Team Love | Interview

This month Bristol will once again be hit by the weekend party that is Love Saves The Day. We caught up with key figure of Team Love, Tom Paine to find out more about the event.

Are you surprised about the monumental success you’ve achieved or did you know you had a good thing going all along?

It’s a bit of both. Collectively, we’ve got a fair bit of experience in festivals and events, and a lot of hard graft goes in to making Love Saves The Day come off so we’re not flying completely blind! We also knew that Bristol had always lacked a dance-music festival and that the demand was there. However, the response to the festival and the atmosphere year-on-year has been humbling to an extent we never would have predicted. We have our attendees to thank for that.

Some are saying that Bristol is becoming over saturated with house music, do you feel there’s any truth in that, or are we nurturing the scene?

No doubt there’s loads of people playing and booking house at the moment but that’s just a reflection of the wider scene. I wouldn’t say that Bristol’s saturated by any one genre in particular, more that there’s just a lot of everything. Really we’re fortunate to have such a massive variety of music on our doorstep and so many people that are passionate about it, be it House, Dub Reggae or DnB.

Out of all the festivals you’ve been to, which do you feel has influenced the ethos of LSTD the most?

That’s a good question. Personally I started out at Glastonbury, which is obviously something of an institution on the UK festival scene, but lots of smaller festivals have influenced LSTD’s outlook too - Shambala operates out of the same building as us, as did Boomtown until quite recently and we’ve all had a great time at those events. At the risk of giving a non-answer, the LSTD ethos is informed by every festival we’ve ever been to rather than just an emulation of one.

I imagine Nina Kraviz smells like warm cinnamon buns. Can you confirm this?

Haha, you know what we have yet to meet, this will be the first time she has been to play in Bristol, if I can get close enough to her I’ll let you know. She would still be fantastic though, even if she smelt of Lynx Africa, it’s a tough old world out there for anyone and I think even more so for female DJs to be taken seriously. I think she plays the game very well, courts enough controversy to get some good press, but at the end of the day she is an extremely focussed and talented DJ.

If you could have one headliner, money being no object, who would it be?

Am I allowed to say Prince? It’s a kinda obvious answer though isn’t it? I mean the man has no equals, it’s obscene the creative output that one man can have. Dave and I were having a long (and slightly drunken chat) about this last weekend. We came up with the less obvious answer of the Super Furry Animals as we are both massive fans and they are the embodiment of real music, releasing album after album of untainted, unaltered, uninfluenced (as in by record company accountants) material, just because that’s what they do, they make music… Can’t get better than that.

Tickets seem to sell out months in advance. Is moving to a larger site something you plan on doing in the future, or are you content with keeping it relatively intimate?

We’re really not sure at this point. Whilst there’s definitely scope for expansion, Castle Park is such an amazing venue and it’s been our home since year one. Whatever happens in the end, maintaining the atmosphere and the ethos of the festival is absolutely crucial.

The Love Inn seems to be a roaring success. Was owning a bar a plan from the start, and are we to expect more of the same?

Tempted as I am to cast myself as a business mastermind, I’d be lying if I said that it was always part of the plan. We’re really happy with how everything’s going at The Love Inn (and there’s some great additions in the pipeline), but we’ve no aspirations to start a national franchise. Yet.

Collectively, who are you most looking forward to seeing perform?

We’re quite a musically diverse bunch but everyone’s excited to see Neneh Cherry  and RocketNumberNine, Neneh’s album is fully deserving of all the praise it’s received. Adrian Sherwood & Pinch playing live ought to be special too, they’ve been in the studio a lot recently working on an album together and it’ll be fascinating to say how that translates to a live setting.

Grab a slice of Neneh Kraviz right here: