Big Special have never been a band afraid to feel or to laugh. The Black Country duo, made up of childhood friends Joe Hicklin and Callum Moloney, are known for channeling big emotions with bigger noise, mixing poetry, post-punk and plainspoken truth into something strikingly sincere. With the deluxe edition of their debut album Postindustrial Hometown Blues now out in the world, we caught up to talk about everything from Brum venues and emotional gigs to how they really look after each other on tour and which dog would play the drums if Big Special ever needed a canine replacement..
You’ve spoken about Birmingham often being overlooked, despite it being the UK’s second biggest city. Are there any Birmingham based artists or independent venues you want to give some love to – places or people who helped shape Big Special, your album, or just mean something to you?
Joe: GANS. We will always say GANS.
Callum: GANS is the greatest band out of Birmingham not called Big Special *laughs*
Joe: Yeah, there’s loads. Katherine Priddy is a great folk artist from Brum.
Callum: The art scene is massive in Brum now as well. Tat Vision.
Joe: Bag Lord.
Callum: Independent venues; we were basically the house band for the Hare & Hounds for like, the first year of our band. It’s f***king brilliant, I think it’s one of the best venues in the UK. Dead Wax in Digbeth as well. That was a big one for us and it’s a big venue for up and comers and that. Any other artists or bands?
Joe: Yeah, Meat Dripper and The Big Hell, more hard core stuff, from Brum and the Black Country and that. There is loads of stuff happening, I just don’t think it has as much of an infrastructure for it like other cities. It does look like it’s moving away from being so overlooked. I feel like we’re hearing about Birmingham a little bit more in media, and not just because of their bin strikes, but the other stuff as well *laughs*
Callum: It’s across the board. Since we’ve got this job now, we started to clock that the industry just sort of don’t give a f**k about Birmingham in general. Like you watch any major artists, especially ones not from the UK, they come here, they go London, they go Manchester, they go Glasgow. They never come to Birmingham. And I think because of this sort of top down disregard for the city’s music scene, in particular, I think the natural downness of a true Midlander, people ain’t f**king going gigs, and in the end, the scene stagnated. But from growing up in Birmingham and playing gigs around there, I’d say that there’s more unreal bands now than ever, in my time of living in Brum and in my era of being a 30 year old man. I wasn’t around when Sabbath were, so I guess that was probably a bit better. Some would argue that was the best time. But I don’t know, right now, it’s better than it’s ever been for gigs and for bands and for art.
Joe: I think those bands are saying where they’re from as well. I just never remember hearing bands being from like, around there, you know? And I feel like nowadays, there is a bit more like, people talking about where they’re from, that ain’t just like Manchester and London It’s just nice to see it branching out a bit.
You first played together at college – what was that band called, and are there any similarities between the music you were creating then and now?
Joe: Well, I sing and Cal plays drums.
Callum: That’s the only similarity! *laughs*
There was only two of us back then as well. We didn’t have no mates back at college either *laughs*
Joe: We were doing a BTEC together on a music course and we had a couple of bands. We had a college band with a bunch of us, and then me and Cal branched off and did our own, like, bluesy two piece. White Stripes/Black Keys kind of thing. Then we went off to work and studied and didn’t play forever. But our little duo, it was called the Days Of Plenty.
Callum: It was also quite funny, because that band did about three gigs and then split up. So the days were not plentiful *laughs*
Joe: We did Scruffy Murphy’s in Brum and the Adam and Eve in Brum and then that was that. Then Callum went off and I was thinking ‘he’s got to do it, he’s got to go off and do his thing, but if he stayed.. we’d be famous!’ *laughs*
Postindustrial Hometown Blues has already struck such a chord, and now the deluxe edition adds even more layers – from the remixes to the early demos. Was there one addition you were most excited to finally release into the world?
