Brit Floyd Interview

Brit Floyd is now on tour through out North America and the rest of the world through the end of the year.
We also Got the special privilege to interview vocalist, lead guitar and musical director Damian Darlington.

MTR: My name is Kyle, and I’m with MusicTourReviews.com. So let’s start off with, when did you start playing guitar?
DAMIAN: When did I start playing the guitar? Probably as long ago as when I was 11 years old, I got my first guitar for Christmas and so. But I probably started seriously playing when I was about 13
MTR: What other influence do you have besides PInk Floyd?
DAMIAN: Yeah, Quite varied. I suppose I was very much into guitar players like Alvin Ellis, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny when I was young; I was inspired with like Rush, and Yes, and Genesis, and etc. and, you know, all the stuff like, Johnny Mitchell, Ricky Jones, Tori Amos, all sorts of things.
MTR:Do you have any newer music that you’ve liked that you’ve found over the past few years?
DAMIAN: I suppose I’ve gotten more interested in acoustic music, got into Bluegrass, stuff like that; I very much appreciate Nickel Creek for example, you know, about the bands and like that, but bands like also proper bands like Coldplay, playing things like that.
MTR: You were in the Australian Pink Floyd Show for 17 years, What’s the difference between Brit Floyd and the Australian Pink Floyd show?
DAMIAN: I think we just sort of like taking it for us, first, looked at what we did with the Floyd’s music, it’s fairly sort of a rejuvenated lineup to be going out and doing the Floyd stuff, we definitely sort of taken even finer look at the detail of what we do, to recreate the Floyd songs, both the audio side of things and the visual side of things here, we’re sort of going the extra little mile to get it absolutely as perfect as we can.
MTR:Is Brit Floyd sponsored in any way by Pink Floyd?
DAMIAN: No, we’re not officially sponsored by Pink Floyd in any way.
MTR: Is the stage designed by a certain area of Pink Floyd on this tour?
DAMIAN: Certainly, we have a lot of the Pulse tour as it’s known sort of the division bell of Floyd’s back in 1994, you know, there’s a circle which is sort of a synonymous with Pink Floyd for many, many years but there’s an arch designed to the light show as well so it very much looks like that stage lay out Floyd had in 1994.
MTR:Yeah, I saw that tour and that was a great tour.
DAMIAN: It was amazing, yeah.
MTR:What guitar gear do you use on stage?
DAMIAN: Guitar equipment, I’m a big fan of all things sort of Boss and Roland so I have an awful lot of Boss Roland equipment, multi-effects processors there, I still use some of the VG equipment, the VG-8 and the VG-88, I think they stopped making those two particularly, the units that we still use, and I have a Boss GT-Pro in my rack as well that everything’s sort of being fed through; so, obviously I use the Fender Strat, you have to do that, you know, if you’re gonna do Gilmore, it has to be with a Strat, And Ovation Acoustics, Variax Acoustic guitars as well for the nylon strum and the 12-string acoustics and stuff like that.
MTR: What songs do you find most fun to play?
DAMIAN: I suppose, you know, I’m obviously Comfortably Numb, you know, with the big one; I get to play the solo at the end of that, you know, which is definitely one of the top classic guitar, sort of rock guitar fellows of all time so I’m looking as to get to play that every night so that’s a lot of fun; but as a vocalist, as a singer, I enjoy performing songs like other man from the Dark Side of the Moon, and I enjoy singing that one a lot.
MTR: Do you find any songs difficult or more challenging?
DAMIAN: It all has it’s own challenges, I mean Floyd or not, it’s sort of a really seriously out and out technical group when it comes to how they wrote their songs and how they played them but they certainly had a magical feel to what they did so that’s the challenging thing, it’s trying to recreate that successfully and also get the sounds right because Floyd was so pioneering in the recording studio with those other sounds they got on record and it sort of changed quite a lot from record to record; sort of the challenge is to recreate all those different areas of Floyd, all within one concept, and so that’s definitely a bit of a challenge
MTR:What LP really got you into Pink Floyd’s music?
DAMIAN: I say that it was definitely The Wall because I was just sort of discovering music as it were when that came out in 1979 so that about definitely hit the chord with me and I was very much a captivated guy, I thought it was fascinating, all the sort of fact there was a story to it, all the sound effects all the way, all the way all the tracks link together, you know, that was. I thought that was amazing at that time, and then I went on to discover Dark Side of the Moon and then Wish You Were Here after that.
MTR: Have you seen the Roger Waters production of The Wall yet?
DAMIAN: Yes, I did. Last May or June, I’m not quite sure which, last May or June in England, I saw it in Manchester in an arena there. Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely an amazing show, visually stunning, and the band’s great too
MTR: Yeah, we saw it three times and we’re gonna do it three times this tear also.
DAMIAN: Yeah, it’s coming back to the US, isn’t it, this summer?
MTR: Yeah, we’re gonna do here, and then we’re gonna go to New York and check out the Yankee Stadium shows, how they portray it from an arena to a stadium to be interesting.
DAMIAN: Yeah, I’ll be interested. I hope they do that, yeah.
MTR: So, how do you come up with the set list of such a huge catalog to choose from?
DAMIAN: Well, at the moment, the set is based fundamentally on the fairly recent release by Pink Floyd, a compilation we called A Foot in the Door which they brought out last November as part of their sort of re-mastering the back catalog release campaign, and so we’re playing all the tracks from that but puts some other sort of choice gens like Echoes, we’re doing all 23 minutes of that, and we’re also doing a whole section of The Wall as well just to sort of mark the fact that Roger is touring around the world to that at the moment so it’s a very wide selection of the music we’re playing, we’ve gone right from the Syd Barrett through to the division, got a lot open, and covering most albums in between.
MTR: Excellent, excellent. Well, that’s all I have for you today, Damian, I really appreciate the time for the phone call and the interview
DAMIAN: Okay
MTR: And we look forward to the March 28th performance at The Brick of Minneapolis
DAMIAN: Okay, thank you
MTR: Have a good tour and we’ll see you then
DAMIAN: Thank you. Bye-bye

Check out this 3 minute clip of the band.

Brit Floyd is currently on their North America tour. More dates all around the world after the North American tour.
Here are the remaning dates of the North America tour. Catch them while you can.

Sunday 18 Mar Paramount Theatre Asbury Park, NJ
Monday 19 Mar Lyric Opera House Baltimore MD
Wed 21 Mar Theatre at Westbury New York, NY
Thursday 22 Mar Landmark Theatre Syracuse, NY
Friday 23 Mar Lifestyle Communities Pavilion Columbus, OH
Saturday 24 Mar Akoo Theatre at Rosemont Rosemont, IL
Monday 26 Mar Clowes Memorial Hall Indianapolis, IN
Tuesday 27 Mar The Midland Kansas City, MO
Wed 28 Mar The Brick Minneapolis, MN
Friday 28 Sep Red Rocks Amphitheatre Morrison, CO

Music Tour Reviews will be at the Minneapolis show.
Thanks again to Damian and the staff.