Welcome to YoungHollywood. com. Hey guys, it's Michelle Marie coming to you from the VIP lounge here at The Greek Theatre. I'm here with Richard and Tom of the one and only Keen. How do you prepare for an audience, you know, because you have played everywhere. Huge stadiums, smaller venues. How do you prepare for tonight as far as The Greek?

What we do actually, um, is we have a little setup where we have the Keen dressing room and we have the Keen music room. And, uh, we have all these really wacky instruments. Um, like Richard has his kind of electronic drums and I have this just horrible looking guitar and this amplifier that doesn't really work. Uh, and we just plug it all in but it kind of makes a good enough noise. Um, and so for for like a half an hour or an hour before the show, we just jam around and uh, see what we come up with.

You guys formed in the mid-nineties, late nineties and then in '04 you really broke through to the mainstream. And, you know, your albums and your sounds had changed over the years. How would you describe the way it's progressed?

I think we were kind of brought up on that ideal of, um, of always evolving and always changing. And so that that I think has been the main thrust behind what we do. You know, hopes and fears is very kind of it's quite a soft album. Um, quite, um, I suppose a lot of love songs and, um, uh, you know, quite melancholic. Um, and then Under the Iron Sea is very dark and we we kind of started messing around with all the the sounds that um, that we had like the pianos and drums and and vocals. Really kind of tore them up and and made them pretty distorted and dark. And then and then uh Perfect Symmetry, the third record, was just kind of uh, well, that that was one that was kind of inspired by Under Pressure. It was just like uh, you know, more pop sounding. It was very pop sounding. Yes. Night Train which is the latest one, uh, kind of even more in that direction, I suppose. Right. Um, it's just a kind of uh, a gathering of loads of different bits that we had knocking around.

Yeah. Yeah. I know, you know, K'naan is one of those artists that I saw at Coachella and I fell in love with his music. I mean, he brought tears to my eyes because of obviously what's behind his lyrics and also as an artist, he's so inspiring. What was it about K'naan that you guys loved that made you want to work with him?

Everything really. I mean, he's he's the complete package I think. It's it's just um, I think obviously first and foremost is his his his great great music. We We all fell in love with The Dusty Foot Philosopher, which is his first record. Love his music and it turned out he loved Keen. Um, and then when we met him, it turned out that we we all got on really extremely well. So, so the whole thing was, um, a pretty happy experience.

Yeah. And you guys are also known as a band, uh, that uses the piano as your main instrument. But it's changed over the years. So how do you guys describe your creative process?

You know, you hear a sound in your head and you try and you try it out and then you probably or you have a really stupid idea. Like on Spiralling on Perfect Symmetry, Tom was doing the vocal and he just came into the control room and he said, "I can hear us all going 'woo' at the start of it." And and we were like, okay. But you try it and then you and and it's cool. So and if you don't try it, you'll never find out. So uh, it's just trusting your instincts and experimenting.

Is there a memory that you could tell us about that might be your most memorable moment with a fan that has happened to you guys over the years?

I think finding out that Paul McCartney was a fan of Keen was pretty cool.

That's huge.

Yeah, cuz we when we did Live 8, we were just in a bit of a daze and uh, you know, as Richard said there were like 250,000 people standing in the crowd. Um, but then looked over to the stage right and there was Paul Paul McCartney with with Heather, his wife for the time. And um, they were just singing along to all of our songs. There was a picture that that was taken of me and Macca after the after the show. And I'd never seen it. And so we put this kind of message out on our website saying, "Can anyone find this picture of me with Macca?" And finally it surfaced. Um, and it was one that his that that Macca's brother had taken. So he, you know, find out he's a someone like him as a fan of Keen, I think um, would be my my kind of most surprising and best experience, really.

Hi, this is Young Hollywood.

I'm Richard.

And I'm Tom and you're watching Young Hollywood.

Bye.