As his band Cud continue celebrations for their 40th anniversary, singer Carl Puttnam is in reflective mood. Comparing the “good” independent set-up that the Leeds-based group has now to the days when they were working with working with a major record label, he says: “It was always mostly all right when we were going as a band back in the day, except that record companies don’t really like musicians.
“I was in the MU (Musicians Union) and I ran for office on the executive and my slogan was something like ‘Record companies, they hate musicians, they hate music, they hate the fans’ – that’s the thing that comes across when you’re signed to a major, they really would rather you just didn’t exist…
“When we got back together again (in 2010) all that business was done with. If I didn’t feel like talking to someone I’d just say I’m knackered, I can’t be bothered. You do it for yourself, I think that comes across loads more to punters. Since Phil Slavin, who used to work for Futuresound (the Leeds-based promoters) and Dance To The Radio (their one-time record label), has been booking our shows as a pal, everything has started fitting together.”
The arrival of drummer Gogs Bym has also lifted them, he feels. “He’s just been really positive, he thinks everything’s great. The other three of us are (adopts a grumbling tone) uuh, but he isn’t and it’s infectious.”
Earlier this month they headlined their own two-night festival in Whitby, with guests including The Wedding Present, The Primitives, Young Knives and Bis. Now they head out on the road for an anniversary tour that includes Hull, Sheffield and Shipley.
“This year apparently loads of gigs are getting pulled maybe because of how the world situation is...but our tour’s not doing so bad at all. We’ve sold out a couple of places almost within days of them getting announced. They’re not big, but we’ve never been big.
“The thing that Phil enjoys doing with us is we said to him, ‘Can we play somewhere we haven’t played before?’ and he pulls out all the stops. We’ve never played Shipley in all the time we’ve been going, we haven’t played in Preston since ’88, Norwich we haven’t been to since ’92, Peterborough, Cheltenham and Scunthorpe we’ve never been to before.
“We play these little places and it’s really fun. We played somewhere in Wolverhampton where while we were played in one room there was a weekly coven session going on in another room.”
Inter-band relations have also improved in middle-age. “In the past you might have predicted there’s going to be some trouble now if we do this, like someone’s turned up late to a rehearsal. Now if they said, ‘Sorry, I’m a little late, I just had something on’ – it’s normally me –everyone goes, ‘Cool, no problem, we just got on with it without you’. Back in the day we weren’t able to do that kind of thing, we were all too childish, I guess.
“Everything is so good now, it’s pretty happy, and I think we probably make more money than we used to.”
In the past 14 years, the band have released four singles. They are slowly piecing together their sixth studio album, Puttnam says. ”There are a number of songs that we’ve recorded that haven’t been released...so we could release an album already with what we’ve got, but we are just waiting on something, I don’t know what exactly, but I think we just want one or two (more) to hang the whole thing on,” he says.
“But everyone’s work just gets in the way. Quite a few of us have got families… I don’t know what the reason is exactly, we have the time and then we don’t have the time.”
Cud play at Hull Adelphi on October 23, Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield on October 29 and Kirkgate Community Centre, Shipley on October 31. https://cudbandblog.wordpress.com/