Hi, my name is Lloyd and in the past two years I have somehow managed to blag myself into a position whereby folk actually believe that I know things about music.

I originally started the blog as I was fed up meeting up with friends and telling them about great music that they should be listening to.

So I started messing about with blogger to see how easy it was. I initially registered the name Peenko as it was a nickname that some of my mates from school call me, if I had thought that I would be where I am now, then I would have chosen a different name. The plan was that it would give my mates a platform to actually go and listen to some great music. Only my friend Jamie actually paid any attention, something which I will always be really thankful for.

If I am honest when I first started the site I was actually just posting up links for my mates to download albums. Yes, I know I was a very naughty boy, but those days are behind me now and I think/hope that I have done enough now to make up for it.

There was no game plan when I first stated up, there certainly wasn’t any plan for me to have such a strong focus on Scottish music. I have always been pretty passionate about artists coming out of my own backyard, but not to the extent that I am now. Initially I found myself doing what a lot of bloggers do and focusing on what you might deem to be ‘hipster bands’. My introduction to blogs came about after I came across American sites such as ‘You Ain’t No Picasso‘ and ‘I Guess I’m Floating‘. Who turned me onto a lot of great bands who at that time weren’t getting much exposure over here. It wasn’t until I started reading The Pop Cop that I even considered starting my own blog up. So in short this is all his fault.

As for those badges were pretty awesome weren’t they, they’re pretty well travelled. There’s a cracking wee pic of one of them in front of the Eiffel Tower!

Euan McMeeken by Lis Ferla (lastyear'sgirl_)

The third in this series of interviews is with another multi-talented creative type, Euan McMeeken, who is not only lead songwriter and vocalist in Edinburgh band The Kays Lavelle (who have just released their debut album Be Still This Gentle Morning on the Wiseblood Industries label), but also writes the excellent blog The Steinberg Principle, where you will also find links to his two other enterprises, the tireless gig promotersTrampoline and record company mini 50 records (phew!).

I sent him a wee email interview asking what motivates him to do so much, and how he manages to fit it all in – here are his answers which I found very inspiring because he truly does what he does for the love of it and it’s made me pick up my guitar again for the first time in ages.

Q: Hi Euan. Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions- I know you’re busy with the recent launch of the new Kays album Be Still This Gentle Morning. Can you tell me a bit about how the album came about e.g. the writing & recording process?

well graeme and i decided it was about time we got our fingers out and released something, is really the jist of it.  what that was to be, we really were not sure at the time, but we had enough songs at the time to consider an album.  the plan was simply to record a certain number of songs then figure out what worked with what.  if that resulted in an album great, if we could only piece together a couple of eps then that would have been ok too.  fortunately it all came together nicely as the recording sessions took shape.  the biggest problem we had then, and have now, was that we were struggling financially so where and how we were going to manage to record was unclear.  after a gig we did with meursault i’d mentioned the situation to neil pennycook and he said he’d happily record it for us.  i don’t think he really knew at the time just what he was taking on but he was kind enough to be involved at the beginning and for most of the project.  it took from november 2008 until february 2010 to complete, with help from alex fenton who finished recording when neil got too busy with meursault stuff.  it was a much longer process than i had planned, but i’m very glad it panned out the way it did and i’m very proud of the result. the songs had been sitting with me for 3 years.  it was nice to finally give them a home.  i am now excited to get cracking on new songs.  hopefully it won’t take 4 years to get the next record out there though!

Q: The Kays are another Edinburgh band to build a much higher profile in recent months. Do you think it’s set to continue? It seems like the Scottish scene as a whole is incredibly strong right now.

it’s been weird.  we’ve had a lot of ups so far this year but then something negative comes along and it kind of knocks your for six.  just when you feel like you’re getting a bit of momentum somebody comes along, in the form of the skinny in our case, and knocks the wind from your sails.  the music industry seems a bit like a game of snakes and ladders in a sense, i guess.   i’m honestly not going to complain though, this is the first time in six years that i’ve been able to read anything about the kays, good or bad, so it feels pretty great to finally be getting recognised within the scottish music scene.  i hope it continues and gets better and better for us.  i really do.  i’m greedy that way!

As for the scottish scene itself, i don’t necessarily think it is any stronger than it has been in the past.  there are just more blogs, podcasts, radio shows and people who love music out there promoting and supporting the artists these days.  avenues which were perhaps not so readily available in years gone by are now plentiful.  so whilst the music coming out of scotland at the moment is unquestionably of a high calibre, i think the vibrancy of the scene is more to do with accessibility to the music than simply the quality.

Q: Also did you have any specific aims in mind that you wanted to achieve with this release and how easy do you find the promotional side of putting a record out?

there were no real aims in mind when we started recording other than finishing a record that we were proud of.  we achieved that.  now we live with the thoughts of others. but i’m not one to sit and say i’m not ambitious.  because i am ambitious.  in everything i do.  so i see where i want the band to go and i’m quietly confident that i can guide us there.  it might take a little longer than for other bands but i’d rather be a slow burner that got to where i want to go in the end than have 5 minutes in the spotlight, because i did what others wanted, then disappear.
in terms of promoting the record.  well, daydream our management and pr company have handled most of that.  but at the same time, i don’t really like it when bands hide behind management and agents etc, so i am very conscious that we should retain a human element and be involved in the whole process.  it’s not a big ask when you are passionate about what you do.

Q: I’m ashamed to say that though have probably been at a few of the same gigs over the years, we’ve never properly met – but then I’m an antisocial hermit. You however are an active member of the local community with the Steinberg Principle blog and having run Trampoline gigs for a long time now. You’ve also been organising a wonderful tribute to a trio of great songwriters, Smith/Chesnutt/Linkous. How do you balance your time so you can do your own creative stuff as well as all the support you give to other artists?

who ever told you i was social??! i think you’ve been misinformed sir!  nothing could be further from the truth.  i love silence and the feeling of being alone with my thoughts. i love my books.  i might be an active member of the community but i do it all from my steinberg lair surrounded by test tubes, notebooks, books, cds and far too many thoughts!

i also know for a fact that i take on too much.  but i need to be active.  i need to have things to sink my teeth into.  the kays and my own music are my primary focus and always will be. however, i know how hard it is to get noticed and heard.  i know how important a good review or the right person liking you can be.  when I started trampoline and my blog the aims were similar: to support artists that i love and that i think deserve to be heard.  the same applies to my label mini50.  i want to put out music by artists I love and i think deserve wider public attention.  and projects like the smith/chesnutt/linkous tribute.  well i just wanted to raise awareness about depression.  it’s a very dangerous illness and it affects lots of people who you’d never think were depressed.  those artists were so important to me, especially mark linkous, so i felt compelled to raise awareness of their music and their illnesses through the project.  i hope it’s working.

