Joe and his younger sister Viva were in a band called Bikini Atoll before starting Joe Gideon & The Shark. “Viva was into being a gymnast, and she was a dancer and stuff. She kept getting a persistent [knee] injury and looked like she’d have to give up. At the time I was thinking of getting a band together and Viva could play the piano so that’s how we ended up making music together really.”

Viva plays the drums, piano and eight-track – sometimes all at the same time. So how does she do that?! “That’s what everyone asks! Maybe it’s something to do with her dancing and also we were both brought up playing the piano which is an ambidextrous instrument. You really have to focus on getting both your hands going. So it’s really not a leap when you can play one instrument with both hands to playing two instruments with one hand on one instrument and one hand on another instrument.” Don’t know about you but that still seems difficult to me…

Now it’s clear where the first part of the bands name came from, it is Joe’s name after all… but the shark? “I had a bunch of names on a list that I’d been thinking about and I showed them to my sister and she just really went for that one [shark].” I see. So Viva isn’t some sort of aquatic creature? “It’s a strange thing you know when you take on a name you start taking on the characteristics of that name, and she’s definitely grown into that role!”

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Their debut album Harum Scarum was released in March and so far Joe is happy with how it’s been received. “[It] couldn’t be better really, (laughs) we’re thrilled.” NME says that Joe Gideon & The Shark is “an inspired band with fire at their finger tips.”

They’ve played with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds something that Joe describes as a “pretty wild experience”.

“I’m a big fan of the Seeds, so is my sister, when we got asked to do that it was God damn amazing. There was one little problem area and that was I was expecting my first child, and it was gonna be 12 days before the first [tour] date so we didn’t know how that was gonna work out… but it did!”

Balancing a family, especially with a baby must be hard for a touring musician. “It is hard. But we’re pretty driven with our music so we have to make it work -so we do. There’s a lot of musicians and actors and they all have families and they all have to make it work if they wanna keep going.”

So with an impressive ex-gymnast (Viva actually competed at the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992 as a rhythmic gymnast) should we expect back flips, handstands and theatrics from the bands performances? “We’re trying our very best just to play these songs that we’ve got and if there’s any theatricality that comes with it that’s from natural expression not predesigned. The songs are story led so you find yourself falling into the stories…”

And if the music business didn’t’ work out? “[I’d be] a mountaineer perhaps, out in the wilderness (pauses) in Greenland… yeah charting new territories in Greenland.” Hmm. How rock ‘n’ roll!

Joe Gideon & The Shark play Crawdaddy, Dublin on September 23. I ask Joe if he has any final words to draw in the lovely crowds: “If they like their blues a little bit strange and their gospel a little bit odd (laughs) then come and see us.”

Words: Kelly McGrath

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