Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Katie Tunstall. Katie, how's your hearing?
Speaker 2: Fifty great, fifty percent completely caput. So yeah, you probably
Speaker 2: know that I lost my hearing a halfway through a
Speaker 2: tour in twenty eighteen on my left side and it's
Speaker 2: never come back.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more, Tell me how you
Speaker 1: discovered it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was obviously it was a massive shock. I'd
Speaker 2: got some top end hearing loss about ten years earlier,
Speaker 2: and I always say it's not the Spice Girl's fault,
Speaker 2: but it was after going to a Spice Girls show
Speaker 2: in like Wembley. But I'm friends with Sporty and she'd
Speaker 2: given me these amazing seats up front and I was
Speaker 2: very close to the speaker. I don't think it was
Speaker 2: necessarily just that. I think I was just burnt out.
Speaker 2: My nervous system was struggling touring incessantly, and I'd just
Speaker 2: come off a long haul flight and I noticed that
Speaker 2: I sort of lost top end hearing and I got
Speaker 2: very bad tenetus after that, and I after whatever happened,
Speaker 2: you know, over that twenty four hours, and you know,
Speaker 2: tonightus as it's pronounced in the US is extremely frustrating
Speaker 2: and very difficult for a musician. And when I first
Speaker 2: got it, it was it was perfect Middle Sea pitch
Speaker 2: and I could tune my guitar to the tenetus. And
Speaker 2: then I kind of thought that was that that I
Speaker 2: just had a bit of a tough ear. And then
Speaker 2: ten years later I was on tour and I was
Speaker 2: halfway through the tour and I wear earplugs on the
Speaker 2: tour bus, and I took my ear plugs out and
Speaker 2: on my left side, it just didn't make any difference,
Speaker 2: and it just felt like my ear was underwater. And
Speaker 2: I'd suffer sensorin neural sudden hearing loss ss HL, which
Speaker 2: basically means they have no fucking idea why you've just
Speaker 2: lost your hearing, and they like shot some steroids into
Speaker 2: my ear drum, which can sometimes work, but it didn't
Speaker 2: for me. And yeah, so.
Speaker 1: What's a prognosis never going to come back?
Speaker 2: I think losing my hearing In twenty twenty five, there's
Speaker 2: more of a likelihood that something might happen where it
Speaker 2: can be restored. I don't know, maybe stem cells, maybe
Speaker 2: some new tech, you know, stick a robot in my
Speaker 2: ear see what happens. But at the same time, I
Speaker 2: find that I've really calibrated it to in a way
Speaker 2: that it doesn't feel as impactful as you might think.
Speaker 2: I've also got a profoundly deaf younger brother. My younger brother,
Speaker 2: Dan was born completely deaf, and he had a cochlear
Speaker 2: implant when he was like in his twenties. But he's
Speaker 2: a tennis coach and I remember telling him, Oh, my god,
Speaker 2: I've lost my I've lost my hearing in one ear
Speaker 2: and he just did this like little tiny violin and
Speaker 2: he was like, oh, for you. And I was like,
Speaker 2: fuck you, man, you're not a musician.
Speaker 1: If your brother was born deaf, how is that growing
Speaker 1: up in the family.
Speaker 2: It's such a good question, and people don't ask me
Speaker 2: that very often, And I think it goes for any sibling,
Speaker 2: especially if the sibling is younger than you. But I
Speaker 2: think it probably it doesn't have a huge impact the
Speaker 2: order that you're in in a family. But you're always
Speaker 2: going to be more you know, you're going to as
Speaker 2: a sister, you're going to be protective of your little
Speaker 2: brother usually, And it was really interesting to me. He
Speaker 2: was born when I was four, and our family is
Speaker 2: very interesting because I'm adopted. My older brother is adopted,
Speaker 2: and my mom was told she couldn't have kids, and
Speaker 2: then she got pregnant and she had my little brother
Speaker 2: and he was born deaf, and it kind of leveled
Speaker 2: our family playing field where it's like, yeah, boohoo, you've
Speaker 2: got given up your rescue human being, but this guy
Speaker 2: can't hear, so you know, all focus was really on
Speaker 2: Dan and making sure that he was loved and supported
Speaker 2: in the family. But I was very close to Dan,
Speaker 2: and it was amazing watching people ignore him as we
Speaker 2: were going off and have these conversations, just just sort
Speaker 2: of not care that he was not part of it.
Speaker 2: So I would always be translating constantly, and I think
Speaker 2: just from a communication point of view, that's been really
Speaker 2: fundamental for me. Like of just it's also like when
Speaker 2: I meet fans after shows, I can just feel that
Speaker 2: some specific fans that come and say hi are in
Speaker 2: a lot of pain, or they've had a lot of damage,
Speaker 2: or they have got some sort of disability, and I
Speaker 2: always like want to go to that person first. And
Speaker 2: I'm not like Mother Treys or anything, but I just
Speaker 2: I feel very sensitive to that because my.
Speaker 1: Brother so did everybody in the family learn sign language.
Speaker 2: Now, interestingly, we just my mom and dad decided because
Speaker 2: we grew up in such a small town in Saint
Speaker 2: Andrew's in Scotland, it was only like eleven thousand people
Speaker 2: or something. They realized that if he spoke sign language,
Speaker 2: he wouldn't be able to speak to anyone. No one
Speaker 2: else speaks sign language in our little town. So they've
Speaker 2: kind of quite bravely decided to teach him how to speak,
Speaker 2: which was really challenging for him because he it's hard
Speaker 2: and a lot of deaf people don't decide to learn
Speaker 2: how to speak. And it was amazing watching it because
Speaker 2: you know, when he's seventeen and goes off to college,
Speaker 2: there's people who are way more deaf than he is,
Speaker 2: but he's the tray later between them and a hearing
Speaker 2: person in the pub, you know, and he's just done
Speaker 2: amazingly well. He's a really, really beautiful person. He's a
Speaker 2: very very lovely person. He missed out on a lot
Speaker 2: of that pifful kind of bullshit judgmental stuff that you
Speaker 2: learn as a kid. Like I had a conversation with
Speaker 2: him as an adult, and he had no idea that
Speaker 2: ginger people got discriminated against, then got shit from people.
Speaker 2: He was just like, but why why not people with
Speaker 2: brown hair? And I was like, I know, I can't,
Speaker 2: I can't answer if it was just so beautiful, but
Speaker 2: he just missed that and he didn't know that that
Speaker 2: was a thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, just a little bit deeper. Before the cochlear implant,
Speaker 1: he couldn't.
Speaker 2: Hear anything, so he had a hearing aid. He had
Speaker 2: one of these, you know, phonic ears they were called.
Speaker 2: And interestingly, actually my mom and dad, my dad was
Speaker 2: a physicist. He got a sabbatical to UCLA when I
Speaker 2: was four, and there was a really good deaf clinic
Speaker 2: called John Tracy Clinic in La, so we he relocated
Speaker 2: to LA when I was four, which I think is
Speaker 2: why America and particularly the West Coast like imprinted on
Speaker 2: me because it's my first memories. We're California, and my
Speaker 2: mom was just going to the clinic and kind of
Speaker 2: learning ways to deal with Dan and so he could
Speaker 2: hear somewhat, you know, with his hearing aid. It was
Speaker 2: funny because my mom had this remote like microphone that
Speaker 2: would like tap straight into his ears. So if he
Speaker 2: was on the street, like taking his bike too far.
Speaker 2: She'd be like, Daniel stop, and he just like grew
Speaker 2: up with the fucking voice of God in his ears.
Speaker 2: It was really funny. And sometimes we'd like steal the
Speaker 2: microphone and speak to him from other rooms and stuff.
Speaker 2: And then he got his colt clear implant and they
Speaker 2: have to like put a magna in your skull to
Speaker 2: keep this thing on, and we would pretend that our
Speaker 2: silverware was like sticking to his head.
Speaker 1: And as this sister, how is it different now that
Speaker 1: he has a cochlear implant? How well does he hear?
Speaker 2: He hears a lot better. For sure, he can hear.
Speaker 2: He can tell the difference between male and female voices.
Speaker 2: He can hear pitch. I remember before he got it,
Speaker 2: I was trying to teach him how to sing song
Speaker 2: too by Blur. We were in the car and it
Speaker 2: was playing and I was like.
Speaker 3: Dn did a Dan did a dead ada down a whoo,
Speaker 3: and he went, d's just.
Speaker 2: Like doll black pitch, And so he he definitely could
Speaker 2: hear better. And there's this amazing moment after he'd had
Speaker 2: his coclear implant and he'd been to a few gigs
Speaker 2: of mine where I was now like playing through proper
Speaker 2: big PA systems so he could hear better rather than
Speaker 2: terrible pub pas full of people drinking and talking. And
Speaker 2: we're in the supermarket and black Horse and the Cherry
Speaker 2: Tree comes on the stereo and he looks at me
Speaker 2: and he goes, is that you? And I like nearly
Speaker 2: started crying. I was like, how do you know that?
Speaker 2: That's me? And he just goes and I was like,
Speaker 2: that's basically my career.
Speaker 1: You were only four when your younger brother was born.
Speaker 1: But did you notice since he had the disability that
Speaker 1: he got more attention?
Speaker 2: I in our family he did, but I certainly didn't
Speaker 2: feel any resentment around that because you could tell that
Speaker 2: his life was harder, and I think out in the
Speaker 2: world he got less attention was he was quiet and
Speaker 2: he would not you know, people sometimes didn't want to
Speaker 2: deal with having to talk to death person. So I
Speaker 2: think it was those It was both of those things.
Speaker 1: So although it's not unheard of, it is not common
Speaker 1: that a family has both adopted children and natural children.
Speaker 1: Can you speak to that experience?
Speaker 2: It's it's a ride, it's a wild ride. And my
Speaker 2: parents were given the advice when they adopted me and
Speaker 2: my brother to start telling us that we were adopted
Speaker 2: before we would even understand. So basically it's like start
Speaker 2: practicing and and and I think that was a really
Speaker 2: great piece of advice. It's really hard. I think. I
Speaker 2: think the perfect situation would be for for someone not
Speaker 2: to even know until they were an adult and they
Speaker 2: were completely formed, so that they could emotionally understand that
Speaker 2: it was all in their best interests, you know. But
Speaker 2: there's just no way of doing that. They're a kid
Speaker 2: is going to find out, and that's just the most awful,
Speaker 2: hurtful thing is to find out as a young person
Speaker 2: that you've been lied to. But so I think this
Speaker 2: is probably the best way of doing it, of me
Speaker 2: never having a moment where I found out, you know,
Speaker 2: I just always knew. I remember my dad when I
Speaker 2: was about four, I was rebelling and I didn't even
Speaker 2: mean it. I was just being naughty, and I say
Speaker 2: to him, you can't tell me what to do. You're
Speaker 2: not even my dad, you know, which is just must
Speaker 2: have broken his heart. And my dad was not a
Speaker 2: very emotional man and he so I remember him sitting
Speaker 2: me on the bed and saying, I know we didn't
Speaker 2: have you, but we are your mom and dad, so
Speaker 2: you're not allowed to say that anymore. I was like, well,
Speaker 2: go and I didn't say anymore. And it actually it
Speaker 2: didn't the whole, the whole adoption thing. I felt very
Speaker 2: comfortable about it all through my youth, and then it
Speaker 2: absolutely bit me on the eye when I was in
Speaker 2: my early forties. I guess it was some sort of
Speaker 2: midlife crisis, you know where, and especially being a musician,
Speaker 2: where you're sort of you have this persona right that
Speaker 2: you're sharing with the world, but it's not ever going
Speaker 2: to be a complete picture of yourself. And I just
Speaker 2: had a huge identity what would be the word implosion
Speaker 2: and it was really around that and I'd never really
Speaker 2: explored it, and so I did for a good few
Speaker 2: years through therapy and through learning.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about the realization that that was
Speaker 1: the issue and then how you explored it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I, as you know, had that really successful record
Speaker 2: in two thousand and four, twenty and five, twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: and toured and then by it was probably around twoenty twelve,
Speaker 2: I had, you know, a house in London, a house
Speaker 2: in the country, an apartment in Edinburgh at one point,
Speaker 2: an apartment in New York, a nice car, a husband
Speaker 2: who was the drummer in the band, and I was
Speaker 2: just fucking miserable. And I just felt like such a cliche.
Speaker 2: You know, I've got I've realized this impossible dream, I've
Speaker 2: got all the stuff, and I'm just not happy. And
Speaker 2: then my dad died. He had Parkinson's, but he died
Speaker 2: quite unexpectedly. My dad was just the most belligerent guy,
Speaker 2: and he just refused to stop cycling on his bike
Speaker 2: and he ended up like falling down a massive pothole
Speaker 2: in the road. It was so on brand for him,
Speaker 2: and so he actually died sooner than he would have done.
Speaker 2: But see, when he died seventy three, he was deteriorating.
Speaker 2: So I mean, I think all of us felt that
Speaker 2: there was somewhat of a blessing in him not having
Speaker 2: to go through the later years of Parkinson's. And we
Speaker 2: were very much at peace, my dad and I. We
Speaker 2: had a really cool relationship, and so there wasn't kind
Speaker 2: of massive grief. I was very sad about losing him,
Speaker 2: but he'd had a great life and we we were
Speaker 2: really good where we, you know, ended up at the
Speaker 2: end of his life. But there was a huge gift.
Speaker 2: I remember doing like CBS Morning Show or something. They
Speaker 2: came to St. Andrew's and it was this really great
Speaker 2: presenter and dad had passed and he said, your parents
Speaker 2: give birth to you twice, once when you're born and
Speaker 2: once when they die. And that was massively impactful for me,
Speaker 2: and I really related to it because my dad's death
Speaker 2: was this crazy gift where I realized of how much
Speaker 2: I was really doing things with him in mind, you know,
Speaker 2: and trying to trying to do the right thing all
Speaker 2: the time. And then I realized that really that was
Speaker 2: tied to adoption as well. Was this kind of people
Speaker 2: pleaser in me which i'd also which had also really
Speaker 2: really like come into my professional life as well, which
Speaker 2: is not good for an artist. You know, you do
Speaker 2: not want to be a people pleaser if you want
Speaker 2: to make art. I mean, obviously aspect of that is great,
Speaker 2: is helpful to put on a nice show for people
Speaker 2: and all that, but when you're actually making the work.
Speaker 2: And it kind of spiraled from there and I had
Speaker 2: what I learned the Eastern expression of a moment of
Speaker 2: SATURI of kind of instant awakening, and it was about
Speaker 2: it was in the weeks after my dad had died,
Speaker 2: and this this incredible awakening of just going fuck, I'm
Speaker 2: I just felt like I was living in the wrong life.
Speaker 2: It was very matrix. I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I'm in the wrong reality. This is not the reality
Speaker 2: I'm meant to be in. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that always made me laugh and kind of made me
Speaker 2: laugh at the time was like, my Wikipedia page is
Speaker 2: so dull. It's just like girl from Scotland does well,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's it. And I was like, no,
Speaker 2: this doesn't feel right this and I'm and I'm and
Speaker 2: I basically realized I was married to the wrong person
Speaker 2: and I was not connected to source universe, god, whatever
Speaker 2: you want to call it, in a way that I
Speaker 2: had been when I was younger, and and I realized
Speaker 2: that really part of it was a big part of
Speaker 2: it was a self esteem issue. My self esteem sucked.
Speaker 2: And there was a lot of bravado, you know, with
Speaker 2: the being an artist and sort of I have a
Speaker 2: song called hard Girls, which is kind of what this
Speaker 2: is about. It's just like presenting yourself as this tough chick,
Speaker 2: you know, heart drinking, crazy rock chick. I'm just like,
Speaker 2: sure I can put I can. I can be that,
Speaker 2: and I enjoy being that when when, when the time
Speaker 2: is right. But I'm also a girl with low self esteem,
Speaker 2: and that was coming from I think that was coming
Speaker 2: from a place of adoption. I think it's just part
Speaker 2: of the course. You got a band. You're going to
Speaker 2: have abandonment issues if you're an adopted person, and it's
Speaker 2: how you handle those. But you're going to have them.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you had this moment as a tory, But
Speaker 1: did you go to a therapist? How did you make
Speaker 1: the transition?
Speaker 2: So I about three days. It was about seventy two
Speaker 2: hours of like this happening, and it was so crazy.
Speaker 2: Every single song I heard on the radio or in
Speaker 2: a car was like a message. It was songs I
Speaker 2: already knew, you know. I remember hearing Rescue Me and
Speaker 2: just going, shit, this is this is it was. It
Speaker 2: was overwhelming and it was somewhat kind of like, you know,
Speaker 2: I felt like I was tripping almost. It was just
Speaker 2: like the world was talking to me. And so I left.