Q: As a writer you are very honest and wear your heart on your sleeve which makes your blog very readable. Your music is also very heartfelt. Do you ever worry that you are putting too much of yourself out there?

i like writing that says as much as possible, using as little as possible.  i always have.  i like short sentences.  i like to not use capital letters (you might have guessed).  i like breaking the rules.  i think as an artist or a writer you must always wear your heart on your sleeve.  for me writing, of any form, is a release.  why would i want to hide that?  i do mask most of the lyrics but I’m not afraid to address the things i think about or the subjects i write about.  i think again, it adds a human element to the music and the blog.  you tell me?!

Q: As a musician you probably have the same concerns I put to Bart Owl recently about the ability to make money from music. What motivates you to keep making music and doing the things you do, even though there is not always a guaranteed monetary reward?

it’s very simple.  i love to make music.   i love the feeling you get when you get it right.  when you create something that you know is right.  that you know is what you’ve been searching for.  more often than not, it comes when you least expect it.  and i love that feeling too.   i don’t do this to make money.  i don’t write music to make money.  i don’t run music nights to make money.  i don’t run a record label to make money.  it’s all about the music for me and it always will be.  if i get lucky enough to sustain a life because of my music or my label then i will be very thankful and ultimately, it’s what i want.  but i’ll never stop making music.  you cannot place a price on the feeling of sitting at the piano with a bottle of red wine.  even in my darkest moments, i still feel at peace with a piano and bottle of red.  if i stop feeling that.  then i’ll stop playing music.  i don’t know if that answers your question though!

Definitely, thanks for answering the questions Euan.

Be Still This Gentle Morning is out now. Photo by Lis Ferla

Photo by Dylan Matthews: of Meursault at the Roxy Art House Edinburgh

The second in this series of interviews is with Edinburgh-based photographer and blogger and now radio DJ, Dylan Matthews. Dylan’s photos have been published by an impressive list of publications including  BBC Online, The List, The Sunday Herald & The Skinny, and he is of course an integral part of the Song, By Toad team. His new radio show with Ali Millar started last week and runs for the next 3 weeks on Fresh Air.  Cheers for taking the time to answer these questions Dylan!

Hey Dylan. Your blog Blueback Hotrod is focused on your photography. How did you get started taking photos and where did the name come from? (Yes, this is a lazy and obvious and quite possibly inanely stupid question, which you are under no obligation to answer)

I’ve always enjoyed taking photos since I was little. My dad took us on a trip to Disneyworld in Florida when we were little kids and bought me a little Kodak Disc Camera. I remember him commenting that the photos I took on that holiday were quite good – all sort of nicely framed and composed and so on. I remember I was always trying to look for interesting angles and outlooks for pictures even at that point.

Since then I’ve always got a kick out of taking photos, I love travelling partly for that reason, and if you go to any party or gathering you’ll find me on the other side of the camera taking candid snaps! It’s great that the live music scene in Edinburgh seems to throw up lots of really good opportunities for photos.

The name of the site is the most boring thing you’ll ever hear, but you did ask! If you’ve seen the site you’ll know the header has a picture of a little red hot rod car. Well, that I took that photo in the car park of this truckstop off the highway driving through Northern Québec. When I saved the JPEG image into my holiday snaps folder, I called the file ‘hotrod.jpg’. Then, when mobile phones first developed screens that could display images, I decided I wanted the wallpaper image on my phone to be one of my own photos instead of the stock ones the phone came with, and I remembered that photo of the little red car. I cut out the car from the background of the car park and mounted the image on a plain white field, but when I uploaded it onto my phone you couldn’t see the menu commands on the display anymore, because they were in white text. So I changed the backround field colour to a nice pale blue so the writing would show up and christened the new file – you’ve guessed it – ‘bluebackhotrod.jpg’. For some reason that filename sprung to mind when I was trying to think of a name for the blog. Told you it was a boring story!

You also do a lot of different things for the Song By Toad blog/label, including appearing on Toadcasts, editing and writing for the ‘Sunday supplement’ section and the bulk of the filming for the excellent Toad sessions. Why? (sorry I couldn’t think of a better question for this either)

Standard response for any questions relating to Matthew and/or Song By Toad: “I was a bit drunk, [insert "Officer" / "Your Honour" / "Mum" here as appropriate]”

No, seriously, I do owe Matthew and the Song By Toad family a debt of gratitude for introducing me to some great people and giving me the chance to make my own little contribution to what goes on over at Toad Hall. The Toad Sessions in particular have been a real privilege to be involved in. We’ve had some great days hanging out with the various bands who’ve been through the sessions, we all usually end up having a few beers, a good chat and a bit of skylarking, and I’ve made some good friends off the back of that. But aside from that, to have been in the room during some of the performances we’ve had has been just incredible.

I remember during the Eagleowl session we were all just pottering about, setting the gear up and whetever, Malcolm was tuning up his violin, Clarissa was texting on her phone, Rob was petting the cat or something, and I think Bart was browsing through the books on the bookshelf, when suddenly Malcolm latched onto a more coherent riff and – as if by telepathy or something – the sound in the room just swelled and within a split-second the whole band had launched into Blanket. It was seriously – like – a jaw-dropping, breathtaking, hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck moment. And the tapes weren’t even rolling. I was like “Whoa! Where did that come from?!”.

It was a similar thing with Mumford & Sons – I couldn’t help grinnning like an idiot during that little banjo-led interlude in the middle of Awake My Soul – which has been one of my favourite bits of music since I first heard it (on Song By Toad!) a couple of years ago. Just looking around the room watching them play that within a few feet away was just mindblowing. Sparrow & The Workshop was another standout, they made food for everyone, and Jill played this fantastic version of Dolly Parton’s Jolene. I keep coming back to Found’s stunning acoustic version of Mullokian, too. Ziggy’s twelve-string is blistering on that. (It’s quite funny if you listen to it – you can still download the MP3 off the website – check out Ziggy couting himself in then pausing, and than playing the song at a completely different tempo!)

