Interview - Rob St John

Words: Chris Hynd

Photo: P. St John

I hope he doesn't mind me saying this but we in Edinburgh miss Rob St John and so his visits up here are always something to look forward to and cherish. His two EPs and evocative live performances left a lot of good memories and as he headed down to Oxford for academic (and now professional) life it was with a bittersweet realisation that appearances back in the city would become quite rare. So it was with great delight (to me anyway!) that Rob would be playing not one, but two times in the space of a few days earlier this month - supporting Ryan Francesconi and headlining the second Ides of Toad gig put on by Matthew Young of the Song, By Toad label and blog. Rob very kindly took time out from his busy schedule while he was in the city to answer some questions I sent to him.

You’re back up in Scotland to play a couple of shows – how do you find coming back up to play now that you’ve been away? i.e. is there anything you miss from your time in Edinburgh or anything you don’t!

Edinburgh will always be very important to me, there’s a very special community of interesting people approaching music in an inspiring way, and I plan to come back in the next year or two. As a place it seeps into most things I write, butting up against the dark Lancashire moors in some imagined mental terrain.

Everyone involved in the LP recording and live set in Edinburgh - Neil Pennycook (Meursault, Withered Hand), Ian Humberstone (Tissø Lake) Tom Western, Malcolm Benzie and Bart Owl (eagleowl), Rob Waters (The Great Bear), Tom Bauchop (UNPOC), Louise Martin, Owen Williams (Pineapple Chunks, Randan Discotheque et al) - has their own main going concerns. We brace and buckle each other’s projects, cross-pollinating ideas and support networks as we go. This project wouldn’t be the same without them.

Following on from that, how is Oxford for a musician such as yourself? I have no knowledge about it as a place for bands so I’m interested to hear what it’s like. Do you play many shows down there or is there a similar thriving musical community such as the one in Scotland? Obviously, it’s like comparing apples and oranges but it would be good to get your perspective now that you’ve been there a while.

This is related to the previous question (and you might have already answered it !) but you were involved in a recording with The Braindead Collective that was released in December. How did that collaboration come about and what was it like recording with them? Would you like to work more with them in the future?

It’s certainly different. Despite being there for the best part of 18 months, I’ve yet to find anything comparable to the Scottish DIY community. But perhaps that’s just through a lack of effort, or luck. For all that any scene or community may intend to be open and approachable, the fact that it’s small in scale and niche in taste, aesthetic or ethos means that it may simply be difficult to find for anybody aspiring to get involved. Relating back to Edinburgh, I suppose this is where (unfounded, in my opinion) accusations of nepotism within the DIY scene stem from.

That said, Braindead Collective are a likeminded, shifting bunch of talented improvisers based loosely in London and Oxford around Seb Reynolds. Recording "The Whites of their Eyes" was a great process - set up in a medieval city centre Oxford church with banks of amps, organs and percussion in a frozen winter weekend and improv over a freshly formed song. We’re playing a collaborative set opening for A Hawk and a Hacksaw in April, and will keep working together, for sure.

I’m currently taking this experience of moving cities and using it as the basis of a fanzine which documents how best to start DIY promotion. A screenprinted and letterpressed document, it’ll collate advice and anecdotes from a bunch of promoters who’re willing to share their hard-won wisdom. Something cheap to sell on merch tables to inspire a new raft of people forging creative communities with a DIY approach.

I believe we can expect a full length LP from you soon! Can you tell us how that’s going, i.e. what the recording process is/was like, the people involved and who plays on the record and what they bring to the process. It’s coming out on Song, By Toad Records – did Matthew approach you with a view to releasing it or did you always see SBT as a good home for you.

We recorded for two days with Neil in a shutter-drawn Victorian living room in north Edinburgh under the weak kaleidoscopic light of an ailing mirror ball like some slow film, and powered on by bananas and strong coffee. It’s a record of events, strung together by creaks and drones. Songs for daybreak and for evening gloam.

Matthew is very enthusiastic, organised, supportive and tolerant of my whims of creative control and artistic vagaries, and is keen to put the record out on vinyl, which is fantastic. We work well together.

Your music has evolved over the time I’ve seen you play from quieter, acoustic songs with harmoniums and the like to you using an electric guitar and having a more heavier and, dare I say it, doomier feel! What led to the change in sound and was it something that came naturally to you? Has your writing process changed in that you’re writing specifically for songs that are designed to be played on the electric rather than the acoustic guitar?

The LP is swathed in skittering drums and bells, harmonium, saw, organ, fiddle and group singing. I was thinking about how group singing has almost exclusively become professionalised and institutionalised in Britain, resulting in the widespread loss of the tradition of communities singing together simply for fun, storytelling or togetherness. Regardless of communal harmony or skill, there’s something liberating about the shared purpose of group singing – something like a football chant without the daft puns (largely) or wavering moral compass.

Similarly, I’m fascinated by the idea of rough music (or ran-tanning) - where a chorus of villagers would ostracise a criminal or wrongdoer with a loud, primal chant and the clatter of saucepans, drums and cymbals. Bill Drummond’s 17 project , where a rotating cast of 17 amateur singers were assembled to sing compositions based on ideas such as the tones and harmonies made by the machinery of a rusting, whirring old Land Rover driven from Hull to Liverpool , is also inspiring. That rediscovery of remaining a happy amateur and emphasising something crafted and communal, rather than necessarily forged from high art, is an idea that resonates (hmm…) with me.

That said, all the players on the record are excellent musicians, well versed in tolerating my oscillating and improvised recording ideas. Held together on some tightrope of other’s talent tapering into waveringly tuneful slips of songs. The recording is the document of the time, the room, the line-up and the available instruments. The live show is constantly changing; hopefully remaining fresh and interesting for all involved, audience and performers alike. The live performance is where I think the true nature of a song is formed and continually redefined.

Played live, songs mutate: becoming louder, quieter, faster, slower, heavier, sparser. I think when you begin to hone and over-practice a set of songs you run the risk of reducing meaningful lyrics or melodies into slick anonymous products, asking to be watered-down and endlessly recited.

The songs are largely in some invented altered guitar tuning or other. You become that happy amateur again when forced to play your hand in an unfamiliar tuning, inadvertently rediscovering the love of the Cs, Gs and Fs you shun as an aspirational learner set on forging something original. Happy accidents as simple phrases played on new or unfamiliar instrument sound exciting and fully formed. Once when touring with Woodpigeon I left a guitar tuned in this way in a musician’s B&B in Manchester, only to return a week later to find the owners had fallen for the tuning and were eager to find out what it was. Guiltily I quickly retuned to standard, for fear of discovery. Tunings can do strange things to a man.

I’ve been listening to a lot of dense, dark, droney music lately, which has most likely influenced the record. A course of Grouper, Lichens, Richard Skelton, Swans, Earth and Ben Frost, punctuated by the crystalline, improvised clarity of Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou’s piano playing, and the songs of Phil Elverum, Ben Wetherill, Karen Dalton and Elizabeth Cotten. That said, when recording, Owen and I took to communicating with each other in code: this song should sound like a frozen waterfall slowly melting; this one should sound as if Low were from a Northumberland pit village. How this cryptic daftness carries through I have no idea.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the process of field recording, and working on a soundtrack documenting a short walk along the River Thames between Oxford and the tiny, mediaeval Binsey Church. When played back, the wheezing, faltering phantom hymnal of the harmonium recorded in the thick churchyard gloom sounds almost identical sonically to some of the distortions made by the wind whirring into my cheap dictaphone whilst field recording. Inadvertent coincidences like this really inspired the shifting, somnambulant aural fog that clouds this record.

Finally, what are your hopes and plans for the year? Obviously the release of the LP will be uppermost in your mind so is it a case of promoting that and playing shows around the country?

I’m very proud of the record, and all who’ve contributed and been involved. I’ll hopefully be able to get to play out a bit more this year. Perhaps a wee bit further afield than before. The second LP is almost written, and will be recorded in the summer. Pablo Clark (My Kappa Roots, Milk) and I will make a (long overdue) homage to "Bert and John" in the near future, a project formulated six years ago in tiny Edinburgh flats as we traded our fledgling, whispered tunes, and argued over who should be "Bert" and who should be "John". I’m also working on a bunch of soundtrack, film and writing projects, exploring ideas of place, memory, landscape and sound. And the fanzine. Sleep is taking a wee bit of a back seat at the moment.

It sounds as if there's a lot going on creatively with Rob at the moment and I know a lot of people will be looking forward to what he comes up with. Personally speaking, the prospect of a record with Pablo Clark is something I can't wait to hear, but that's only one part of the future. Exciting times ahead, always moving, never complacent. It's something that we could all do well to heed as we go forward ourselves.

Interview - Edinburgh Man

Words: Chris Hynd

Well, where were we on the interview front? It's only been since 2008 after all...

The first one back is with Jonny Dobson, the genial host of the Edinburgh Man podcast. I first came across Jonny's podcast last summer when my friend Gordon joined him for a couple of shows over the Edinburgh Fringe period. Although the more indiepop songs on his playlists are not quite to my taste, I do like the mix of indie rock, lo-fi and shoegaze that he also plays so I've found myself keeping a half hour free every week to tune in. Jonny was kind enough to agree to do the interview and took the time to give full answers to my questions.

The Edinburgh Man podcast has been going for around a year now (correct me if I'm wrong!). Can I start by asking what was the inspiration to you to do a podcast in the first place? Did it take a while to get into the swing of things (e.g. I look back on my first couple and cringe, do you feel the same?) or was it something that came naturally to you?

Yep, it's a year this week! I'd been meaning to do a podcast for years, actually years and years, ever since I started listening to podcasts in about 2004/2005, but it's something I never really got around to doing. The actual rather lame impetus was that I got a new MacBook that had a pretty decent inbuilt microphone, plus it came with GarageBand. I also spent a while trawling websites like Music Alley to try and find music to play. After a few days of looking around I had enough tracks for something like five shows, so I just sat down and recorded the first one.

I'm not sure if I've ever really got into the swing of things, and I certainly don't listen to old episodes. Once it's gone, I'm onto the next. The first few aren't available on the podcast feed anymore, but that's more to do with laziness after I changed the server, rather than anything else. Since about episode ten I've tried to do them "live" after GarageBand crapped out on me once and I had to re-record the show. It's much more fun to record them live, so from then on I think I got a lot more comfortable with it. Despite the fact it has probably increased the number of mistakes I make!

The music you play is either “podsafe”, i.e. released under Creative Commons licensing or free downloads that bands have made available to everyone. Was it a conscious decision to do this or wasn’t the PRS-affiliated Mixcloud up and running then and so you had to go down that route and not risk getting into bother playing copyrighted songs?

I think Mixcloud kicked off a few months after I started, or at least that was when I became aware of it. In general I don't listen to much music on major labels, and a lot of my favourite larger independent labels, such as Kill Rock Stars, Polyvinyl, and obviously Sub Pop, openly encourage podcasters to play the tracks they make available on their site. What I also found from that first few days of researching music for those initial shows was that there is so much exciting Creative Commons music out there. I have to admit, a few years ago I'd been put off by so called "podsafe" podcasts because I thought the music they played was, by and large, bland major label wannabe music, rather than anything interesting or innovating. But when I really started digging around for myself, I found so much music that really excited me. Music that I wanted to share.

I also knew that I wanted to join the Association of Music Podcasting. I'm not entirely sure why, maybe I just thought it would be good to be able to tap into the experience and knowledge of guys who have been doing this for years (some from the dawn of podcasting!). The membership criteria is that your podcast must only play podsafe music, so that pretty much clinched it.

Following on from that, is it difficult to source podsafe songs or is it quite rewarding to do a bit more research and digging about and unearth some gems that might not have been so widely known about? What has been your favourite find – someone like Entertainment for the Braindead for instance, for which I have to say thanks for introducing me to!

That EFTB album was the one that really got me too. It's a wonderful album, certainly one of my favourites of 2010. I love the Dressed Like Wolves album, and there are a couple of great EPs by Wisdom Tooth, both of which I first heard through cllct.com - a great website for free lo-fi and DIY music.

To be honest, yes, it's a lot of work! I easily spend much more time researching the music than recording the show. But it's so rewarding. I have an insatiable appetite for new music, and finding something new and interesting is just so exciting. I also don't want the show to be the same music that you hear featured in lots of other podcasts, but by the same token I'm conscious of slipping in a couple of tracks into each show that might be familiar to listeners. I think that's something John Peel used to say about playing music - play something that people want to listen to, and then play something that you think they should listen to.

After a few months I started reaching out to bands and artists, and asking them if I could play their music on the show. It took me a while to pluck up the courage to do this. I think the first band was the Go Away Birds (Catherine Ireton from God Help The Girl and Michael John McCarthy from Zoey van Goey) after I saw them at a wonderful acoustic flat gig. It was very exciting, if only because Michael John instantly got the reference to The Fall in the name the podcast! Since then, if I want to play a track on the show, but it's not necessarily released under Creative Commons I just get it touch and ask. Some of these are unsigned bands whose EPs I stumble across on Bandcamp, while others, such as A Sunny Day In Glasgow are quite a bit more well known, but no-one has knocked me back yet!

I'm totally indebted to the people who have let me play their music on the show, bands like The Last Battle, Kid Canaveral, Schwervon!, and many, many more besides. Without them it'd just be me talking rubbish for thirty minutes, and I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone.

One thing I think about a lot with my podcasts is the mix between older and newer music. Do you think a podcast should exclusively feature newer material or do you share a friend of mine’s view that any song could be new to somebody, no matter when it was released?

I try and play new music for the most part, but it's a balance. I do like playing old stuff and as your friend says, it's always new to someone! In fact, I've often received email feedback from listeners who have specifically been introduced to older bands through the show, which is pretty cool. I do like slipping in some old stuff. A few weeks ago I had an itch to scratch, and played some Bratmobile from the early 90s because they're a band I don't think enough people know about. And I do play the odd Beat Happening track, because you can never have enough Beat Happening!

Is half an hour / approx. 6 songs the perfect length for the type of show you do in that it’s a weekly show and people may be pressed for time throughout the week to listen to a longer show? I’ve seen that you now upload an extended version of the show to Mixcloud with a couple of extra tracks of non-podsafe material – is that something you’re going to continue with?

I reckon so. My favourite podcasts have always been about half an hour to forty five minutes in length. Perhaps that's because my commute has always been about that long, or perhaps it's just my attention span.

I think podcasting is a very different from medium from radio, and the format of the shows needs to reflect that. Radio shows are generally on in the background while you're doing something else, but I think a podcast is a more engaging experience. You've chosen to listen to it, so you're concentrating a bit more, and when you're concentrating more, especially when it's mostly music that is new to you, you don't want a longer show. Two hours is fine for a radio show, but way too long for a podcast. I've yet to be convinced that sixty minutes isn't too long either, although admittedly some of my favourite podcasts, such as Jon Hillcock's New Noise podcast or obviously the wonderful This American Life are about that length.

I'm not sure about the mixcloud versions. They are an experiment that may or may not continue. Certainly the download versions get many hundreds times more listens than the mixcloud ones. We shall see. I know that you use mixcloud for your podcast, but until they sort out a mobile version of their site, or a mobile app, it doesn't really fit in with how I listen to podcasts.

