Wymondham, so I’m down with your East Anglian vibes! Where is the best place for you to write? Your favourite environment, or the most conducive place for creativity? It must be really hard to find when you’re constantly on the road… Yeah, I really admire those people who say ‘yeah, we wrote this on tour’, because I can’t do that, I just don’t know how to access that part of my brain when I’m… when I’m just tired. Te physical reality of touring is quite brutal, you know. It’s not often I bounce out of my tour bunk and go ‘hmm, I really want to write some music’. I find touring is about something completely physical and uniting with the crowd and meeting the people who like your music and talking with them and the whole thing is like expending energy. Te privacy of my own little kitchen is where most of my ideas have been written. So it’s still, to this day, a very private, hibernating thing to do.
I was really interested in the retreat you took to Vipassana in Herefordshire, where you were silent for a couple of weeks. I often find that to access the very cerebral part of me, I have to be alone, so I really admire what you did there… Yeah, on the surface it was quite a superficial reason that I went. But actually, that’s not true because I find any way that you access your brain – whether you see that as spiritual, or just a physical reality – I find that whole world totally fascinating. Tis particular course was a silent retreat, and it came after nearly two years of being on tour. I just felt completely fucked, haha, completely spent. I’d read about doing stuff like that before, but this one really appealed because I could just shut the fuck up for 10 days! I feel different now; it’s allowed me to be massively physical when I perform, while knowing there’s this space, this new void that I’ve discovered by doing that.
You wrote the new songs from ‘Bruiser’ initially with a lot more production, then took the brave step to start stripping them back to their bare essentials, which I think takes
I’M ALWAYS WRESTLING SOME KIND OF IMAGINARY DRAGON ON STAGE AS WELL, SO I’LL DEFINITELY BE WRESTLING SOMETHING.
confidence – where does this come from? Well I think there’s a confidence that comes with lasting as a band for seven years; you reach a point where there’s a stability that finally cements, even without us having huge commercial success or mass appeal, or being very wealthy. Eventually you become galvanised against your ups and downs and you realise that after two records, you’re getting closer to what you want to express. You get an appetite for something, and you really hone in on what you’re after.
I read a quote where you said that ‘Bruiser’ reflects you personally more than any other album, but it’s not necessarily auto-biographical – you seem to be acting as a story- teller. Where do you get these tales from? I was laughing with someone the other day because I was saying that lyrically, no-one ever teaches you what to do, so sometimes I feel like a bit of a fraud because I think I haven’t practiced this, I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m just reflecting on my own emotional intensity and I’ve done that for the last two albums and it’s been very coded, but very me, and that will always be there. By the very nature of so much travel though, I’ve been observing more people and touring brings you very close to people, so I’ve been reaching out a little more externally on this record. As I’ve travelled as well, I’ve found little obsessions along the way. You find yourself travelling Australia and you get a few days off and you see some artwork in Sydney, then you read something and it all comes together. Te things you do when you’re away, living out of a suitcase, get magnified, so the thing that really
excited you that week becomes your obsession.
I really like the idea of you as narrator, and you often come across almost like a character on stage, with attention always taken to styling your stage presence, so I wondered what you’re gonna bring to this show in Norwich? Well, a lot will depend on the weather. It might be leather hot pants, or I might go full rubber waterproofs really. Leather or rubber… kinky. Hahaha! Erm, but at the same time, I’ve always been fascinated by beautiful clothes and I like to wear things I can really move around in, rather than strapped up and crazy. So what I think we really bring is a new burst of energy; there’ll be a rawness that I think will be felt by the audience. I’m always wrestling some kind of imaginary dragon on stage as well, so I’ll definitely be wrestling something.
Wrestling a dragon in leather hot pants… that idea’s got me quite excited. It’s all got a little bit Tolkien hasn’t it?
Yes, fetish Tolkien, which is where we should probably leave it…
Emma Garwood
Te Duke Spirit perform as part of Saturday’s line-up at Norwich’s new event, Te Norfolk Spectacular at the Norfolk Showground on the Arena Stage on September 3rd. Read the uncut version of this interview online at
Outlineonline.co.uk
outlineonline.co.uk /September 2011 / 23
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