it. I probably would have done teaching or something. Teaching? Yeah, primary school teaching, because it did that before. I had more experience and it was cool. Back in the day? Yeah. I liked fashion, but I stopped clothes because I liked it. Yous all have kind of a unique style. Do you have any certain fashion influences? Again, I suppose it's just looking at bands you like and trying to base yourself on that. And like, you know, all the kind of subcultures and stuff like that from years back. Like, you know, mods and telly boys and skat boys and all sort of stuff. You know, they all kind of, you know, they all dressed really cool. So we just take bits and pieces from that. So we like the idea of bands dressing a bit different and being able to define a band by its look as much as it sounds. And do you have certain shops that you like to shop in? Well, it's kind of wherever we find them. Like, you know, we frequent secondhand. Yeah, we get a lot of old tatties and stuff and do it up. Yeah, we get a lot of jeans from Levis and stuff as well. We go back to Levis and Doc Martens and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Very nice. Well, thank you for taking the time to talk to me. Oh, by the way. Thanks. Thank you.