Your site hosts your podcast but do you have any plans to branch out into more of a music blog, e.g. interviewing and reviewing bands or are you happy with the site as it is right now. Also, I really enjoyed the shows you did over the summer at the Edinburgh Fringe, are there any plans to do more of these, not just about the Fringe but around other events?

I'm not really a blogger. I feel like a bit of an imposter when there are so many great Scottish music blogs around, and all I really use mine for is posting a link to a new podcast! I reckon I'll just stick to doing the show. So many people can write blogs better than I ever could do.

The Fringe recordings with Gordon were good fun. It was great to record the show outside, in the sun (sometimes) and with a beer (most times). I also met some really nice people as a result of those shows, like comedian Dave Hill, and the wonderfully talented Charlyne Yi. Depending on work commitments, maybe we'll do some more Fringe shows this year.

Finally, what other podcasts do you listen to and recommend to others? And, do you think more and more podcasts will spring up in the future as people will listen to the ones out there and think “I could do that too!”?

There has always been a healthy churn of podcasts, which I think keeps the medium fresh. There are always people saying "I could do that too", because that's exactly what I thought one day when listening to Song, By Toad (no disrespect to Matthew!). I really enjoy Song, By Toad and Glasgow Podcart; and further afield, Dave Hill's Podcasting Incident and This American Life. Those are my main ones. I also subscribe to The Sounds in My Head, and while he doesn't always play music I'd normally listen to, I enjoy Peter Clitheroe's wonderfully titled Suffolk 'n' Cool, for enthusiastic chat and an interesting variety of music.

My favourite podcast is sadly one that was a victim of that podcast churn. If any podcast really put the seed into my mind of doing this it was the long defunct Dailysonic. Unfortunately you can no longer download this great magazine show from NYC, but I've got most of the episodes still in my iTunes library and dip in now and again. They did some innovating things like customised feeds that dynamically changed the show content based on your preferences, something that even now no-one else is really doing. But at the core it was an interesting and entertaining show written and presented by creative people. A great example of how podcasting is quite unlike any other broadcasting medium out there.

Indeed. Thanks again to Jonny for doing the interview. His podcast is uploaded every Thursday night and can be found at -

http://edinburghman.com/

You also can follow him on Twitter - @edinburgh_man.

Interview - Love.Stop.Repeat

Words: Chris Hynd
Photos: Morna West

Love.Stop.Repeat are a duo worth knowing. They create a beautiful, willowy, alt-folk sound, a beguiling mix of guitars, harmonium, accordion and the odd ukelele. Lindsay West provides the sweet vocals, Dave Millar the intricate instrumentation. They both took time out to answer the following questions.

To start off, can you give a brief history of Love.Stop.Repeat and what made you want to start the band together.

Lindsay: Dave and I have been playing music together for about a year and Dave started writing LSR songs this summer. He got me to sing these never ending lyrics and I expanded some of the melodies.

Dave: After Lindsay had helped me out with some Con Brio vocals I thought it'd be fun to try some proper songs with actual instruments away from the computer. The lyrics were adapted from scribbled poems and the vocal lines I had rough ideas for, but Lindsay took these and added strong harmonies, which ended up very much directing the structure of the songs. When Lindsay heard the first couple of demos she suggested we call ourselves a band and so Love.Stop.Repeat was born.

You both have your own projects (Dave as Con Brio and Lindsay's solo work), is it difficult to balance the two and find time for both or do you see L.S.R as your main focus for now?

Lindsay: I am finishing off an EP I’ve been working on for ages and I won’t rest until it is finished. It sounds dramatic but it’s been going on forever. LSR is getting most of the gig time at the moment, partly because Dave is super organized at booking gigs (and I’m not) but also because people dig the music! I’m happy to have both things going on right now.

Dave: I'm keen to carry on my own projects - whether it's Con Brio, the other band I'm in (Attention! All Shipping) or others, and although LSR mightn't always be the main focus for us, I'm sure we'll be able to strike a balance to make it work. It's been really rewarding so far.

Your EP was self-recorded, made and released - can you talk us through the process of putting a record out yourselves from start to finish and how difficult or easy that process was. Is it something you'd like to do again, or will we see future releases on other labels (e.g. Fence Records, who you have an association with)?

Dave: Truth be told, we hadn't actually anticipated playing these recordings to anyone. We were recording the songs as notes to remember them by really, so we could listen back later and see what we thought, but those very same recordings ended up on the EP we've been selling. We've used the Make Your Own Adventure label for the EP with a view to possibly releasing either ourselves or other artists with it in the future. I'm not sure if we'll get a chance to do that though. Running a label proper would take up too much time realistically. We're only selling CD's via Fence and our shows at the moment, so most of the work with it has been in the manufacturing. I think we might have got carried away with the design a little, but they've come out looking great so it's worth the hours we have to put in making them. It's nice to see people picking them up at shows and actually parting with their hard earned pennies for them.

Speaking of Fence, how helpful have they been with what you do? Recently, you played the Halloween weekender in Anstruther, how did you find the weekend and were you pleased with the reaction your set got?

Dave: Fence have been very supportive. Johnny Lynch was really positive about the tracks we put up on our MySpace page, offered to sell the EP in their shop and invited us up to play in Anstruther. We really weren't sure how it might work live and didn't know what sort of reaction we might get. Before the Halloween show we'd just played the one gig in Edinburgh a couple of days beforehand. We were really nervous for that show, but the reception we got was fantastic and really encouraging. It made the prospect of playing after the likes of the Pictish Trail, HMS Ginafore, James Yorkston and King Creosote that bit less scary. We went on and up stood Johnny (Pictish), Kenny (KC) and Gav (OnTheFly) in front of what seemed to be a wall of Fence fans, which I found completely daunting, but again we played and to my surprise there seemed a couple of people singing along. The reaction we got really couldn't have been better.

One thing I got from your EP was a sense of nostalgia for people and places in your songs, - is that a fair comment? Does the landscape around you shape your music or is it a simple case of you writing about what you know, e.g. your lives, travels around the country etc.

Dave: I suppose for my part, it's all of those things. For instance, "Secrets and Slumber" describes a meadow near where I work I've been known to slip away to for a quiet hour or two. Maybe it sounds a bit cheesey, but I want to be able to take people on a journey with the songs - let them in on a daydream perhaps. For "In the Shadow of the Moon" on the CD, I was in the loft space we rehearse and record in and hung a microphone out of the window to record the sounds we hear up there - just to let people in on the lazy summer's day that led to the song. Then there's songs like "Sunday Strolls..." which harks back to a couple of trips we'd made to Scotland, "The New York" song in which Lindsay describes her journey to the city alongside my own account of the Big Apple in "Pictures". I suppose the songs are a bit of an escape, both for us and the listener.

Related to that, you've been putting up video blogs on Youtube documenting what you're up to. What led you to start doing that and is it something you'll continue to do as the band goes on? It's interesting for us to see what things you've been doing, whether it's how you put your CDs together or which part of the country you've been visiting, do you want your listeners to get a better idea and sense of what goes on in L.S.R. and break down the barrier between audience and performer?

Dave: This was actually Lindsay's idea, but I've kinda of taken it by the horns and got a little carried away. It's nice to be able to document what we've been doing both for us to look back over, but mainly to share the whole experience with anyone who takes an interest. Thanks to sites like MySpace, Youtube and Facebook, not only can we say "Hey, we're playing in Fife", but we can take people along with us in the video blogs and show them what we did. It's nice to put it all out there.

