You haven't been with the band since the beginning?
No, I've been with it since 1996 so I'm still the baby. It was fortuitous really. I joined as a trumpet player. They'd had a trumpet player but he'd moved on to other things in his life. Being a woman was what they were hoping for as well. I went along and had a bit of a play with them and it just started from there. I can't imagine having a proper job again really but I'm sure I could if I had to.

Boff is one of the Chumbawamba's original members

Has the band's music changed much over that time?
Definitely. Chumbawamba is always consistent in its inconsistency. Musically it's always gone off in lots of different directions. The folk-type element has always been there but latterly it's come to the fore, to the point that at the moment we are going out as an acoustic band as you saw at the Love Apple and that's the kind of avenue we are pursuing for the immediate future.

At the gig the band went well beyond the traditional songs included on the 2003 English Rebel Songs album, including old favourites like Enough Is Enough?
It did get a massive shot in the arm from English Rebel Songs. This was originally done in the 1980s, and when we listened to it we thought we could probably do this better now so we re-recorded it, brought it up to date and put a song about the Miner's Strike on and that sort of kick-started the acoustic thing but as we've gone on we've brought more stuff in. Even in the electric gig you'd get things like Homophobia and Nazi which were straight a cappella things and now we've just recorded a new album and that's taken the acoustic thing on a bit more.

Songs like Homophobia suggest you are also concerned with things that are happening now?
Yes, but it's seeing the whole rebel songs thing as a tradition that carries on. You can do a song from 1381 and then you can do a song from 1991 and it shows there are still things to be written about. It's not just fake music in a little glass case.

"In Europe they seem to get it."

Would you ever describe yourselves as folk musicians?
I don't know really. As ever we've managed to make ourselves uncategorisable which is good in some ways but it would be easier if we could fit into the box. There's parts of the folk world where we do fit in, but the folk world itself is a massive thing and the bit we are embraced by is quite a small section of that, and not all our fans are in that folk tradition. And, of course, in Europe it's different again because they seem to get it. We've done quite a few gigs in Europe where the venues are right for the thing you're doing and they are not necessarily folk venues. Here it tends to be that a folk venue is the closest you are going to get to somewhere people can sit and listen to what's going on.

You can end up in a rock club where you're struggling against the fact that people are at the bar and it's hard work. In Europe there seems to be more of a scene that gets that acoustic or unplugged or quieter music for slightly older people BY slightly older people. If you an out and out rock band you know where you are going to play and you know what you are going to do. Certainly in this country the folk market, to use that terminology, is something that we'd like to break into a bit more. I don't want to go on about age but I think it is slightly older people who are a bit more open to things they haven't heard before. If you're playing to a 20-year-old NME audience, it's as though they know what they want, and whether you fit into it or not.

Do you think the audience for live music is dwindling?
Bradford suffers from being thought of as the poor relation of Leeds. Even the Leeds live music scene is not as good as it was because places like the Duchess have closed down. I guess there's less of a circuit of places where bands are likely to play in Bradford.

You did record your new album in Bradford though?
Yes. Neil in the band is a studio engineer by trade and used to own a studio where the band used to record so Chumbawamba have got a long history with him and now it's a home studio, partly because these things are so much easier now than they were 15 years ago. Most of it was done upstairs in Heaton although we did hire a studio when we did the final vocals and we had some guest vocalists and musicians in.

Neil - the new album was recorded in his studio

Can you tell us a bit about the new album?
Often on Chumbawamba albums and tracks there's a bit of this, and there's a bit of that, and there are weird collages of these bits and pieces. This album is a bit more straightforward in that these are songs. What we were aiming for is that it should feel like a group of people sitting around playing. It isn't quite that, but that's sort of where we were going with it, and it's based around acoustic guitars and very light drums with brushes. There's bits of accordion and we've got a couple of people in doing pipes and fiddle and, yes, it's a collection of songs.

There's the usual slight absence of love songs, although there is one with a twist at the end of the album. There's one about the Kinder Trespass in 1932 which we did at the Love Apple gig - we've been doing quite a few of these already. That's our usual sort of thing celebrating what people do, their little triumphs. There's one about Joe Hill [Swedish-born trade union organiser and song-writer, framed and executed in Utah in 1914], there's one about the anarchists Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, the usual chart-friendly stuff. (Laughs). It's called A Sing-Song And A Scrap.

Do you know which company is going to release it?
We have a record company in Germany who might do it for Europe but we're hoping they might do it for the UK as well. You work really hard getting an album done, and you get it finished and it's fantastic, and then there's this awful period of not knowing because you have a record deal but each time you re-submit and they have the option of going, 'No, we don't want to do this anymore,' so you are waiting. Even if they say yes, and they probably will, it's the 'when.' You need to plan the gigs around an album release but at the moment we don't know when that's going to be. We can't get any gigs until we know when the album's going to be released. You just have to sit there and wait until someone suddenly goes, 'It's going to be then.' It's this mad sort of getting it together.

You once had a contract with EMI. Is it difficult to please record companies and maintain artistic and political integrity?
EMI never interfered artistically - I think because they knew it would be a pointless exercise but they waited patiently for us to deliver another Tubthumping, and we didn't, so we said goodbye to each other after the next album. They never did try and nudge us in other directions which is a good thing but then you end up not on EMI anymore and then you are struggling around trying to find a company. But that's the way it has to be.

The big thing now with record companies is copy protection and we've spoken out in defence of people's right to download, and then the album comes out and it's got copy-protection on it to the point when people can't even play it on their computers.

Do you think there's an appetite for politics in music at the moment?
It's weird, isn't it? It comes and goes. It's the flavour of the month at the moment - we've had Live 8, and those things. I think there's always a place for politics in music and there's points at which people like Bob Geldof, who has fantastic access to the media, can galvanise all these people and it becomes headline, and that's fantastic, but it needs to be there all the time. I wouldn't decry something just because it's very mainstream - it might be a bit woolly and liberal but it's better than it not happening. And, yes, their album sales do all increase as a result. One of the nice things for us about the world of folk music is its immediacy because it is essentially about people playing things in pubs, and we can go in and liberate Iraq on Monday and somebody can write a song about it and sing it in a folk club on Wednesday.

You're often seen as a Leeds band but you are based here?
Yes, Neil and myself are based in Bradford and the rest of them are based in Leeds. Big it up for Bradford! It was nice to do the Love Apple gig as part of the Festival because the Bradford Festival has had a bad time of it over the last few years. I also play in a band called the Peace Artistes.It's a sort of street band, and it's been very involved in the Bradford Festival which we've seen it dwindle away but it felt a bit more as though it was back on track this year. It was nice to be part of it because it's a great festival and what always amazes me is that so few people in Leeds know what goes on in Bradford. I mention the Bradford Festival to friends in Leeds who do not have hermetacally-sealed existences and they've no idea about the festival though they've vaguely heard of the Mela and that's about it. It always amazes me, this divide between Bradford and Leeds and people don't know what goes on here.

And Jude says, if you are wondering why the number of forthcoming gigs listed on Chumba's website is so small, then that's because the band are still waiting to be given the go-ahead from the record company...