Landing somewhere in between nasty blues and lighter Skiffle, Dark Passenger have slowly emerged from highly rated support band to headliners in waiting on the live scene.  A recent superb outing at Stockton Calling reinforces the bands ability to put on white-hot shows; something they’re sure to put into practice across the summer, including at Richmond Live in August.  Damian Robinson caught up with Passenger frontman Stu to find out more about the band.

You’re set at Stockon Calling was called out as one of the best on the day, how did you find it?

Every chance we get to play a gig we try to take as we all enjoy being together and the enthusiasm  we all get from playing live.  Stockton was great and I think it showed how well we’re working as a band.

A Passenger gig tends to have moments of lightness mixed in with moments of seriousness.  Is that a hard show to manage?

Not really no.  As a frontman it’s often generalised that I should be all moody, but I’ve never been able to do that.  What we all want from the show is a show which may have serious music being played, but we’re all characters and all we like to contribute in different ways, whether that’s onstage cheekiness or whatever.  Our main aim is to put on a show which is a positive one, both for the people at the show and also for everyone in the band.

It’s quiet a collective decision making approach then in the band?

Where we can we certainly try to.  Ultimately we’ve all been in bands before which had some challenges and we want to make sure that in Dark Passenger we all feel like we can contribute to the music and the live show.  There’s 4 of us onstage and it’s really important that we help each other out and that we all have fun.  If we don’t enjoy it then there’s going to be less ability for the band to let loose and cause mayhem.

There’s some big gigs coming up for the band, one at Richmond Live and then the bands first show in Newcastle.  How are you approaching those shows?

Well we’ve only had seven songs finished in the past but these are expanding so it means we can work together to figure out the set list, and the order we play the tracks in, so the show’s should be really lively as we’ll all have contributed to the set list.  We want to put on the liveliest show we can and we’ll only do that if we all feel we contribute.  This is everyone’s band.

What’s next after the shows?

We’ll take our time and work on some new music.  Once it’s ready we’ll look at ways to release it.

For information about upcoming Dark Passenger shows check out https://www.facebook.com/darkpassengermusic2017/