How do you approach playing live with all the different instruments that are featured on your songs, specifically for Dave playing guitar/ukelele and kick drum at the same time?! Your cover of NMH's "In An Aeroplane Over The Sea" is a particular highlight of your set and your version of it fits in beautifully with your own songs, what led you to start playing that song and will there ever be a recorded version of it?

Lindsay: LSR basically began as a recording project until we were asked by the Fence guys to go up and play live. Then we sat down and tried to figure out how to play all those layers of vocals and instruments with only two people, instead of with the army Dave created on the CD.

Dave: I think we'd both envisioned the need to bring in other musicians to help play all the parts on the songs but, as the two of us sat down and worked through the songs in became apparent that it might just work as a duo which I'm really pleased about. Lindsay's a great guitar and piano player and very used to singing while she plays, but it took a little while before I decided I was happy playing percussion, guitar/uke and in particular singing all at once. Linds works out some good harmonies for me to tackle though.

Lindsay: Playing live is an experience. Both of us have had to get used to playing new instruments but it is a lot of fun.

Dave: Regarding the "Aeroplane..." song; this was my idea - I just thought we might need an extra song to play in the set and this one sounded lovely on the uke. Lindsay came up with the idea to transpose it up a couple of keys so we're able to slip into it from "The New York Song" almost like it's one long piece. When I don't mess up the transition that is. It's easily one of my favourite songs - a couple of people have said that to me since too, so it looks like it was a good choice. I can't see that we'll end up recording it, but it's grand to play and hear Linds singing.

Finally, what are your hopes and plans for the future in L.S.R.? Are you looking for L.S.R. to play a bigger role in your musical outputs as people become more aware of you or will you continue to pursue your own solo ventures at the same time?

Lindsay: I hope we can keep playing for a long while and experimenting around with the music.

Dave: Yeah, it's been lot of fun and people seem interested so I'm keen to keep it going alongside our own projects. We've got more shows coming up over the next few months and new songs are always being written. A few members of the Fence Collective have done remixes of our songs and two by OnTheFly and Art Pedro came out on De-Fence at the end of November, which is really exciting. The lovely thing about Love.Stop.Repeat is it's all come from Lindsay and I just messing around with a little idea. Fingers crossed we'll get to do it a while longer.

And I think we'll be crossing our fingers for that to happen too. Love.Stop.Repeat were probably my favourite musical discovery of the year and I hope they become yours too. You can find out more at -

http://www.myspace.com/lovestoprepeat.

Interview - My Kappa Roots

Words: Chris Hynd

Right now Pablo Clark, who records and plays under the name My Kappa Roots, may well be one of Scotland's best kept secrets. Clark's hushed, acoustic songs are full of beauty and wonder and joy and elan. As John Mackie says in his review below this interview, we just want to shout to the world about what an extraordinary record "The House Of St. Colme Burnt Down" is and what an extraordinary performer Clark is. It was a pleasure for me and John to come up with these questions for him and read Pablo's replies to them. Here they are for you to read.

To start off, can you give us a brief history of My Kappa Roots and what led you to start writing, playing and recording under that name?

"I was nineteen and I was studying at Edinburgh art school. Although having been accepted into the institution on the “strength” of my drawn portfolio, as someone close to me said: “You’re not a particularly talented artist but you always seem to be obsessing over things and that must count for something. They probably let you in because although you can’t paint like a painter you at least come across as one.” So it was at this time, feeling very unsure of what precisely I was achieving by being at art school, walking around the corridors sound tracked by the bottom of a barrel being scraped and (no doubt) obsessing incessantly, that I heard from an old friend that the old bar by the beach had burned down in the village where I grew up. I borrowed a camera from the film department and went to visit the remains. When I arrived rumour was rife that it had been an inside job, fingers were pointed, voices in the bars were raised in protest or else they conspired quietly with the rims of their pints. All was as it should be. As I walked through the town I realised how much of my identity was tied to its surrounding. There was the tree that bore witness to my first fumbled kiss and behind that public toilet was my first cigarette. It struck me how funny and sad it was that all my memories were tangled up in the leaves. When I saw the burned out ruin it seemed to me that even things of stone have their time and that just as I no longer belonged to this town neither did all the things that I had done. I decided to document all the places in the village that I had in someway made my own. I wrote some music for it and considered what words I would use to say that these ordinary memories that are uniquely mine have been lived through in different guises, by different people, time and time again. Everyone (or at least everyone that comes from where I come from) remembers where they used to drink with friends (the shelter at black sands) or the private places you went with girlfriends (the woods behind Craig‘s house). I made a documentary about the first tracksuit I was ever given, how I tore it at the knee and was too embarrassed to wear it outside, so I hid it away and when I finally came to try it on again it had lost its new clothes smell. This taught me to always value and take pride in my tracksuits. I called it “My Kappa Roots” and I started obsessing about that instead."

Your LP came out last year to very little fuss or fanfare, was that frustrating for you in that you'd like your music to be heard by as many people as possible? What was the reasoning for releasing the record on Drifting Falling and will you continue to work with them?

"I felt more an acute sense of failure. I felt that perhaps I had over stretched myself. In trying to communicate something inherently personal to a large collection of people, assembling an audience, it had become dispersed in the ether in between. Embarrassed by the keen sound of silence. I felt frustrated, not in particular with Drifting Falling, but more with what seem to be the mechanics of any record contract. I felt a distance grow between myself and the material, at least in its recorded state. I care about those songs deeply, I care about the people that the songs concern and the events they discuss. Until, after a time, I came round to the idea that the record would exist somewhere between worlds, heard by the people who stumbled upon it. I felt a real sense of relief. I think I would enter into a new contract with a lot more caution, really consider why I was agreeing to allow the purchase of my songs. I think that I am an unsteady and unsure person and that particular proposition from Drifting Falling went some way to validating the conviction that I rally around my songs. Jon and Justin, who work for and with Drifting Falling are two lovely people who have put their time and effort into releasing that record and I’m flattered that they did so. But the company is now based in Houston and compared to the majority of music they release I feel like the black sheep. The idea of releasing something under my own steam is appealing. The knowledge that the direction the songs take, from their initial conception to their final form, would always be close to me, would certainly be comforting. Then all I need to do is barricade all the doors and windows to make sure nobody gets in, nobody breathes on the furniture and my kingdom and psychosis will be complete."

The flip side to that of course is that it's all the more satisfying as a listener to discover your music for the first time and hopefully word of mouth, more gigs and the like help to get your name out there? Is that along the lines of what you hope to achieve with My Kappa Roots or is it simply the case of continuing to write and play for yourself and let others find out about you as they have been doing?

"The process of writing songs, speaking for myself, I set apart from all other considerations. It takes me months and months of trying to pick apart what I‘m trying to say. As I’m writing this I’m staring at a stack of notes. I keep them on file on my bedroom floor. I take great pleasure and comfort in writing music. I feel a duty to the subject matter but not necessarily the audience. In turn if people take a shine to it then I’m pleased but I would rather people came to it willing rather than to have it forced down their throats."

The LP was mostly recorded in a masonic hall. Did it have one of the big "all seeing eye" symbols on the wall?! These factors must have contributed towards an interesting ambience in which to record. Was it a conscious decision not to use a studio?

"There was an eye, unblinking and all seeing. I was sure it knew what I was thinking, it took to winking and made me blush. The walls were all lined with the portraits of old lodge masters, all seeing and all knowing. It certainly seemed that they knew what I was thinking, they took to coughing into their beards until I couldn’t look them in the eyes more. One of the windows was broken and a tree was trying to climb inside. There was a huge ceremonial bell that we rang with our shoes. Always with a great sense of ceremony. We wrapped ourselves up against the cold in banners we found in the basement and drank until it was almost light, recording the backing vocals to a song called "The Dour Festival." It is a terrifying fact that this Masonic hall is also where I went to nursery. It seems we are all eyed and sized up from a young age in Fife. I had no money for recording studios, and for as long as I could remember my friends and I would play music there. We had a key. It seemed that there was a no more fitting place to play those songs. (Ma)sonic Youth 4EVA IDST."

