Hot to trot

Steve Bays is a man on a mission.

“My goal today is to find some weird instruments that I can only find in Dublin,” announces the Hot Hot Heat frontman as we sit down to natter before their recent Village show.

“Every record has had a different concept. On the next one I want to surround myself with different keyboard-related instruments. I also want to buy an autoharp, a celeste and a mellotron. I’d really like to get something uniquely Irish too.”
A brief discussion about trad music follows, and I scrawl a map of nearby music shops on a beermat. Once Steve’s curiosity is sated, our conversation turns to recent events in the world of Victoria’s finest export.
2007 saw the band release their third album for Sire, Happiness Ltd, the first to feature new guitarist Luke Paquin. This ambitious confection marks their first foray into the world of co-production, with heavyweights Tim Palmer (U2, David Bowie, The Cure), and Rob Cavallo (Green Day, My Chemical Romance) at the helm. Most of the year, however, was spent in stadium support mode.
“We did Weezer, Foo Fighters, Snow Patrol and The Killers all in a year and half,” Steve explains. “If you’re on a stage in front of 50,000 people who aren’t there to see you, you learn a lot about yourself. I feel like we paid our dues and now I want to do our own shows. They’re going to be more fun.”
The band’s European tour started in Glasgow the day before our encounter. Luckily, some hospitable locals made the boys feel right at home.
“Gary from Snow Patrol and Barry from The Futureheads took us for lunch,” beams Steve. “They’re really cool guys.”
So how exactly does intra-musician bonding work then? Is it all chumsy from the get-go on the road?
“They were actually stand-offish at first, as they were very burnt out,” Steve concedes. “It usually takes a while to decide if you really want to break the ice with opening bands. But it only takes one party and everyone becomes best friends and it's like summer camp. As you get closer to the end of the tour you start to get sad, but you end up running into the same people all the time. I probably see the guys from Louis XIV more than I see my own parents.”
As well as the stadium circuit, Hot Hot Heat also featured regularly on the talk show trail, notching up appearances on Conan O’Brien and The Tonight Show.
“I can’t think of anyone on TV I like more than Conan,” he gushes. “So I get really shy and nervous. We've been on his show before, but this time he was really complimentary, which was a real honour.”
Steve also managed to turn the tables on the wise-cracking host. Luckily, Conan can take a taste of his own medicine.
“I told him we did an interview for a New York Fashion Week magazine,” Steve explains, “and I discovered I didn’t really have anything to say about fashion, so I made up a story. I said Conan and I got drunk on Pap’s Blue Ribbon (the US equivalent of Buckfast or some other highly intoxicating cheap inebriant), that we spent an hour getting tanked and he was a really cheap drunk. He was pretty excited actually and wasn’t offended at all.”
With that, Steve bids me farewell and sets off for Walton’s, curly mop-top bouncing as he walks. If the next album is a Celtic opus drenched in bodhran and fiddle, I take full responsibility.

Happiness Ltd is out now on Warner