Yeah – it’s really been an experience to have been involved in these. Long may they continue!

You’re now also doing your own radio show on Fresh Air and have already been praised by random strangers for your dulcet tones and ‘relaxed banter’ with your co-host Ali Millar. What can people expect from the show and how did you enjoy your first show last Saturday?

Last week was a great fun – but it was a bit of a disaster on the technology front! Hopefully we’ll get the hang of it soon. The idea of the show is to link it in with the live scene each week, which makes sense what with Ali doing her promotional stuff with A+E Promotions and me with the photos. Ali’s a cheeky little so-and-so, so there’ll be plenty more banter I imagine, and I’ll have to be gracious about the “dulcet tones” thing and take it as a compliment – not so sure myself!

Dylan & Milo: rather drunk & out of focus

You always seem to be in the right place at the right time (apart from in the above photo obviously)– just looking  at your photos from Homegame you were able to capture some great moments. Any tips for photographers wanting to get closer to the action e.g do you have a special technique to make musicians relax in your presence? (besides plying them with rum obviously or have I just answered the question for you)

I don’t know really. I suppose I’m quite lucky in that I often seem to be taking photos of mates, so maybe they relax a bit more because they know me. I think the trick to taking photos in a close-quarters situation is to just relax, chat to people and help everyone have a good time, then people won’t bother about you wandering around with the camera so much. Oddly though, I feel much more self conscious near the front of the stage during a gig, I keep telling myself that no-one in the room is looking at the photographers, but it doesn’t seem like it sometimes!

I believe you have a day job, do you find it a struggle getting all the other stuff done and being so sociable as well? Don’t you ever fancy a night in watching Taggart or something?

Yeah, I’ve got a very dull 9-5 IT job. I get very antsy sat at home in front of the TV unless there’s either something brilliant on (which isn’t often), or I’m worn out. But I do seem to spend plenty of evenings sitting at home.

In terms of bands/music you are obviously a big fan of the Scottish alt-folk scene is there anything in your record collection that might surprise people? You must have a few guilty secrets??

Oh god, there are plenty of guilty secrets. You certainly couldn’t put my iPod on shuffle and expect the good times to last long! I have to admit to being a bit of a sucker for 1980s power-rock. If I’m drunk and near the stereo, then it’s not usually long before things like Why Can’t This Be Love by Van Halen and Easy Lover by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins come on!

So thanks very much to Dylan for agreeing to be interviewed. I thoroughly recommend tuning into his and Ali’s show on Saturday at 12:30pm, it’s a nice mix of light-hearted repartee and chilled out tunes to start your Saturday in style.

Also worth reading is his recent post on being inadvertently off the sauce for the Song, By Toad Sunday Supplement- it’s nice to know I’m not the only one on the ginger beer at the moment!

Photo by Dylan Matthews, taken from Song, By Toad session (click for link)

This is the first in a new series of interviews with people who are doing great things creatively both locally and hopefully a little bit further afield too. First up we have the ridiculously likeable Bart from eagleowl, the stunning Edinburgh band whose music has genuinely moved me to tears on more than one occasion.

Bart. You’re in a band called eagleowl. You’ve got a new EP out called ‘Into the Fold’ which is already getting a bunch of good reviews. It is of course, beautiful and literally made me cry 3 times. Cos I am a girly boy, or a complete wuss. Are you trying to make people cry? Why, why are you trying to make people cry?

That’s really touching. People have said that before – not often, granted – but a few people have said that certain songs on certain occasions have moved them to tears. It’s quite a compliment. I think to have someone cry – to have that level of unreserved emotional response – is hugely flattering. It feels more genuine, since its almost involuntary. Obviously we don’t set out with the intention of making people cry, but I think the songs are intended to instill at least some kind of emotional response or involvement from people.

And you’re launching the EP this weekend with gigs in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Given the emotional quality of your music, I find at your gigs I often start daydreaming about a litany of lost loves and remembering a bittersweet combination of events in my life, like the day my dog died crossed with the day I got my first Bontempi keyboard. is there anything I can do to emotionally prepare for this trauma prior to the gig?

Oh my, I really don’t know. We’re not really as miserable as we appear, honest. We’ve been discussing playing a show in animal costumes at some point. I think it’d help lighten the mood.

I asked you to do the first ever ‘Creative Types’ interview because like a great number of people I admire, you’re multi-talented. Not only have you played in every band in Edinburgh ™ but you also promote excellent gigs under the name The Gentle Invasion’ and if I’m not wrong design gig posters and the like. Do you have any advice for other creative types on (a) how to fit it all in, and (b) how to stay motivated and focused. (Ok, I say other people but really I desperately need this advice myself.)

I’m not sure if I’m the best person to give advice. But I think just stay focused, and remind yourself why you’re doing it in the first place. Be sure you’re in it for the right reasons. Don’t be put off by one bad show or one bad review or whatever. As to how to fit it all in – I’ve really no idea. Make sure you have a very understanding partner. I think that’s a key factor.

You did a really great interview with Ewen over at the Steinberg Principle about how good the local scene is at the moment but what are your thoughts on spreading the word beyond Scotland? I know people like Marc Riley are doing a good job, but is it difficult to break out beyond that? I really think you guys deserve to be heard by as many people as possible.

We’ve been talking about that a lot recently. I think we’re planning to try and do more English shows this year and play in more cities outside Edinburgh and outside Scotland. There does seem to be fewer and fewer outlets for smaller bands at the moment, and I do think that a lot of the National press does have a distinctly English bias. But I think that will come from them being London-based. It ‘s only natural, I guess, but no less frustrating.

I feel that the internet is becoming more and more important in giving the smaller bands a voice. The current rash of new bands in Scotland over the last couple of years seems to have coincided with a lot of new music blogs starting up as well. And with less and less space being devoted to smaller releases in the National press, it’s really nice that sites like Drowned in Sound are giving those releases the attention they deserve.

