Today is the first date of Sons and Daughters headline tour of the UK, it perhaps makes sense that the first gig is so far from their home city of Glasgow. Many people may have heard of Sons and Daughters and their mix of Americana and post-punk though there recent support slots with Franz Ferdinand.

Like with any interview with a band on there first release it is probably best to start at the beginning and work towards the present. There fore perhaps it is best to investigate how the band formed and singer / guitarist Adele explains "I formed the band about 2 and a half years ago, Dave and I used to play in a band together called Arab Strap, I wrote some songs when I was on the tourbus and things, he always promised that he'll play drums if I had another band. Alidh had learned to play classical piano in the past couple of months; she was playing guitar and bass as well. So we started writing songs together just in our house, we had about 4 or 5 songs and then I saw Scott play one night, he used to do an acoustic thing called March of Dimes, we wanted another guitar player so we asked him to join."

There is also the standard question about how the band managed to decide on a name; again this is best left for Adele to explain "It came from a dream that I once had about Bob Dylan, he was playing "a times they are a changing" in my parents back garden and was singing the line "your sons and your daughters will never get married" and I always thought I'll given up family for years and I just didn't know what I was gonna choose so it seemed pretty simple.

Sons and Daughters are one of those bands that is hard to pigeonhole, as they don't easily fall into any particular genre perhaps then it is best for the band to instead describe there music. As vocalist and guitarist Scott elaborates "I would just say it's a mix of all of our different tastes in music. There's elements of country, elements of roots and folk music, there's elements of post punk, we touchings and splatterings of funk even in there, seriously in the bass lines, it's a big melting pot of everything we love, I think it's the hardest thing to describe your own music."

There is also the standard question that appears in all interviews when an artist has a new album out, which goes along the lines of "so why did you name your new album…?." Perhaps now would be a good time to address why Sons and Daughters decided to name their album love the cup. As Scott conveys "When we were recording the album last July in Chem 19, it came in a dream, we didn't have a name for it, I was listening to the last Johnny Cash album that came out The Man Comes Around and a bit in it was can I have a cup of tea or something and I was listening to it and I thought he said love the cup, and there was another incident as well I can't remember actually, it was a wee bit after that that I heard it on another record. I thought someone else said love the cup, it was just something that kinda stuck I guess, I mentioned it to the other guys and I guess it was another tribute to Johnny Cash. Even though that's not what he says."

It is surprising that Love the Cup was initially only available in America on cult small independent label Ba Da Ding, as usually it is more common for a band to release material in there home country first. But as Adele make's clear "We recorded some demo's about two years ago, we sent them out to some labels, I didn't really know how to go about it to be honest, I didn't know who to send it to. One of them was Ben at Bada Bing, because he was a friend of mine and we had been emailing each other and I didn't want to say that I had a band. I'd known him because he used to work at Matador and Arab Strap were on Matador. I eventually told him and he asked if I could send him a copy, he really liked it and decided to put it out. So we got money from the Scottish arts council to make the record which was really good. After that we slid over to Domino. Domino liked the Demo's but they wanted to hear more songs." David the drummer would continue the discussion by saying "it's weird that you could get our record over here but only in specialist shops who imported it." Before Scott continues "that was like expensive, so now it's great having it in the shops and having it at £6.99, cos I like having kinda introductory debuts at kinda cheap. Things like Hatful of Hollow by The Smiths that was £3.99."

At Present there seems to be a lot of good music coming out of Scotland at the moment particularly Glasgow, be it the renewed vitality of established bands like Snow Patrol and Belle and Sebastian, or the emergence of new bands like Franz Ferdinand. As Scott declares "the last year or so, there's just millions of great bands in Glasgow and I think it's because for the last seven or eight years, obviously you had bands like Mogwai, Arab Strap and Belle and Sebastian coming out in the mid 90's and it was really a bit of a birth for music, in Glasgow there wasn't much happening and I think people kinda got sick of that, so they thought fuck it we're going to do music for a bit of a laugh, so because they were doing it for enjoyment so they ended up just doing what they wanted not what was popular at the time. So now your getting all these bands that don't sound anything like each other and they're just really passionate because it's what the kinda music they love, some bands are electronic, some bands are kinda bluesy kind of thing, some of them are rock bands." Before Adele rationales "I think it's unrealistic to have a constantly brilliant music scene, in Glasgow it seems to just come in bursts every few years." There must be an underlying reason for this, Alidih validates that a reason for this may be because "There's a couple of really good supportive small venues in Glasgow, they put on unsigned bands and that really helps." With Scott going onto declare "Another thing I think as well is that in the last couple of years it has got very friendly, all the bands that are coming though now, there had been maybe more backstabbing of bands in the past, and now it's like everyone is starting a fresh, every ones very friendly, helping each other out, doing gig's with each other, lending each other gear and because it's is such a small place Glasgow you get to meet, if anyones remotely into the same music as you you'll meet all those people and you can't help meeting everyone into that kind of music, so if their in a band you'll see there band, there'll see your band, it's all supportive so everyones egging each other on. Going oh come on but that's what makes it so great, it makes you want to be in a better band."

Previously to this tour Sons and Daughters where the opening act for Franz Ferdinand's recent UK tour, which also had The Fiery Furnaces as support. Of this Scott would comment "I think a lot of fans were expecting Franz clones to be supporting, so we were kinda worried about how we'll go down but it was needless because the age range of the audience was quite vast and everybody seemed to be really receptive, it was a nice reception."

Apart from supporting Franz Ferdinand in the UK they have also supported them in the USA. Sons and Daughters have also played Music Industry Festival SXSW, of this Scott would say
"We were there for about a full week, we played 3 shows and an all in, in that bit of Texas, the main showcase that we did at the fest was brilliant in a really big venue, probably about a 1000 people. There was a big barn with dear antlers on the walls, it was meant to be a billiard room, it's normally a big billiard room, there's a really down in the barn kind of feel to it. It was great the general reaction was great, it's still weird because whenever we go anywhere, like if we go to London or New York or even LA there's people who come up to us after shows and go "oh I saw you guys at South by South West" so it shows how many people come from all over the world to see it." David would then further this by declaring "It didn't look full when we were actually playing, but when we watched the video, we looked back and saw it was really busy."

Of the future Scott would declare "We're touring just now, doing a tour of England, we're going to go back to America for a few dates in August. Doing Reading and Leeds, going to go to Europe for a couple of shows, plan some more touring for the end of the year. Just writing and rehearsing when ever we can for the next album which will probably get recorded in about December or January something like that."

Love The Cup is out now.

Many thanks to Sons and Daughters and there crew for making us feel welcome and to Alison at Hermana PR.

Nathan Westley