Speaker 2: I just sat my ex down and just said I'm
Speaker 2: not happy. This is not working, and he just packed
Speaker 2: the bag and left the house. It was just it
Speaker 2: was completely bizarre. And then and then I knew I
Speaker 2: needed to go into therapy. So I sort of started
Speaker 2: that journey and I did a lot of reading. I
Speaker 2: did a lot of kind of you know, obviously it's
Speaker 2: not just therapy these days, it's just such good resources
Speaker 2: online for reading and watching things and kind of opening
Speaker 2: my mind. And I think just part, I think a
Speaker 2: lot of it too, was like taking accountability for making
Speaker 2: bad choices. You know, not all this stuff was happening
Speaker 2: to me. I think that was the thing that was
Speaker 2: really tough, actually was I was in charge the whole time.
Speaker 2: I was making all the decisions. The whole point of
Speaker 2: wanting to be a musician was because I didn't want
Speaker 2: to work for anybody, and I wanted to call the
Speaker 2: shops and I wanted to write my own narrative, live
Speaker 2: my own life without anybody telling me what to do.
Speaker 2: And I fucked it so badly, I'd got it wrong,
Speaker 2: and I think it was it. There was a feeling
Speaker 2: where you can either do the British thing, the British
Speaker 2: contractor thing, where you just constantly kind of like paper
Speaker 2: over holes in the wall, no hotel, and there's layers
Speaker 2: and layers of shit underneath this white wall, or you
Speaker 2: just rip it up and you start again. And I
Speaker 2: decided that that was definitely a much more exciting way
Speaker 2: of living life, of really trying to just start again,
Speaker 2: which is what my song Invisible Empire was about. I'll
Speaker 2: always make a joke that sometimes you have to go
Speaker 2: to home depot and just rent some heavy machinery and
Speaker 2: level this fabricated city that you've built that's your reality,
Speaker 2: and start again. And so I sold everything I owned
Speaker 2: and I moved to America, which was one of the
Speaker 2: best things I've ever done.
Speaker 1: So you had all these houses, you sold them, You'd
Speaker 1: had had an apartment in you Where did you move
Speaker 1: to in America?
Speaker 2: So I moved to La I'm trying to not say this,
Speaker 2: but I want to say this. The part of why
Speaker 2: I sold everything was because my ex ripped me off
Speaker 2: so hard. But I had this love of the West
Speaker 2: Coast because I'd been there as a kid, you know.
Speaker 2: So my first memories were like swimming pools and orange
Speaker 2: trees and great flavoring. And I loved America. I'd also
Speaker 2: done my last year of high school in Connecticut at
Speaker 2: Kent School. I got, like randomly got this scholarship to
Speaker 2: the super expensive boarding school, which was awesome because I
Speaker 2: went to my first shows. I'd never really been to
Speaker 2: see live music. It was hard to go and see
Speaker 2: live music where I lived because an hour and a
Speaker 2: half away from any big city. So you know, I
Speaker 2: saw Fish and Van Morrison and The Grateful Dead and
Speaker 2: it was it was amazing and I and it was
Speaker 2: really the first time I got exposed to a lot
Speaker 2: of new music. And I'd always gravitated towards America as
Speaker 2: a British kid growing up. You know, I'm happy Days
Speaker 2: is on from my you know, I'm watching that from
Speaker 2: the age of ten or something. Then Friends comes out,
Speaker 2: and you know, and all the movies, I mean, all
Speaker 2: my favorite movies. Thank god I was an eighties kid
Speaker 2: because it was just the best time. It was such
Speaker 2: an amazing time to grow up. You know, we got
Speaker 2: I went to See Back to the Future five times
Speaker 2: in a row at at the movie theater. And you know,
Speaker 2: my dad being physicist that you sort of got me
Speaker 2: into science fiction as well when I was young. So
Speaker 2: all the vernacular, all the imagery and all the music
Speaker 2: I was just so drawn to in America. And I
Speaker 2: think because of La it just felt familiar to me.
Speaker 2: So I'm moved. I'd done some promo in Santa Monica
Speaker 2: and I looked down the boulevard straight at the ocean
Speaker 2: and a and a fucking dolphin like jumped out the
Speaker 2: water and did and it was like it left a
Speaker 2: rainbow trail. It's like, this is crazy. People live here,
Speaker 2: like it's so nice and uh. And so I packed
Speaker 2: my bags off and I moved to Venice Beach and
Speaker 2: it was it was exactly what I needed.
Speaker 1: Okay, all these years later, do you still live in
Speaker 1: Venice Beach?
Speaker 2: No, So it got too crazy for me, unsurprisingly, and
Speaker 2: then I moved up to Tapanga Canyon for a while,
Speaker 2: you know, hitting all the hitting, all the musician spots,
Speaker 2: and it was beautiful up there. But I found that
Speaker 2: I was hankering after nature and I loved being up
Speaker 2: there and it was very beautiful. And there's like deer
Speaker 2: off the balcony that I can throw carrots to. And
Speaker 2: I was like, but I'm still in a metropolis, and
Speaker 2: I stay. And I'd met the love of my life
Speaker 2: in a dog park in Serenia Park, in a Calabat
Speaker 2: or a thousand Oaks. I think it is and he
Speaker 2: was a jiu jitsu instructor for twenty years. I'd been
Speaker 2: a musician for twenty years, and we were both just
Speaker 2: like it was so cool. It was like a John
Speaker 2: Hughes movie. Our dogs introduced us in a dog park
Speaker 2: and I might write a musical about it because it's
Speaker 2: just so funny. And we just decided it was time
Speaker 2: to leave the city and go somewhere with some space
Speaker 2: and go somewhere that felt healthier. I guess I've never
Speaker 2: loved cities ever. I never I never would have imagined
Speaker 2: living in cities as long as I did, but it
Speaker 2: was just useful, you know. But I found I wasn't
Speaker 2: using Los Angeles for it's you know, I guess, for
Speaker 2: this city aspects of it. And so we went to
Speaker 2: a friend's wedding in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and my
Speaker 2: other half Chris, just ten minutes in, was like we
Speaker 2: should live here. I was like, I'm so down. So
Speaker 2: we just in four months we first sight we saw,
Speaker 2: we were like, this is it, and we just we
Speaker 2: did it again, packed off and just left and love
Speaker 2: it there. It's really great.
Speaker 1: So how long have you been living in Santa Fe.
Speaker 2: I've been there about four years.
Speaker 1: And how close to town. There's a downtown in Santa Fe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's the plaza.
Speaker 1: Right, and it becomes pretty rural pretty fast.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure.
Speaker 1: How far from downtown do you live?
Speaker 2: So we're like ten minutes drive, but we're out in
Speaker 2: an arroio and it's it feels extremely rural where you
Speaker 2: can't hear traffic where we are, and our neighbors are
Speaker 2: pretty far away, and it's it's definitely a secluded life.
Speaker 2: It's an I love it. I'm very happy to be somewhere. Sorry,
Speaker 2: there's a child in the room next door. Very very
Speaker 2: happy to be somewhere where I feel completely enveloped in
Speaker 2: nature and not urban madness.
Speaker 1: Okay, But as an artist, there's an issue of inspiration. Now,
Speaker 1: you could be sitting at home and reading a book
Speaker 1: or looking at the wall and getting inspiration, but certainly
Speaker 1: when you live in a city you're encountering more so
Speaker 1: do you find you have just as much inspiration the
Speaker 1: same kind or different inspiration living in New Mexico.
Speaker 2: It's really funny because I thought that I worried about that,
Speaker 2: and you know, inspiration is for sure directly correlated with
Speaker 2: the input that you're giving yourself and you know your environment.
Speaker 2: And I remember my good friend Tim Smith, who's an
Speaker 2: amazing dude. He built the Eden Project in the UK,
Speaker 2: which is a music venue but also this incredible environmental center.
Speaker 2: But he was in the music business in his early life.
Speaker 2: But he said that when I moved to Venice Beach,
Speaker 2: he was going to buy me a roller blind of Hackney.
Speaker 2: He said, when I'm in my studio, I've got pulled
Speaker 2: down the roller blind and just see something horrible. Not
Speaker 2: that Hackney's horrible, Hackney's very nice then, but something gritty,
Speaker 2: you know. And actually Venice Beach was gritty, certainly gritty
Speaker 2: enough as it turned out. And I think what I've
Speaker 2: gravitated to, certainly as I've got older, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: this is not unusual, is you know, one of the
Speaker 2: very deeply inspirational figures of New Mexico and Santa Fe
Speaker 2: is Georgia O'Keeffe. And I've been very very inspired by
Speaker 2: her legacy. And the museum in town is fantastic. It's
Speaker 2: a it's such a fantastic owed to her, and it's
Speaker 2: very alive. It feels very very much kind of like
Speaker 2: a living museum. And what I love about it is
Speaker 2: just the rebellion in her art, the rebellion in the
Speaker 2: way that she lived her life. You know, her partner
Speaker 2: Alfred is it Stiglitz? Is that that right? I can't
Speaker 2: remember his last name, the gallerist anyway, who was her partner.
Speaker 2: There's this beautiful letter in the Georgia O'Keefe Museum and
Speaker 2: it says, Georgia, you finally have what you always wanted,
Speaker 2: a ranch of your own. And it's ghost ranch where
Speaker 2: they actually do music as well. They have gigs up there.
Speaker 2: And I just love the fact that this guy understood
Speaker 2: that what she really wanted was solitude. And the two
Speaker 2: things that I've always needed to write songs is solitude
Speaker 2: and a view. And I think it doesn't really matter
Speaker 2: where that is. But having said that, my songwriting is rarer.
Speaker 2: It's not as prolific as it was. And I'm looking at,
Speaker 2: you know, writing a new album after this twenty twenty
Speaker 2: aniversary re release, and it is somewhat it's somewhat unsettling,
Speaker 2: you know, not writing all the time, and there's there's
Speaker 2: the constant sort of conflict if am I too am
Speaker 2: I just too happy? Am I too? At peace? Does?
Speaker 2: Does music, and music has always come through a therapeutic
Speaker 2: purging of difficulty, and it's always been personal for me.
Speaker 2: It's never been kind of big statements about the world.
Speaker 2: So it's an interesting point in my life where I
Speaker 2: have to I have to, really I'm a big believer
Speaker 2: that there's you when you make a record. It's got
Speaker 2: because you have to make a record. You have to
Speaker 2: have something to say when you make a record, and
Speaker 2: so I really have to work out what I want
Speaker 2: to say now because I'm not it's not obvious.
Speaker 1: So what have you learned about love? Marrying the band member,
Speaker 1: having a realization he was the wrong one, finding the
Speaker 1: guy in the dog park? What are the insights here?
Speaker 2: Oh, myriads of myriads. I think one of the things
Speaker 2: I've learned I learn a lot from Chris all the time,
Speaker 2: which is why I love being best friends with him
Speaker 2: and being with him. He's he has no problem challenging ideas,
Speaker 2: challenging behavior, which is great for me because I can
Speaker 2: be I can be a petulant little shit if I
Speaker 2: want to be, and it's great having a partner doesn't
Speaker 2: put up with that. I think the thing that I've
Speaker 2: learned most with him or certainly one of the things
Speaker 2: that is most profound was this idea that you will
Speaker 2: always have your own house, and that person spiritually and
Speaker 2: that person and emotionally, that person will always have their house,
Speaker 2: and then you will have a shared house. But I
Speaker 2: think it's always good to keep your shed, to keep
Speaker 2: your personal shed. And I think what I learned with Chris,
Speaker 2: both of us had gone through a lot of personal
Speaker 2: work by the time we met each other, which was awesome.
Speaker 2: So we didn't need each other in that way, and
Speaker 2: we weren't looking for a relationship to fill an empty
Speaker 2: corner of our shed. We were meeting each other to
Speaker 2: make a new house. And what I really learned was
Speaker 2: i'd sort of been fed, I guess, just you know,
Speaker 2: from the ether, fed this idea that you should share
Speaker 2: everything with your partner, you know, And I just think
Speaker 2: that's not true at all. I think that there's there's
Speaker 2: there's a lot of behavior, there's a lot of kind
Speaker 2: of reactionary behavior that comes out that has nothing to
Speaker 2: do with that other person but can but can have
Speaker 2: a negative effect on them. And so I think that
Speaker 2: was something that was really interesting for me. Just go, oh,
Speaker 2: that's my ship. I need to sort that out. It's
Speaker 2: really I need to. It's basically the metaphor I like is,
Speaker 2: do not get dog shit on your shoe and walk
Speaker 2: into your house. Clean your shoes before you go in.
Speaker 1: So he's living in New Mexico. What does his life
Speaker 1: look like?
Speaker 2: His life looks very different than it was. So he
Speaker 2: was he was an art major. He was he was
Speaker 2: possibly going to be a you know, he could have
Speaker 2: been a pro baseball player. He loved baseball. And it's
Speaker 2: amazing that I've done the music for Clueless, the musical
Speaker 2: in London, and his life was clueless. So he grew
Speaker 2: up in the valley grievously Bush had the house party
Speaker 2: where like the cops and the helicopters turned up. But
Speaker 2: he grew up playing baseball and unbelievably, one of his
Speaker 2: childhood best friends was t J. Jackson. So Tito Jackson
Speaker 2: was his baseball coach. When he wasn't on tour, he'd
Speaker 2: like gone back and teased the baseball. In the end,
Speaker 2: he decided it wasn't it wasn't something that he could.
Speaker 2: He wanted to just dedicate his life to which was
Speaker 2: what was going to be. So he ended up an
Speaker 2: art major. Up in San Luis, ABIs Bowl and then
Speaker 2: Long Beach. I think he was art college and he
Speaker 2: walked past the martial arts gym and saw people doing
Speaker 2: jiu jitsu and he walked in and that was that.
Speaker 2: He was just completely addicted. And so he was the
Speaker 2: head coach at the Gracie Academy in Beverly Hills for
Speaker 2: about fifteen years and then kind of peeled off to
Speaker 2: do his own thing. And then of course COVID happened,
Speaker 2: which was not good for martial arts and music where
Speaker 2: everybody is in close contact and in the room together.
Speaker 2: And so he's working on a new more art arts
Speaker 2: based martial arts project at the moment, which is really exciting.
Speaker 2: But he's yeah, big pivot whilst also holding down the
Speaker 2: fort in the beautiful high desert with four dogs.
Speaker 1: And Hapapi economics, you know where seems like you're making
Speaker 1: more bread than he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Attention to the relationship, it.
Speaker 2: Really doesn't, It really doesn't. It's I find I think
Speaker 2: it would with certain couples, you know. And I find
Speaker 2: it's much more exciting for me to do what I
Speaker 2: love doing. Go out. I've got a great job, I
Speaker 2: make a great living. And then afford him the space
Speaker 2: to really follow something he's passionate about. And what he
Speaker 2: wants to do is going to be a real community
Speaker 2: give back project, and so I don't want to share.
Speaker 2: It's his place to talk about it. But it's exciting
Speaker 2: to sort of feel like a team in that way
Speaker 2: that I'm going out and doing the music, doing the gigs,
Speaker 2: make the money, and then I love what he's planning,
Speaker 2: and it's it feels like putting our team energy into
Speaker 2: something that can that has the potential to be really
Speaker 2: great for other people.
Speaker 1: Now you're not married to him, correct, Now, what's the
Speaker 1: thinking there?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, the thing is that we
Speaker 2: call each other and wife because I'm just I'm too
Speaker 2: old to have a boyfriend. But it's just I'm too old.
Speaker 2: It feels too weird to say my boyfriend. So I
Speaker 2: don't think either of us feel at all strongly about
Speaker 2: you know, it would just it would just be for
Speaker 2: practical legal stuff that makes life a bit easier when
Speaker 2: you're married. But we're not in any hurry to do that.
Speaker 2: We're very happy.
Speaker 1: Well, I've been with my girlfriend for twenty years and
Speaker 1: we're not married. She's been married twice. I've been married once,
Speaker 1: and after being divorced once, I certainly don't want to
Speaker 1: go through that again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel that way too.
Speaker 1: Even though divorced. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it will fucking put you off, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a horrible it's a horrible process to
Speaker 2: go through. You it's so unpleasant. So yes, I think
Speaker 2: avoiding that is a very good pro of not doing
Speaker 2: it again. But yeah, it's I don't think it's massively
Speaker 2: important to either.
Speaker 1: So you're rex he moves out other than lawyers, do
Speaker 1: you have any more contact?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's just grim. Like we had to do mediation
Speaker 2: and like get in a room and oh it was gross.
Speaker 2: It was terrible, And that the terrible part of it
Speaker 2: was that I was faced with, like how bad the
Speaker 2: decision had been to marry that guy. I had to like,
Speaker 2: you know, seeing the worst side of it because he's
Speaker 2: extremely hurt that I've left. And then you see a
Speaker 2: very different side of somebody, especially when they're trying to
Speaker 2: get half your money. You know, that's just a it's
Speaker 2: a horrible it's a horrible thing to witness in someone
Speaker 2: that you spent ten years with.
