& THE HOOVES OF DESTINY BETH JEANS HOUGHTON
frantically around, throwing words and notions at her in the hope they’ll stick. ‘Folk’, ‘anti-folk’, ‘comeback’, ‘Kiedis’, ‘hiding behind her costumes’ and ‘sufferer of Synaesthesia’ are the ones delivered daily at her feet, while all the time Beth and her band, the Hooves of Destiny have put their energy into crafting one of the most explorative debuts of this decade, ‘Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose’. Despite her deserved wariness of the press, Beth was a charm as she gave us her time before this month’s Holt Festival appearance...
It’s
We’re doing this interview ahead of your date at the Holt Festival this month. Holt’s a beautiful place in the north Norfolk countryside, a calm village close to the sea – is that the kind of place you’d normally like to spend a Monday evening? Yes, that sounds perfect actually!
It’s a great line-up over the duration of the festival – John Cooper Clark, Alan Bennett… - I just watched a documentary about John Cooper Clark actually. He has one of those old rock star faces that make you wonder how they look so good at that age.
Now Beth, because we’re a magazine concerned with our own locality, tell us what it was like starting your musical career in the northeast and what you took from its musical heritage, if anything? Erm… probably nothing! I don’t know, I get asked a lot about growing up in Newcastle and what it brings to my music but I don’t tend to think it does, I mean, it probably does have some sort of influence, but no more influence than me having lived somewhere else really. I just happen to have been born here!
Was there much of a scene starting out, because you did start young? Yeah, I guess there was but I don’t think I ever really felt involved with that scene.Te people were a lot older and it was much more of a competition; I think in England, in general, it’s more of a competition, whereas, say, in America they seem to support each
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other.Tey’re happy for their friends to get somewhere, whereas here it’s more like a rat race.
We were deliberating in the office over whether you’d ever had any vocal training – growing up, how did you find your voice? Erm, I didn’t have any training, but I don’t really know because I used to sing a lot when I was a kid and although it wasn’t the main thing I wanted to do when I grew up, I always really enjoyed singing in the house. I always used to try and go for the parts in school plays and stuff but I was told that I couldn’t sing, so I’m glad I didn’t listen to them! I still don’t feel like I’m a singer though, I just sing because I wouldn’t want anyone else to sing what I’d written really!
Well worry ye not Beth, to our ears it’s a beaut. Now, I was reading the music papers last year and a lot were citing a comeback from you, which made me double take, as you’d only been slightly off the radar for a year or so… Hahaha yeah, and I hadn’t even had a record yet, my debut record!
Is there a sort of unsustainable expectation when it comes to your activity? Yeah, well a lot of it was news to me because I don’t read a lot of the stuff that people write, but someone told me – I think it was my grandma or someone – that someone said it was a comeback record! I just thought it was strange because I hadn’t really been anywhere to come back from! I’ve
as if Beth Jeans Houghton stands in the middle of a swirling vortex of music press, rooted to the ground that she knows she’s on, while journalists spin
been touring and making music the whole time, but yeah, it was a bit strange.
You came to Norwich, to the Arts Centre about two years ago now, I think and since then it’s been a long wait for us for your debut album, as you’re well aware – - Ha, yeah…
Can you tell us about the time that it’s taken to come to fruition? Yeah, well it was finished about three years ago and came out about two years after that, ha! Te delay was just sort of like boring label stuff from contracts, and people got sick who were working on the record, so it was frustrating, but I’m glad that it’s out and we’re talking about the next record now, which is good for me ‘cause I’ve all these songs that are written already for it, which we can’t really do anything with ‘til we record them, so that’s a positive.
It’s not called a release for nothing – did you feel like you’d kind of exorcised those songs when the album was finally released? Yes, stupidly I did think that I’d exorcised them and then I realised that I had to tour them for like a year, haha, so I’ll feel like I’ve exorcised that record once we have another record out, because this is still the one that I’m promoting. I do love it, and I love the songs and love playing them live and stuff, but the new music is difficult and sometimes it is difficult to go back. You know,
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