Clint Boon Interview: "I'm getting really excited about all thats happening"

Whether it's playing the keyboard for the Inspiral Carpets, being a mainstay on the Mancunian radio airwaves, soundtracking the club nights of the city's indie-inclined, or providing (along with Mrs Boon) a place where sweet treats and music collide in the best way possible; Clint Boon is a verified Manchester music legend. 

However, with Clint having recently quit radio after over 20 years in the game, you might think he would be slowing down for once, but in fact, he is as busy as ever. The Inspirals are back on tour, Mrs Boon's Tea Party is getting bigger and bigger, he's in the midst of a new club residency, and he is even starting on his autobiography! 

With all this happening and more, we thought we'd catch up with Clint and chat all about this exciting new chapter in his life, and where he sees it all going. Scroll down and check out what he had to say!

 

 

Hi Clint, it’s good catching up with you, how are you keeping? Despite just leaving the radio, it seems like you’re as busy as ever!

"For sure man! Yeah, I really am!

"The idea of leaving the radio station in December was to create more time in my day to develop some of the more creative things I'm doing.

"That chapter has ended for now, but I'm confident that at some point I'm going to be back on the radio. What I've been saying to a lot of people, which I think explains it, is that if the only thing that I could do was to be a radio presenter, then I'd have been stuck at XS for the rest of my days, because it's a great gig, they're a great station.

"But, because I do all these other things, you know, I'm a musician, I'm a DJ, I'm hoping I'm a writer (I’ve just started writing my memoirs!), I think I just needed more time and stepping out of radio is the only way I could provide that time to give all my other projects the attention they need really."

 

It must’ve been a big decision, taking that jump, as you’ve been in Radio for decades now no?

"It was a bit scary at first.

"Once I’d handed my notice in at the radio station, and kept on thinking, that income was the only steady money that I've ever had in my life. In the stations that I've worked for over the last 20-odd years, there's always been a monthly wage coming in, you know what I mean?

"That was worrying for a few months, especially leading up to Christmas. It was like, there’s this thing called a mortgage that we still need to look after haha!

"It's taken me a lot of time in my head to adjust to my new timetable. I'm still re-acclimatising, but I'm definitely on the other side now. I'm getting really excited about what's happening.

"I had a meeting today about our Mrs Boon’s Tea Party business, which was one of the most important meetings that I've had in terms of what's going to come out of it.

 

Image: Clint Boon on Facebook

Whilst we’re on the tea parties, you say there have been important meetings, but how are they doing?

"They’re going really well, mate! We’re doing it once a month at Bask, in Stockport, and it’s very successful.

"We’re looking at keeping that going, but taking it out to a bigger market and doing it in other cities. We can literally just load up the van, take it over to places like Sheffield and do it. 

"But then the other thing we wanna do is get it into the festival market as well.

"It won't happen overnight, but this year there'll be a few events and festivals where we'll pop up. 

"Then we're hoping that, you know, within a couple of years, it'll be festivals coming to us and saying we want you to come and do Mrs Boon's Tea Party at Glastonbury, you know, on the main stage, before the main act Inspiral Carpets haha! 

"It's a lot of hard work for both of us because Charlie does all the baking in the two days leading up to the event. Then there's a lot of donkey work on the day, you know, loading the van up, getting the gear into the room, setting the room up takes three hours.  

"Then it's a three-hour event during which I'm DJing, I do the Boons Bingo, and we have live bands on, so I'm usually doing the sound tech for that stuff too

"If the Tea Party business was the only thing that we had going on, that'd be exciting, building that and working on that. We love doing it together. 

"Plus it's a family business that hopefully will still be there in 10/15 years for our boys to be running.  So yeah, it’s really exciting."

 

Fancy checking out what Mrs Boons Tea Party at Bask is all about? Get last-minute tickets for this weekend's edition below!

Buy tickets:

 

You mentioned that you’ve started on your autobiography too, what's that process been like?

"It's great. I know it's a cliche, but it's very cathartic.

"The way it's come about is, I think probably two or three years ago, this guy, a musician who's ended up in publishing, approached me about it. But my bottom line for the first couple of years was ‘I'm too busy to write my book.’

"Because every day at this time, like one, half one, I was packing everything up to get into Manchester to do my radio show.  Then everything else I'm doing, all this other busy stuff was compressed around that.  

"So I told Jake, the publisher, that, as and when I wanted to do it, I’d do it with him because I like his approach.

"Then when I left the radio station in December, as soon as I got the time, I started putting together the basis of what the book was going to be all about.

"Now, I've started writing it. 

"It might not be all my life story in chronological order. It might just end up being a chunk of my life, but I think it's going to be at least two books, to be honest with you. 

"But I'm enjoying doing it, and I'm spending a lot of hours on it and it's a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. 

"I thought it might be a case of me sitting there thinking, right, what happened then? I know, oh, I started a band! 

"But I have spent a lot of time doing the chapter list where I've gone through my life and done bullet points of roughly what happened, working out the structure of the book, that sort of thing.

"But when I'm doing the actual creative side, you know, the memories and writing, that is coming out beautifully. 

"So I'm yeah, I'm enjoying that process."

 

Well, speaking of reincarnating old memories, you’re not only doing that on the page, but on the stage as well! You and the Inspirals are about to head out on tour supporting the Happy Mondays.

"What's funny about this tour, is that The Inspirals were very much over.

"We'd not worked or gigged for six or seven years, because Craig our drummer had passed away. 

"We'd all written it off, we just thought it was never going to happen again. 