Speaker 1: You say, he ripped you off, in that.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, I'm sure he would he wouldn't use
Speaker 2: those words. He in his words, he wanted what he
Speaker 2: was entitled to, and it was it was very painful
Speaker 2: for me that side of it, just feeling like it
Speaker 2: was just grossly unfair.
Speaker 1: So looking back, when you made the decision to marry him,
Speaker 1: you go on at this point that you had made
Speaker 1: prior to this lightning bulb coming down. You made all
Speaker 1: these bad decisions. So what was the decision to marry
Speaker 1: him in retrospect, what was going through your brain? And
Speaker 1: why was that bad?
Speaker 2: I think I don't blame myself for it, and I
Speaker 2: don't I really understand what I was needing, And what
Speaker 2: I was needing was something grounded and something reliable and
Speaker 2: something that felt safe, which ironically ended up not being
Speaker 2: that at all. But at that time in my life,
Speaker 2: i'd moved down to London, so we met before my
Speaker 2: record came out, and I'd moved down to London, and
Speaker 2: I just needed something to hold on to while this
Speaker 2: life was this hurricane was going on, where I was
Speaker 2: becoming well known, I was having a multi platinum record,
Speaker 2: I was touring the world. One of the things, one
Speaker 2: of the really discombobulating things about being successful was that
Speaker 2: I just hadn't even occurred to me that I would
Speaker 2: be a boss. You know, I just wanted to. I
Speaker 2: really wanted to be one of the guys in the band,
Speaker 2: and I wasn't and I couldn't be that, and so
Speaker 2: I was a bit allergic to taking responsibility of being
Speaker 2: the boss of a business. And it felt very lonely
Speaker 2: being the turn, you know, being being the queen bee,
Speaker 2: I was different from everybody else. People you know, had
Speaker 2: to kind of behave when they spoke to me, and
Speaker 2: I had to be like literally chaperoned everywhere, like a
Speaker 2: little fucking golden eggs. So nothing happened to me. But
Speaker 2: I just sometimes I would just like sneak off at
Speaker 2: the hotel just to have a walk, so there wasn't
Speaker 2: anyone with me. I mean, it was so suffocating sometimes,
Speaker 2: but you understand, it's just like nothing, you can't let
Speaker 2: anything happen to me, because you know, I'm the egg
Speaker 2: and so I needed to know. And he was a
Speaker 2: very straight laced dude, so I just knew that it
Speaker 2: was I think it felt like it was holding onto
Speaker 2: something that would stop me just completely going off the rails,
Speaker 2: which now I look back and I think I should
Speaker 2: have just let myself do that. That was, you know,
Speaker 2: it would have been a lot easier and cheaper.
Speaker 1: What other bad decisions did you realize you made.
Speaker 2: That's a good question when I actually have to list them.
Speaker 2: I feel like it was a perhaps a kind of
Speaker 2: attitude to way of life where I think I had
Speaker 2: fallen into this weird trap of convention, where I built
Speaker 2: this life that was allowing me to live an artistic
Speaker 2: life and live a free life, and I just sort
Speaker 2: of all these small choices had made it feel extremely conventional,
Speaker 2: and really underneath it, I'm not a very conventional person,
Speaker 2: and I don't and I find that convention oppressive. And
Speaker 2: I think my nurture and going back to, you know,
Speaker 2: growing up as an adult kid, I think my parents
Speaker 2: were very straight laced, and you know, my dad was
Speaker 2: a physicist, my mom was a teacher. They didn't kind
Speaker 2: of go to bars or it was all dinner parties
Speaker 2: with other scientists coming to the high Sea. It's basically
Speaker 2: kind of square, you know, academic, and I think that
Speaker 2: that was overriding my my wildness, and so I just
Speaker 2: ended up feeling like someone had clipped my wings when
Speaker 2: I was in a cage.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're talking like your roots are being responsible,
Speaker 1: and most artists, not all of them, but a lot
Speaker 1: of them are irresponsible. So now that you're conscious and
Speaker 1: you're in charge, how do you deal with that balance?
Speaker 1: You know, I would say there many artists have to
Speaker 1: be an artist because they could work at the seven
Speaker 1: eleven because they couldn't show up on time.
Speaker 2: That's might be able to do the work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so how do you make sure you don't clip
Speaker 1: your wings going forward?
Speaker 2: It's a great question, I think. You know, during that
Speaker 2: time in twenty twelve when I moved to America, I
Speaker 2: thought I was going to give up. I thought I
Speaker 2: was going to give up music, not music completely, I
Speaker 2: thought I was going to give up being an artist.
Speaker 2: I felt like I'm done. I don't want to be
Speaker 2: front facing, I don't want to be in the public
Speaker 2: realm anymore. I'm so bored of this, like hamster wheel,
Speaker 2: of making a record, working with whoever the big producer is,
Speaker 2: trying to compete on radio, doing your promo, doing your tour.
Speaker 2: And you know, the whole reason I wanted to be
Speaker 2: a musician was I hate repetition, and there I was
Speaker 2: in absolute feeling of repetition. And then what I realized was, yes,
Speaker 2: you can alway, you can find reputation in anything that
Speaker 2: you're doing. You know it's on you, but it's on you.
Speaker 2: It's on you to not make what you're doing repetitive
Speaker 2: because you're in charge. You're making the decisions about what
Speaker 2: you're doing and how you're doing it. And I was
Speaker 2: allowing myself to be made part of some machinery that
Speaker 2: I never intended to be part of. I don't want
Speaker 2: to be part of. But it was like, how else
Speaker 2: do you do this? How else do you release records
Speaker 2: and have a tour if you're not part of this machinery? Right?
Speaker 2: And so I thought I was going to completely walk
Speaker 2: away from it, and I got accepted onto the Sundance
Speaker 2: Film Institute's Film Composer's Lab, right be the great Robert Redford.
Speaker 2: And I don't think I wasn't very good at doing
Speaker 2: film music because I'm too much into melody and it's
Speaker 2: too doesn't fit my writing perfectly, but it was it
Speaker 2: was extremely freeing to go and learn something else. And
Speaker 2: one of my tutors actually was Alan Silvestri the did
Speaker 2: the music for Back to the Futures. That was extremely
Speaker 2: exciting for me. It was what was really important about
Speaker 2: that time was that I got the hooks out and
Speaker 2: I knew I didn't have to do it, and that
Speaker 2: was that was the really important level up was under
Speaker 2: was really really understanding that I didn't have to do
Speaker 2: it and I could walk away and I could just
Speaker 2: have a different life. And I still always just have
Speaker 2: these fantasies of just disappearing. I'm sure lots of musicians
Speaker 2: have this, where you just it would be so great
Speaker 2: to just walk away and not be seen again. I
Speaker 2: remember reading this story about Madeline Peru. Are you familiar
Speaker 2: with Madelin Prairiue. She's a she's a she's a really
Speaker 2: interesting French kind of pop classical artist. But she's quite
Speaker 2: a wild child, I think, and she just and I
Speaker 2: just remember reading this story that she just disappeared and
Speaker 2: no one knew where she was, and I just thought,
Speaker 2: oh my god, that's so cool, it's so great.
Speaker 1: Way, let's slow it down a little bit. What is
Speaker 1: the appeal of disappearing.
Speaker 2: I suppose the that the freedom, it's the wildness, it's
Speaker 2: the freedom that you're not dictated to. No one's telling
Speaker 2: you you've got to go to work, no one's, no one's,
Speaker 2: no one has ownership of your movements and of your decisions.
Speaker 2: And I think being an artist, I mean a musician, Uh,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's very extreme, you know, being a
Speaker 2: touring musician, it's all encompassing. You go on tour, it's
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven, You're living in a little sardine
Speaker 2: can with six blokes that you end up spending more
Speaker 2: time with them than they do with their wives, you know.
Speaker 2: So I've chosen vocation that really is so often it's
Speaker 2: just all or nothing. There's not really a balance to
Speaker 2: be had. It doesn't exist a lot of the time.
Speaker 2: And so I think it's that, I think it's just
Speaker 2: a kind of a fantasy of just I'm just gonna leave.
Speaker 2: I'm just not gonna do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, obviously, if you were to do that, whether you
Speaker 1: did it or not, they're economic issues involved. The artists
Speaker 1: has done much better, the business is much more sophisticated
Speaker 1: than it was fifty years ago. But you obviously had
Speaker 1: to pay your rex a certain amount. You've had us
Speaker 1: certain level of success. How are you doing financially doing good.
Speaker 2: I feel very lucky in this I feel, I have
Speaker 2: to say, I feel like on many levels and all
Speaker 2: the way through my career I felt like an anomaly
Speaker 2: in a very which I'm very grateful for. You know,
Speaker 2: even that first breakthrough, I was just like a busker
Speaker 2: from Scotland and the album was like super stripped back
Speaker 2: with no bells and whistles. I really didn't have a
Speaker 2: record company breathing down my neck telling me to take
Speaker 2: my clothes off or dress this way or look for
Speaker 2: this way. They weren't telling me to do that. They
Speaker 2: were really just if anything. The second record was difficult
Speaker 2: because I wanted to lean into the rock star stuff
Speaker 2: and they were like, we want to keep you the
Speaker 2: girl next door, just keep wearing your jeans, and I
Speaker 2: was like, no, I want to try on some sparkly shit.
Speaker 2: And it's all felt very you. It's all felt really unique,
Speaker 2: which has been which I'm really grateful for. And I
Speaker 2: think where I'm at twenty years later is I'm very
Speaker 2: I'm proud that I can look back at every record
Speaker 2: and I didn't do what was expected and I changed
Speaker 2: up my really like seriously changed up how each record sounds.
Speaker 2: It's that I've never repeated myself. I don't think at
Speaker 2: all with what I've produced, and I think that now
Speaker 2: is feels like my purpose is just to keep Beck
Speaker 2: was a big inspiration to me when I was young
Speaker 2: when I saw Loser on MTV. You know, I'd grown
Speaker 2: up watching Top of the Pops and I saw you know,
Speaker 2: Kim Wilde. I thought was great. I loved her, but
Speaker 2: in general all the pop stuff, I loved the songs,
Speaker 2: but it never made me want to be a musician.
Speaker 2: And it was when I saw Loser on MTV and
Speaker 2: I was just like, holy shit, that sound it is
Speaker 2: amazing and looks amazing, and he's weird and he looks
Speaker 2: like a boss, he looks homeless. It's like, how is
Speaker 2: this working? And that was sort of my journey into
Speaker 2: wanting to be a musician. That like kind of fifteen sixteen.
Speaker 1: So if you decided to go to a desert island today,
Speaker 1: do you have enough money and enough royalties or are
Speaker 1: you working for a living?
Speaker 2: I'm still working for a living, but because I've it's
Speaker 2: because of the lifestyle I've chosen. I have a beautiful
Speaker 2: house in Santa Fe and I have a very comfortable
Speaker 2: lifestyle and that I'm working to keep that. But if
Speaker 2: I had to move to a desert island, I would
Speaker 2: be I would be fine because I would not have
Speaker 2: to pay for pro paine.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you know you're a woman in the music
Speaker 1: business and you're not a pop act. That's a category
Speaker 1: into itself. On the rock side, more art to side,
Speaker 1: we certainly had the me Too movement starting like seven
Speaker 1: years ago, but whatever the amplification, those issues always existed.
Speaker 1: So what it's been like for you being a woman
Speaker 1: in the music.
Speaker 2: Business again apparently an anomaly. I really feel like I
Speaker 2: have come up against very very little sexism in my career.
Speaker 2: The sexism I have come up against has certainly been
Speaker 2: on the business side rather than the touring side. On
Speaker 2: the touring side, I've had a great time, and I
Speaker 2: feel like the men I've worked with, if anything, have
Speaker 2: been polit and better behaved because they're working with a woman.
Speaker 2: And I've also always I've always conducted myself as a
Speaker 2: musician first. I don't feel like I sort of trade
Speaker 2: on the on the fact that I'm female. I'm very
Speaker 2: much in Chrissy Hines camp here where it's like you're
Speaker 2: a musician, you happen to be female and business side,
Speaker 2: I think the thing that's been most frustrating is there's
Speaker 2: a lack of confidence in female artists compared to male artists,
Speaker 2: certainly in my maybe not in kind of the super
Speaker 2: pop realm or the hip hop an urban R and
Speaker 2: B realm that's I think it's very different kind of
Speaker 2: culture culturally, but certainly in indie rock folk music, I
Speaker 2: will be playing a venue that someone who's really on
Speaker 2: par with me in terms of style and success is
Speaker 2: getting offered a bigger guarantee than I am, or I'm
Speaker 2: not being given a very high building on a festival lineup,
Speaker 2: which when really the data does not suggest that I
Speaker 2: should be here, I should be there, and that feels
Speaker 2: like it's due to being a female artist.
Speaker 1: Let's just go back to your time of epiphany and
Speaker 1: just go back to the adoption for a minute. So
Speaker 1: what point did you search for your roots in your
Speaker 1: birth parents?
Speaker 2: So I was twenty three, So I didn't get my
Speaker 2: record deal till I was twenty nine. I was twenty three,
Speaker 2: I'm unemployed, want to be a musician living in Edinburgh,
Speaker 2: or actually I was still living in Saint Andrews hanging
Speaker 2: out with a bunch of very cool in the kind
Speaker 2: of punk folk musicians called the Fence Collective. In Saint Andrews,
Speaker 2: the head head folk punk was a guy called King
Speaker 2: Creoso Kenny Anderson, who kind of started that he was
Speaker 2: the Goudy of our little town, just making really strange,
Speaker 2: great outsider music. And I watched a brilliant movie called
Speaker 2: Secrets and Lies by Mike Lee, and it's so batshit crazy.
Speaker 2: It's this black adopted woman who tries to find her
Speaker 2: mom and she it's Brenda Blefflin, who's an amazing actress.
Speaker 2: And she goes to the doorstep of this woman's house
Speaker 2: and she says, I think you're my mom, and she
Speaker 2: looks at her and she goes, Darling, I don't think
Speaker 2: that's possible, you know, And then she suddenly remembers and
Speaker 2: she goes, oh my god, oh my god, I do remember,
Speaker 2: you know. It's just and it's so crazy. What happens
Speaker 2: in that movie is so funny and dark and awful.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I could handle that. I really
Speaker 2: think I could handle that, And so I started looking.
Speaker 2: I sent My parents had always been very gracious and
Speaker 2: very very supportive, so we'll always we'll always stand by
Speaker 2: if you want to find out. And I I remember calling,
Speaker 2: I had a number, I had more information than I
Speaker 2: should have had. Actually, they got given like some a
Speaker 2: lot of information about who they were. And I couldn't
Speaker 2: find my birth mother, my biological mother, so I sent
Speaker 2: I found out that her brother was in the army.
Speaker 2: So I sent a letter to the kind of army
Speaker 2: headquarters in Scotland, and then forgot about it and didn't
Speaker 2: hear anything back. And then there was a number for
Speaker 2: my biological father in Ireland, and I called the number
Speaker 2: and this older woman answered, and I was like, holy shit,
Speaker 2: this is my grandmother. And I I didn't know if
Speaker 2: he told her. I didn't know if they knew, you know.
Speaker 2: So I just had to say, this is a friend
Speaker 2: of John's from the seventies. And she was obviously like
Speaker 2: totally suspicions that we don't hear from him very much.
Speaker 2: And that was that. And then six months later I
Speaker 2: got I was in my little house on the Experts
Speaker 2: with Saint Andrew's the phone it was what a WAE
Speaker 2: line phone, and the phone went and funnily enough, the
Speaker 2: guy said, is that Kate I said, yes, he goes,
Speaker 2: it's your uncle Bob, and I said, I don't have
Speaker 2: an uncle Bob. He goes, well you do now, And
Speaker 2: then I was able to meet with her and she
Speaker 2: lived in Edinburgh, very very nearby, and it was what
Speaker 2: it was a really wild experience. And she's tiny, she's
Speaker 2: half Chinese, half Scottish. We kind of look alike. But
Speaker 2: what I found out in later years, we're not that
Speaker 2: long ago twenty nineteen, when Long Lost Family, which is
Speaker 2: a TV show in the UK, I could never find
Speaker 2: my biological dad and they said, you want us to
Speaker 2: find him and be part of the program, and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh my god, do I really want to
Speaker 2: do this on camera? But then they said, look, we've
Speaker 2: got access that general public don't have. You also get
Speaker 2: a social worker that basically a therapist that anybody involved
Speaker 2: with the show can call for the rest of their
Speaker 2: life if it's to do with the program. And I
Speaker 2: was like, man, I wish I had this support when
Speaker 2: I did it the first time round, and I thought,
Speaker 2: it's probably the last chance I'm going to get to
Speaker 2: find out who he is, and so I said yes,
Speaker 2: And then it turns out I look really like my
Speaker 2: biological dad, and he was an irishman with a great voice,
Speaker 2: and sadly he passed by the time I did that program.
Speaker 2: But they said, they said, off camera, you know he's past,
Speaker 2: really sorry, but we'd like to wrap things up, you know,
Speaker 2: on camera. So we did this like shoot and the
Speaker 2: guy presenting Mickey Campbell, he's quite a well known presenter.
