INTERVIEW W/ BIG SPECIAL: "They gave us the confidence to be the band we wanted to be!"

The debut record 'Post Industrial Hometown Blues' by Black Country duo BIG SPECIAL was one of our favourites from 2024. The pair have spent the last 12 months touring it extensively, gaining slews of new fans across the world who have fallen in love with their soulful Punk energy and poetic, visceral lyricism.

Now, a year on from the debut album release, we caught up with Joe Hicklin and Callum Moloney to reflect on the record, assess the crazy memories that they've created and look ahead to their upcoming support tour with one of their favourite bands of all time... The Pixies. (Buy tickets to the tour here)

Q. How does it feel one year on from releasing your debut album? Has your relationship with those songs changed over the last 12 months at all? 

CALLUM: Yeah we only just realized that’s its been a year a couple of days ago…fuck me its gone fast! We’re still really invested in the songs. We've been playing them basically every night and they haven't lost their charm to us yet but we are also excited for new stuff. We've been writing like mad, just experimenting and testing the waters.

JOE: That album is the proudest thing I’ve ever done. It got us where we wanted to go after trying for like 16 years. So yeah, I absolutely love that album and I think we’ll always love it. 

CALLUM: Well you say that now, wait until 10 more years of playing Shit House live!

JOE: Shit, I don't think we'll ever be able to do a gig again where we don't play shithouse. 

CALLUM: It's funny, I have people screaming Shit House at me in the street now!

Q. After touring the album so extensively, have you got any new emotions and memories associated with the songs? 

JOE: I think we're always making new memories with them. It was mad to see how emotional people got about the gigs. Me and Cal would have old geezers just come up to us and tell us how much it meant to them. I remember one in Brighton in particular who said ‘I've been going to gigs for 57 years and that's the first time I've cried at one’. There’s personal stories from fans as well of what the songs have meant to them in their experience and that is a mad realization to think that the music you've made means something to someone else just as much as the music that means something to us! 

CALLUM: A lot of the songs as well are from a perspective of being trapped when we were and working normal jobs in the Midlands but this perspective has changed a lot because now we're on the other side of the world, playing on the stages we dreamed of playing on. So yeah, the meanings haven't changed, but the perspectives have changed dramatically. I think that makes it even more beautiful sometimes because it fills us with such a big sense of pride and a sense of victory in what we’ve achieved. 

Q. How was the experience of getting to collaborate with Sleaford Mods as well as other artists such as Public Service Broadcasting on the album remixes?

JOE: Yeah, it's proper flattering and I find it really exciting to give up something you've worked on and see how others can cook up something new with it. It’s interesting to see what different directions that can inspire other artists. Plus, it’s a mad little moment to think you've loved a band like Sleaford Mods for fucking years and then now they’ve worked on one of our tunes. 

CALLUM: The remixes were like a proper natural arm. Luckily, we've been so busy over the last few years we've met all these people and know them quite well. So, it became a nice friendly collaboration and didn't take too much begging like! 

Q. What would you say the main influences were that fed into that debut album? 

JOE:  Ooh, I think an accumulation of everything that's come before us but the main influence is Sleaford Mods. Finding them showed me a new way of doing stuff that I didn’t know was possible. They showed me that your laptop can be your new acoustic guitar.

CALLUM: Yeah, I'd agree. I think they encapsulate the attitudes, the ability to step outside of the conventional guitar, bass and drums sort of set up and also just seeing them be a band of two working class guys that we respected from the Midlands, doing broadly Proud Midlands spoken word.  I think that without that sort of influence, we might have ended up a very different sort of band. They gave us the confidence to be the band we wanted to be. But we’re also Garage fans and massive Hip Hop fans. Joe spent the first 15 years as an acoustic Americana songwriter, so there's this huge Blues influence in there whereas I'm a massive Punk fan so that came through on the album too. 

Q. How much do you feel your hometowns also impacted the attitudes and musical influences on the album? 

JOE: I think your environment affects whatever you're doing so I think it's the same experience of any other writer or creator but personally I think that area relates to our music. The clearest it does so is in the dark sense of humor and the self-deprecation, that’s in the bones of people from the Black Country; it’s like trying to reduce the tragedy by making a little joke. I also think the history of grafting and that hard work mentality that’s been passed down from generations since the industrial revolution fed into the album a lot. 

CALLUM: It’s quite an insular county as well I think. Historically, it's been ignored despite the importance of Birmingham and the Midlands throughout the country’s history. There’s always this north vs south divide but we missed out the conversation musically, the industry completely fucking ignores Birmingham and always has. I think it's always been the county that gets looked down on and people assume nothing's gonna come from it. So, that breeds into the attitude of the people; a proper Midland is always walking uphill. 

Q. You’ve mentioned your appreciation for some iconic artists that have come before you - how are you feeling about supporting The Pixies on tour this May? 

CALLUM: Very excited man! We're big Pixies fans and DooLittle is like one of the greatest albums of all time isn't it? We were very lucky they wanted us. They're a fucking brilliant live band too. You get so many legendary bands that just don't want to play the classics. They only wanna play the new album but The Pixies put on a proper show every time and play the songs that fans want to hear. It's a proper privilege to be on tour with them. There’s going to be a 15-year-old me just sitting at the back of the room sobbing!