Music Award nominee The Jim Jones Revue: 'We're at a heightened state of alert at all times so we're ready to rock at the drop of a hat!'

You've been touring the States recently, how does the reaction differ over there to your Brit audience?

We've had a great response in the US and Canada too which has been brilliant because we're influenced by so much American music. But the reaction has been quite similar to what we get in the UK-People just go mental! The difference for us is travelling the long journeys from city to city because North America is just so big. For instance on the last tour we drove from Chicago to Philadelphia in one hit which is a 16 hour drive-It’s like driving from London to Edinburgh twice! We arrived at our hotel at 4 in the morning, then got up a few hours later to do an NPR radio show at midday, then played a gig that evening. The whole tour was pretty much like that. We were supposed to be playing the David Letterman show at the beginning of the tour but our flights got cancelled due to Hurricane Irene. Letterman then got re-confirmed while we were en route to the first show in the Vancouver so we slotted it into the only two rest days we had on the tour and ended up flying from one coast to the other four times in a week!

What does the band do to relax (if you can remember a time when that happened), and to keep fresh gig after gig?

We never relax-We're at a heightened state of alert at all times so we're ready to rock at the drop of a hat!

Do you think London has had a creative impact on your work?

London has a huge creative impact on the band and our work.  As we've said before the lyrics of our songs are inspired by what Jim experiences in London every day of his life, not an imagined 50's Americana which has no relevance to us. We've all lived in London all our adult lives so this also influences they way we play and probably adds a unique element to music which is why we don't sound like a straight ahead 50's revival band. It was never our intention to create a facsimile of a 50's rock’n’roll band. We just loved the music and used it as an inspiration alongside another 5 decades of brilliant music.

Apart from rushing around Australia, what is the 2012 creative ambition for The Jim Jones Revue?

As soon as we get back from Australia we're going to start recording our new album and that’s our main priority for the beginning of next year. We've been on tour solidly for the last two years so we want to concentrate on making this record as good as we can. We'll kick off touring again in the Spring, then do the festivals and all the usual stuff over the summer.

Photo Stephane Rossi