Interview Paddy Considine

The cult film star on his first love, making raw rock'n'roll with his band Riding The Low

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Interview: Paddy Considine

Paddy Considine may be best known for his arresting performance as avenging angel in Dead Man’s Shoes and was recently giving the north a bad name in the dark and twisted Red Riding, but I bet you didn’t know that he had a band called Riding the Low who are playing the Cockpit on 30th May.

Considine and co are not new to the music scene. “We’ve been going for three years now,” he says, “and before that I used to play the drums in college bands.” He was at college with director Shane Meadows and together they formed grunge band She Talks To Angels, but, as Considine says, “then my wife bought me a guitar and I started messing round on that, just making sounds you know - then I got Chris Baldwin involved and he started writing with me and it just sounded really raw and great.”

Concerned about the reputation of those who try to bridge the film/music gap he is keen to assert that he’s not “just another actor wanking off on stage”. So what sets him apart from the Keanu Reeves and Russell Crowes of this world? “We are about having a great time, making lo-fi, raw guitar with the fat cut out,” he says. “It’s not an ego trip, there are no five minute guitar solos or anything like that. We just vibe off the crowd - so it’s as much about them as it is about us.”

His roles have been pretty harrowing, what can he bring from that experience into his music? “It’s a release from all of that. When you do a film, it’s someone elses take on things and it’s theirs and they decide what the final cut looks like. Although we’re a band, I write the songs and when I’m on stage it’s my baby, it’s much more personal. There’s much less tension and stress and we can just let loose and it really belongs to us.”

The bands’ live shows have got quite a reputation with Paddy confessing that “we like to pass around a bottle of tequila, get everyone drunk and make them like us!” Forced fun seems to be the order of the day, “the other day we were playing and we’d been on for an hour and were meant to be playing our last song and I was like ‘no, we’re not going’. So we played for another hour and really got the crowd going. Make sure you come down to The Cockpit!”
Riding The Low, 30 May, The Cockpit, Swinegate, LS1 4AG, 0113 244 1573, 7pm, £6

Posted on Friday 15th May 2009
Edwina Attlee

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