There is no doubting the sheer immensity that runs through the heart of one of Glasgow’s finest 21^st Century bands, The Fast Camels.

A popular favourite of many who come to Liverpool during the month of May for the International Pop Overthrow, The Fast Camels have endeared themselves and seared their music into the hearts and minds of many who find their way to the Cavern Pub and Cavern to enjoy a relentless blast of the pop groove and psychedelic affair that the band offer.

Meeting up with two of the band, the insanely likeable Drew Sturgeon and Mark O’ Connor on a quiet Sunday morning before they perform the second of their slots at the I.P.O. is an encounter in which to savour. The taste of the day to come is fuelled by tea in the awakening Cavern Walks, the talk is of other things away from the music, the Scottish independence vote, Fleetwood Mac at the Hydro, the two great hats that the two musicians wear with relish and with pride, however soon enough events must turn to the previous evenings music, I ask them,

Welcome back to Liverpool, how did you feel last night went?

Drew: “I thought it was one of our better performances, wouldn’t you agree? (Mark says yes!) We played a new song from a new album, a lot of older material and it was good to see David Bash back and healthy after his scare last year, he just looked a lot thinner!”

Mark: “We couldn’t believe it; we actually thought when we went up to the bar that it was a look-alike! One of the guys we were with was getting a picture with him and we thought it was a look-alike, he had the same hat and everything but it was actually David Bash!”

Maybe that’s something that should be arranged next year, is have a David Bash look-alike contest at the I.P.O. How do you feel the festival has progressed?

Mark: “We’ve played the I.P.O. seven or eight times!”

Drew: “It’s getting a bit busier with the locals coming a long and we’ve got to know a lot of them as well but I think the back stage is getting very busy on Fridays and Saturdays. Previously we were playing to 20 or 30 people but last night was a little busier.”

Mark: “The time that we were on last night was 10.30pm and last year we were on at Midnight so a bit later. The later you play the more people you have there. I think as well it was off the back of playing two weeks ago and so I think that helped us as well as we played two 45 minute sets so here it’s only half an hour and it’s hard to bring it down to size.”

By the time you get started you have to stop playing! You don’t want that type of thing overrunning!

Drew: “I think we were over by two minutes which wasn’t too bad but don’t tell David Bash! It’s hard to organise all the bands.”

Your last album was tremendous, it was excellent but you said you have a new album and a single out?

Mark: “We’re working on a new album – six tracks are done now, we’re still writing just now for it so six tracks down now, we’re starting to mix them and we’re going to aim for ten tracks on it and we want to do a vinyl release for it this time.”

Drew: “What we found was that with the Dead Rooms and Butterfly Dreams album was that it was too long because we had a seven year gap between the first and the second album we had so much material we wanted to put out but we found it was too long and as you know, vinyl has to be 22 minutes each side as you lose the quality so we couldn’t use it for a vinyl release so this time we’re cutting the tracks down to ten so we’ll have five on each side so we’ll have the quality we need.”

You’re a band that deals more with a particular genre, how on earth are you going to take the timings down to do that because you are very psychedelic and an element of this runs throughout your music. This is like asking the Mamas and the Papas to release just an album of six songs! How does that work for you?

Mark: “With the first album it was all Drew and myself but on this album it’s not going to be the same but just now Andy’s got a song and Joe’s got a song about the accident he had whilst on holiday – I’m not sure if you’ve heard about that? He broke his neck and his back! It was last year, he tripped into a swimming pool and he hit his head on the ledge on the side of it  – Joe won’t mind me telling the story, he’ll enjoy the sympathy!  He broke a bone in his neck and his back, he’s fine now though.”

Drew:“The main thing is that he’s now back healthy and playing.”

Mark: “He was very lucky; he was one vertebrae away from never walking again. We’re just thankful that he’s back and playing. He wrote a song about his time in hospital. He was in traction so he was just lying back, staring at the ceiling as he couldn’t move but there a nurse, a matron and there was one other guy a patient but he didn’t know what he looked like, he couldn’t see him but they got on very well and the hated the nurse – the matron because she was very rough, she wasn’t very nice so Joe wrote this song about the matron and that’s going to go on the album, it’s really good.”

Is there going to be a tour on the back of this album, perhaps including a visit to Liverpool?

Drew: “Anytime that we get the chance to play Liverpool because it’s our favourite place outside Glasgow.”

Mark: “I think it’s better than Glasgow!”

Where do you see the band going with the new album?

Drew: “We want to make the album a bit more poppy, a bit more snappy, as the Dead Rooms and Butterflies album was an experimental studio album and we loved the material on it but we’d like to make the new one so it catches a bigger audience.”

Moving then away slightly from the progressive and psychedelic thing that you’ve been doing and moving into more commercial areas?

Mark: “We’ve actually been talking about this and I think we’ve actually done it back to front. We should have done the commercial stuff to start with and then progressed on. We went the wrong way, we were writing all these epics and we should have been writing shorter ones. We just thought that we could do it.”

That’s interesting because your heroes are quite diverse when it comes to music aren’t they?

Drew: “We like 60s music, the stuff going on in London and the west coast of America, Syd Barratt, The Who – John Entwhistle, actually he’s a massive influence, The Kinks. We’ve actually got a new song called The Joy of Roy which is quite like that – it sounds like The Kinks.”

One last question, thank you for coming back to Liverpool to the International Pop Overthrow, would you consider, if David Bash asked you, to go over to America and play the I.P.O. over there?

Mark: “I would say yes but I would want to tie it in with other things, we would have to pay ourselves. If we had the means to go we’d go.”

Drew: “I’d say no as we don’t have the finances to go. We’d lose so much money but as Mark said, if we were over there anyway with other gigs then we’d do it.”

Mark: “Imagine us at the Whisky A Go Go! We’d have to come up with a scheme!”

Drew:“To play in America was always something that we’ve wanted to do though. We’ve a few friends out there but we couldn’t do it for just one half hour I.P.O. gig. The amount of people we’ve met through the Liverpool gigs is amazing.”

Mark: “The amount of people who are part of our lives now, it’s been wonderful this week.”

It’s hard to turn David Bash down as well!

Mark: “It’s just that sexy face!”

Ian D. Hall