Mumford and Sons Perform Live on the Interface

When banjo-wielding rock quartet Mumford and Sons popped by Spinner's studios to tape their Interface performance, we'd pegged them to be a bunch of serious blokes based on heartbreaker songs such as 'Little Lion Man' and 'Sigh No More.' But actually, they're quite the opposite. After running through a four-song set, we asked the band what sort of reactions they've received over the years when they tell people they use a banjo, an instrument not usually seen in the music that comes out of the UK these days.

"People like pick their noses and flick what comes out in our faces," Marcus Mumford said jokingly "Sometimes they pour hot tar on us when we walk into their houses, just for having a banjo in the band. It's strange. I didn't expect that violent a reaction."

For those still unfamiliar with Mumford and Sons, they're currently touring behind their debut album, 'Sigh No More,' and they mainly draw from Americana influences such as dustbowl author John Steinbeck and Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt.

"We'd been playing together with lots of other musicians, just some sort of country songs, fairly ramshackle, and then we decided to sit down, the four of us together, and play some songs that we hadn't really written yet," Mumford explained of the band's origins. "Suddenly, we realized we were a band because the sound we were making was specific to the four of us as individuals with the instruments we were playing. Then we just went straight on the road. We had like two rehearsals, and then we just went and started playing gigs. We took every gig that was offered to us."

Indeed, the last year has been quite a journey for Mumford and Sons, who traveled to India for some recording sessions, as well as backed up their pal Laura Marling on her forthcoming album, 'I Speak Because I Can.' They'll be back in North America this May for a big club tour and gigs at Bonnaroo and the prestigious Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Looks like that banjo really has paid off.