Callum: From a personal perspective, for both of us, when we got that Sleaford Mods remix drop into the inbox, like we’ve both been Sleaford Mods fans forever, and we’re not one of them bands that pretends, like is it Greta Van Fleet that pretends that they don’t like Led Zeppelin? We’re not like that. We absolutely love Sleaford Mods. You can see it a mile off listening to the band. So we’re not too big to pretend that we don’t and yeah, when they agreed to it and then sent us the remix, we’ve got a thing with our idols now, with our, like, favourite musicians, or, you know, top 10 to us. So that was a really big moment.
Joe: Hearing the remixes of our stuff in general, is really cool. I’d love to get stuff remixed like everything we do, because it’s just really cool to see what sparks people get from listening to your thing, what they do with it and that. It was funny, I liked putting out the acoustic version of TREES because we’ve got a nice little memory of that, of working on some notes and stuff. I was talking to our manager, Steve, on the phone, it was lockdown, not doing much, and he says ‘well try and make a two minute little banger’. And I did, and that was that demo for TREES. It’s nice having stuff down where we can remember the moment it happened. We’ve got a clip now of us playing TREES in the crowd at Forum, with like 1000 people around us, it’s nice to have that and me on my sofa in my dressing gown on the acoustic playing it.
Joe, you’ve said that Freddie Mercury lit a spark for you early on – if you could have him feature on one Big Special track, which would it be? I’m throwing MY SHAPE (BLOCKING THE LIGHT) into the ring.
Joe: Oh, that’s interesting. So I was going to go straight up THIS HERE AIN’T WATER, because he could do like, a big, big bit of belting. But, yeah, that’d be really cool. Yeah, I like that.
Callum: He didn’t get back to our email.
Joe: I don’t know what he’s up to. Queen are big though aren’t they? *laughs* Yeah, that would be class. But he would completely outshine me though. I reckon, to hear a Freddie Mercury fronted Queen version of this THIS HERE AIN’T WATER would be f**king golden. I’d love that.
Callum: I want it now.
Joe: Chat GPT! We’ll do a Chat GPT deluxe remix of Postindustrial Hometown Blues.
There’s real emotional weight in your music and you said something powerful in another interview, that the more personal a song is to you guys, the more people can relate to it. Has anyone ever told you what one of your songs meant to them and it’s made you see it in a completely different light?
Callum: Yeah we had a lady this weekend, Joe reads FOR THE BIRDS off a sheet at the gigs, and she asked if she could have it after the show, because two weeks before, she’d read it at her Mother’s funeral, which was mind blowing. We’ve had a lady tell us that she was in hospital having chemotherapy and SHITHOUSE was the only thing that made her smile.
Joe: Some people got in touch saying a fan of ours passed away and asked if we could give a shout out at a gig and that, and we did, and, yeah, it’s just mad, you know, just realising it’s like us, we’ve always been nerds for music and we’re one of those bands that do that music now, do you know what I mean? To some people who don’t know us, to know that it means something to someone in any capacity is mad. That feels like success. Like, you’ve put your art out and it’s done its job, you know. But then to have it on a level where someone’s thought of it enough to read at a funeral, it’s quite surreal, or even hearing about someone who we’d met at gigs has passed away, man, that’s crazy. There’s a connection there now, even though we didn’t know that guy, but there’s something there, from them, him and his family are listening to our music that made them think ‘I’m going to ask the band if they’ll say that, if they’ll just talk about that, that will mean something to us.’
Callum: We had it from early on now, didn’t we? Midlanders have a very dry sense of humour, we’ve got a dark comedy, everything’s a joke, you can’t be too serious, so we have a lot of tongue in cheek in our music. We never intended to come out with these big, big ballady songs but I think the contrast between what we naturally do by just trying to be funny d*ckheads instead of talking about serious stuff, when we do focus on these more serious points, it just has more of an effect on people. From really early on gigging, I remember within the first year, when we were doing DiG! finishing the set on our big, big, hopeful number, people come and be like ‘I didn’t cry at my own Dad’s funeral, but I just cried to that last song.’ People find our music easy to be emotional to, which is beautiful, it’s amazing that it has this effect on people. The contrast between what we do for the heavier moments and the more comedic moments. I think we are very sincere people in general, like even though we’re trying to be funny and make everyone laugh, it’s just because, like, if we were saying all this really serious stuff on stage, it’d be the most miserable f**king show you’ve ever seen! So we’ve got to come up with a bit of a sense of humour, but, yeah, it just adds contrast.