One of the things I like about your shows and the record is that you do not strive for "perfection" or polish. It seems to me that it's about the feel of the performance (man) I love hearing that approach because it is still so rare! I can't imagine you doing multiple takes of songs. Is this a fair comment?

"Ideally when recording I want to capture a sense of place and of a particular time. I do however, on occasion, allow myself more than one take. I don’t subscribe to a purists lo-fi aesthetic in that respect. Enshrining every mistake I make will not make my music any more real. I have a (degree of) command over what I play and in playing my best I am trying to do justice to subject. Rather, what appeals to me are the more incidental sounds. The sound of traffic or animals flirting outside. These things I try to retain; they define the song in that particular moment, as something both inconsequential to its surroundings. It is a transient, passing moment. I make a lot of mistakes and I’d rather not be reminded of every single last one. When I play live I am never further than a note or two from disaster."

What is the phrase you use near the end of "The Dour Festival", i.e. "We hunched young..."? I'd just like to add that I find this song and the words simply extraordinary. Could you tell us a bit about what inspired it?

"I mumble don’t I? I think the lyric is "we young hunched pack rats." It refers to certain people I spent time with growing up. It’s about the physicality of adolescence. The song itself is about my home town, Aberdour. The second part of which, dour, is a Scots word meaning unfriendly, unresponsive. Each year a festival is held. The (Aber)Dour Festival. The song is a condemnation and celebration of the whole place. In the opening passage I tried to relate the beauty of a sleeping place waking: "From the faltered steps of dreaming the speechless sons arise." The second half, I tried to address all the different characters who populate the village, celebrating together in the marquee they erect on the top of a hill that runs down to the sea. I have strange and snatched memories of moving between the lights late in the evening, watching the dancing inside and walking off into the drunken night to where my friends stood in a knuckle. The barge bodied ladies, the drowned sailors, the moon’s young daughters, the clay cracked poets and us the young hunched pack rats. In places like this, remoter and more private, it seems that every human drama becomes magnified. The whole human race simmers down to a few familiar faces. Many of which spend their days lamenting the fact that the world revolves ever forward. Similarly these places posses a great sense of community, of history, ritual and tradition."

In general, how do you approach playing live, especially as someone with a quiet way of playing and singing? I recall a gig supporting A Hawk And A Hacksaw where you reduced the crowd to silence so they could hear you as you were playing so quietly. Is it difficult to concentrate and play your songs if there's crowd chatter and not many people paying attention?

"It can feel like your dragging the whole sorry business out into a public forum. If people are talking it can all get a bit much. But it can also give you something to rally against. I don’t want to impose the songs on people, I simply play quietly because it comes naturally. Sometimes I play with an electric guitar. But I’m drawn to playing live. After all no one is making me do it. I’m not contractually obliged. I certainly enjoy the ceremony. I enjoy the confessional aspect. Setting yourself up for a hanging. I find there is a redeeming quality in playing live. The chance at the gallows to make amends.

"Hawk and a Hacksaw and I stayed drinking after that show. I secretly wanted to marry her and run away together through the high thighs of the city. Pawn my possessions and live in the engine room of a slow train."

At the risk of sounding muso what guitar players do you like? I would certainly associate you with the likes of James Blackshaw and Jack Rose, some of the more free-form guitar players, very fluid and organic musicians. Would you describe your playing in similar terms?

"That’s a very nice thing to say. Thank you. However in truth I don’t have the discipline or the command over rhythm they do. My guitar playing is much more confused. Most of the songs I play are in alternative tuning, but I can’t read music, know nothing of time signatures or the names of the notes I’m playing. I would really like to learn more. When I was growing up my dad would listen to Bert Jansch, Can and Captain Beefheart, and I wouldn’t. I’d listen to Oasis (no danger I’d be caught listening to Blur). Then it got to the stage that I saw Christopher Mack in the Glasgow underground and forgot how to speak. I spent a summer staying up all night with a friend (and really exceptional guitarist) who plays under the name Rob St. John. We would spend our time drinking suspect fruit wine and playing guitar in his tiny apartment. Then we’d wander bleary-eyed downstairs, sit in the garden and put the world to rights like only young men think they can do. I like Captain Beefheart, Can and even Blur now. I hope Oasis can find it in their hearts to forgive me.!

You're originally from Fife and I'd say that there is a good side to living in Fife, for example some of the scenery! There is a bleakness and an eeriness to parts of the kingdom, particularly the coast. In that sense to me your music breathes Fife. How important do you think landscape and surroundings are to your songs?

"When writing songs for "The House of St Colme Burnt Down" the landscape was certainly a huge factor in how I wrote the songs. I wanted to treat it like a wide canvas that I had to people. I wanted the human element to be relegated to the role of a minor player, wanting the landscape instead to take on human characteristics. Trying to extract and give form to the memories that played out there. Musically, I wanted to continue this thinking and have long instrumental passages that evoked the landscape. All across the coast of Fife there is that ragged beauty. The trees bent by the prevailing winds and the estuary waters hidden by the haar. To relate a sense of memory by obscuring the lyrics, by making the music more obtuse and vague. In contrast to the countryside many of the towns are ex-coal mining, old dock and textile communities. Places that have been politically and financially abandoned. I still remember when the red road ran by Burntisland, the refining dust from the aluminium factory there. It feels like the hearts of a lot of theses places were shut down and they bled out through the streets. I will always treasure Aberdour for its obscure lanes and old graveyards, a place where I spent a childhood by the water and by the trees."

Related to the last question, you've now moved to Glasgow. How do you think being based there will affect your writing and performing, especially when your songs appear to be so rooted in Fife?

"After graduating from Edinburgh art school I left Britain and lived in Paris. I left behind the familiar landscapes of Fife and across the water that sleepy "city" Edinburgh and found myself in a huge place. The result was distressing, I found it really hard to write. The landscapes of Scotland had nurtured not only my song writing but my art work. It is much harder to romanticise a tower block than a forest and it is much harder to lyrically lay claim over a populated place, almost impossible to imbue it with a singular purpose. So, slowly I found myself drawn to people and my relationships with people and the songs appeared lyrically, with the landscape out of focus, but increasingly with the music relating a sense of progress and directness, a sound more like the city. I am in the middle of recording a new record at the moment. Lyrically I feel it is stronger and, much like the musical direction, more focused. After writing “The House…” I felt that subsequent songs I wrote were diluting the message and intent of what I was trying to say. It felt wrong to sing about the country when I hadn’t lived there for a long time. It has taken over two years but I feel I am finally finding my feet again."

Do you ever have any thoughts about using a band or at least some other instrumentation for live gigs? This is a slightly loaded question because I want you to say no!

"I sometimes have friends who play on stage and when we play we go under the extended name of My Kappa Roots and the Sound of Music (groan). This is usually very spontaneous and is rehearsed on the day. I am very lucky to know some really wonderful musicians, especially people who are related to the Fife Kills: Collective and I have every confidence they could play my songs better than I could. Saying that, lyrically I feel very stunted writing with other people because I feel some sense that I have to make the song more encompassing, relate more to other people. I find that very difficult to do in a song. Selfish really. I like playing on my own because I feel very close to the songs when I play them live. If I was to add more instrumentation I would like very much to play as much of it as possible. Once more block the windows and doors. Stocks of tinned food. No visitors. Rumours of riches in the basement."

