As part of a sponsored content collaboration with the folks at Jågerhaus – the best festival-based house you’ve ever been in – we spoke to Thom from Gnarwolves about low-level theft crimes he has committed that involve your mother’s favourite recording artist, and the karmic consequences of said thefts.- - -I love festivals, they’re just great. We’re a punk band and - with people letting loose, living in filth, embracing idiocy and literally screaming their lungs out against the monotony of life – we feel at home there. Playing to a crowd who are a little bit feral, things can get weird. And having gone to a bunch of festivals and played at a load more, I can assure you that they’re two completely different things. Yes, we all can relate to the relief of peeling off a sleeping bag and tearing up your tent in the morning, but picture being in a van for twelve hours and stepping out into that mud bath of intensity; you feel like a Martian. But considering that the last time I had enough disposable income to be a punter at a festival I was in my teens – good Lord that’s a depressing thought – I’m having to get used to it.In spite of anomalies like taking a quiet nap on a leather sofa to the side stage of Slipknot losing it, vandalising a cess pool with our own album name or meeting Foster the People and realising that yes, indeed, they’re almost as bland as that famous car advert song they have, you can pretty much plot a Gnarwolves festival day prior to it even happening. After an arduous, sweaty journey we’ll arrive on site a few hours before stage time. In a haze of nervousness we’ll burn through a load of cigarettes until we feel like we’re about to have heart attacks. We’ll go on stage and, as part of some effort to calm down afterwards, will eat all of our potato-based catering. Then for some reason, we end up stuffed, watching The Hives.And that’s the way that most festivals go for us, and it has to be exceptional to buck that trend and break the will of the universe for me to remember it. Our first big set at Reading and Leeds was a good one, though. We were particularly excited because we’d been invited to mix it up with the big boys and millionaires on one of the big stages. And though we were in our usual Gnarwolves routine before stage time, this was exceptionally nerve-wracking. Forty cigarettes down and under an hour to go, we run out of Rizlas so I go out in search of some. Yet after asking all the hard-faced roadies and knocking every door, I’m out of ideas. When all hope appears to be lost, I stumble on the Holy Grail. The answer to all of my prayers: Jake Bugg’s dressing room - so I have a quick look over my shoulder and bolt in. And yes, of course, it’s a dressing room packed with beautiful people enjoying a banquet. But alas there’s no Jake: jackpot. So I fill my arms with bananas, packets of cigarettes, crackers - whatever I can hold onto - and rip down the ‘Jake Bugg’ paper sign on the way out. Where would Mr Bugg and his brigade of beauties’ new den be? The nearest and grubbiest tent I could find, of course. So I stuck up the sign, lit a cigarette and skipped off.That’s not to say things didn’t catch up with me though. After the set and long night of poor behaviour that followed, we – along with an entourage of seven or eight people who’d managed to bring one tent between them – end up piling into our van. No sleeping bags or heating, just a stack of seven muddy humans hiding from the freezing cold. Following a satisfying couple of hours sleep, I shiver to notice I’m sharing my ragtag skateboard bed. ‘That can’t be right’, I think to myself. So I turn to smite my brother and, obviously, it wasn’t him. It wasn’t even Jake Bugg: just some random fella. So I’m shaking this mud-covered dude and yelling at him, and he’s frozen silent.After the initial shock and utter fear, I start laughing and I just can’t stop. This guy has no idea where he is, his tent is or his friends are, and has no money. So after a breather, I lend him a tenner and we drop him off somewhere he can get a train home. I still see him at the odd festival actually, and we have a special connection. And the madman has the cheek to insist it wasn’t a tenner, but actually a fiver I leant him - a fiver! I forgive him: he obviously decided that, in order to truly embrace his idiot spirit, he needed to sneak into random people’s vans and nick tenners. But there’s one lesson to be learned here: fuck with Jake Bugg and muddy men will steal small bills from you.Gnarwolves play the Jågerhaus stage at Reading Festival on Friday the 26th of August
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