We were very excited to announce last week that we are working alongside Tim Burgess, lead singer with The Charlatans and the brains behind the Tim Peaks Diner which can be found at festivals all over the UK this summer. Ben Sherman have teamed up with Tim to create the shirts being worn by the Tim Peaks staff – taking our classic Gingham House Check Shirt and adorning it with an embroidered chest pocket badge of the diner logo and also the Pete Fowler designed avatar of Tim himself, coming out of the breast pocket. We sat down with Tim over a double espresso to find how Tim Peaks came about and to hear more about what’s in store for the summer.
Well the first idea was a tweet and it went crazy from there. I’d set up a twitter account and had a couple of thousand followers. I wasn’t sure what twitter was for. One morning I just tweeted ‘coffee?’ and lots of people tweeted back with stuff like ‘I’m plastering a ceiling in Preston, need an espresso’ people from Japan, Argentina and all over the place. We thought it needed a name and I’m a big fan of David Lynch so it had to be Tim Peaks – a nod to the best telly show ever made. After that someone sent us a logo and a guy got in touch who roasted coffee so I went up there and we came up with the Tim Peaks blend. The organisers of Kendal Calling got in touch to ask if we wanted to have a real Tim Peaks at their festival. We said a big yes and we asked some friends to come and play a few songs, Edwyn Collins, Roddy Frame, Kyle from The View and Nick Heyward all turned up and played and I did a set too. Since then we’ve done a few festivals and people like Suzanne Vega, Sleaford Mods and High Llamas have all swing by to play some songs. Lots of upcoming bands too – bands I hear on Soundcloud that we just like the sound of.
At the first festival we sold over 2,000 cups of coffee – we didn’t want to make money from it so we gave it all to The David Lynch Foundation. The whole thing has been magical.
Tim Peaks will be at Liverpool Sound City, Kendal Calling and Festival Number 6 this summer. A four hour dub marathon from Prince Fatty and Horseman is a tasty prospect. It’s not all music though, Professor Tim O Brien will be there with planetary amazingness, there’s Welsh language classes at Portmeirion and the Northern Soul Dance Classes are always a blast
Lots… Hot Vestry are a band that I’m listening to a lot at the moment. I have to let you know here that I’ve got a record label, so we get to sign some of the bands we like. It’s called O Genesis and we’ve just released Hot Vestry’s EP. There’s a great new Liverpool outfit called DROHNE who I’d recommend anyone to look up. I recorded a song with a brilliant band called Grumbling Fur last year, my album of the year (obviously I mean for the songs without me on, that would be a bit big headed). Chastity Belt are great too – an all-girl band from the US. Boxed In are cool. I spend a lot of time listening to music so I’m always happy to recommend. There’s a band called Grasshopper who are supporting us when we play on Worthing Pier – the oldest kid in the band is 16, yet they’ve got a post punk sound from around 1980, it’s great to find a band a give them a chance to play in front of a bigger audience than they would at their own gig. And one last band, Blossoms – that should keep you going for a while.
Here are the bands he recommends: Grasshopper, Hot Vestry, D-R-O-H-N-E, Grumbling Fur & Chastity Belt.
Tickets for Kendal are available from http://www.kendalcalling.co.uk/tickets/ and for more information on Tim Peaks see www.timpeaks.com
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