Finally, what are your plans for the future? Any gigs at Clem's Lounge in Kirkcaldy?! That part isn't serious but do you have any horror stories of playing gigs in Fife? Fence-related ones don't count!

"When I was younger I played at the Path Tavern in Kirkcaldy. I once got asked to play at an energy conference in Glenrothes, got told the wrong date and spent a day in the Glenrothes shopping centre looking for people who looked like the might run energy companies. I played "The Dour Festival" at The Dour Festival, hosted by a band called A Yard of Ale, at an event called Poems and Pints. I supported Ainslie Henderson from Fame Academy in a pool hall in Dunfermline, got so drunk I spent the whole set knocking over the pints that seemed to litter the stage and with the money I made went up to Harlem, drank aftershock all night and spent my time trying to chat up an old girlfriend, with miserable results. I didn’t get glassed mind. We used to get lock-ins at a pub called the Cedar Inn (under old management) and would spend the night playing songs, whilst the owner told us stories about being in the navy. They often ended with some startlingly racist remark."

"The House Of St. Colme Burnt Down" is out now on Drifting Falling Records. If you've any sense, you'd better go and buy a copy. Now. Go on, you know you want to... You can find a link to so from here -

http://www.myspace.com/mykapparootsmusic

Interview - James Yorkston

Words: Chris Hynd

For the past half dozen years or so now, Fife's James Yorkston has been creating and releasing warm, lyrical, folk-tinged songs and records. An integral part of the East Neuk's Fence Collective, Yorkston's latest release, “When The Haar Rolls In”, has seen him garner his best reviews to date. Before undertaking a UK tour to promote the new record, Yorkston headlined the latest Fence Club, a regular series of shows put on by the collective, at the Caves just off Edinburgh's Cowgate and I caught up with him before he went onstage.

“When The Haar Rolls In” has just recently come out and this has come out at a time when you've moved back to Fife. Is it a record that was born out of that particular environment?

“I don't think so. A lot of people have made that connection so maybe there was in a way that I didn't think about. Most of it was written before... actually, I don't know if I can say that truthfully... no, I guess most of it was written when I was back in Fife but I don't think so. Moving back to Fife brought a great sense of relief and maybe that did come through on the record.”

In general, how happy are you with the record and the reaction to it?

“I'm over the moon with both. The reviews haven't all been great but the ones I've seen, 95% of them have been very, very good. They've mostly been four stars, a couple of five's but they've all read very well, they've all been positive about the record and how it's a good record you know? Myself, I'm over the moon with it, which is more important obviously. I don't think there's a duffer on it, I think it's a very strong record, I'm really happy with it. You're always judged by your last record and I think my fourth album is easily as strong as any of the one's that have gone beforehand. I'm delighted with it.”

Talking of Fife there, a friend of mine thought that there was a sense of your records being tied to Fife with a kind of nostalgia for the place. Have you ever thought that, is that a fair thing to say?

“Yeah I would but it's not to Fife though. There's definitely nostalgic qualities to them but most of the nostalgia are for places I go to on the road, people I meet. The lyrics are definitely looking backwards but at people or places away from home so it's not tied to Fife but it is tied to memories. On that most recent one, the first song and the last song are about west Cork, I guess the song “When The Haar Rolls In” has lots of references to Fife.”

Linked to that and looking at your records as a whole, do you feel they've followed a path or a trajectory over the years? For instance, do you feel you've become more experimental or more confident in what you do?

“I think the first record, “Moving Up Country”, was a pop record. With the second record, people talk about the second album syndrome and I definitely had it. I love that album, I think it has some of my strongest songs on it but it was a fucker to write. So when “Year Of The Leopard” came along I just had to break out from doing acoustic music so that's why it's got me singing in falsetto, it's got electronica on it, all sorts of different things. That kind of left me free to do what I wanted. I don't think the new record is inhabiting any genre but I didn't feel I had to break out of any genre with this one, that there was any strain with what I had to do and finally because I love what I do and I love my music and I'm very proud of it, taking all of those things aside, I'm very aware that it's uncommercial. It's not experimental, it's just that I don't have to worry about having a hit!”

You've done a couple of things that are a bit more stream of conciousness lyric wise, “Woozy With Cider” on the last record, the title track of this one. Would you be looking to do more things like those?

“I think that you can't look backwards. With my second album I think I was looking backwards a bit as we'd made the first record so good. I became aware about half way through writing the second album that it was just the wrong thing to do, I had to look forwards. I don't really look back. “Woozy With Cider” is a record that a lot of people relate to but can you imagine if this record had an electronica song with me speaking over the top of it?! It would have been really corny - “he's trying to do another “Woozy With Cider!”” It's more important to not pay attention to what you've done before.”

The new record comes in a very beautifully put together box set, with the double 10”, the remix and covers CDs, the works. How did all that come about and is it something you'd consider doing again or is it a one-off?

“We'll see what state the record industry's in in two years time or whenever the next record comes out. There were lots of reasons for doing this box set. One was that we had collected all this stuff. The covers thing started out because originally there was going to be a covers EP, “Tortoise Regrets Hare” was going to be the main track and the b-sides were going to be three covers but I asked five people because I figured two people would drop out and all five came through. I mentioned it to a few other people and before we knew it we had fifteen/sixteen people so it happened really naturally.

“The remixes was kind of similar. We had all these old remixes and a few people got in touch and asked “can I do a remix?”. Again, it just happened naturally and I got in touch with Domino and we were talking about a promo for the album and they just said “what have you got? What can we use?”. I said “I've got this and these seven cover versions” so they came back and said “why don't you finish those off and we can put it out as a box set.” My album sales are going... I have to be careful what I say because it might not be true... but it's looking like that this one is going to sell more than the last one and the last one sold more than the one before. It's only tiny increments, I'm not at Bonnie Tyler status! But, the record business as a whole is selling a lot less and the figures you hear, not from Domino necessarily, albums are generally selling half as many as the one before because of downloading.

“So this box set has been really good because we've sold a thousand things that couldn't get downloaded so we've actually brought some money in which nowadays for someone of my size is a reasonably rare thing to happen. Normally I'm subsidised by the bigger bands but who knows what will happen in two years. It's just getting less and less and less and less, people are buying less each week so I've no idea what'll happen.”

Following on from that, part of the lure of buying the box set is the chance to win the golden ticket to have a song written about you and then performed for you. Has that been claimed yet?

“No, it hasn't. I've got a feeling though that Domino know which box the golden ticket is in and they're not going to send it out until... I don't know how many boxes are left, I know we sold about 500 in the first week so there can't be that many left now. If they've got any sense they'll wait until there's about a hundred left and then put it in randomly but I don't know that. I'm selling three here tonight and it could be in one of those, all honestly it could be in one of those.”

Did you like the idea when it was first put to you? Did you think it would work?

“I thought it was a bit cheesy but the record company put a lot of money into recording the album and I thought that if this is going to help in any way, help them recoup some of the money then I'm happy to do it. There's a certain part of me that thinks it's going to be an interesting project, say someone like you won it...”

But I didn't. No golden ticket for me! I had grand plans of you coming round to my house and everything...!

“Exactly, you just never know. You're speaking to someone and trying to write a song, it's a difficult thing to do one way or another. There's that side of it and the other side of it is that I know it's been good for publicity, it's a reasonably good idea, I'm quite happy to do. Right now at least, ask me in a year when I've done it and it's about some nutty guy and it'll be quite different now I've done it!”

As I said to you before we started this, I've interviewed Johnny Lynch and Kenny Anderson for the blog and Johnny described you as a kind of “ambassador” for Fence Records, do you see yourself in those terms or is it just a matter of having the freedom to play songs for and with friends to complement your releases on Domino?