Joe: When we get a big, tattooed, hairy geezer come up and say ‘I just cried at that’ maybe it’s because we’re f**king hairy, tattooed geezers being emotional on stage *laughs* but I suppose that’s good init. A lot of people talk about us being angry and stuff like that, but everyone’s crying at the end, so we ain’t that angry, you know what I mean?
Callum: It’s also like a reflection. It is emotional for us still, the shows are really performative, we do hundreds of gigs a year now, and we realise, we still f**king mean it, every time we get on stage, and we’re putting our heart and soul into the music. Like last year, over 100 times I watched my best mate since I was a teenager, standing in front of a f**king crowd of thousands of people and read his poetry. We’re building each other up. I think the fact that we’re both from the same background and we’re doing this, the flip that’s happened in our life, you know, where we’re doing doing this now, I think the emotion, it’s coming from us, because it’s such an emotional f**king thing to do.
Joe: It is yeah, and to be true to what we’ve made, as well. There’s only two of us on stage, so I don’t think I’ve got any room to just be reeling off the lyrics, you know what I mean? I feel like it’s my job to tap into the meaning of it still every time we do it, and that’s probably the most tiring part for me of the touring. It’s all about f**king depression and certain personal things, but to do it well, every night, you gotta get back into that headspace.
Callum: It’s such a cheesy thing to call it therapeutic, isn’t it? ‘Oh yeah, the gigs are like therapy for us’ but they are the most cathartic thing we do.
Joe: Massively. And it’s the first time I’ve ever felt confident doing stuff and now it’s become like a bit of a cigarette, you know what I mean, like ‘oh, I need a bit of that.’
Callum: We go a little bit mad when we don’t gig very often. You know if we have a week off, we’re both just f**king losing our nut *laughs*
Joe: Does anyone even know I’m alive?! *laughs*
You touched on it there about your bond, and you’ve got some massive shows coming up including supporting Pixies, but touring especially can be mentally and physically draining. You’ve been open about your mental health struggles, how do you keep check on yourselves and each other whilst you’re on the road?
Joe: We’re still figuring that out you know. We’re very open with each other and like I was saying with people in the crowd, being able to say ‘oh, I’m upset’, I think we’re good to each other in that way, we give each other the space to just say ‘man, I’m struggling.’ We’re good at reminding each other that it’s good as well. You know, it’s easy to get lost in your situation, whatever that is, but whatever emotional or physical hardness we’re going through, it ain’t as bad as getting up at five in the morning for Cal to go and drop a van from Bristol to Newcastle, do you know what I mean? And then drive another one to, you know, Timbuktu and back, or, like, me getting up and going to work on a lorry doing waste removal and stuff, and then coming back from those jobs with just a little bit of money that barely gets you by – any routine like that is going to get you down in some way. We have to keep perspective, even when it’s hard, it’s like ‘yeah, but we’re actually making our own way, doing our own thing, which most people don’t get to do.’ But I think that the hard thing is, doing music, doing art, it’s so reliant on you being tapped into the emotional side of it. So I think that’s what can bring everything up to the surface, and make it feel really bad at times, because to do well, you have to be emotional. You know, you have to be tapped into how you’re feeling, what the songs are about, what the audience are feeling, and stuff like that. And I think that can put you in a head space that’s hard to deal with sometimes. It’s just a mad, unique experience anyway. We joke now and say that we’re one percenters, not because of money, but in an experience way. People like us try and do this forever and ever, even at the the level we’re at now, like, you know, most don’t get to that. So it’s only me and Cal that have the experience of being in Big Special, we’re the only two that know where each other’s coming from. So we just try and stay tapped in like that. We don’t argue and stuff and we’re just diamond geezers to each other *thumbs up*
Callum: Yeah, we’re lucky we’re going through it together, we’re both understanding. Most of the people we work with are as well. Doing the normal jobs was harder. Every day when I was doing van driving, we’re not having to emotionally analyse the darkest points of your life and it’s just harder in a different way. A weird thing we’ve noticed is, the satisfaction of realising that depression isn’t situational and that we were right all along. You can still be depressed if you’re a musician, you can still be living the dream and have them days that hit you like a brick where you’re like ‘what the fuck are we doing with a life?’ That would happen to me, and as I say, we’d have to get up and go to a normal job with a gaffer who didn’t give half a f**k about it, whereas now we’re with a good team, and we’re doing it with people who all believe in it, believe in you, and are building you upl. The pressure isn’t there. I think everybody is aware that, it’s a silly job this. We’re just making music. We don’t want to let anyone down or anything like that but I remember there’s been times when I felt like ‘I can’t do it’ and I’ve called up the manager being like ‘bro, I don’t even think I can do this gig today’ and he’s like ‘you don’t have to, you don’t have to do it. If you don’t want to do it, we can cancel it’. Hearing people who you’re instinctively expecting the pressure to be coming from, being like ‘it’s fine. If you’re not happy, we can stop.’ You know, it’s a blessing. We get to do the most emotional job without the pressure. Because the pressure is not coming from any of us.