Speaker 2: He's also adopted in the UK. He just goes, there
Speaker 2: is something we didn't tell you. And I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, what And he goes, You've got two
Speaker 2: sisters and they're within two and three years of you
Speaker 2: in age, and they's been living fifteen miles away from
Speaker 2: you when you were growing up, and so he'd had
Speaker 2: kids with someone else very soon after. And we are
Speaker 2: so alike, and they're so great, and we've got a
Speaker 2: fan we've got a fantastic relationship, which is just and
Speaker 2: I had no sisters growing up, so it's that was
Speaker 2: a wild ride. But it was so crazy because of
Speaker 2: course I knew I might have siblings, you know, they
Speaker 2: had no idea, no idea. Turns out he like had
Speaker 2: kept a baby picture of me and his wallet, and
Speaker 2: you know, he was he was he had wanted to
Speaker 2: keep I think, and it was my mom just wasn't
Speaker 2: able to My biological mother just wasn't able to do it.
Speaker 2: But the program called them and they just have to
Speaker 2: sort of give them the information slowly to let them keep,
Speaker 2: you know, emotionally, keep up. They said, we think we
Speaker 2: have reason to believe you might have a sister that
Speaker 2: you don't know you have. And she's Scottish and she's
Speaker 2: a musician. And they put the phone down and Chaven
Speaker 2: and my older sister said to let all my younger sister.
Speaker 2: So I'm the oldest. She's middle and she said it's
Speaker 2: Katie Tunstall and Mell was just like, what are you
Speaker 2: talking about? Don't be ridiculous, Like this is insane. And
Speaker 2: they had my album in the house and she went
Speaker 2: and grabbed my album, grabbed a picture of their dad
Speaker 2: and just went look and lol went, oh my god,
Speaker 2: they look exactly the same. And so that's just been
Speaker 2: a massive joy. But I'm very lucky, because you know,
Speaker 2: these things can be pretty tough, but it's it's really
Speaker 2: been a lovely knee chapter of my life.
Speaker 1: Just going to whatever happened with your mother and going forward,
Speaker 1: what was the meeting like? And then what happened thereafter.
Speaker 2: It was it was really bizarre. It was really strange
Speaker 2: because I'm I. You don't know how to do these
Speaker 2: things right? You did, There's no rule book for it.
Speaker 2: And she'd asked if I would like to stay with
Speaker 2: her and did I did I stay the night? I don't,
Speaker 2: I can't. I definitely went over there and like had
Speaker 2: dinner at their house and my family we sat at
Speaker 2: the table every night six o'clock. Mum made dinner. We'd
Speaker 2: sit around, they'd make us talk about what school was like,
Speaker 2: and like we'd have a family dinner. And then I
Speaker 2: went over to my biological mom's house and we had
Speaker 2: we got we had dinner in front of the TV,
Speaker 2: which I'd never done, and it just felt so alien
Speaker 2: and so weird. It was like just being so transported
Speaker 2: into someone else's completely different family life. And I had
Speaker 2: a younger half brother, James, great guy, he was about eleven,
Speaker 2: and so we were sort of there eating, sort of
Speaker 2: trying to pretend that this was like normal, this like
Speaker 2: family dinner, and it was just so weird, and it was.
Speaker 2: It was, It was but wonderful. It was also like,
Speaker 2: you know, you're in all just going what I was
Speaker 2: inside that person who I've just met, and it was
Speaker 2: a very it was a difficult journey for a good
Speaker 2: few years. It was a hard time, and I'm really
Speaker 2: grateful that we overcame difficulties and that we're we're not
Speaker 2: in we're not we're not close, but we're in touch.
Speaker 2: You know, we'll message each other now and then. But
Speaker 2: it was definitely like it was definitely hard on my parents.
Speaker 2: You know, they were understandableving nervous and afraid for me
Speaker 2: that it would be hurtful or it would be disastrous,
Speaker 2: you know, and more even more difficult that I was.
Speaker 2: I then went on to become well known, and so
Speaker 2: I was always just very I knew I had to
Speaker 2: be quite careful around all of it. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: just about me. It was about my family as well.
Speaker 1: You don't have children, Is that because you didn't want them,
Speaker 1: or because you're too busy being an artist, or because
Speaker 1: the adoption, or because of whatever.
Speaker 2: All of the above. You nailed the main three. I
Speaker 2: think when going when I was in kind of boring
Speaker 2: Wikipedia page life that chapter, I never questioned it. I
Speaker 2: was just like, yeah, of course, of course I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have kids. That's what you do, you know. And then
Speaker 2: got my married and my ex was very keen to
Speaker 2: have kids, and that was when it was just like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, I've never really spent time deeply thinking about this,
Speaker 2: which one should and one should before one gets married
Speaker 2: also and about what you both want, and it was
Speaker 2: just I was trying to keep it down and try,
Speaker 2: you know. We tried to have children, and thankfully I
Speaker 2: didn't get pregnant. And I think in another life, if
Speaker 2: I'd gone through that epiphany I talked about of like
Speaker 2: really sorting my shit out and really making peace with
Speaker 2: the adoption staff, and if I found all of that sooner,
Speaker 2: and if I'd met someone but I did want to
Speaker 2: have kids with, I think I would have probably really
Speaker 2: enjoyed it. And I but I just I really, in
Speaker 2: my heart, being honest with you, I don't think I
Speaker 2: would have wanted to be a musician at the same
Speaker 2: time as being a mum. I think I would have
Speaker 2: just wanted to be a mother. And I think that
Speaker 2: that I think that that that was a choice too.
Speaker 2: I was just like, you know, I feel like what
Speaker 2: I do creatively has a uniqueness to it, and I
Speaker 2: think I've got something to offer, and I think that
Speaker 2: it feels like a really positive purpose in the world.
Speaker 2: I have a very I have a very positive feedback
Speaker 2: from other human beings for what I do and what
Speaker 2: I share. And I just I didn't feel like I
Speaker 2: wanted to stop doing that and I didn't want to
Speaker 2: do I felt like I would not be good at
Speaker 2: doing both at the same time.
Speaker 1: So for those of us living in America, when we
Speaker 1: think of Saint Andrews, we think of golf. Yeah, is
Speaker 1: that something if you live in St. Andrews you think about?
Speaker 2: So growing up in Saint Andrew's I was slightly I
Speaker 2: was a tomboy and quite a rebellious kid, and the
Speaker 2: only women who were allowed into the RNA, the royal
Speaker 2: and ancient golf club in Saint Andrew's with the bar
Speaker 2: maide and the cleaner, and so I was like, well,
Speaker 2: that seems like a bunch of bullshit. So I was
Speaker 2: very like anti that scene because it just seemed stuck
Speaker 2: up and sexist. And I just I didn't like the
Speaker 2: boys club thing. Obviously it's changed now where you know,
Speaker 2: it's much much more equality in that sense, but it
Speaker 2: just never ever appealed to me. And I went on tour.
Speaker 2: Two weeks ago. I had a really great bus driver
Speaker 2: called Dino, and he took me for my first ever
Speaker 2: golf lesson. We went to Top Golf and it was awesome.
Speaker 2: I had a great time. So my dad would always
Speaker 2: take us to the Putt and Green. There was really
Speaker 2: cool litt putt and green called the Himalayas. It's sort
Speaker 2: of a bit like a mini you know, crazy mini
Speaker 2: golf where it's all these hills and you've got to
Speaker 2: get into the hole. And so I love that, but
Speaker 2: I was I was never interested in in adult golf.
Speaker 2: And I feel like maybe turning fifty, maybe it's just Jeanette.
Speaker 2: It's a genetic, DNA human thing that you just.
Speaker 1: To beat a dead horse. It's like, if I'm going
Speaker 1: to Saint Andrews, is it there's going to be a
Speaker 1: sign home of golf or people are going to say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what we're famous for. Or if you live there,
Speaker 1: go yeah there's a golf course. But yeah, some people play.
Speaker 2: It's a big deal. It's a big deal people people
Speaker 2: are very proud of it and a lot of there's
Speaker 2: a lot of local great golfers and do you play.
Speaker 1: You know, I played as a kid. I don't play anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I would, I would, I would. I would
Speaker 2: be persuaded man to have a go.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you end up going to Kent?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So the school system in the UK, the Scottish
Speaker 2: school system is different from England. So in England you
Speaker 2: do what's called a levels and it's two years of
Speaker 2: kind of intense like three or four subjects. And in
Speaker 2: Scotland we had a different system, which was hires, which
Speaker 2: is less intense and you do more subjects. So I
Speaker 2: did five hires. I did art, music, French, history and English.
Speaker 2: And I was young for my year anyway, but I
Speaker 2: basically was able to graduate high school at seventeen. It
Speaker 2: was on my seventeenth birthday and I was really really
Speaker 2: ready to leave school. I didn't want to be in
Speaker 2: high school anymore, and I wanted to take a year
Speaker 2: out before going to university. And you know, there's all
Speaker 2: these amazing things that you can do on your gap
Speaker 2: year as we call it, but a lot of it
Speaker 2: was you had to be eighteen and I didn't want
Speaker 2: to go to UNI at seventeen. And my mom found
Speaker 2: this advert for this this organization called the English Speaking
Speaker 2: Union who sponsor kind of kids from America to come
Speaker 2: to Britain and vice versa, and I just kind of
Speaker 2: went for this interview and I feel like I was
Speaker 2: like the special the special kid that got to go
Speaker 2: because all the other kids were like, you know, into
Speaker 2: kind of politics and it was very academic, and I
Speaker 2: felt like this sort of drama kid who got given
Speaker 2: the special arts award and got put. I got sent
Speaker 2: to Kent for a year, and it was it was
Speaker 2: really an amazing experience.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm from Connecticut, are you. Yeah, that's northwestern Connecticut,
Speaker 1: which by Connecticut standards is the Boonies. Yeah, tradition prep
Speaker 1: school is sort of singular in that it's upper class.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, white. Yeah, so Ken wasn't It wasn't like
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly white, because there was these really it was really interesting.
Speaker 2: There was these fact like groups of Chinese students, of
Speaker 2: Korean students, of black students, and it was actually like
Speaker 2: really quite segregate, like itself segregating into these sort of
Speaker 2: little gangs. And everyone got on great, but there was
Speaker 2: it was noticeable kind of groups of different students, but
Speaker 2: it was crazy rich, like they've got their own indoor
Speaker 2: ice hockey rink they've got on indoor swimming pool. I
Speaker 2: like studied photography, development and conducting and ceramics. You know,
Speaker 2: it was insane.
Speaker 1: But how did you fit in?
Speaker 2: I fit in pretty well. I mean I've never been
Speaker 2: I've never been a I was never a kid at
Speaker 2: school that had like a clique. I've never liked that.
Speaker 2: I've never been drawn to that. I like having different
Speaker 2: I like knowing lots of different people in different places.
Speaker 2: Which suits you suits me well as a musician. And
Speaker 2: I formed my first band at Kent School and my
Speaker 2: guitarist was he was a pothead and wanted to call
Speaker 2: wanted to call our band THHC. And I said, we
Speaker 2: can't do we can't do that. So we were called
Speaker 2: the Happy Campers as Code and it was just, you know,
Speaker 2: it was a very very safe, sheltered environment and I
Speaker 2: would just that was when I started organizing my first gigs.
Speaker 2: It was really fun.
Speaker 1: Okay, what does the average American not understand about Scotland?
Speaker 2: I don't can I can I use terrible language. Of course,
Speaker 2: they don't understand the word cunt. The reason it sounds
Speaker 2: so bad in America is because you pronounce the t.
Speaker 2: It just it makes it so much more offensive. It's
Speaker 2: like so much more biting, but it's actually an absolute
Speaker 2: term of endearment in Scotland. You're a great cunt. I'm
Speaker 2: good friends with I've become good friends with Craig Ferguson,
Speaker 2: and we both as Scottish people now living in America,
Speaker 2: we just love having this conversation. Just like the lack
Speaker 2: of understanding of how of how endearing it can be.
Speaker 1: Okay, I go to Canada frequently and I know a
Speaker 1: lot of Canadians. Seemingly every Canadian in Los Angeles knows
Speaker 1: every other Canadian. Is it like Scott's Once you come
Speaker 1: to a place, every scott finds each other.
Speaker 2: It can be like that. I mean, Scotland's a really
Speaker 2: small country. It's smaller than Greater London. It's just it's
Speaker 2: incredible to me the musical heritage of that tiny little
Speaker 2: country and the impact and the breadth of genre that
Speaker 2: that have come out of that country. It's absolutely staggering
Speaker 2: and I can only say it's coming from you know,
Speaker 2: Iceland is similar with its with its music, but Scotland's incredible.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, everything from the average white band
Speaker 2: to simple minds, the garbage to eurhythmics to I mean,
Speaker 2: on and on and on, you know, just fantastic musical
Speaker 2: legacy and history and current you know, current artists as well,
Speaker 2: really exciting and I it's it's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: I like America is that America just fucking love Scotland.
Speaker 2: They love Scottish stuff. They just want you to just
Speaker 2: like say stuff, just to like say something. Can you
Speaker 2: just say something? I just want to hear you say
Speaker 2: something else, like like what and then because that's brilliant
Speaker 2: and they just love it. And it's you just feel
Speaker 2: extremely welcomed in the States being Scottish. And yeah, so
Speaker 2: it's you're often put in touch with Scottish people that
Speaker 2: people know and do you know them? I mean sometimes, Okay,
Speaker 2: you finish a kid's school, then what do you do?
Speaker 2: So I finished at Kent. I my roommate Kent had
Speaker 2: wanted to introduce me to her hippie friend from Vermont,
Speaker 2: so thinking that I would fall in love with him,
Speaker 2: which I did, and I went off and spent the
Speaker 2: summer in Vermont in a basically on kind of hippie
Speaker 2: commune vibe, you know, the house where his mom had
Speaker 2: the artist mother had like built the house herself and
Speaker 2: we bathed in the pond with like eco friends.
Speaker 1: I went to college Vermont. We had a house in Vermont.
Speaker 1: I gotta ask, we're in Vermont?
Speaker 2: It was. It was near Fairfield, Okay, not far from Burlington,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty minutes for Burlington or something. And so I
Speaker 2: busked a lot in Burlington at that time, and it
Speaker 2: was great. I loved it. I loved life there. I
Speaker 2: just loved it. I would have stayed forever, but I
Speaker 2: had to go home and start UNI. And it was
Speaker 2: a huge heartbreak for me. That's where other side of
Speaker 2: the world came from. Huge heartbreak, leaving this guy and
Speaker 2: leaving America. And I just made a I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm getting myself back to America. I have to get
Speaker 2: back to America.
Speaker 1: Okay, I gotta ask, have you had any contact with
Speaker 1: that guy subsequently going back?
Speaker 2: So I did, right, I did, and I did come
Speaker 2: back and I saw him again and I was just like, oh,
Speaker 2: he's you know, it's not the same. We're not We're
Speaker 2: not young and innocent anymore. And then not that long ago,
Speaker 2: I kind of looked him up and he is a carpenter.
Speaker 2: I guess he's would work whatever, but he's like a married,
Speaker 2: like kid on the way or had a kid or something.
Speaker 2: And I'd messaged and I said, I'm going to be
Speaker 2: in Vermont and it would be so nice to see you,
Speaker 2: and and he's like, yeah, that would be good. And
Speaker 2: then the time came around where I was going to come.
Speaker 2: It was just on Instagram, right, I was just messaging.
Speaker 2: Time came around to come to Vermont and he he disappeared,
Speaker 2: like his account didn't exist anymore, and our messages had disappeared.
Speaker 2: So I was like, oh, well that was not meant.
Speaker 1: To be right. Okay, you go to college or you
Speaker 1: say university where and what's that experience like?
Speaker 2: So I get into It was one of the University
Speaker 2: of London colleges, which is called Royal Holloway and it
Speaker 2: was in near Windsor Castle, so it was not in
Speaker 2: central London, which was really disappointing to me because I
Speaker 2: was not really that interested in going to university. It
Speaker 2: was really just a means to be in London to
Speaker 2: do gigs. I knew from seventeen eighteen that this is
Speaker 2: what I was going to do, but I was studying
Speaker 2: their theater studies program. Which was really really good. They
Speaker 2: have an amazing theater studies program. I did do a
Speaker 2: joint honors with music, but I ended up giving up music.
Speaker 2: It was like doing math. It was dreadful. There was nothing.
Speaker 2: It was just an absolute science class. I was sitting
Speaker 2: in this lecture for Shankirian analysis and it was basically
Speaker 2: this guy who discovered that you could overlay this sort
Speaker 2: of you know so analysis of Renaissance classical music, and
Speaker 2: it was all fit to this thing. And I was like, oh, whoop,
Speaker 2: do do well done? Like what am I doing in
Speaker 2: this class? So I gave the music part up and
Speaker 2: just did the theater studies and it was It was fantastic.
