Last month was undoubtedly a great one for Mumford & Sons. Not only did they pick up a Brit Award for Best British Group, they also scooped the highly coveted Album of the Year Award at the Grammys for Babel, released in September. And the good times haven't stopped yet, with the English folk rockers selling out, time and again, on tour. Currently promoting their second album, Babel, the four-piece band haven't let the rise to fame distract them. Lead singer Marcus Mumford, who is married to British actress Carey Mulligan, explained: "We are just focused on the gigs really. We are trying not to focus on the media or even the awards rubbish or album sales or charts or anything like that.
That stuff… happens and we know it happens, but we like to distract ourselves and just focus on the gigs. And if we do that every day I don't think there is a chance of being too affected by the other stuff. "They recently offered up what they called "rules one, two and three of being a band". Put concisely: "Play live". And that, they do well. Now on the European leg of The Gentlemen of the Road tour, venues have repeatedly been 'upgraded' due to early sell-outs. So many concerts have sold out so quickly that the band has announced a change of venue, in the US as well as many European cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Antwerp, Copenhagen and Oslo, moving to higher capacity locations and allowing more tickets to go on sale. The band, consisting of lead singer Marcus and 'sons', Ted Drane, Ben Lovett, Winston Marshall, are four London-based musicians in their 20s who came together as a folk-rock band five years ago.
Having concentrated heavily on the US, with no less than ten separate tours, the quartet have played for Barack Obama at the White House and appeared alongside Bob Dylan. Last month, Justin Timberlake revealed that he had been working with Mumford and Sons' frontman Marcus Mumford on the soundtrack of the new Coen Brothers film, Inside Llewyn Davis. The film, which stars Justin and Marcus's wife, Carey Mulligan, focuses on a fictional musician trying to make it in 1960s New York. "I did work with Marcus Mumford on the soundtrack… Marcus and myself, we all kind of worked on the music together and I don't know any other world where we would have the opportunity to collaborate like that but it was so much fun," Justin said. Having played to Lisbon this weekend, next stops on the tour for the band include Paris, Luxembourg, Antwerp and Amsterdam, before they will move on to Germany.