Axis Of Awesome: "Any act is improved by an animatronic dragon"

One third of the Axis of Awesome, Lee, is reclining on the couch in his new house in Australia. We're talking about the difference between comedy music and "serious" music and how comedy bands seem to be better at catering to the world's RAWK needs then the current crop of indie mopers.

"When I think of Scottish music at the moment it’s all those Snow Patrol-ey acts," he says. "It’s pretty glum. The weather doesn’t necessarily breed happy… people there, does it?” How do the Axis plan on brightening up the lives of the sad, rained-upon people of Glasgow. "With our comedy songs, most likely. Also, there will be free gold."

I ask Lee whether the music or the comedy came first, and he explains that they emerged simultaneously. "Benny has always been the musician of the group, and Jordan and I started in improv. It was a sideproject for about a year, until Benny finally allowed us to do the Four Chords song with him.

"There are advantages and disadvantages to being comedy and music. Sometimes you rock up to a club you're booked for and they're like, 'we're not equipped to have a band on', and you're like, well why did you book us then? But then people want to hear the material over and over again, like in our third year in Edinburgh we were still getting requests for Birdplane. And we've done music festivals, like we recently played the Sasquatch festival in Washington State with people like Foo Fighters on the bill.

So do the Axis consider themselves a proper band? Lee takes a deep breath. "I pretty much have to say no, or Benny would knife me."

The Axis Of Awesome have built up a cult following not just by being funny, but by being a genuinely great live band. I asked Lee what he would do to bring the Awesome if he found himself in a boring band: "I’d probably start with a bit of colour. You just need to brighten things up a bit. And you know how some people have double-necked guitars? I saw a guy once with a five-necked guitar. I think multiple-necked guitars and a bit of colour, they’d get such a great reaction.And then probably try to give each band member their own theme, like make one a medieval clown or something.

"And the most important thing: any act is easily improved by an animatronic dragon."