Speaker 2: There was a couple of One of the classes that
Speaker 2: I remember most fondly was I did I did a
Speaker 2: course in camidia de larte, which is the Italian kind
Speaker 2: of original clowning. And I loved that class and I
Speaker 2: loved learning about the role of the clown and the
Speaker 2: traditional role of the clown. And what really stuck with
Speaker 2: me was was that the reason society loves the clown
Speaker 2: is that they feel it's medicinal. They feel such relief
Speaker 2: in watching someone else fail and watching awful things befall
Speaker 2: someone else. It befalls the clown or the gesture, and
Speaker 2: they don't have to suffer that themselves. But they know
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's not actually happening. They're watching it
Speaker 2: being acted. But I loved that whole idea of the
Speaker 2: service of the clown who has to deal with all
Speaker 2: these terrible things happening to him. And one of the
Speaker 2: one of the exercises that we did was the whole room.
Speaker 2: The whole class had to huddle into the corner of
Speaker 2: the room and one person had to come in and
Speaker 2: they had to come in and stand in front of
Speaker 2: the huddle of thirty and everybody would cheer, ah, just
Speaker 2: go crazy. And then they had to do it again,
Speaker 2: and the whole class would boo and jeer and shout
Speaker 2: nasty things at you. And we had this fantastic teacher
Speaker 2: called Angela Dicastro, who was a well known Brazilian comedia
Speaker 2: alerted clown. She still does shows now, and she said,
Speaker 2: you have to understand, the clown cannot be affected by
Speaker 2: the crowd. You cannot let the crowd dictate your reaction
Speaker 2: and your response, and because how you respond is the
Speaker 2: clowns show. It's not in there, it's here. It's the
Speaker 2: clown mask that responds to how to what the crowd needs,
Speaker 2: you know, and that was that went deep as a performer.
Speaker 2: So I got lots of really cool There was a
Speaker 2: lot of learning from a performance point of view, but
Speaker 2: I mean I think I was basically using it to
Speaker 2: get gigs. And so that was three years, and weirdly
Speaker 2: for me, at the end of three years, I had
Speaker 2: not found a band. I won Battle of the Bands,
Speaker 2: which I was very proud of, but I did not
Speaker 2: find a band. I did not find my people in London,
Speaker 2: and I ended up going all the way back to
Speaker 2: St Andrew's and because really the most exciting musicians I
Speaker 2: knew at that time was still there.
Speaker 1: Okay, before we go there, you talked about having your
Speaker 1: first band it Kent. Yeah, when did you first start playing?
Speaker 2: I started, well, I I was definitely I definitely came
Speaker 2: out the womb musical. It was always, it was always present.
Speaker 2: I was always drawn to musical instruments when I was
Speaker 2: very very young. And actually I've got it on the
Speaker 2: wall in my little whiskey room at home where I
Speaker 2: couldn't write and I was trying to write music. You
Speaker 2: can just see this little baby, this little baby handwriting
Speaker 2: I'm trying to write musical notes and my mom being
Speaker 2: a teacher. It really just warms my heart in the
Speaker 2: bottom right hand corner. It just says, good, my mom's
Speaker 2: marked my attempt at writing music. So I asked my
Speaker 2: parents for a piano when I was four, and then
Speaker 2: I just was It was very easy. I was very natural,
Speaker 2: you know, I learned very fast. I did years of
Speaker 2: lessons on piano. I never got very good at piano,
Speaker 2: it wasn't my instrument. And then I also did classical flute,
Speaker 2: so I did all my flute exams. And then when
Speaker 2: I was fifteen, at high school in Scotland, you start
Speaker 2: getting given free time to study for exams. And I
Speaker 2: used to go up to the music music department and
Speaker 2: there was a guitar teacher called Tim, and I used
Speaker 2: to just go in there, I say, can I borrow
Speaker 2: a guitar? And I'm very grateful to him because he
Speaker 2: never tried to get me to take lessons. He just
Speaker 2: would let me borrow guitar so I could teach myself.
Speaker 2: And so I never had lessons in guitar or voice,
Speaker 2: but I had all my theory and background understanding through
Speaker 2: learning piano from a really young age. So it was
Speaker 2: a nice way of doing it where I wasn't being
Speaker 2: instructed in the things that I was being creative with.
Speaker 2: But I had that kind of background, and so as
Speaker 2: soon as I as soon as I started playing guitar,
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, this is it, this is what
Speaker 2: I'm going to do. I was into acting when I
Speaker 2: was younger, and I remember I got chosen to go
Speaker 2: and do some role Shakespeare company thing and I was like,
Speaker 2: these people are no beds. They're just I was just like,
Speaker 2: they're just It was just so like, it was so
Speaker 2: performative all the time, and I was like, there's no
Speaker 2: way I could be surrounded by this. It would just
Speaker 2: go mad. And I also just wanted to write the
Speaker 2: words myself. I didn't want someone telling me how to
Speaker 2: say things and how to say other people's words. So
Speaker 2: music was just the natural kind of artistic swivel to
Speaker 2: go into that instead where I'd just be my own boss.
Speaker 1: So when you were in college at the university near
Speaker 1: the Castle, yeah you say that you busked. You say
Speaker 1: you won the Battle of the bands, but you didn't
Speaker 1: find the band I didn't how much did you busk?
Speaker 1: Were you looking for a band? How do you win
Speaker 1: the Battle of the bands without a band?
Speaker 2: So it was me and a mandolin player, my friend
Speaker 2: Jay right Mandalin's, and it was I really remember because
Speaker 2: there was this like goth band who'd entered and they
Speaker 2: were just so sure they were going to win, you know,
Speaker 2: and they were so pissed that they lost to a
Speaker 2: girl with a guitar and a guy with a mandolin.
Speaker 2: I've still got the poster, and my mom and dad
Speaker 2: had come down. They were visiting me at the time,
Speaker 2: and it was just awesome me winning battle with the
Speaker 2: bands against the golf band. So as soon as I
Speaker 2: went to UNI, I started I was just straight to
Speaker 2: the kind of union students, union like events guy making
Speaker 2: friends with them and making sure that I could do
Speaker 2: a gig in the pub every you know, once a month.
Speaker 2: And then I had a little scooter and I used
Speaker 2: to go to Windsor where the castle is, which wasn't
Speaker 2: far away, and I would just get my guitar out
Speaker 2: and bosk. And I'd sort of learned busking from my
Speaker 2: Scottish friends when I was living in St Andrews. They
Speaker 2: used to do that a lot, and I never busked
Speaker 2: at home because I would have been too embarrassed for
Speaker 2: my parents' friends to be like throwing tenpence pieces into
Speaker 2: my guitar case. So I did it in London, in
Speaker 2: Windsor out by college, and then I would go back
Speaker 2: to America for summers. My best friend from Kent, Amanda,
Speaker 2: had gone on to do photography at the Institute of Chicago,
Speaker 2: and so I had a summer doing like open mic
Speaker 2: nights in Chicago that was wicked and I had a
Speaker 2: great time doing that. So I was just cutting my teeth,
Speaker 2: you know. And bosking is such an amazing way to
Speaker 2: learn your craft. It's just unparalleled because no one's there
Speaker 2: to listen to you. I'm quite a purist with busking.
Speaker 2: I get very frustrated with boscos who use amplification. I
Speaker 2: don't think they should people quite some people quite like it.
Speaker 2: I would like to hear you just with an instrument,
Speaker 2: making people stop and listen to you, without having your
Speaker 2: fucking amp at eleven and not giving anyone any choice.
Speaker 2: And it's also like, if you could afford an amp,
Speaker 2: why are you bosking? I couldn't afford an amp when
Speaker 2: I was bosking.
Speaker 1: So how often did you actually busk?
Speaker 2: I would just do it at the weekend, so not
Speaker 2: every weekend, but i'd sometimes go into London. I remember
Speaker 2: I remember busking in Camden, which is, you know, like
Speaker 2: the kind of Venice Beach of London. And I remember
Speaker 2: playing and this young rock and roll looking dude puts
Speaker 2: a pound coin which was a big deal, into my
Speaker 2: guitar case and I was like, oh my god, that's
Speaker 2: Mark Owen from Take That and Take That, where like
Speaker 2: they had been huge, you know, they were like our
Speaker 2: end sync. And I was like Mark Owen and he goes,
Speaker 2: you are really good, and I said, give us a fiver.
Speaker 2: You've beat your massive And then I met him, like
Speaker 2: I guess ten years later, after I'd had success and
Speaker 2: Take That hadn't had their big reunion, and he'd had
Speaker 2: a mildly successful career but it hadn't really worked out.
Speaker 2: And I said Mark, and we met and he knew
Speaker 2: who I was at that point and he said, uh, oh,
Speaker 2: it's so nice to see her. You know, well done.
Speaker 2: And I was like, you gave me a quid when
Speaker 2: I was busking in Camden, and he goes, I might
Speaker 2: need to ask for that back. But yeah, so i'd
Speaker 2: I would bust pretty regularly.
Speaker 1: Okay, you say, oh, well, you know you're a mark
Speaker 1: from take that? Why not a fiber? To what degree?
Speaker 1: These words have negative connotations? But I don't mean him
Speaker 1: that way. To what degree were you? And are you
Speaker 1: cheeky and aggressive?
Speaker 2: Oh, Dad's not that. I don't take that negatively at all.
Speaker 2: I am. I definitely have cheeky and aggressive aspects to
Speaker 2: my personality. My dad was incredibly competitive, so I had
Speaker 2: a very competitive streak in me growing up, and I
Speaker 2: got in real hot water once in an early interview.
Speaker 2: I remember that the journalist was guy called John Lewis.
Speaker 2: He was writing for I think it was Big Issue
Speaker 2: or so, one of the one of the magazines where
Speaker 2: it was like, you know, longer music interviews, and he
Speaker 2: was baiting me and I fell for it and it
Speaker 2: was so annoying, and he just said, you know, people
Speaker 2: compare you to Dido, and Dido was really big at
Speaker 2: the time, and I was really angry at this. He'd
Speaker 2: been kind of nipping at me during this interview and
Speaker 2: I was really green behind the ears and I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't. I wasn't in great control of my of
Speaker 2: my kind of response at this at that stage. Yet
Speaker 2: and uh and this this really bothered me because Dido
Speaker 2: was a studio artist and I felt like Dido's music
Speaker 2: and it was huge at the time, you know, and
Speaker 2: I felt like Dido's music was it had done so
Speaker 2: well and it was its own thing. But I did
Speaker 2: not feel that Dido was known for her in her
Speaker 2: live performance. It didn't feel like that was what Dido's
Speaker 2: career was really about. And I also didn't feel like
Speaker 2: she was a a very impressive singer, you know, her
Speaker 2: her style was unique, and the kind of mixture of
Speaker 2: her and her brother Roles production it made something that
Speaker 2: really hit a zeitgeist. But I did not feel like
Speaker 2: she would be in the pantheon of Aretha Franklin, you know,
Speaker 2: or you know, ROBERTA. Flack amazing singers. And I really
Speaker 2: prided myself, and pride is exactly the word that was,
Speaker 2: you know, what was getting poked at this point where
Speaker 2: I hoped that I was standing out as a vocalist,
Speaker 2: and I just lost my temper and I said, well,
Speaker 2: that's not fair, Diety can't fucking sing, which was you know,
Speaker 2: a really unkind, hurtful way of expressing what I was
Speaker 2: trying to say. And of course that's like the headline,
Speaker 2: and I wouldn't And I think I did a publicly
Speaker 2: apologize after saying that because it wasn't a nice thing
Speaker 2: to say. And it's not true either. She can sing,
Speaker 2: It's just I was annoyed at being thrown in. I
Speaker 2: was also very touchy about being classed as a pop
Speaker 2: singer when I didn't feel like one. And I suppose
Speaker 2: back to your question about being a woman in music,
Speaker 2: that was something that was really funny. I could put
Speaker 2: three four man magazines on the table of reviews of me,
Speaker 2: and one said I sounded like b York, one said
Speaker 2: I sounded like Dido, one said I sounded like Janice Joplin,
Speaker 2: and one said I sounded like Joni Mitchell. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: make you fucking mind up because you can't sound like
Speaker 2: the only thing is we've all got tits, so like,
Speaker 2: can we have some honesty here? Like that doesn't make sense?
Speaker 2: So yeah, navigating that, I don't know why I started
Speaker 2: telling the story. I can't remember.
Speaker 1: So you go back to seeing Andrews after college? Then what.
Speaker 2: Then if someone had told me at fifteen years old
Speaker 2: that it was going to take my lifetime again to
Speaker 2: actually get a record out. That would have been very
Speaker 2: sobering for me. So I go back to St Andrews
Speaker 2: and I was just adamant to not sign a record deal.
Speaker 2: My mentor, Kin Kriso, was very un establishment, very very
Speaker 2: anti industry. He'd had, I think he'd had a brush
Speaker 2: with the record label and was fiercely independent and I
Speaker 2: just wanted to be cool like them, and so I
Speaker 2: really wanted to do it independently. So I was sort
Speaker 2: of getting by on unemployment benefit and trying to get
Speaker 2: gigs and applying for arts grants which I never got,
Speaker 2: and getting gigs was really really tough in Edinburgh and
Speaker 2: Saint Andrews. It was just it was a and R.
Speaker 2: Guys were not coming up to Scotland back then. And
Speaker 2: my other mentor Bobby Heatley, who ran a studio in
Speaker 2: rehearsal space, and he recognized that I had talent and
Speaker 2: he would really help me out. He was really helpful
Speaker 2: because obviously, you know, you don't have money for that stuff.
Speaker 2: So it was really great getting some demos together and
Speaker 2: being able to rehearse a band. But he said, get
Speaker 2: your publishing deal. Get your publishing deal before you get
Speaker 2: your record deal. Don't sign your record deal for money.
Speaker 2: And that was great advice, and so I did that.
Speaker 2: I would keep whenever I could. I would go down
Speaker 2: to London and I would play try and get in
Speaker 2: open mics and showcases, and I'd be phoning random numbers
Speaker 2: for record label offices or publishing label offices. And it
Speaker 2: was dawning on me for sure that I was going
Speaker 2: to have to pursue a deal, that it was not
Speaker 2: going to happen. Certainly if I stayed in Scotland and
Speaker 2: tried to do this on my own, it was just
Speaker 2: like not happening. And one of my friends, Vic Galloway,
Speaker 2: who's a radio presenter. He'd been in a kind of
Speaker 2: punk band called miracle Head and Edinburgh was friends with
Speaker 2: all the people I knew. He got a job on
Speaker 2: indie radio on Radio One, which is like a big deal.
Speaker 2: It was like a late night kind of indie underground
Speaker 2: radio show. And I was like, play my song, come on, Vic,
Speaker 2: play my song, and he wouldn't play it and he
Speaker 2: just said, no, you don't belong on my show. You
Speaker 2: need to get on mainstream radio. I was like well,
Speaker 2: how the hell am I meant to do that? Like,
Speaker 2: can't you help me out? He just he was just
Speaker 2: like no, And at the time I was so angry
Speaker 2: that he wouldn't help me. And then, you know, at
Speaker 2: that point, it was fully five years later my first
Speaker 2: single was getting played on mainstream radio, and he was right,
Speaker 2: it wasn't. That wasn't where I was meant to be.
Speaker 2: And I had to leave Saint Andrews and I had
Speaker 2: to leave Scotland and I had to I had to
Speaker 2: leave my little punk indie folk family and be what
Speaker 2: I was actually meant to do, do what I was
Speaker 2: meant to do, which was much more mainstream.
Speaker 1: Okay, a little bit slower. You're nobody from nowhere in Scotland.
Speaker 1: You come to London and you get a publishing deal,
Speaker 1: no problem.
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't no problem. I mean it took years.
Speaker 2: So this is my entire twenties. So I finish college
Speaker 2: at twenty one and the publishing deal happens at twenty nine,
Speaker 2: so it's yeah, it's a.
Speaker 1: Long time twenty years later. Who owns those songs?
Speaker 2: Well, so I signed to Sony Publishing. I was with
Speaker 2: them for twenty years and then COVID happens, and I
Speaker 2: have just decided to buy a new move into a
Speaker 2: new place in Tapanga. I had a big old tour booked,
Speaker 2: and I take out a big old loan to upgrade
Speaker 2: my life. And then suddenly there ain't no gigs, but
Speaker 2: you still got to pay your loan back, right, And
Speaker 2: the kind of publishing deals had started, the catalog deals
Speaker 2: had begun. At that point where you know, companies like
Speaker 2: Hypnosis and Primary Wave, who I've ended up working with,
Speaker 2: I really just had to make a business decision. And
Speaker 2: I was just like, this is a business and I
Speaker 2: can either face this really really nightmarish situation right now
Speaker 2: where everything I have is in jeopardy, or I work
Speaker 2: with this company. And the crazy thing about Primary Wave,
Speaker 2: who I'm not working with, was that Larry Mestel, who's
Speaker 2: the head of Primary Wave, had actually been at Virgin
Speaker 2: Records when I first came over to America and set
Speaker 2: and we had this amazing meeting and he said, he said,
Speaker 2: he handed over to the next person at Virgin. He said,
Speaker 2: whatever you do, do not fuck up Katie Tunstall. She's
Speaker 2: the next Melissa Etheridge. And he said, they fucked it up,
Speaker 2: and he said, and I want to make right by you,
Speaker 2: and I want to sign you, and I want to
Speaker 2: share your publishing and I want to make it worth
Speaker 2: more and I the deal with them, and I'm and
Speaker 2: I have a great relationship.
