“If nobody breaks my heart again, I’ll never be able to write good songs.”

We sat down with Italian romantic, FIL BO RIVA to talk music, touring and his debut EP, If You’re Right, It’s Alright.

Starting with the beginning, Fil Bo Riva aka Filippo Bonamici grew up in Rome, Italy. Though his geographical references are from all over the place, as his website states, ‘three words, three cities’, expanding on his journey through Ireland, before settling in the artistic nest Berlin.

I started doing music when I was 10 years old, more or less. Pretty standard, then I was in different small bands in Italy, where I grew up, and then I moved to Berlin in Germany 3 years ago. Everything really started there.

Berlin is well known for its blooming art scene, and Riva admits that this had an major impact on him.

That was actually one of the main reasons why I moved to Berlin – he explains. In Berlin I got the motivation and the energy to make music professional, and that was the push. So, Berlin actually pushed me to do music.

His first EP, If You’re Right, It’s Alright, was released earlier this autumn at PIAS Recordings, and the collection of five heart-aching tracks is seemingly harder to describe than to perform.

How do you describe an EP? – he laughs, before continuing. It’s pretty much a story about a girl, and things that happened between this girl and myself. The songs on the EP were the first songs I wrote. Well not the first, but the best of the ten-fifteen songs I had about this person.

The first song, Like Eye Did, is a particularly outstanding track, and is Fil’s most successful release to date. The simple chord-structure leaves all the room for Riva’s idiosyncratic vocals to play out.

Riva himself describes the track as:

The title, and the word-play in it, has to do with the first song that came out “Eye look”. That is the first song I put online, and it also has the word ‘Eye’ in the title. It actually started as a game, nothing serious; I just liked the way it looked. More interesting than the normal ‘I’. The song is also about shouting out to this girl. It’s screaming out the emotions pretty much.

And so you can hear.

So maybe if nobody breaks my heart again, I’ll never be able to write good songs again – he ponders.

Hopefully he will. For now, he uses his songs as emotional outlets, getting ‘things that hurts you down on paper’.

The musician holds the expressive art of music high, as he says, “I think music actually means expression of thoughts.”

I really like listening to music that means things, maybe stories about people, maybe things that happen, like old blues singers singing about cotton fields and hard work. That is what I understand behind music and lyrics, and the meaning of music. It carries things you really feel, and gets things that hurts you down on paper, and you record them and show them to people.

Fil Bo Riva played Heaven just a couple of days ago, and the thousand-capacity venue is quite a contrast to Kamio’s 200.

“I’m excited to play here in a much smaller venue, it’s more personal.” He says before clarifying that he enjoys the variation between bigger and smaller venues.

Getting on to the topic of touring, Riva opens up about the slightly less glamorous sides of working in music industry.

I have one funny story, and the funny story is about that we never have enough time to have funny stories. We’re always driving so that’s actually probably the funny story. It’s our funny, sad reality. We’re driving in the car, we arrive for sound check, we go have dinner, we put our jackets on, we play, so that’s probably the funnies, hilarious, real, sad reality.

As for tonight, Fil will play as a part of the First Fifty, a series of shows set up prior to The Great Escape festival next year in order to showcase the different talents gracing the bill.

Last show we played as a support, and today we’re pretty much on the same level as other bands. I wouldn’t say we’re as good as all. There are some very very good bands tonight, but you know, there’s no really huge band tonight, so it’s good.

Though he seems excited about the prospect of the show, Riva is reluctant to any expectations.

I don’t have expectations, I never have expectations – he states, before elaborating that. I think you just gotta do things. Since we’re always on the road, always working, I never have expectations about my music. Like if things don’t work out tonight, I’ll still be happy to play.

As we get to round it off, Fil has some last words on supporting musicians today.

Most people hear music on Spotify, but we also sell CDs. It’s probably a thing musicians say often, but buying CDs directly form the artist helps a lot more.