Full Interview with Christopher Bowes of Alestorm

J: I had another personal question. I follow you guys on Facebook, and your last show was in Johannesburg on September 27th. 

CB: Yeah, that was our last show, yeah.

J: In that show, you threw a giant inflatable duck into the crowd, and you had mentioned that you’d been touring with them and you no longer had any giant inflatable ducks left. 

CB: This is true. When we started getting these ducks, we were looking for a stage prop online and we found this company called BigMouth. You can buy their stuff in Wal Mart, they just sell inflatables. On their website, they had this ridiculous seven-foot-tall giant inflatable duck, and I thought “I want it”. So we bought one, and then it started to get a bit bad, you know the plastic wears out. So we thought “he’s going to die soon, let’s just throw him into the crowd”, and people loved that. So we just started doing that more and more, throwing this duck into the crowd. Then we’d go to the website, buy a new one…

So earlier this year, March or so, I wrote the company saying “hey guys, I’d like to buy five more of your inflatable ducks”, and they said, “we stopped making those, there’s no more.” They knew there was one on eBay, but that was it, so we bought the very last duck, and there are no more of those. So we spent most of this summer trying to source inflatable ducks, and it’s really hard to find a big old inflatable duck like that. But in the end, we found someplace in the evil empire of China. Some online daft stupid “We’ll make anything you want for money” thing, and we’ve commissioned custom giant inflatable ducks. I think we’ve done a reverse Spinal Tap and they’re really big. Like, really really big. And they weigh a fucking ton. I’m not sure we’re even going to be able to get them on an airplane anymore, so we’ll see. 

J: So the inflatable ducks aren’t gone, then?

CB: They’ve come back in a new form, we hope. There’s a chance the guy at the airport will say “you can’t bring this on an airplane”. It’s literally too heavy for any kind of oversized baggage, so… we’ll see. 

J: Where did the idea for a stage prop come from in the first place? 

CB: Well. You’ve got to go back to [2015]. We were playing on a cruise ship — there’s a lot of them these days — so we’re on this ship, out in the middle of the ocean, and the local venue guy says “you can’t hang a real backdrop, but you have a screen, so you can have a digital backdrop”. And we thought “well that’s great, we didn’t know this, but we don’t have a backdrop file you can use”. So Elliott, our keyboard player, opened up his computer, and the only image he had was this duck-banana thing that his girlfriend had sent to him. So we said this is all we’ve got, do you want to make a backdrop out of it? 
So we just randomly made this duck-banana backdrop, and it was so popular we made it for real, started playing shows with this duck-banana backdrop. 

In 2016 we had this big tour supporting Sabaton, and they had an actual tank on stage, so we thought “how do we beat a tank?” I know, let’s get a real duck. That’s when we decided to get this first giant duck, and it just sat on top of Sabaton’s tank. And that was the beginning of the duck. All just a terrible accident. 

J: I thought it might have had something to do with Sabaton. I think they’re still bringing out the tank. It might have even gotten bigger. 

CB: Yeah, their tanks are getting bigger… Means our ducks have to get bigger to match, as well. 

J: When was the last time you toured with Sabaton?

CB: Would have been that tour in 2016, but we’ve seen them at festivals.  Like us, they just go all over the place all the time. If we ever play with them again we’ll have to get an even bigger duck. Maybe a duck riding a tank, who knows? 

J: Or a duck vs. tank battle. 

CB: Yeah, anything can happen, we’ll see. 

J: You’ve been touring “No Grave But the Sea” since 2017. What’s your favourite song to play live off the new album? 

CB: It’s got to be “Fucked With An Anchor”. It’s all about the songs that people love to sing along with, and that is the ultimate sing-along. People love swearing. It sounds like a bunch of drunk sports fans singing this happy song, and it’s great. That’s the essence of this band. That sort of nonsense. And that song is so much fun to play live.

J: Anything else you want to say about the show coming up in Kelowna?

CB: I hope to see a lot of people there. We’ve never been there before. We’ve never done a tour of Canada quite this big, and I hope it pays off, and people come to the show.