Speaker 1: With Okay, just to break it down, so you sold
Speaker 1: them half of the.
Speaker 2: Publishing, Well, I don't really want to go in.
Speaker 1: Let me put a different You're still own part of
Speaker 1: the publishing or did you sell a part part?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Part yeah? They they Larry was like, don't get rid
Speaker 2: of all of it. You should keep something.
Speaker 1: Primary Wave has a label. Are you working with their
Speaker 1: label too?
Speaker 2: Well? Primary Wave also owns Sun Records, So I put
Speaker 2: a record out on Sun Records, which was a real
Speaker 2: It was a huge honor of my career to have
Speaker 2: a record out on Son and that was my duet's
Speaker 2: record with Suzi Quatro. But I really look forward to
Speaker 2: keep doing stuff with them, and we've got another project
Speaker 2: in the works that would be great to they're they're
Speaker 2: very excited about maybe doing on so again. So it's
Speaker 2: it's a there. There are just a very kind of vibrant,
Speaker 2: excited creative company that want to do stuff. Whereas you
Speaker 2: know before I would be having to like we'd be
Speaker 2: knocking on doors going can you not find anything that
Speaker 2: my music can get synced with? And it was just dead,
Speaker 2: nothing was going on, and so it's just it was
Speaker 2: really nice to work. It's in general now that I've
Speaker 2: also signed to BMG for publishing moving forward, and I
Speaker 2: love the BMG UK amazing company. They just they're just
Speaker 2: music fans. These people just love music, and that's how
Speaker 2: I remember it being when I first started, and it's
Speaker 2: how I remember that tailing off where all the lawyers
Speaker 2: and accountants started running the record labels and it just
Speaker 2: felt so sterile. And it just feels really nice to
Speaker 2: get back to working with teams of people who were
Speaker 2: genuinely it's still very excited by new music and old music.
Speaker 1: So you moved to London and how do you ultimately
Speaker 1: get a record deal?
Speaker 2: So I moved to London. I did not want to
Speaker 2: move to London until I had a deal because I
Speaker 2: knew that being in London with no money was going
Speaker 2: to be grim. So I would just get myself down
Speaker 2: to London and I was I had a friend who
Speaker 2: worked in film and he would let me crash in
Speaker 2: his living room. But I felt bad because his roommates
Speaker 2: had proper jobs that they had to get up for
Speaker 2: in the morning. So I would pull the couch two
Speaker 2: feet out from the wall and I would sleep behind
Speaker 2: the couch. And so yeah, there was many nights that
Speaker 2: I would sleep behind behind Tim's couch and it was
Speaker 2: great times. You know, I have very very I have
Speaker 2: very sweet memories of that time. It was it was
Speaker 2: an adventure and I would and I made friends with
Speaker 2: the guys who ran a place called the Kashmere Club,
Speaker 2: this guy called Tony Moore, and it was a really revolutionary,
Speaker 2: revolutionary little open mic night in a basement in Marylebone
Speaker 2: in London, and a lot of A and R guys
Speaker 2: would come to that and you didn't pay. It was
Speaker 2: free to get in, but you had to shop up.
Speaker 2: You were not allowed to talk during performances. And ultimately
Speaker 2: that's where I got signed.
Speaker 1: Okay you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2: But I should I should, but but that was my
Speaker 2: record deal, my publishing deal. I was making phone calls
Speaker 2: trying to meet people in publishing and I actually got
Speaker 2: offered a really tiny kind of like ten grand publishing
Speaker 2: deal and that ended up leading to me working with
Speaker 2: a manager. And it was a guy who'd been at
Speaker 2: a label on the record label side, and he persuaded
Speaker 2: me to kind of start working together, and he actually
Speaker 2: managed to get like Sony Warner and I think Chrysalis
Speaker 2: bidding for my publishing and I ended up with a
Speaker 2: good deal.
Speaker 1: Okay, managers are a world done to itself. How long
Speaker 1: did you work with that guy and what has been
Speaker 1: your experience with managers?
Speaker 2: I worked His name was Simon Banks. I worked with
Speaker 2: him for ten ten years. I think he hadn't had
Speaker 2: a lot of management experience before. He was na in
Speaker 2: our guy, and you know, we had a just stellar
Speaker 2: first record. It was just an unbelievable success, like way way,
Speaker 2: way beyond anything we would imagine, like selling five million
Speaker 2: copies of this record. It was just you know, it
Speaker 2: was a twenty three grand record deal. It was a
Speaker 2: I think like a I think it was something It
Speaker 2: was like a twenty grand budget for the record. It
Speaker 2: was all these relatively small at that time. You know,
Speaker 2: people were spending a lot of money on stuff and
Speaker 2: it was pretty good. It was he had the substance
Speaker 2: abuse problem instead of me, so that was difficult. And
Speaker 2: what I found as time was going on, and especially
Speaker 2: as we got into album two was he was really
Speaker 2: good at answering the phone, but not very good at
Speaker 2: making the phone calls to make things happen, and of course,
Speaker 2: inevitably the phone stops ringing as much. And then the
Speaker 2: thing that was really difficult was that I cracked America,
Speaker 2: which was just stratospherically difficult and just fantastic that I
Speaker 2: managed to do it. And he would have a different opinion,
Speaker 2: but in my opinion, he did not manage that success
Speaker 2: to the point where I then had the career in
Speaker 2: America that I could have had. I think we neglected
Speaker 2: the American market too much, and you know, I was
Speaker 2: playing sheds to four or five six thousand people and
Speaker 2: I can't do that now. And not to say that
Speaker 2: I'm entitled to that, but there was there was a
Speaker 2: business plan, path, a strategy that we could have adopted
Speaker 2: that would have made that more likely, and I'm annoyed
Speaker 2: that we didn't do that, so we stopped working together.
Speaker 2: He had this Sunset deal where I'm paying you know,
Speaker 2: fucking stupid amounts of money for ten years, which was
Speaker 2: very painful, and we're not in touch anymore. So that's
Speaker 2: where it's ended up.
Speaker 1: So since him how many managers have you had, if
Speaker 1: any managers?
Speaker 2: I had an American manager for a short period of time,
Speaker 2: which was basically like a second divorce. It was it
Speaker 2: wasn't very disappointing, and I then had a friend of
Speaker 2: mine from London step in. He was in film, but
Speaker 2: he was just a good friend and he said, look,
Speaker 2: I feel like you're not getting you feel like you
Speaker 2: should be should be celebrated more than you are. Your
Speaker 2: career should be going better. And he was just he
Speaker 2: knew that I had the capacity to do something positive
Speaker 2: in the world and wanted to help me do that.
Speaker 2: And he's been He's been incredible. For the last ten years,
Speaker 2: my friend Alex has been managing me, and to his
Speaker 2: own detriment, I think it's I'm excited about a new
Speaker 2: situation on the new horizon where I can't talk about
Speaker 2: it yet, but it's all good. And so the last
Speaker 2: ten years has been really I've been very grateful watching
Speaker 2: someone who really cared and put me, put my best
Speaker 2: interests first, and it's made a huge difference. And I
Speaker 2: feel that where I am now is vastly different. I
Speaker 2: don't know if I'd still be doing what I'm doing
Speaker 2: if it hadn't been for him coming in and helping me.
Speaker 1: Okay, going back, how do you actually get the initial
Speaker 1: record deal?
Speaker 2: I mean, everyone's going to have a different answers. There,
Speaker 2: I'm again, there's no there's no rule books. I'm telling
Speaker 2: you my experience. I had my publishing deal, I did
Speaker 2: not get my I was not able to get a
Speaker 2: record deal for two years of trying. I was trying,
Speaker 2: no one was interested. I remember going into a record
Speaker 2: company of which I will not name, and playing for
Speaker 2: him and he said, well, the thing is we have
Speaker 2: a girl who plays something. I was like, really, how
Speaker 2: many guys have you got that play something? But it
Speaker 2: was it was the Nora Jones effect, Like Nora's success
Speaker 2: had really blown the doors off in terms of female
Speaker 2: singer songwriters who played an instrument. She paved the way
Speaker 2: for all of us, really and got the record companies
Speaker 2: excited about it. But unfortunately most of them had their
Speaker 2: girl who plays something, and it was very, very difficult
Speaker 2: to get signed. And also I was older. That was
Speaker 2: probably putting people off without them saying it. And this
Speaker 2: one record company who saw me at the Cashmere Club
Speaker 2: at that under that basement open mic, they were an
Speaker 2: underground Asian dance label. The owner had been a Ugandan
Speaker 2: Asian dance DJ. They had so solid crew who was
Speaker 2: like an urban RAF act. They offered me a five
Speaker 2: album deal for like twenty three grand and I was like,
Speaker 2: this seems like a completely preposterous partnership, Like why would
Speaker 2: they even want me? They just really liked my stuff.
Speaker 2: And Shabs the head of that label, Absolute Maverick, He
Speaker 2: was just like, we just signed things we like, doesn't
Speaker 2: matter what it is, and they said, and I was
Speaker 2: very nervous about it. I was just like, it doesn't
Speaker 2: feel like the right fit. It's not a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: They were a subsidiary of Virgin at the time. They
Speaker 2: were called Relentless or its Outcast Records. It was Relentless
Speaker 2: and Outcast with their two imprints. And they said, well,
Speaker 2: here's the thing. We have this other band that's instrumental
Speaker 2: and they need a top line writer and a singer
Speaker 2: to do a few singles so that we can get
Speaker 2: them on radio. So why don't you work with them
Speaker 2: and then go on tour with them and you can
Speaker 2: get to know us. And I was like, that sounds awesome.
Speaker 2: Who are they? And he says there were ten piece
Speaker 2: Klesmer Jewish hip hop band, and I'm like, who the
Speaker 2: fuck are you people? This is so weird. And I
Speaker 2: was like, I'm one hundred percent down, I'm in. That
Speaker 2: sounds amazing. And they were called oiv a Voi. So
Speaker 2: I go on tour with oiv Avoi and halfway through
Speaker 2: the tour, the band say to me, Katie would really
Speaker 2: like to do a song in Sephardic Jewish Spanish and
Speaker 2: call it Ladino songs. Soldino is this Sardi Jewish language?
Speaker 2: And I was like, great, good luck with that. I
Speaker 2: don't fucking speak that, like what And they said, don't worry,
Speaker 2: you just learn it phonetically. It'll be great. And it
Speaker 2: was just it was so much fun. We just traveled
Speaker 2: all over the place. I got to know the record label.
Speaker 2: I trusted that they really were into just supporting music
Speaker 2: they liked and they weren't trying to change it into
Speaker 2: other stuff. And so I signed the deal.
Speaker 1: Okay, you signed the deal. There's X amount to make
Speaker 1: the record. How do you find a producer? What's the
Speaker 1: experience of actually making the record?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it was really interesting because they didn't have
Speaker 2: a lot of budget, and I knew nothing about producers.
Speaker 2: I'd basically not really been in music in studios at
Speaker 2: this point. You know, my friend Bob who ran the
Speaker 2: studio in Edinburgh. I'd gone in there and done some recording,
Speaker 2: but I was very inexperienced, and all the stuff that
Speaker 2: i'd done before that was just eight tracks, you know,
Speaker 2: in a cottage on the edge, just and Andrew's, and
Speaker 2: so I knew nothing about producing or mixing. And it
Speaker 2: was actually my A and R guy, Martin Morales, who said,
Speaker 2: I think you should have a look at this guy,
Speaker 2: Steve Osborne. He's really interesting. He's a rock producer. He'd
Speaker 2: worked with Doves, You two and Placebo were like his
Speaker 2: big artist acts. And I was just like, whoa, this
Speaker 2: is not what I was expecting you to say, and
Speaker 2: this is delighting me that you are coming to me
Speaker 2: with a very non female artists suggestion, because that was
Speaker 2: my worry, right was that they were just kind of
Speaker 2: kind of sweet in the dish, and I was like,
Speaker 2: this is this is really a good suggestion. So I
Speaker 2: went to meet with him. He worked out of Real World,
Speaker 2: out of Peter Gabriel's place in Bath and I really
Speaker 2: really liked him. He was cool. He was weird. He
Speaker 2: looked like a vampire. He was clearly into keeping things
Speaker 2: very gritty, which was really important to me. But we
Speaker 2: couldn't afford to do the record at real world. So
Speaker 2: he found the studio in the middle of nowhere in
Speaker 2: Bradford upon Avon, which is just outside Bath. And it
Speaker 2: was this roadie who'd lost the use of his legs
Speaker 2: in an accident on tour, lived with his crazy Italian
Speaker 2: mother and had put a knave desk in his house
Speaker 2: with his mom, and like the vocal booth, was a
Speaker 2: disability ramp that you could either like sing going uphill
Speaker 2: or downhill, and it was it was very basic, like
Speaker 2: we had to we had to gaff tape comforters on
Speaker 2: the wall for when we needed to change the sound.
Speaker 2: And Steve was literally the driver the whole Me and
Speaker 2: the musicians stayed at his house. We stayed in his kids'
Speaker 2: bunk beds. His wife would cook us food like it
Speaker 2: was a labor of love for him. It was. It
Speaker 2: was definitely not coming from a place of him thinking
Speaker 2: he was going to make a bunch of money off this.
Speaker 2: He loved the music and he wanted to do it,
Speaker 2: and he just took on all the roles and we
Speaker 2: made the record. I loved it. It was very very
Speaker 2: stripped back, and I was And then we proceeded to
Speaker 2: send the masters to the label and I was not
Speaker 2: invited to the mix. I wasn't even told the mix
Speaker 2: was happening. The mix it was a guy I've still
Speaker 2: never met, and it just got sent away and it
Speaker 2: came back and I just felt like someone had taken
Speaker 2: a hot iron to the excitement of what we'd made,
Speaker 2: and I couldn't stand it. And it was just like
Speaker 2: it just felt so saccering like what they'd done. And
Speaker 2: when I listened to the record now, I'm like, Jesus
Speaker 2: Christ is completely stripped back and raw, and it's still
Speaker 2: got all of that qualities, but it was just it
Speaker 2: was more produced. I'd not heard anything produced of mine,
Speaker 2: and so fuck knows what the we've got the originals?
Speaker 2: We should I need to dig them out and have
Speaker 2: a listen to them because they must be so raw.
Speaker 2: But it was very very hard for me, and I
Speaker 2: felt quite betrayed by the label that they didn't include me.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that the artist wouldn't be included in
Speaker 2: the mixing process. And now of course, it's just like
Speaker 2: such an intrinsic part of making a record, and like
Speaker 2: my label boss got some guitarist in to like re
Speaker 2: record my parts without telling me, and it was just
Speaker 2: it was really he was trying to do the right thing.
Speaker 2: I believe that, but it was very hurtful and so
Speaker 2: it was very fractious. And then I had to go
Speaker 2: out and promote this record that I thought sounded terrible.
Speaker 2: It was, but I had to keep my I had
Speaker 2: to bite my tongue. It was very difficult because the
Speaker 2: record was just doing so well. There's no point in
Speaker 2: me then going out and saying I didn't like it.
Speaker 2: It just felt like that was that was going to be,
Speaker 2: you know, an insult to fans who liked it.
Speaker 1: How fast after it was released did it become successful?
Speaker 1: And if you ever come to accept her and you
Speaker 1: still think it's too flattened with an iron.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I mean to answer the latter question, I
Speaker 2: have one hundred percent embraced how it sounds, and I
Speaker 2: love how it sounds, and I can hear it and
Speaker 2: I can love every every part of it. Now, it
Speaker 2: was more I think an emotional reaction at the time
Speaker 2: to being you know, I was so worried about signing
Speaker 2: my soul away to the Devil with a record company that,
Speaker 2: and it just felt like those fears came true when
Speaker 2: that was happening. And so it was much more an
Speaker 2: emotional relationship with what had happened than it was the
Speaker 2: actual sound of the record. And you know, part I'm conflicted,
Speaker 2: I'm also like, well, whatever they did, it made itself
Speaker 2: five million copies, and it probably wouldn't have done that
Speaker 2: if they hadn't made it sound the way it sounded.
Speaker 2: And what was the first question?
Speaker 1: Was it successful from its release?
Speaker 2: It wasn't fast. It wasn't fast. It was we it
Speaker 2: was a soft release. We kind of did an EP.
Speaker 2: It was rolling along. I think it went in at
Speaker 2: number seventy three, but it was a real slow moving juggernault.