“When I started... you love music you know? I imagine you do, you're doing music journalism and I got asked in loads of loads of interviews which bands do I like and it was very easy and very truthful for me to say the Fence people, you could say Lone Pigeon or King Creosote or UNPOC because it was true. It was honest as well because I wasn't listening to or had a love for a London band, I was getting into the Fence thing, I was really excited about that. When I first started it was really easy to work with Fence because it was natural.

“Imagine you're an artist, you were painting and all your pals were artists doing something staggeringly new and original and somebody would ask you which artists do you like then you could say “oh, my pals!” Because I was playing with them and was so immersed in it, it was the easiest thing to do, talking about genuine talent. I knew that when I sent a King Creosote or a Lone Pigeon CD to whoever I knew I was sending them something really good, it wouldn't sound like an acoustic Oasis or whatever it was really fucking good. Nowadays it's completely different because Kenny is way better known than I am. Now, I play shows that's just me and my acoustic guitar I play whatever I like. Kenny's got so many good songs, Jenny (Gordon, aka HMS Ginafore) is great, Johnny's great but I just do whatever, traditional songs, my own songs.”

I was going to ask about playing with Kenny and Johnny as The Three Craws. I've seen you a few times now and it just looks like an absolute joy to play with those two guys, is that the case?

“Yeah, absolutely. It's funny, when we first started that we did mostly Kenny and Johnny's songs, we didn't do any of mine because I was touring and touring and the last thing I wanted to do was any of my songs. Now Kenny's touring and has become better known we hardly do any of his songs, now we're just doing Johnny's songs but his record's just come out now and it's doing really well, it's almost sold out of the first edition which is really good in today's climate so we're doing less of his one's as well! We're doing more of Gordon's (Anderson, aka Lone Pigeon), more of Jenny's, more traditional songs and more things that aren't our own. It's a great thing to do, to go onstage and have fun with the harmonies and try to trip each other up. I love it.”

A few months ago I saw a piece on The Culture Show on the BBC about the Fence Collective and on it you're interviewed where you say that you don't see yourselves as folk singers/musicians but as songwriters. Is that still an important distinction to make?

“Folk is a word that means something different to practically everyone you ask, from the music in the fields passed down from mouth to ear to all the different music that's out there. For me the word “folk” has always meant traditional folk so for me the word “folk” doesn't describe what I do because I write pop songs, even though they're not very popular. One may say it's folk and that's one's opinion and that's fine but it's not my opinion, folk has always meant traditional folk. It's not a big thing, it's not a war cry or anything.”

Obviously, you've covered Lal Waterson's “Midnight Feast” on the new record so I take it folk music will always have an influence in what you do?

“Oh yeah, absolutely. It's more of an influence on me than any other type of music. All these horrific titles of genres you hear, alt-country and new-folk and all that, the only one that I ever thought was good or funny was kraut-folk because I was really into krautrock, Can and Faust, as much as I was into traditional music so for me it worked. At the moment it is a little tricky because I'm working on an album that is completely traditional songs. I don't know what I'll say when that comes out and I'm asked that question but at the moment I really do think I'm a singer-songwriter, as horrible as that expression is.”

I saw you at the Green Man Festival last month and I think it's fair to say you've become a bit of a fixture there, playing every year. This was your first time on the main stage at the venue where it's held now, how do you think it went and were you nervous at all?

“Yeah, I was really nervous. Obviously, we'd played on the main stage at the first one but I actually prefer playing on the smaller stages and I asked them to put us on the smaller stage but they wanted me on the main stage because I've played there every year and they have to mix it up. It's a great festival, I absolutely love it and I'm terrified that one year I won't be asked but I'll be fine about it, I'll take it like a man. It's great fun, but it can't go on forever.”

Did you hear what Kenny said during the King Creosote set after you, mentioning that you played a greatest hits set, of mainly new songs...

“I think his tongue was in his cheek when he said that! You just have to play the new stuff especially if you play a festival every year. That was kind of influenced by Kenny the year before because he played totally new stuff with three or four old songs. I really enjoyed it, I was happy with the performance and thought we did ourselves reasonably proud.”

And again this year, the now legendary Jason came onstage for “Cheating The Game”, how did that all start off and come about?

“The first ever Green Man was in a country house and the main stage was a drawing room! We played a drawing room and it was about five times the size of this room. He kept on standing up and going “PLAY TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH!” and we're like “no man, we're not playing that, there's only two of us”, it was just me and Faisal on the harmonium before he got ill so this guy got up and walked out the room so as soon as he got out the room I started playing it and he got really annoyed, it just went backwards and forwards. Eventually I said “look I'll play it if you come up and do the drums” so he got up and did the silly drums, the “TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH-TCH”. We've done it ever since and had him up playing every year. It's good fun, I hope it doesn't become wearing for the audience because we only do it once a year but I look forward to it because you never know what he's going to do as he's a bit of a jokey character. But, it's not like we're doing a comedy song or something, it's one of our own songs.”

Do you ever see him outside of the festival?

“No, I don't know anything about him! I know his name, I know he's approaching 40 and I know he's got a son called Alfie but that's only because I've met him onstage and he's told me that!”

Finally then, how do you see the next wee while panning out for you? Obviously, you've got a tour coming up with The Pictish Trail and Rozi Plain...

“I'm curious to see whether the great reviews this album got is going to translate into numbers at the shows. I'm curious to finish this next record which is the traditional songs and then I'm going to get on with the next James Yorkston record. That's really the plan, just keep on keeping on. It's great that everyone else on Fence is doing really well now. There's always talk of a Three Craws album or a Fence Collective album, there's talk of the moment and there's been talk since 2001 when we started up. It's the same with this traditional record, I started in 2001 with Domino, it's been on the back burner ever since and now it's almost finished. I've got one of those old projects out of the way so now I want to get some of the others out the way as well.”

With all the work you do, do you ever get time for a break, have time to yourself and just relax and not think about music?

“Yeah, but it's not really like that. Playing is fun, we go on the road and it's good most of the time, it's tiring sometimes. Obviously you take holidays, have a couple of weeks off and recently I've been at home just doing DIY and reaping the rewards in the garden. It's good, Fife seems a very long way away from where the record company are and it doesn't feel as if my nose is to the grind stone. I live a very easy life!”

And some might say that Mr Yorkston has earned the right to those rewards and hopefully the success of “Where The Haar Rolls In” will lead to those rewards continuing. Thanks to James for the chat and for taking a couple of interruptions we had to the interview in his stride. He's a real pro, and a gent to boot. Maybe that golden ticket winner is reading this, I can't think of a better man to write a song for you if it is you!

Interview - Oxbow

Words: John Mackie

California's Oxbow were last in the country on tour this past summer with fellow noise-makers Harvey Milk. Now home, vocalist Eugene Robinson took time out to answer some of our questions via email.

I've come to Oxbow very late...

This might be considered, in many quarters, to be a positive development.

My first serious introduction was the gig in Glasgow with Harvey Milk. I've subsequently investigated "The Narcotic Story" which I love. Could you tell us a bit about the recording of it?

Our records are always difficult and bloodied affairs. Our refusal to work with anyone other than producer Joe Chiccarelli on this (versus say having him record the basics and then have someone else mix it) caused innumerable delays as he would frequently skip out to produce stuff for Jack White and the Raconteurs and other much much larger groups and personalities. Within this framework as well just getting what we need to have happen creatively is difficult. First Lou Reed had thought he might be on it. Because you really can't have a record called The Narcotic Story without Lou Reed. And then he bailed. And then we couldn't afford prime time hours to record in so we took off hours. The first studio we did the basics in was shit even though we knew that all of the records that had been recorded there, many by Metallica, sounded like shit we thought it'd be different for us. But no... So we had to construct a skiff, or a room within a room, at the studio to make the sound make sense. And then because the vibe was so bad with the studio we escaped and went to another studio to do my vocals. This studio was a great one for vocals. So great that immediately on our completion of them the studio went out of business.