Also, is that enough if most people aren’t willing to pay for music? What do you think musicians should be aiming at these days? (I know this is a tough question)

Oh my. It’s a conundrum. With our releases we try and make sure that we do everything to ensure it’s nicely packaged. With the shift towards downloads, to ask someone to fork out for a hard copy you have to make sure it’s an attractive item in itself, asides fro the musical content. I think the rules are changing and there’s been this huge shift in the industry, and everyone’s still not sure how to deal with that. Time will tell, I suppose.

Thanks to Bart for taking the time to answer these daft questions with such honesty. Don’t forget to check out eagleowl’s new EP ‘Into The Fold’ – (you can hear the song No Conjunction on April’s podcast). It’s being launched with two gigs this weekend:

30th April at the Roxy Room, Edinburgh

1st May at the Flying Duck, Glasgow

Also, check out their recent session for Song, By Toad at which Dylan Matthews took the excellent photo above.

With 17 albums recorded over 15 years under various pseudonyms, Kentucky-born Will Oldham has established himself as one of the most prolific and talented songwriters in alternative music today. That’s despite starting out as an actor – at the age of 17 he starred in John Sayles’ 1987 film Matewan, but found the accompanying pressures unmanageable and instead drifted into making music (just don’t mention Joaquin Phoenix).

After recording a number of albums under the names Palace Brothers, Palace Music and as himself, he settled on his greatest character role to date, that of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. The first album he recorded under that moniker, 1999′s I See a Darkness, is a masterpiece of ragged, lo-fi coal-black country-folk, his unaffected, fragile voice spitting out brutally honest poetry that seemed to come from depths rarely mined by other songwriters. It’s as if the protection of an alter-ego has afforded him the freedom to express a much deeper side to himself than he would feel comfortable doing under his own identity. The album’s title track has even been covered by the late great Johnny Cash (with a little help from Oldham on backing vocals).

Since then the Bonnie one has forged his own distinctive musical path with follow up albums such as Ease Down the Road, Master & Everyone and the Letting Go, plus collaborations with Matt Sweeney, Tortoise, Björk and PJ Harvey, and even appearing in videos for R&B stars Kanye West and R. Kelly. And following his success in music he’s been able to return to acting on his own terms, taking roles in a selection of credible indie films such as Julien Donkey-Boy and Junebug, and Wendy and Lucy, out in the UK this month. However for all his critical acclaim, it would seem that Will Oldham is not a fan of the music press. Why else would promotional copies of Beware, the latest Bonnie Prince album, also out this month, contain so many excruciating spoken interruptions during each song, rendering the album virtually unlistenable and leading one journalist to recently describe it as “the worst promo CD ever”?

Speaking on the phone from a “very attractive” Hawaiian island where he’s due to play a gig the following night, Oldham admits that this wasn’t just some evil record company ploy, and that he was complicit in the decision (Oldham is signed to Domino Records in Europe and Drag City in the US). “That’s something that we agreed on. I guess it’s all well and good for reviewers to complain about something like that, but I think it’s partly the reviewer’s responsibility to figure out a process by which music can be gotten to reviewers in advance of the release of a record without it being leaked all over the internet, and when reviewers get off their asses and start taking a little responsibility for their jobs then things can go smoothly again.”

In fact, he also considers the current process of doing interviews inherently screwed up. “Doing lots of press takes so much time away from playing, writing and listening to music. And I think there’s something wrong with this process of soliciting huge numbers of writers to talk to somebody about their work in a solid mass of interviews, rather than doing say, four interviews over the course of a year. It might have something a little bit more to do with the writer’s desire to find something out and the musician’s ability and desire to express something about what’s going on, and that would make for ideally more interesting articles.”

Oldham’s attitude towards promoting his records may seem overly antagonistic to some – and seems to have led to a reputation as something of a curmudgeon, with even his own mother describing him as “ornery” in a recent in-depth article in The New Yorker magazine. Whilst on some levels the New Yorker piece fits into Oldham’s ideal of how the interview process should work, he also says he considered the author’s detailed description of his Kentucky home life including his dinner with his mum to be “a strange invasion of privacy” as he hadn’t realised the writer “would be on the clock 24/7″.

But his self-protective stance actually serves to illuminate his entire life and career philosophy, helping to explain how he has managed to produce a discography almost as prolific and rewarding, at least to his huge and dedicated fanbase, as Dylan (to whom he is oft compared) or The Fall (who he has revealed are on his ipod). It also explains his sometimes surprising changes in musical direction, and his preference for recording under multiple names: “I feel strongly about protecting my ability and enthusiasm and energy and desire to continue making music, and it seems, as with in every walk of life, there are a lot of forces constantly acting against you to make you feel like it might be better and easier to stop.” He went on to spell out his strategy for dealing with such forces. “It’s a regular checks and balance system, when things do seem stupid or futile or wrong, to not necessarily get claustrophobic, but to decide OK, this just means turn left or turn right, and not to feel that if you’re not moving straight it means you’re not progressing.”

Leaving the acting profession could be seen to be a case of this philosophy in action – “I didn’t get to go to career counselling and choose to play music over acting, it was more that music started to open up, it started to happen.” It’s a similar open-ended approach to the one Oldham took whilst recording Beware. “I wouldn’t say that it was necessarily loose, I definitely was very tense throughout the whole time, but I guess the idea is to spend a lot of energy making sure that things stay open.”

Oldham admits that- much like contact with journalists – some engagement with the public has been unavoidable in this pursuit of a musical career. “I understand that things like faces and names help people connect with music, so if that has to happen then there can be some sort of representation of a human being through these photographs.” Yet it would seem he’s happy to remain elusive, a character trait that has only heightened the fascination of his fans, as if he is a rarely sighted hairy man of the woods, a kind of Bigfoot of American indie.

But then Oldham believes that is far better than the kind of ubiquity enjoyed by massive stars these days. “I’m satisfied with the littlest thing – if I love a song by the Greek singer Demis Roussos, I can go on YouTube and watch some strange video – that I can’t make head nor tail of, which looks bizarre, ridiculous and frightening – in 3 minutes and I’m satisfied. Then you get the extreme pinnacle example of somebody like Michael Jackson or Britney Spears, where we find out so much about them and see them so often that both they and the public become fatigued. If Britney Spears just released music and you didn’t have to deal with her personality then you might every once in a while be like, oh, I want to listen to that Britney Spears music”.