Speaker 2: It was word of mouth. It was that beautiful magical
Speaker 2: thing called word of mouth, where it was back. People
Speaker 2: were still buying records, and they were sharing it and
Speaker 2: they were giving it to friends, and it was just
Speaker 2: building slowly, slowly, slowly. And then I got Jules Holland
Speaker 2: and then everything changed.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me the experience of the second record, how
Speaker 1: this gigantic success. You say the label wants more of
Speaker 1: what you did, You want to lean into the rock star.
Speaker 1: What was that experience? Like?
Speaker 2: The second record was fucking hideous. It was such a
Speaker 2: hideous experience. I hated it. And this was where the
Speaker 2: mistake was made with America, because I tod the Telescope
Speaker 2: came out in two thousand and four in the UK,
Speaker 2: and then it was released a year later in America
Speaker 2: and it off and I should have just not done
Speaker 2: a second record until I'd really got my relationship with
Speaker 2: America in a deeper place. But in the UK, I
Speaker 2: was being told by my manager, you have to have
Speaker 2: a second record out this quarter although because it's going
Speaker 2: to affect Sony Publishing's share price. And I was just like,
Speaker 2: what the fuck has that got to do with me?
Speaker 2: And why would you want a record that's not ready?
Speaker 2: And I was exhausted. I was just the redbear. I
Speaker 2: was hanging on by a wire because I'd been touring
Speaker 2: eighteen months straight and partying and trying to keep my
Speaker 2: blog together, you know. And what I should have done
Speaker 2: is taken a month off, done a month of writing,
Speaker 2: but it just wasn't allowed. I was I was put
Speaker 2: in the studio. And the other massive mistake was I
Speaker 2: was put in Rockfield, which of course is a legendary studio,
Speaker 2: but I very quickly realized I don't really love big
Speaker 2: fancy studios. Love the I love the lore. I'd love
Speaker 2: to like record a song in there, but when it
Speaker 2: comes to actually making a record, I'd much prefer to
Speaker 2: be I suit a much more low fi, limited space.
Speaker 2: It's not helpful for me for someone to say, this
Speaker 2: is the piano that Pretty Mercury recorded Bohemian Rhapsody on.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, that's great. I'm not going to do
Speaker 2: anything nearly as good as that on this piano. Let's
Speaker 2: make a record, you know, well's Zeppelin. We're here at
Speaker 2: great never going to be that good.
Speaker 1: Okay, So A, the record's done, how do you feel
Speaker 1: about the record? B The record is not commercially as successful.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about that?
Speaker 2: So the label were very adamant that I worked with
Speaker 2: Steve again because they wanted to repeat success. Steve was
Speaker 2: not in a good place personally. He had his own
Speaker 2: issues going on. I was desperate to make a rock
Speaker 2: record because I had gone from playing in pubs and
Speaker 2: busking to playing for four thousand people and all of
Speaker 2: this new Sonic universe was now available to me. I
Speaker 2: was playing through huge pas, I was playing electric guitar.
Speaker 2: It was my Bob Dylan moment where I was just like,
Speaker 2: I could do really different shit on this record, and
Speaker 2: I want to play songs I want to make. I
Speaker 2: want to have a wall of noise that is exciting,
Speaker 2: you know. I was seeing other people's gigs and I
Speaker 2: was like, I want to have that experience of being
Speaker 2: in a rock band and being a rock singer, and
Speaker 2: no one else wanted that. Everybody wanted me to do
Speaker 2: the same thing again. And I wanted to record the
Speaker 2: record live. I wanted I knew that I performed better
Speaker 2: when I live. I didn't want to track it, and
Speaker 2: just utter refusal from everybody. Your band isn't good enough,
Speaker 2: it's going to take too long, it's not going to
Speaker 2: be good. So we could not record that record live.
Speaker 2: And so that record, of all my records is the
Speaker 2: one that I would love to re record because it
Speaker 2: should have been played live. It should have been recorded
Speaker 2: as live music, and it just lacks it lacks excitement,
Speaker 2: and it lacks the energy that those songs should have
Speaker 2: because I think the songs are good on that record,
Speaker 2: and some of it worked, the slower, the sort of
Speaker 2: softer Sung's work. And not to not to shit on
Speaker 2: the record, because I still think it's good. I'm still
Speaker 2: proud of it, but it could have been a lot
Speaker 2: more exciting than it was. At that time. Everybody was
Speaker 2: losing their job. No one at my record label knew
Speaker 2: if they were going to be working there the next day.
Speaker 2: Internet had hit hard. All the people I saw in
Speaker 2: positions of authority at record labels had no fucking clue
Speaker 2: that the Internet was going to do what it did,
Speaker 2: and they were so slow, like no one was No
Speaker 2: one was moving as if it was a you know,
Speaker 2: it should have been the alarms should have been going off,
Speaker 2: and they weren't. They just everyone was just carrying on
Speaker 2: as if things were going to stay the same. And
Speaker 2: that record really suffered, I think because of that, and
Speaker 2: my third record he suffered because there wasn't a new
Speaker 2: approach to sharing the music and how it was marketed
Speaker 2: and how it was sold. It was just they were
Speaker 2: just it was all the same as it had been
Speaker 2: in two thousand and.
Speaker 1: Four, just starting on an artistic level. Were you happy
Speaker 1: with the third record.
Speaker 2: I loved the third record. Yeah, the third record was
Speaker 2: my middle finger to the label, going, you're not going
Speaker 2: to tell me what to do. So I decided I
Speaker 2: made I wanted to make an acoustic techno record and
Speaker 2: went to Berlin and made a record in Hansa and
Speaker 2: it's I think that record is probably very It's a
Speaker 2: little overproduced. There's too much going on. It was with
Speaker 2: Jim Abbys. We had such a good time and I
Speaker 2: don't regret it at all. I love that record. Makes
Speaker 2: me feel really good because I just did what the
Speaker 2: fuck I wanted.
Speaker 1: Okay, you put out the first record. Of course, I
Speaker 1: have an American perspective. You put out your first record.
Speaker 1: All of the old world than old mechanism still exists,
Speaker 1: even though they were on their last gasp, whether people
Speaker 1: know it or not.
Speaker 2: Oh, it is the tiger. I call it the tiger's tail.
Speaker 2: I was so lucky to grab the tail.
Speaker 1: So you have that tail, and you have you know,
Speaker 1: MTV still meant something, you have videos, etc. One So
Speaker 1: you realize the world was changing, the people you were
Speaker 1: working with did not. Where does that leave you today,
Speaker 1: because the landscape has completely changed from when you.
Speaker 2: Broke Yeah, absolutely I'm very lucky because from a timing
Speaker 2: point of view, I think that my fans certainly and
Speaker 2: I think the wider general public do not necessarily view
Speaker 2: me as a heritage act. I'm not sort of seen
Speaker 2: as going out and just you know, dining out on
Speaker 2: these old hits, while of course I play them. I've
Speaker 2: consistently put out records since then and worked them hard,
Speaker 2: so I've managed to I think, keep irrelevance as a
Speaker 2: contemporary musician, which has been healthy. It's been good, but
Speaker 2: I have the huge benefit of also being viewed as
Speaker 2: an old school musician that's sold records, and my fan
Speaker 2: base is very much the foundation of that fan base
Speaker 2: is people who bought records and still love albums and
Speaker 2: still want to buy vinyl. I mean there's tons of
Speaker 2: you know, young kids now who want to buy vinyl,
Speaker 2: which is fantastic, but it's Jesus Christ. I mean, streaming
Speaker 2: is just so ruinous for musicians. It's just so difficult.
Speaker 2: I don't know how new artists even manage with that
Speaker 2: being their main source of how they share what they make.
Speaker 2: And so it's really been.
Speaker 1: You know, my boat that I.
Speaker 2: Still say is live, and I think honing a very
Speaker 2: unique live show where there's not a lot of people
Speaker 2: who perform solo and can kind of sound like a band.
Speaker 2: So the loop pedal stuff has been a great gift
Speaker 2: in my life. And there was a time where I
Speaker 2: really wanted to get rid of it because it just
Speaker 2: felt like a gimmick and I was just like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, I'm just the loop girl. And then I
Speaker 2: was like, oh my god, I'm the loop girl. That's
Speaker 2: really cool, and it's like really awesome feeling like I've
Speaker 2: pioneered something in music. And so now I'm very grateful
Speaker 2: for it, and I love I love playing solo and
Speaker 2: that that solo show which is now sort of partly
Speaker 2: a storytelling show as well, and it's partly a comedy show.
Speaker 2: I love having a laugh with the audience. But also
Speaker 2: I'm so constantly pushing like what I can do, and
Speaker 2: it's all about dynamism within a solo show, like how
Speaker 2: many different sounds can I present you as one person?
Speaker 2: And people really love it. People really love seeing one
Speaker 2: person creating what sounds like a band. And I think
Speaker 2: that for me now, you know, our dream is of
Speaker 2: our dream as musicians is to have a signature sound
Speaker 2: that you. Within the first eight bars of someone hearing something,
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, that's Katie tells. Though, you know what
Speaker 2: a fucking amazing achievement that is that you've got your sound,
Speaker 2: but also that you've got this You've just got your
Speaker 2: own little corner of the music universe that feels like yours,
Speaker 2: and it feels unique, and it feels original, and it
Speaker 2: feels like there's enough space that you can keep expanding
Speaker 2: and keep changing and keep growing all the time into
Speaker 2: something that feels fresh, you know, and that you've got
Speaker 2: your space to say what you want to say. And
Speaker 2: I think that that that's where I am now, that
Speaker 2: I just I have my I feel like I have
Speaker 2: my space and it's me and it's got my name
Speaker 2: on it and it's.
Speaker 1: And I can.
Speaker 2: Thrive in there.
Speaker 1: That's a very accurate assessment of the landscape. A lot
Speaker 1: of people been in the business as long as you
Speaker 1: have do not have that perspective. But let's put that
Speaker 1: visa VI. The old game. The old game is you
Speaker 1: make a record, you're hoping for a single to catch fire.
Speaker 1: And of course then it was terrestrial radio. Terrestrial radio
Speaker 1: is you know, it's exists, but it doesn't have the
Speaker 1: power it once did. So I saw you perform in
Speaker 1: the spring, and you know, for those who've never seen
Speaker 1: you see you once, they're not gonna you're never gonna
Speaker 1: forget it. Yeah, experience, and it's far more than someone
Speaker 1: standing near performing numbers. As you say, there's comedy, there's
Speaker 1: a person out.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like, wow, oh, thank you, Bob. I
Speaker 2: appreciate that you've seen a lot of gigs. I appreciate
Speaker 2: that very much.
Speaker 1: I mean that one hundred percent. But I do have
Speaker 1: a question in your own mind. Is there a belief
Speaker 1: that if enough people see me, they'll spread the world
Speaker 1: and my audience will grow or do you more feel
Speaker 1: like I thank god I have the audience. I do have.
Speaker 1: And then the third question, which relates to the first,
Speaker 1: have you seen any evidence of any growth?
Speaker 2: I have absolutely seen growth. I absolutely believe that if
Speaker 2: I can get in front of people, they will like
Speaker 2: the show, they will enjoy the show, they will be
Speaker 2: moved by the show, and they will tell their friends
Speaker 2: to come next time. I believe that and I've seen
Speaker 2: that for sure. So this is why I now really
Speaker 2: enjoy opening for other people. And I was sort of
Speaker 2: really I was really against it at the beginning of
Speaker 2: my career because I was just like, I don't want
Speaker 2: to play for people who are just buying beer and
Speaker 2: waiting for the next band. I'd prefer you know, I
Speaker 2: don't want to play to a thousand people who waiting
Speaker 2: for someone else. I want to play to one hundred
Speaker 2: people who want to see me. It's misguided. It was
Speaker 2: a misguided idea, that misguided way of thinking, because it's
Speaker 2: extremely great when another artist asks you on tour with
Speaker 2: them for a start, they're giving you the audience they
Speaker 2: have earned over their own decades of work. I mean,
Speaker 2: I recently went out with Roger Daughtry and just had
Speaker 2: the best fucking time, and I'm like, I'm playing for
Speaker 2: who fans? I'm playing for Roger Daultry fans. These are
Speaker 2: people who've seen some of the best gigs that have
Speaker 2: ever been played on stage. They're discerning people, they have
Speaker 2: high expectations of what they're going to see. And I
Speaker 2: said to Roger, you know, you're obviously not going to
Speaker 2: play the entire who back catalog on your tour. Is
Speaker 2: there a song of yours or Who's that I might
Speaker 2: cover that might delight your fans? To hear that they're
Speaker 2: not going to hear in your set, he immediately goes acid, Queen,
Speaker 2: you need to do it. And it was such a
Speaker 2: thrill a learning that znge b playing it for his fans,
Speaker 2: just the being in the moment of being on stage
Speaker 2: before him for his audience thousands and thousands and eight
Speaker 2: thousand people, you know, and nailing it. And I was
Speaker 2: like yes, and them going yes, she did do a
Speaker 2: good job playing on her own. It was super cool.
Speaker 2: And I'm on the on tour at the moment with
Speaker 2: told the whitt Sprocket and I wasn't massively familiar with
Speaker 2: their music, not going up anyway for sure, because it
Speaker 2: wasn't that prevalent in the UK. And man, their fans
Speaker 2: are just amazing. I feel like I'm playing to my
Speaker 2: own people, like they're so open to listening to something
Speaker 2: they haven't heard before, and they're giving me like standing
Speaker 2: evations in the during the show and at the end
Speaker 2: of the show. It just and it really keeps seeing
Speaker 2: people saying I knew that one song, but I never
Speaker 2: never been to her show, didn't or catalog. Now they're
Speaker 2: checking out all the records. It's really cool. So I'm
Speaker 2: having a really good time. I'm really enjoying. I'm really
Speaker 2: enjoying playing, and there's been times where I haven't, so
Speaker 2: I'm really glad that I've come back around to enjoying,
Speaker 2: really being grateful for the job. And I love going
Speaker 2: on tour with people because it's a masterclass. You get
Speaker 2: to watch these other artists and bands. You know I've been.
Speaker 2: I went on tour with Simple Minds and the Pretenders.
Speaker 2: I mean, fucking hell, it's amazing, and it was funny.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you a quick funny story about Chrissy Hines.
Speaker 2: So Christy Hein was just terrifying and she's just like
Speaker 2: my favorite, and you know, I'm such a big fan
Speaker 2: of hers. She's my number one. And I was just
Speaker 2: too much of a fangirl to like be able to
Speaker 2: actually make friends with her, and she was just too
Speaker 2: scary to me. But every night she would call me
Speaker 2: out and she'd say, you better have been here for
Speaker 2: Katie Tunstall because she's still great, and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god. And then she'd like dedicate Brass and
Speaker 2: Pocket to me every night. We're just crazy. And at
Speaker 2: the end of the tour she goes, you gotta see Kass.
Speaker 2: She's awesome. She's awesome. She really inspires me, like what like,
Speaker 2: and I'm not really managing to kind of create a
Speaker 2: friendship rapport with her, you know. At the same time,
Speaker 2: it's like, this is insane. And I had to go
Speaker 2: and speak to her afterwards, and I was like, Chrissy,
Speaker 2: this is insane. You're Chrissy hein. I need to know
Speaker 2: what you mean when you say that I inspire you.
Speaker 4: And she goes, I don't know, You're just so fucking friendly.
Speaker 4: She's like, I can never do that, and I was like,
Speaker 4: that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Now I get it.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's your social media online presence?
Speaker 2: I really enjoy social media. You probably don't hear that
Speaker 2: very often. I don't. I just am not interested in this.
Speaker 2: This is what I'm fucking having for breakfast. I just
Speaker 2: I'm not It's just moronic. So I'm not doing that.
Speaker 1: You have TikTok, which is where things blow up these days.
Speaker 1: You have an act.
Speaker 2: I actually, yeah, I'm going to be really honest with you.
Speaker 2: I don't have TikTok, so I have Instagram and x
Speaker 2: but what I'm what my content gets put onto TikTok
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 1: Well, you have the type of act that could translate
Speaker 1: on TikTok and if you made stuff specifically for TikTok yourself,
Speaker 1: because TikTok to algorithm is are you are you?
Speaker 2: Are you giving me advice on how to expand my career?
Speaker 1: Bob, I'll give you a little advice. I'll give you
Speaker 1: the other advice. Okay. Management is about relationships, and certainly
Speaker 1: a manager who cares about you. Who's number one. If
Speaker 1: it's the biggest manager, it's irrelevant if you know they're not.
Speaker 1: You know. That's why relationships make a difference in terms
Speaker 1: of the act and the manager, so the manager can
Speaker 1: leverage opportunities. One of the big things for an act
Speaker 1: is exposure. One thing, you know is what you think
Speaker 1: is going to work almost universally never works. Yeah it's
Speaker 1: a thing you said, ah, I don't really want to
Speaker 1: do it, but okay, blah blah, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden that works. Okay, So having seen you, I say, okay,
Speaker 1: if someone saw this, they would get this is rare.