ADD to this the generalized agita born of sleeplessness and just trying to corral the craziness and you have: The Narcotic Story.

It's a dense and multi-layered record with so much going on. How does an Oxbow record usually take shape?

It takes years. And years. We went through one 6 month period where we rehearsed nothing but a 3 minute section of a song. Just this. Again and again. I say WE here but I really mean Dan, Niko and Greg. Since the first note that I ever sing on a song is the note that you hear on the record, I mean we never rehearse vocals BEFORE recording them, I mostly just listen and let the song come alive. In my head. And having written the lyrics I have months and months to have them make sense for me from an emotional standpoint as well. and this is even outside of the actual logistics of how we get things to happen my an audio production standpoint.

"The Narcotic Story" is your first record on Hydra Head. How has it been working with them? As a label, does it feel like a natural home for band like Oxbow and do you envisage remaining with them for the forseeable future?

In short order: GREAT. And YES.

You recently finished a tour of Europe with Harvey Milk. On the surface there are few similarities but from the audience's point of view it certainly made for an interesting and varied bill. Here's a 3 part question! What was touring with HM like?

Quite nice. Temperamentally the bands are coming from completely different places. They're, culturally speaking, pretty Southern Gothic, if that makes any sense and it is no wonder to me that some of my favourite writers are Southerners, so from my my vantage point this really worked. From their vantage point I think they expected me to be getting into a LOT more fistfights and were actually disappointed that this tour, sadly/gladly, offered very little of that.

What do you make of playing in Europe compared with back home?

Well our last tour of the States was with Isis... so it was GREAT. Our last tour of the States withOUT Isis can be best be described if you can envision a pair of boots slowly compressing your testicles, if you have them. and now imagine this forever. or for at least 6000 miles. Welcome to America. And truthfully: the UK is great for Oxbow but not very different in many regards, usually in the "fuck you - we don't care about you" regard, though the UK has always been cool to/for us... The stench of seen it all/done it all clings to the soundmen, support staff, promoters and venues here as it does in America. I say that though while also noting that this last tour was our best one ever in the UK and everyone we dealt with was unfailingly wonderful. it's just that my memory of the UK goes back 20 years and it has not always been so.

A bill featuring different "types" of bands can often mean one of them playing to the other's audience or at least an audience used to different fare. How do you feel about that?

We've played with A Perfect Circle, Isis, Tom Waits' band Oranj Symphonette, Mike Watt, The Melvins, Neurosis, and swing bands. Harvey Milk was as close as we're going to get to a band that sort of occupies the same art space. that is: one where the audience is OK with WHATEVER.

The Oxbow live experience was genuinely unlike anything I'd seen before! Intensity (an overused phrase but apt I think), performance art, feral noise... There were people near me who were standing literally open mouthed. I guess audiences, myself included, are not used to being part of such a truly visceral experience. For me it was thrilling. It got me thinking a lot of how it seems as if audiences for the most part clearly tend to want something cosy and traditional. I'd like to know if you agree with this? Also how important is it to you to challenge perceptions of what a live band does? Do you feel that that you consciously set out to challenge an audience?

I don't know about cosy and traditional and them really WANTING it. I mean people eat EGGS... I don't know how many of them really WANT to eat eggs. We are habituated in strange ways and if an evening's entertainment involves a LACK of real physical peril, existential anxiety, and psychosexual discomfort, well that would be fine for about 99 percent of the people out there walking around. decent people all, in all likelihood. there have been people at our shows who have wanted to, they say, see us and have not managed to for 20 years. This is virtually impossible, really, so I am left to assume that this is only the kind of thing you hear when you're ready to hear it. that is: understand it when you CAN understand it.

Or more prosaically... People who are real music heads like the accumulation of musical info as much as they like music. Right now I could not tell you at ALL what Yo Lo Tengo or Galaxie 500 or Linkin Park sound like but I have a GENERAL idea and for me? That's clearly enough given how short life is. this is the efficiency argument and this might play heavily into people saying "once you've seen one crazy Negro screaming to a noisy but highly proficient and divinely inspired band you've seen them all" but this is probably not true.

As for whether what you call the challenge is conscious, well I'd have to say no. Maybe if you have not read the lyrics it might emerge as a challenge but there is a direct one to one relationship between what we're singing about and how we're playing it and this has everything to do with how all of our lives are lived: with great difficulty. NOT sub-saharan African difficulty. We're all quite well-fed. But 1st world difficulties and clearly difficulties of the blood.

Eugene, how much do you see your live show as a "performance" as opposed to an act of "playing music" in the way other frontmen might approach it? Again, this goes back to challenging audience's perceptions with regards to the role of a frontman in a band, you often break down the barrier that exists between the band and the audience. Is this something you set out conciously to do or does it just feel like a natural thing to do?

Without the music what I am doing has no measure.

There are so many different elements to your sound. All these ideas and "influences", for want of a better phrase, fighting AND at one with each other at the same time. Being great musicians gives you the freedom to explore these different areas. Do you ever feel the urge to make a straight ahead "rock" record?!

Are our records NOT straight ahead rock records? They're not madrigals.

The amount of lazy descriptions of you I've seen are quite astonishing often along the lines of, "a metal band", "a hardcore band" etc. To me your music seems almost impossible to categorise even if I was inclined to attempt to do it. Are you bothered or frustrated by these types of statements? Do you thrive on them?

I am bothered and frustrated by capricious gods who see fit to under-reward me while those half as talented are over-rewarded. But naming conventions? I could not care less.

Eugene, could you tell us the background behind your book "Fight"? You've also written extensively elsewhere. Do you have any other books in the pipeline? As both a writer and a musician, do you ever find yourself having conflicting priorities or are both elements able to co-exist without being detrimental to each other?

Yeah. I wrote an article about my obsession with fighting and was flown to NY immediately afterward and given a book deal with Harper Collins. The gods were not so capricious that day, apparently. It's a great book that is NOT being distributed in the UK by the company publishing it because of the 2 pages I was urged to include on knife fighting and the idea that the book would aid and abet citizens of the monarchy in putting holes in each other. It's presently on sale ONLINE so... hey... I'm not asking for a handout... I'm just asking for A GODDAMNED HAND... Buy the book. Other books? Always... But nothing I've managed to sell yet. So: Air. And lots of it. Until a check gets written.

But do I find the writing/music thing tough? No. Writers are much more egomaniacal than musicians. I mean YOU know this, hahaha...

Finally, Oxbow have been together for close to 20 years. How do you keep things fresh?

Our music is not our business. I mean while we're involved in the business of music, we can't feed ourselves doing it and so then it becomes something done beyond real world constraints. like wicker basket weaving. it keeps us off the streets. I don't know if this equals FRESH but when no one cares what you do it can be quite liberating to do WHATEVER.

What makes you want to keep making music together?

Anger. And bitterness. Mostly. And a mutual hatred of fate. And our own wretchedness. And I wish I was joking but I am not.

How do you think Oxbow have evolved over the years?

Have we evolved? This could clearly be part of the "problem." Hahaha...

Thanks to Eugene for replying to our questions so quickly, it was a pleasure to chat to him. You can find out more about Oxbow and Eugene here:

http://www.theoxbow.com/
http://www.eugenesrobinson.com/