"I didn't want to do it again without him and it didn't even enter my thoughts, you know, the idea of getting the band back together, I just wasn't interested. 

"But then, in the summer of 2022, one Saturday morning I got an email off Graham, our guitarist, saying we've just had this offer to get the band back together and go out on tour supporting the Happy Mondays. 

"Immediately I was just like, I'm ready for that. I just wanted to do it. 

"Ste, our singer, quickly said he wanted to do it. Graham was up for it.

"Martyn, the bass player, amicably declined. He said: ‘I'm not ready to tour, but you guys go ahead and do it without me.’ So we did. 

"But the Happy Mondays support didn't happen that year for one reason or another. So instead we went out on the road and did our own UK headline tour, which was phenomenal. We also went out on a headline tour of Australia and New Zealand. It was just one of the greatest years that we've had as a band.

"And now, in the second year of that new chapter, the Happy Mondays tour is about to happen."

 

Was that decision to return helped with it being the Mondays, and that you’d be out touring with old friends?

"The Happy Mondays part did proper excite me, because I love the band, and I love working with them.

"It’s one of them, if that had been: ‘Do you want to go out and support  X or Y band?’ It might not have had the same appeal.

"It's funny, they've been friends of ours since the late 80s.  

"When I first saw them, I'm guessing it would be 87 or 88, It was before Bez was in the band and they were supporting New Order.

"I fell in love with the music right away. Then soon after that, we supported them at the Boardwalk in Manchester, and from that night, we just became good friends. 

"Sure there have been times over the years where we've lost contact for a little bit, but with like Mark, Gaz, Bez, Shaun, and Rowetta, we feel like brothers (and a sister!), you know what I mean, the kinship has always been there. 

"A few years ago now, we went out and did an arena tour with them, which was brilliant, just proper nice. Everybody was still getting on, and because we're all a bit older we’ve calmed down a bit, we can actually remember more now, haha. 

"You know, Shaun doesn't remember much about what happened in the early 90s, but he'll remember that tour he did with the Inspirals a few years ago.

"It's interesting, the original offer over email didn't mention fees. It didn't mention how much we were going to get,  but as soon as I read it, I just thought, wow. Yep. I'm ready. Let's do it."

 

Image: Inspiral Carpets on Facebook

You’ve got your son in the band now, replacing Martyn on Bass, that’s got to be awesome as a Dad, no?

"Yeah, our 19-year-old Oscar is our bass player. 

"You know, to be stood outside the Sydney Opera House with your band you never thought we were going to get back together again, with your 19-year-old son at the side of you because he's a brilliant bass player.

"For a Dad, that's quite a kick, it's pretty brilliant. 

"He’s also got a band called The Solution, who you should definitely check out."

 

Despite being able to remember more, is there anything new The Inspirals are doing in this new chapter as you speak of it, or any new music on the horizon?

"We're very much talking about probably getting some new music together, and hopefully, a new album at some point, which would be a great thing, a great part of the journey.

"But we're playing better than ever as well. On a technical note, I'm sure some of you readers might appreciate that we've started using in-ear monitors for the first time ever. 

"You know, the little things that you see pop stars sticking in their ears. That's made such a massive difference because, A, we're singing more in tune than we've ever sung, so we can hear everybody in the band. B, we're doing less damage to our ears because, famously, these things aren't as damaging as the traditional wedge monitors.

"And C? Is there a C? Oh no. Suppose it looks good. Haha!"

 

The Inspiral Carpets are playing an exclusive intimate live show at AMP in Stockport next month! Grab tickets quickly as this one will sell out!

Buy tickets:

 

Image: Clint Boon on Facebook

Finally, I’d just like to finish off on your return to the Manchester club scene, any honourable Mancunian with an indie-inclination partied with you at South before its closure, but this latest one at Off The Square, what can you tell us about it?

"South Nightclub in Manchester was legendary, the vibe that we created in there, and we were all sad to see that go.

"I think it was the longest-running weekly residency by one DJ ever in Manchester. That's what I've been led to believe anyway. 

"Since South closed, I've been looking for somewhere to do a weekly residency.  I've done things like all-day and one-night events at places like Deaf Institute and Disorder, but when I came across Off the Square, I just felt like it was the perfect room to get that community back together.

"So yeah I’ve been doing a weekly ‘Boon Army’ club night at Off the Square on Lever Street in Manchester since the start of the year. It’s a brilliant venue and I love DJing there. 

"It's just a really inviting room, whereas some other clubs can tend to be a bit cold and sticky until you've got 300 people in, this just feels a bit more homely, and I'm DJing down on the floor with the people rather than the elevated DJ booth you see a lot of nowadays. 

"However, I’m only going to be doing the night until the 8th of March and then I’m off on tour with the Inspirals so I’ll be taking a break for a couple of months.

"I’m hoping I can revisit the idea of a weekly residency further into 2024 when the Inspirals have a bit of downtime."

 

 

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Want to see Clint Boon DJing live, visit his artist page on Skiddle and Find out where he's playing - HERE

Grab your tickets to see The Inspiral Carpets live - HERE

Fancy attending Mrs Boons Tea Party? See when it's happening and grab your tickets - HERE

Want to get down to one of the Boon Army nights before their hiatus when Clint heads out on Tour, find all the dates and tickets - HERE

 

 

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Check out our What's On Guide to discover even more rowdy raves and sweaty gigs taking place over the coming weeks and months. For festivals, lifestyle events and more, head on over to our Things To Do page or be inspired by the event selections on our Inspire Me page.

 

 

  

 

 

Header image credit: Clint Boon on Facebook