However despite his love of R. Kelly, who he says “has originality going for him”, the Bonnie Prince won’t be putting Britney on his turntable in the near future. “i’ve always been kind of mystifed and even offended by people’s claims to like her- I mean Britney Spears is sort of like the Oasis of America, I don’t understand how somebody who likes music can look you in the eye with a straight face and say that this is good”. Realizing I embodied the twin evils of both music journalist and Britney apologist, I kept quiet at this point and thanked my lucky stars that I had gotten off so easily with this notoriously difficult interviewee. In fact, whilst clearly a complex man, Will Oldham was a very nice chap to chat to, despite what his persona would lead you to believe – unless this was just a case of him playing yet another of his many roles.

As published in the March issue of The Skinny Magazine 

For more info see www.jasonlytle.com

Grandaddy Q & A

Despite a sequence of great albums which began with both Under the Western Freeway and the Sophtware Slump in 2000, Grandaddy never seemed to reach their full potential or breakthrough to a larger audience, overshadowed by the success of their peers who shared the same aesthetic and thematic sensibilities, including Radiohead, Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips. Vocalist and songwriter Jason Lytle decided to split the band last year, but not before releasing one more epic album of sonic and melodic majesty, “Whatever Happened to the Fambly Cat”. Lytle spoke to the Skinny about the album and his reasons for ending the band, as he was preparing to leave his home town of Modesto, California, the inspiration behind many of the band’s songs.

The album marks the death of Grandaddy as a band, and the epic nature of many of the tracks seems to reflect this.

I wasn’t thinking too much about death, more like the end of a journey. There was so much going on related to that, in addition to the band – moving from this place that I’ve lived, Modesto California, for a long time that contributed to much of the material that people have come to know.

So have you left Modesto already?

I’m still here right now, the house is for sale; so it’s completely empty and I’m doing things like scrubbing floors, dusting countertops and clearing up the yard, shit like that. The studio was here and everything, but it’s all moved now. All my belongings are 12 hundred miles away, I was living out of a bag throughout this 3 week press trip I’ve just done, and I lost my luggage so I don’t even have that anymore!

You’re studio is in storage at the moment; will you be setting it up again when you’ve moved to Montana?

Yeah, that’s the plan. That part of it’s pretty exciting, it’s a complete change of environment. I’m not seeing it like “it’s all crashed and burned and I’m ready to throw in the towel”, I’m looking forward to working, and when I’m taking breaks being around good, healthy, inspirational stuff, not just fucking off.

The recent ‘Todzilla’ EP was a postcard of discontent with your hometown Modesto, was that your way of telling yourself you’ve had enough?

Yeah, it was like, this isn’t even funny anymore. It gets pretty ridiculous around here. Part of it is the fact that’s it home, but the other part is the fact that people just don’t know what to do with themselves so they decide to do the worst version of all the options. All I can do is cruise around and take it in, and just go man, “this place just sucks. At first it was funny, but It got to the point where it isn’t funny anymore, and then it just starts affecting you and then you’ve just got to do something about it and get out while you’re still alive!

You’ve said that when you’re not busy you have a “substance abuse problem”?

Yeah, I come from a long line of drinkers- it’s not like I’m cowering behind a dumpster in an alley, it usually starts off light hearted and social enough, but a part of it is not knowing when the party should end, an ability to know when to say when. I needed to rearrange my thought process.

It’s a stimulation thing too, I’ve always placed a pretty big importance on making sure I’m having fun and there’s a lot going on and I’m being excited by something, and when you’re in an environment where that’s just not happening you’ve got to create it artificially and it becomes a long running bad habit.

And I believe you quit drinking during the recording of the album?

Yeah. I was falling way short of where I should of been and I could see there was a good chance that the album was entirely going to suffer from my inability to juggle technical stuff and getting to the essence of where the songs needed to be. I had other shit going on, a big relationship that was on the out, and the uncertainty with the band was bringing me down.

So the split has been on the cards for a while?

Yes, a lot of it was because of the uncertainty and I was hoping and waiting, like we’ve always done- sometimes you’ve just got to wait things out but years were going by and there were no answers coming.

Do you have a Brian Wilson like attention to detail during the production process, because the way it’s mixed makes it seems that way, there’s so much going on and so much depth and warmth.

That’s where it gets down to the unspoken artistic part of it- knowing that you have this crossword puzzle, there’s a point when all these words and all of these pieces are going to fit together and it’s going to make sense- always being, for the most part, slightly out of reach of that can be pretty maddening, but the challenge and the payoff of finally getting it right is pretty immense.

I was hellbent throughout this album, definitely through the mixing part, of really getting it right. It was tough towards the end cos my back started going out on me, it was like everything was trying to prevent me from getting it right. I had way too much fun for a while on the painkillers, and finally I couldn’t do those anymore, and I was in such pain that just to sit for more than 20 minutes at a time was insane, it was like a big cruel joke to make sure that I didn’t get it right.

Were you addicted to the painkillers?

For a while there was a little problem and I kind of sorted that out. But then I got my doctor giving me these non-addictive muscle relaxers so towards the end it was like red wine and muscle relaxers just so I could sit for long periods of time! I was possessed, I had to finish the album. It’s funny to talk about it in a lighthearted way now but sometimes I forget what a chaotic time that was. The worst part of it was having to come back out of that world and be normal to other people, pay bills, be presentable, when a lot of times I just wasn’t. I had shut myself off entirely.

The final song “This is how it always starts” in particular seems to be coming from rock bottom, lyrically.

Yeah, as a matter of fact, there’s a point towards the end where the song is breaking down and there’s a little shaker percussion part; that’s actually a little container of prescription painkillers which and I’m using it as a percussion instrument. That was to the depths, there and back, and attempting to get it on tape.

You mentioned waiting, as a band for long periods. Were you waiting for some kind of breakthrough, for example to a larger audience?

It was more the financial strain; it had become a concern, then it became a problem, then there was the potential it could be fixed but it stayed in that mode for way too long, and there’s a sliding scale, the longer it goes on, the older the guys in the band are getting and the more concerned they are, there’s never been a solid sense of security for the members of the band, we’ve always been winging it, for years. It got to the point where I knew it wasn’t going to get any better. The label were petering out and were pulling back on support, it looked like it was going to get harder rather than more fruitful.

