Interviews

- Hi and welcome back to Europe soon, how the devil are you?

 Very good! Really excited to be coming back to Europe. 
 
- What influenced the writing on this album and is the creation of a new song, a whole band process?
 
It's hard to say what influenced the writing on this album; it really can be a number of things. Each song starts out coming from one person, an idea or something complete, and then we all work on it together. 
 
- What is the best part of the album cycle, writing, recording, promotion, playing live?
 
It would be a tie between writing and playing live for me. Writing can have such a peaceful, cathartic sense about it, because you are getting a lot of creativity out of your brain and making something that you are proud of (that's the goal at least). Playing music live is just amazing. It's loud, it's moving, it's magical.  
 
 

Interviews

We are delighted to publish our interview with Marry Waterson and Oliver Knight. 

  Hello and how are you today, is life enjoyably hectic?

Oliver: Hi Pete. Very well thank you.

Marry: Hello Pete, thank you for the lovely review. Oliver and I are gearing up for a series of concerts and interviews, the first being Lewes on 5th May and Bristol on 6th with London Kings Place on 13th and others  throughout May

How long were the songs that made up the album in your mind, before they were put on to tape?

O: Windy Day was around since about 2004, I wrote that while walking with my daughter but always though someone else should sing it. Marry wrote most of the other lyrics although I had a lot plotted out for Angels Sing and I had the Basic tune for Sleeping Flame.

M: Secret Smile was about my neighbours in the street where we bought our first house, so that particular song had been rattling around in my head for some time, Rosie contains lyrics from an afternoon’s writing Mum and I once shared, with the majority of other lyrics added much later.

Once Oliver and I had collaborated on our first song Angels Sing, I couldn’t stop writing, some songs where complete and with others I would have lyrics and an idea for a tune and Oliver and I would develop them in the studio, so sometimes songs where put down pretty quickly. Revoiced was the last song I wrote when the album was more or less finished, we recorded it almost as soon as I’d written it.

There are comments that the folk world had been waiting for Marry to sing for a long time? So again before the album, was it just singing in the shower that made you realised you had a wonderful voice?

M: Well, that is very kind, having grown up immersed in traditional song I first sang on stage with the Waterson family when I was ten years old, making the occasional appearance from then onwards. I guess the confidence and inspiration took it’s time coming, though as an artist, I have always been involved in other creative disciplines.

 

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Interviews

 

An Interview with Adam Harrison, Bassist  of The Boxer Rebellion direct from their current U.S. tour:

 

How the devil are you today? Did you have downtime after a hectic SXSW?

Very good thank you! We actually had no downtime after south by- on the Sunday we were called by our airline to be told our flight was cancelled out of Houston... Not what you want to hear when you have to play Amsterdam the day after the new arrival date! So... Yeah, no rest for the wicked- all worked out though and it turned out to be our biggest ever show on mainland Europe...

 

 With so much (friendly?) competition out there, how have you approached the marketing of your new album to get it on top of people's want list?

It has been a combination of things really; we try to make the album artwork attractive and the packaging interesting. We also try to incentivise sales by adding exclusive tracks for different retailers... At the end of the day though its the music that has to carry you and word of mouth really is our biggest tool.

 

With the band gaining popularity and larger audiences is there a temptation to resign to a major label (if the offer arises) &  2) what advice would you give to bands starting out who believe the way forward is to get signed to a label?

In today's climate you have to have the whole package as a band already together before a label will pick you up so my best advice is to go he'll for leather in the direction of independent release, if you attract a great label offer in the process, good for you, if not you've got everything you need to continue without the need to re-think any strategy. In terms of our own situation we actually licence our albums to some territories and have great relationships with our partners whilst retaining our rights. There are still good people in the industry and I'd never rule out finding a home at the right label in the future, for now- the job is best done by us.

 

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Interviews

An interview with Josh Grier  from Tapes ‘n Tapes. Feb 2011


How are you all? Life enjoyably hectic at the moment? 

Yeah, enjoyably hectic would be a good way to describe things.
We're doing well, though. We just kicked off a month and a half long
US tour, so we're excited to be out playing shows. It feels good to
bust out some of our new songs.
 
Your third record and it maintains the quality in song writing and
musicianship as the previous two. From your point of view, was there any different approach taken to the recording process this time around?
 
I think the overall approach we had to making this record was pretty similar to our past records. However, we did spend more time as a band demoing the songs on the new record. In the past, I would typically make a rough demo of a song, then I would bring it into the band and we would sort things out in a live setting. 
 
This time around we focused more energy on demoing the songs before we went into record. I think hearing the demos and working on them allowed the songs to grow more before, we went into record. It also gave us a better idea of how we wanted everything to sound.
 
 

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