Massive Wagons on playing Download Festival: 'This is a real moment for us'
Massive Wagons have said playing Download Festival is one of the defining moments of their career so far.
Singer Baz Mills and Adam Thistlethwaite spoke to Wyatt shortly before their Dogtooth Stage set and Baz told him: “This is the first Download for us yeah, this is a real moment for us like. This is what bands dream of playing here.”
Asked by Wyatt if playing the big stage is easier or more nerve wracking, Baz said: “We’ve always said – we’ve been asked this question a few times, people say ‘we’ll see how they perform on a big stage’ – but you want to (try playing) a working men’s club for people that don’t know their rock music, that’s difficult.”
Adam added: “To be honest we’ve done probably more of this size of tent – the Dogtooth Stage where we’re playing – we’ve done that quite a lot. But I think the pressure is there’s more press, there’s more eyes on you at a festival like this.”
“It’s such a tough nut to crack getting here in the first place,” continued Baz. “You just pile the pressure on yourself because you don’t want to naff it up.”
Elsewhere in the chat, Wyatt asked whether they consider themselves a cult band with their highly passionate fanbase.
“I think we’ve operated on the smaller level for such a long time we’ve kind of developed this quite hardcore group of people who’ve been there since the beginning,” says Adam. “It’s only been in the last 12 months that the momentum has kicked in and we seem to be reaching a wider audience and playing this kind of thing. But it’s given us a really strong foundation to build upon so it’s definitely a good thing.”
Baz added: “When we started, this is the first and only band we’ve only ever been in – we didn’t come from any other bands, this is it, this is the only band we’ve ever been in.
“So it might seem like it’s taken us a long time but a lot of other bands might have been in other bands and found their feet in other bands over the years – it’s taken us eight years to get to this point. When we started out we didn’t even know what a promoter was.
“We didn’t know anything, we just found it all out ourselves. We have built up a hardcore following and in the last two to three years people like Planet Rock – Planet Rock and Winter’s End – you’ve just put us on and it’s snowballed.”
Watch the full interview below where they discuss Massive Wagons’ intense work ethic and Wyatt mistakenly dubbing them a Yorkshire band.
PHOTO GALLERY: Friday at Download Festival 2018
PHOTO GALLERY: Saturday at Download Festival 2018