The band also knew that I didn’t want to go back on tour. I said I would consider it if there was a new way of doing it that was more efficient and more healthy.

Was it the sheer amount of touring?

partly, and it was the most foreign environment for me. The whole thing of being stripped of your independence, under someone else’s constant routine. If you’re granted 30 seconds of solitude at any point at all during a tour, you can think yourself lucky. I spend more time by myself than anyone else in the band, I live alone, I’m more of a solo guy than anybody else. some of the others didn’t mind that part, they loved standing around, smoking, talking shit, drinking and partying, playing shows..I loved the playing shows part, the excitement of playing in front of people and how exciting and frightening and invigorating it was,. but all the other stuff was just a waste of time, and the years were racking up, you know, I was like, wow, I’m wasting a lot of time in my life doing this thing I’m told I’m supposed to do, in order to pay a bunch of crew and have my band be miserable because we always ended up coming home broke.

Can you ever see yourself doing a solo show?

the fact that I’m afraid of it makes it kind of appealing, but I don’t want to do it for the sake of doing it, I want it to be special, more scaled down, more arty and not so macho like all the top rock shows.

I would love to think that I’ll be sitting round piecing something together and I’ll think that other people might get a kick out of it.

What was the story behind “the Animal World”, which seems to consign animals to the past?

The initial reason for the song was; my mum is a total antisocial, hermit person so I guess I got a lot of those qualities from her. She sent me a Christmas card one year and it had a picture, almost like a bible picture, of all the animals on earth, like a Noah’s Ark kind of thing, zebras, monkeys, horses, posing in a picture, and underneath it said “Joy to the World” and I thought how hilarious it was because there were no humans in the picture! The humour behind that combined with the fact that I love watching old movies and every now and then there’s a dog walking past or a cat on the fence or something!

To get back to the record, was there a specific story behind the mainly instrumental track “Skateboarding Saves My Life Twice”?

I skateboarded on a regular basis since I was 8 years old and totally grew up in the culture and I feel that it was responsible for dictating the direction of my life and turning me into who it is I am today. Thinking about who I could have turned into without it scares me, with all the other options that were out there. I did it for many years and amongst other injuries I had a really bad knee injury and I had to quit for four years. I eventually got surgery and all of a sudden there it was, back in my life, I started skating again, it was like an old girlfriend or a friend I hadn’t seen in years, I kind of had a new approach to it, it was a lot less strenuous, there was no pressure attached to it, it was totally enjoyable and therapeutic. It came around at a good time in my life.

Maybe that’ll happen with your music once you’ve had a break?

I’ve been thinking about this since and there might be something to that.

Originally published in The Skinny Magazine in 2006

At the end of January Edinburgh’s indie music stalwarts SL Records are releasing an album called ‘Releasing The Impossible’ – one of the most bizarre, twisted pieces of audio you’re ever likely to hear. Anyone who’s encountered either Dawn of the Replicants or his work with The Leg won’t be surprised to found out that Paul Vickers is one of the nutjobs involved and that it’s inspired by Ivor Cutler. In an effort to recycle content in a timely fashion, here’s an interview I did with him for one of the early issues of The Skinny Magazine.

As their dazzling new album ‘Fangs’ suggests, you’d be hard pressed to find a more entertaining interviewee than Dawn of the Replicant’s front man and lyricist Paul Vickers. The album, their fifth over a ten year career, is a voodoo New Orleans Jazz-rock-opera featuring a cast of boozed up lounge lizards, pterodactyl dinner guests, diminuitive brawlers, and surrealist Wild West imagery. Beautifully arranged and produced, musically it spans classic rock, Ennio Morricone, doo wop,  BB King style blues, Sinatra style crooning and consistently melodic yet inventive songwriting. 

The Replicants began when Vickers moved to the Scottish Borders town Galashiels to work on cult music magazine ‘Sun Zoom Spark’, having left a music course in Nottingham which geared its students towards “spending the rest of our lives doing background music for Czechoslovakian animation.” Disillusioned with their band Crunchy Joseph, Brothers Roger and Mike Simian had started Sun Zoom Spark and gained UK wide distribution. The first issue sold 15, 000 copies but sales began to drop off and when it folded prematurely, Roger and Paul’s new band The Dawn of the Replicants became their main concern. They used Roger’s student loan to press up a batch of their first single and the contacts they’d built up with the magazine to gain exposure. “We got over the fear of phoning people up and not knowing where to start as we’d been dealing with record companies for two years through the magazine”. 

The single instantly gained airplay from John Peel and Mark and Lard’s evening show, as well as support from the NME and Melody Maker. Record companies were soon on the phone demanding to see the Replicants live, but with the band not as yet properly formed they were forced to play showcase gigs in their living room, along to “backing tapes powered by an Atari”. In the end they decided to go a major label. “East west had Mick Hucknall and Tori Amos so wasn’t that cool but it was the right A&R man so we thought let’s go for it.” 

However after recording second album ‘Wrong Town, Wrong Planet, Three Hours Late’ the band were dropped, another casualty of a cruelly indifferent music industry. “What a lot of major record labels suffer from is no company loyalty. What happens is nobody’s safe in their jobs, and the turnover of jobs is so fast, that you have a lot of people who don’t really give a damn working for the company. I remember that they sacked the whole A&R department at East West, apart from the A&R man who signed us. Somehow he got away with it and is now working at EMI because he signed the Blazing Squad.”

Luckily, after a period of disbandment in which Vickers and Roger Simian went it alone as the electro duo Pluto Monkey (“It was a difficult time. We went for a sort of Soft Cell approach which didn’t really work”) they decided to reform the Replicants, albeit with a couple of new members, and have now hooked up with Edinburgh’s SL Records, home of Ballboy and Misty’s Big Adventure. Vickers is philosophical about the glitches in their career, regarding it with a characteristic sense of humour. 

“You can’t be in Dawn of the Replicants without having an element of humour – we’re underdogs. People have preconceptions and write us off as being a weird band without actually listening to our records. I think the problem was that we weren’t cool enough when we came out. We just looked like a bunch of farmers and were even described by one journalist as ‘four farmers and a freak’”. 