Joe: You did the gig after that, because that pressure you build up goes away, and it is good to voice it, because sometimes, I think especially our background, it does feel like sometimes you’re not allowed to moan about this, because from that outside perspective, we got out – we got out of the normal job routine and we get to do the thing that’s the dream. So it feels like sometimes we aren’t allowed to acknowledge that it’s hard at times, because it’s almost like taking the p*ss out of people with normal jobs. But we’ve gotta remember sometimes, all work is hard work.
You’ve got a running theme of dog references in your lyrics, visuals, and song titles – if you had to describe each other as a dog breed, which would it be and why?
Joe: That’s a good one actually!
Callum: I’ve got one. Joe, you’re an Irish Wolfhound, cos you’re wiry haired, you’re docile, you’re gentle, but if you wanted to, you could tear a rabbit apart brother *laughs* That’s our Joe.
Joe: Cal’s a Staffy,
Callum: The greatest dog alive really aren’t they?
Joe: Because they’re my fave
Callum: Awww *laughs*
Joe: And I suppose, yeah, they’re quite vocal as well, and I could just see that, Staffy on the drums, if you’re gonna put a dog on the drums, it’s gonna be a Staff init?
Callum: I’m quite low to the ground and squats as well. I think that’s probably a part of it.
Joe: No Staffy’s don’t squat. You’re thinking of Bulldogs.
Callum: Well, they’ve still got quite a low frame, bit of a breeze block dog do ya know what I mean?
Joe: Staffy on drums.
Like their songs, Joe and Callum’s answers swing between brutal honesty and dry Midlands humour. It’s that same emotional contrast that’s made Big Special’s music resonate so deeply with so many. This interview proves they’re as powerful in conversation as they are on stage. And if you see a Staffy behind a drum kit on their next run of merch, now you’ll know why.
Listen to POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES here: https://lnk.to/POSTINDUSTRIALHOMETOWNBLUESPHY
BIG SPECIAL 2025 LIVE DATES
Tickets on sale now here: https://bigspecial.co.uk/
27 Mar – Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, UK
29 Mar – O2 Forum, Kentish Town, London, UK
20 Apr – Esquires, Bedford, UK
9-10 May – Are You Listening? Festival, Reading, UK
13 May – P&J Arena, Aberdeen, UK *
14 May – O2 Academy, Edinburgh, UK
16 May – O2 Academy, Brixton, London, UK **
17 May – O2 Academy, Brixton, London, UK **
19 May – O2 Academy, Leeds, UK **
20 May – O2 Academy, Birmingham, UK **
21 May – Utilita Arena, Cardiff, UK **
23 May – O2 City Hall, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK **
24 May – O2 Apollo, Manchester, UK **
25 May – Dot To Dot Festival, Bristol, UK
30 May – Maifield Derby, Maimarkt Mannheim, Mannheim, DE
25-28 Jul – Deer Shed Festival, Thirsk, UK