Speaker 1: I mean no, you put it very well. No one
Speaker 1: is doing what you're doing. So theoretically you could have
Speaker 1: a manager who could put you in spots where you
Speaker 1: could potentially get lucky. Okay, that's one thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The next thing is TikTok. Musicians have it wrong. I'll
Speaker 1: give you an example, which is kind of funny. You
Speaker 1: wear this guy, Jesse Wells. Jesse Wells is a guy
Speaker 1: who does topical material alone on his guitar, and he's
Speaker 1: releasing material very frequently, like one song a week, okay,
Speaker 1: and he's gotten amazing coverage and the New York type Listen.
Speaker 1: It's a hard road to hoe because you're not making
Speaker 1: songs for the radio whatever. But this guy went from
Speaker 1: essentially nothing he's been around to being People email me
Speaker 1: about Jesse Wells as much as they do of anybody. Okay,
Speaker 1: I look at Jesse Wells. He stands in their guitar,
Speaker 1: usually like in a field or by a railroad track
Speaker 1: or something, and he sings a topical song. Okay. The
Speaker 1: songs are brief, for like two minutes. Bob Dylan does
Speaker 1: not have a radio friendly voice, but he's the best
Speaker 1: lyricist of all time. Jesse Wells is not the best
Speaker 1: lyrics of all time, but he also doesn't have the
Speaker 1: world's most palatable voice, but he is on there every week.
Speaker 1: Just recently, there are people starting to do what he's doing.
Speaker 1: So if you're on TikTok saying, you know, performing a song,
Speaker 1: let's be very clear. I think briefer the better. Certainly,
Speaker 1: nothing more than two minutes. It could be thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: It could be something you make up on the spot
Speaker 1: that is one hundred percent true to yourself, not second
Speaker 1: guessing the audience, but being exhibiting. This is what I do.
Speaker 1: And in addition, you do more than play music. You
Speaker 1: have a personality of a sense of comedy. If that
Speaker 1: comes up you today, more than every you have to
Speaker 1: be in the game to win it. It's great to
Speaker 1: go on the road. Let's talk about the acts that
Speaker 1: are really not Spotify Top fifty acts, new acts, not
Speaker 1: you or you made it a tail end of the
Speaker 1: old thing. They can be fantastic. It takes longer than
Speaker 1: ever to break through. As we all know, most of
Speaker 1: them no breakthrough, but some do. Okay. None of those
Speaker 1: acts are Internet savvy. They all say, oh, I'm a musician,
Speaker 1: I don't do that. I got a team for that.
Speaker 1: The joke is on them because this is where the
Speaker 1: active audience is the one thing you're looking for. Your virality.
Speaker 1: The term is way overused. But this is what people
Speaker 1: don't realize. I quote this all the time. I ripped
Speaker 1: it out of Newsweek thirty years ago. I had it,
Speaker 1: don't have it anymore. But there's this mozart expert, she's
Speaker 1: really big in a world not my world. Meets Jeita
Speaker 1: and she says, I teach a lot. I tell my
Speaker 1: students to practice a long time and be great because
Speaker 1: there's very few great things out there, and if you're great,
Speaker 1: people will find you. We are dying to tell people
Speaker 1: we saw something great. Dying. We don't want to get paid.
Speaker 1: We just want to say, did you see that? Okay?
Speaker 1: And in the music world, listen, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who say, oh, I went this, and you go.
Speaker 1: And you don't trust them because they thinks everything's great.
Speaker 1: You have something unique? Do I think if you started
Speaker 1: using it on TikTok tomorrow you'd instantly blow up big.
Speaker 1: Probably not, but if you're not in the game, you
Speaker 1: have no chance of breaking.
Speaker 2: It's true. It's true. I did just get my one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand YouTube subscribers award, so I'm not doing not that.
Speaker 1: As I'm trying to say, is TikTok is where it's.
Speaker 2: At no I get I know, I appreciate the kickut
Speaker 2: of the RS because I know you're right and you have.
Speaker 1: The right personality and music for it. That is so rare.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, you've persuaded.
Speaker 1: Go on TikTok just to get a feel. You have
Speaker 1: to be on the other and look at this guy, Jesse.
Speaker 2: Do I have to download it? Do I have to
Speaker 2: look at it?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Can I just make stuff for it? Do I have
Speaker 2: to look at it.
Speaker 1: To at it? For a couple of reasons, One, okay,
Speaker 1: you get on it and it takes a while to
Speaker 1: learn what your interests are.
Speaker 2: Yes, you have to understand it, right, They have.
Speaker 1: To understand you, and then it will show you stuff
Speaker 1: you didn't know you were interested in that you love.
Speaker 1: No other platform is like this. I'm on TikTok. They
Speaker 1: start showing me car repair videos. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to repair a car. I'm never going to repair my
Speaker 1: own car whatever, But I find this shit riveting. Okay.
Speaker 2: Another thing, I'm like, I'm addicted to this chiropractor. But
Speaker 2: and I just fucking watched this chiropractor for like an
Speaker 2: hour and a half.
Speaker 1: But when you go on changing people's lives very quickly.
Speaker 1: You will learn what works and doesn't work. To be
Speaker 1: a musician, you have to pay your dues. Most people
Speaker 1: don't want to pay their dues, and today they're using shortcuts.
Speaker 1: Whether it be you know, it could be electronic instruments,
Speaker 1: but it also be writers, producers, etc. You have people
Speaker 1: on TikTok exhibiting what creativity it is mind blowing. Yes,
Speaker 1: you have people on there saying, let me tell you
Speaker 1: the story of my date. Let me tell you the
Speaker 1: story of the divorce. Okay, then go to see other
Speaker 1: things in go this person has a ton of personality.
Speaker 1: How did they tell the story this way?
Speaker 2: I mean part of it is you sort of have
Speaker 2: to have some one filming you all the time, and
Speaker 2: I don't have that person. You've got to pay that
Speaker 2: first you have a smartphone, and then but also then
Speaker 2: if I'm just doing it myself, like there's part of me,
Speaker 2: the part of me that fights just going I don't
Speaker 2: want my immediate response to something cool to be let's
Speaker 2: film it.
Speaker 1: But I know what you and I agree with a smartphone.
Speaker 1: The latest smartphones are you know, four K. They're unbelievable. Okay,
Speaker 1: you can buy a little tripod if you need, you know,
Speaker 1: you can use books, you can Amazon.
Speaker 2: Just promise me, I'm not going to be one of
Speaker 2: these people who fucking falls off Niagara Falls while I'm
Speaker 2: videoing myself. I don't want to die.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no no, don't. Don't. You have to have
Speaker 1: the modern tent. Noalitay, the old school social media. Tell
Speaker 1: me what you ate for breakfast, Give me a travel
Speaker 1: How are you making your album? Forget all that that
Speaker 1: is over? Okay, it's not a peek into your life
Speaker 1: for fans to know more. It's about exhibiting some creativity
Speaker 1: in your vein.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: I mean you may not do this, okay, but okay.
Speaker 1: There could be something in the news. You get an idea,
Speaker 1: you write a song that you post it. You're never
Speaker 1: gonna sing the song again, that's right. Or you could
Speaker 1: say I came into the hotel room, somebody's banging on
Speaker 1: the wall. I've been in too many hotel rooms. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you this story. I mean, just because you're inspired.
Speaker 1: If you're second guessing what the audience wants, you're done.
Speaker 1: Don't so it's your personality. I've been talking to you
Speaker 1: for two hours. Okay, what do I know you have
Speaker 1: a personality. It's not wimpy, and you can tell a
Speaker 1: story that puts you, that puts you ahead of a
Speaker 1: million people. The thing is you have a slight edge.
Speaker 1: And I used to I like to use the you
Speaker 1: know the concept of bell Crow. Delcrow has these little
Speaker 1: hooks and these little things. If there's no edge, nothing
Speaker 1: can hook you. So you have that little edge, you know.
Speaker 2: It's like.
Speaker 1: The bland artists are never I'm not gonna say you're
Speaker 1: super edgy, but doing something bland to appeal to a
Speaker 1: lot of people no longer works. You said it yourself,
Speaker 1: you go. If you want what I've got, you can't
Speaker 1: get it anywhere else. Does everybody want what I've got? No,
Speaker 1: the more people want what I've got, they aren't aware
Speaker 1: of it. Yes, okay, I got two final questions to
Speaker 1: let you go. One. In this journey, especially from university
Speaker 1: to getting your record deal, everything could given up.
Speaker 2: Not then. No, there was absolutely zero plan B. And
Speaker 2: I I really enjoyed the struggle. I found it purposeful,
Speaker 2: I found it exciting. It was an adventure. I didn't
Speaker 2: know where it was going to take me next. I
Speaker 2: loved just you know, jumping on the train or the bus,
Speaker 2: or having to sleep on the floor, or I really
Speaker 2: really enjoyed it. And there was definitely times where I
Speaker 2: was really frustrated because I couldn't get my music in
Speaker 2: front of the right people. I couldn't get, you know,
Speaker 2: having not being able to open the doors to be
Speaker 2: but I always had to say where I could just
Speaker 2: play for them, they could hear it. I reckon it
Speaker 2: would work, but I just couldn't get in front of
Speaker 2: the people that I needed to get in front of.
Speaker 2: But it felt it felt like I was writing a
Speaker 2: good story all of that, you know, while I was
Speaker 2: trying to get there. But I've definitely had after being
Speaker 2: successful that I didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: You didn't want to do it just to put a
Speaker 1: bow on it, not because you weren't successful, It was
Speaker 1: more it wasn't working for you.
Speaker 2: I think both. I definitely went through a period of
Speaker 2: time of being quite bitter where I felt like I
Speaker 2: should be doing better than I was, and I deserved
Speaker 2: to be doing better than I was. And that's nasty.
Speaker 2: That's a nasty thing to feel, and that turns you
Speaker 2: into an unpleasant person. And I know other musicians who
Speaker 2: who certainly feel that way, that they feel like they
Speaker 2: should be entitled to a more successful career than they have,
Speaker 2: and that's a bad feeling to have.
Speaker 1: How do you get over that?
Speaker 2: You can have a word for yourself. You're being an asshole.
Speaker 2: You're being an asshole. And even now I'm like, I
Speaker 2: see other artists, you know, going it's so hard and
Speaker 2: I should we should get paid more, and it's so
Speaker 2: expensive to tour, and it's like, well, yeah, okay, there's
Speaker 2: some unfairness, but you've got to be really fucking good
Speaker 2: as well. You've got to be You've got to be
Speaker 2: someone people want to pay their money to come and see,
Speaker 2: and you've got a responsibility to put on a really,
Speaker 2: really fucking good show if you want people to go
Speaker 2: to work all week and then spend their cash on
Speaker 2: your ticket. Don't think that you don't. It's not on you,
Speaker 2: incumbent on you to write really good material, make it
Speaker 2: sound really good on a record, and make it sound
Speaker 2: even better when you play it live. So I think
Speaker 2: it was having a word with myself, getting happy on
Speaker 2: the inside, get sorting my own shit out. So I
Speaker 2: wasn't blaming other people and blaming circumstances for why I
Speaker 2: didn't feel good, and then really having a spiritual reconnection
Speaker 2: with extremely deep gratitude that I'm one of the very
Speaker 2: very few people on this planet that gets to do
Speaker 2: this as a job and get to do this successfully
Speaker 2: and have a relationship with fans, and you are so
Speaker 2: lucky to do what you love doing for a job,
Speaker 2: because everybody would want that, and very few people get it.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talked about loving the struggle prior to getting
Speaker 1: your record deal. You're enjoying the struggle. Were you convinced
Speaker 1: you were going to make it?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it's very kind of gaseous term make it,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's not you're going to achieve whatever goal you had.
Speaker 2: I was definitely ambitious, for sure, but I really did
Speaker 2: not have any expectations, nor did I have particular dreams
Speaker 2: about doing as well as I did. I did not
Speaker 2: expect to do as well as I did. I did
Speaker 2: not know anybody who'd done as well as I did.
Speaker 2: And I think really the driver for me was I
Speaker 2: wanted to be a musician, not have to have another job.
Speaker 2: That was the dream. I just I wanted to do
Speaker 2: music as a living and if that meant I remember
Speaker 2: like arguing with my mom.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: She was just like, this is insane. You shouldn't expect
Speaker 2: to do what you love for a living. That's what
Speaker 2: hobbies are for, you know. You need to get a
Speaker 2: proper job. They were very worried about me, especially as
Speaker 2: I'm you know, getting close to thirty and I don't
Speaker 2: have any money. And I said, I watched you be
Speaker 2: a teacher, and I don't believe that you've loved that job.
Speaker 2: And she was like, no, it's a difficult job. And
Speaker 2: I was like, well, it's not that it's difficult. It's
Speaker 2: just that I would prefer to not go on holiday,
Speaker 2: not go out for dinner, not have nice new clothes,
Speaker 2: and do what I love every day. I don't want
Speaker 2: to work a job that I fucking hate and have
Speaker 2: a two week holiday and have some money. I would
Speaker 2: prefer to be poor and do this because I'm going
Speaker 2: to be miserable. I'm going to die regretful if I
Speaker 2: don't spend my life as a musician. And so I
Speaker 2: was so the make it. Part of it was just
Speaker 2: to not have to do another job.
Speaker 1: Okay, what I think is the final question, how do
Speaker 1: you perform on stage with this hearing problem.
Speaker 2: It's cheaper than it used to be because I only
Speaker 2: need one wedge, so I just have a wedge on
Speaker 2: my right hand side. It's awesome. It's much easier. It
Speaker 2: was the hardest part about the hearing loss was that
Speaker 2: I got vertical, a really bad vertigo. For three months
Speaker 2: after I lost my hearing, I couldn't walk. I was
Speaker 2: like having to hold the sink while I'm brushing my
Speaker 2: teeth because I was going to fall over. It was grim.
Speaker 2: It was the grimmest thing I've ever experienced. And I
Speaker 2: really feel so bad for people who suffer with vertico
Speaker 2: because it's completely debilitating and you don't know if it's
Speaker 2: you don't know if it's going to go away. I
Speaker 2: didn't know if that was it for the rest of
Speaker 2: my life. It's just horrendous. I was so nauseous and
Speaker 2: I couldn't really you know, you can't really drive, and
Speaker 2: I couldn't really. I couldn't stand on stage for three months.
Speaker 2: I was definitely out of action. And the first gig
Speaker 2: I did after it started to obey, I was nervous
Speaker 2: that I was going to fall over. And I got
Speaker 2: through it, and that was great. I got through it.
Speaker 2: And then it just slowly improved and improved. I don't
Speaker 2: I can't do roller coasters and stuff anymore, but I
Speaker 2: don't suffer from vertigo anymore. And honestly, when that stopped,
Speaker 2: I could give a shit about having both my ears.
Speaker 2: I was like, as long as that has stopped, I'm
Speaker 2: good and listen. I have tenetus's annoying. I can hear
Speaker 2: it all the time. I have not got stereo hearing anymore.
Speaker 2: I miss it. I remember loving hearing panned backing vocals
Speaker 2: and how nice that was. But as my producer friends
Speaker 2: tell me, all the best records were made in Monomi.
Speaker 2: So it's really not impacted me very much at all.
Speaker 2: I can do everything that I used to do. I
Speaker 2: just I can't hear the person to my left to dinner.
Speaker 2: That's it. Otherwise, you know, I think it had it
Speaker 2: happened to me ten years earlier, it would have been
Speaker 2: really extremely challenging, because I'd and you know whatever, fifteen
Speaker 2: years of touring under my belt. I was actually, it
Speaker 2: might sound strange, but when it happened, there was actually
Speaker 2: some relief that I could stop for a while. And
Speaker 2: I was like, oh shit, I'm burnt out here. I've burnt.
Speaker 2: I've burnt my nervous system out, and I need to
Speaker 2: be more careful. And now it's a real reminder that
Speaker 2: I've got to look after myself. And I'm very very
Speaker 2: When I went there, I kept singing that Nina Simone song.
Speaker 3: Got mass, got my liver, I got my blood.
Speaker 2: I was like, I can walk, I can see, I
Speaker 2: can still hear, I'm healthy, I'm good. It could have
Speaker 2: been so much worse. There's so much worse things that
Speaker 2: could have happened.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think we've come to the end of the
Speaker 1: feeling we've known. I want to thank you Katie for
Speaker 1: telling your stories and ensuring your life with my audience.
Speaker 1: So thanks for taking the time.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Bob, Thank you for what you do.
Speaker 2: It's a constant in a crazy world, and your love
Speaker 2: of music pervades. It's really really cool and it's an
Speaker 2: honor to be on the show. Thanks for everyone listening.
Speaker 2: And it's been really great talking about all this stuff.
Speaker 2: I've really loved it.
Speaker 1: It certainly has. Till next time. This is Bob Last