Vickers believes that humour is essential in music as long as it’s combined with real feeling. “I suppose it seems like a strange thing to get upset about but snobbishness about humour really pisses me off. You can say a lot more with humour than anything else, and when something’s genuinely funny you feel every emotion- everyone can recognise that a real truth is being spoken.”

John Peel was always a major supporter of the band, and one of their sessions for him was recently voted amongst the best of all time. Vickers regards the reaction to his death with bemusement. “It’s a weird thing because it went from nobody giving a shit to everyone really caring after he died. In a lot of ways Peel was just doing the right thing, he cared about music and he stuck by bands he really liked whether or not they were in fashion or not, as long as it was still good he’d still give Half Man Half Biscuit a session and it was the same with us.” 

Of course the loss of the band’s major champion was always going to be difficult.   “We went to the funeral and I cried my eyes out throughout the whole thing. Partly”, he jokes, “because I thought this is the end of my career! At the funeral there was Belle and Sebastian and the White Stripes in the row in front and behind us was Griff Rhys Jones of all people. There were really famous people there like Robert Plant and also a cement mixer from Hull, which you wouldn’t get in any other circumstances. We’ve lost one of the good guys.”

www.dawnofthereplicants.com

www.myspace.com/paulvickersandtheleg

www.myspace.com/recordingtheimpossible

From The Skinny Magazine, December 2008

Celebrating Orange Juice’s recent reunion to collect a lifetime achievement award, Milo McLaughlin charts their legacy and speaks to frontman and solo artist Edwyn Collins.

Scottish music industry shindig The Tartan Clef Awards, held last month in Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket, was notable not only because of a brief on-stage appearance by rotund funnyman Peter Kay – it also marked the first time that the original members of Orange Juice had been together in the same room for 20 years. The seminal Scottish band put aside any lingering differences to receive the ‘Glasgow: Scotland with Style Life Time Achievement Award’, an event given added poignancy by the fact that frontman Edwyn Collins was able to attend at all. In 2005 he suffered a very serious cerebral haemorrhage/stroke, for which he underwent a brain operation and spent six months in hospital.

As a result of his ordeal Collins is no longer able to use his right hand and for a time couldn’t speak or even walk, but has shown remarkable bravery in regaining his strength and abilities. This inspirational courage in the face of such adversity was evident in the moving BBC Scotland documentary which followed him and his wife (also his manager) as he took his first tentative steps to recovery and incredibly, towards playing music live again.

Speaking ahead of the awards ceremony, Collins relates: “I love my life, I love to work. It’s fresh and new to me. I’m glad to be alive.” He also talks about the personal importance of the charity which the ceremony was in aid of, Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy in Scotland: “Nordoff Robbins do great things, especially with children. I’ve been involved for a long time. But I actually received help from one of their therapists, Matthew, when I was in hospital.” The awards raised £93,000 for the charity on the night.

Good cause aside, it might surprise some that a band considered to be one of the great post-punk acts of the 80s would choose to reunite at such a mainstream event, with tabloid-friendly fare like the Fratellis and Sharleen Spiteri also in attendance. But then Orange Juice and Collins himself have never had any problem with both courting and achieving mainstream popularity.

As documented in Simon Reynold’s brilliant book on post-punk Rip it up and Start Again, which takes its title from the band’s most famous and successful single, Orange Juice emerged at a time when the alternative music scene was still reeling from Ian Curtis’ untimely death. But rather than attempting to fill that vacuum with the then fashionable trend for staring-into-the-abyss existential angst, Orange Juice were the perfect antidote, combining the jaunty pop sensibility of Talking Heads with danceable rhythms which owed as much to disco act Chic as the Velvet Underground.

They soon hooked up with ambitious hipster Alan Horne who became their manager and founded the hugely influential Postcard Records, through which the band released their debut single Falling and Laughing in 1980. Horne went on to sign the Go Betweens and Edinburgh’s Josef K as well as Aztec Camera, who collectively became known as ‘The Sound of Young Scotland’. Postcard’s bands also earned themselves a reputation as ‘New Puritans’ as they had little interest in getting trashed or taking advantage of groupies, something else which set them apart from the pack.

Pop success was something that was high on the agenda for Orange Juice though. Despite gaining them critical acclaim, Postcard didn’t have the financial clout to make it happen, so they signed to Polydor. The backing of a major label and a personnel shake-up led to the band finally gaining mainstream success with their signature song ‘Rip it Up’, which utilised the new technology of a Roland 303 and slicker production values to take the Orange Juice sound to the heights of the charts in 1983.

Collins was to replicate that success as a solo artist in 1995, a decade after the band split, with the irresistible Girl Like You. The success of this saw him make a surreal appearance on Vic and Bob’s Shooting Stars performing his hit in the ‘club singer’ stylee – just in case anyone doubted that the writer of the self-deprecating classic Consolation Prize was in possession of a wry sense of humour.

Now – despite his current challenges – Collins is determined to continue with his career and maintain the connection with his fans (his son Will set up a MySpace page for this purpose). He cites this as an important part of his therapy: “It’s very important to me. More than you can imagine. Before MySpace and my letters I couldn’t read and write without a lot of help. Now I can do quite a bit myself.”

After his stroke, Collins had to learn everything again from scratch: reading, writing, even drawing. But he persevered and having his drawings of bird life exhibited in London was a major step in his ongoing recovery process. “Drawing is another important thing for me. I draw with my left hand now. Crude at first, but I’m still improving. I’m going to have an exhibition in Glasgow next year.” And as for the music? The first single released after his ordeal, though it was recorded beforehand, was the haunting and eerily appropriate Home Again. But as for any new material Collins simply says: “I’ve just started. A bit at a time.”

Also published on www.theskinny.co.uk

illustration by Leigh Pearson

From small beginnings, Anstruther-based label Fence
Records has deservedly grown in stature over the last decade or so, and
now boasts a dedicated fanbase and an impressive roster of artists
whilst very much retaining its down-to-earth DIY ethos. I caught up
with label lynchpins Johnny Lynch and Kenny Anderson, otherwise known
as The Pictish Trail and King Creosote for a chinwag just before they
played a blinding gig as part of the Retreat! mini-festival in
Edinburgh.

Not everything has run
smoothly however. Anderson’s last two albums as King Creosote, KC Rules
OK and Bombshell were released through Warners offshoot 679, allowing
him to reach a much wider audience than ever before. But the record
industry being what it is, he’s back to releasing his latest album
through Fence and perhaps not coincidentally it has a more experimental
side, not least the title – ‘They Flock Like Vulcans to See Old Jupiter
Eyes on His Home Craters’. Being back in control must be something of a
relief though, given the hoops that major labels expect their artists
to jump through to justify their investment? Kenny: “Well it is a
relief because we’re at the helm so we’re as busy as we make ourselves.
The difference is when you’re with another label and they make you busy
with all sorts of things that you never expected to have to do, but
you’ve signed up to do it – and they make it quite awkward for you if
you don’t do it. All these things are there to help promote your album,
but it’s just amazing all the weird and wonderful things you end up
doing.”

As well as interminable
interviews that take up entire days (The Skinny not included,
obviously), this involved some major support tours, for the likes of KT
Tunstall and Squeeze. And despite Tunstall’s early links with the Fence
clan, it was playing with Squeeze which paid off. Kenny: “Actually
Squeeze made more sense, in an appreciation kind of thing because it
was an older audience and it was a music buying audience, and we did
better from sales of albums. Whereas a lot of Kate’s audience were
younger and had only heard two or three songs on the radio; it was like
a different gig. As soon as she played ‘Suddenly I See’, the place just
went bananas – even though it’s not a stand-out in the set at all, but
it’s just one that everybody knows. So for us as a support band, can
you imagine? We don’t have anything even approaching her least known
songs.” Johnny however is keen to stress the glass-half-full side of
the arrangement.  “It doesn’t mean it was worthless because the end
product of that was that for other Fence shows that we’ve done since
then, it’s brought in a different audience and it’s made the audience
that was there think of us as a real band instead of just ‘some guys
from Fife’” Kenny agrees that there are benefits to such compromises.
“That’s true, and also playing with Kate did get us that Jools Holland
thing  – without a doubt that was what swung it for the producers.”

But despite the raised profile both are
determined to avoid the label morphing Decepticon style into a
monstrous corporate machine. Johnny: It’s reflective of the audience
that’s there, if the audience that gets properly excited about it gets
bigger then we want to accomodate that, because there’s nothing worse
than putting on something and people who really want to be at it can’t
get to it.” Kenny: “But we’re not in it just to make a quick buck and
escape. the Homegame, for example, is different, oddly enough because
it is different. We’ve made our own rules. Everybody expects you to
want to be bigger and better, but we kind of don’t. We want it to be
manageable, and just to keep people happy.” Johnny:  Because at the end
of the day the Fence thing only has to supply a wage for two people.”
Kenny: “And a lot of kids..”

Fence Club #6 takes place on Wed, 17 Sep at The Caves, Edinburgh and
will feature James Yorkston, Malcolm Middleton and The Pictish Trail. They Flock LIke Vulcans… is available now at King Creosote’s live gigs and will be more widely available in November. King Creosote, The Pictish Trail and The Fence Collective play The Corn Exchange, Cupar on 25 Oct.

As published in the Sept issue of The Skinny and online.

Hear part 1 of the I Hear a New World podcast here.

Perfectly
representing the organic mix of traditional and electronic
instrumentation with quality songwriting and unself-conscious
experimentation that characterises the output of the Fence Collective
is Secret Soundz Vol.1, the first long-player from The Pictish Trail
aka Johnny Lynch.

Born and raised in Auld Reekie before
moving to the US as a teenager (where he became a big fan of the likes
of Beck and Pavement), Johnny Lynch was drawn back to study at St.
Andrews University by a love of the Beta Band and Belle &
Sebastian, and it wasn’t long before he made a fateful encounter with
Fence founder Kenny Anderson aka King Creosote. “Kenny used to play pub
shows in St. Andrews and they’d be three hours long with different
songs every time. I got the Beta Band connection when I saw him and his
brothers singing She’s The One, which Gordon (aka The Lone Pigeon and
lead songwriter of The Aliens) had written. It was just amazing seeing
that and being a fan of that band.” And the rest is history.

Despite having released material for years, Secret Soundz
is the first “proper” album Johnny’s released, but he’s philosophical
about his chances of breaking through into the mainstream. “Maybe
people will buy the record and become new fans of Fence or maybe
they’ll just be sworn off buying anything by anyone Scottish ever
again!” chuckles Johnny. “I know people were burnt really badly with
Deacon Blue – they ruined it for us!” And although there are three
excellent tracks that were recorded with The Earlies – who also played
on Kenny’s first major label album KC Rules OK – the album is
extremely varied, and far removed from any predictable attempt to
replicate his pal’s winning formula. “I wanted it to be a kind of
hodge-podge thing because a lot of the songs have been done at
different recording sessions – I mean I respect bands who go and do a
ten day stint somewhere and record a thing all at the same time – like
Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska - but I wanted things a bit fucked up and a bit weird.”

Far from the cabin fevered sparsities of The Boss, Secret Soundz
is influenced by bands like Hot Chip – who Johnny admits to being a
massive fan of – though he says that by comparison “the equipment I’m
using is absolute shit!” There are also similarities to fellow Fence
artists Barbarossa and Found, not surprisingly as Johnny, who runs
Fence on a daily basis, was the man who signed both acts and still
speaks excitedly about the pair.

“The Barbarossa record I got through Adem – we put out an acoustic
EP, and then James had also recorded stuff with Simon Lord from [now
defunct electro rock band] Simian, which was the sort of music I get
really excited about – it’s the same thing with Found because they’ve
nailed proper songs with something that’s a wee bit experimental but
not for its own sake – it’s not too arty, it’s pop music. Man, you
should hear the new Barbarossa stuff, he sounds like Justin Timberlake!
He’s done a few tracks with Diplo who did the MIA record.”

So given his taste for genre-hopping artists, can we expect Secret Soundz Vol. 2 to be Pictish Trail’s answer to Beck’s infamous Midnite Vultures?
“I’m not sure,” Johnny ponders. “I might not even call the next record
Vol.2. But I do love that album – powerhouse funk is an overlooked
genre!”

Published in The Skinny Magazine, September 2008