with him, apart from the fact we shared the same singing teacher once – not at the same time though!
I read that prior to the competition, you’d supported Lisa Hannigan, you’d opened for Diana Krall, and other things like that, but despite your experiences, you seemed genuinely surprised to even get through the semi-finals, into the final! Very! Because I didn’t go there to win it, I just went to have a good time and hopefully make some musical friends with people in the area. I thought, ‘I know, I’ll try and get to know bands here, because bands here do really well’ – obviously only if they’re good, and the vast majority of them are. Lots of people in Norwich love music and so I thought, ‘brilliant, even if I can just find people to hang out with, that’ll be great.’ Plus I didn’t know whether I’d ever get to play a venue like Open, otherwise. I would just like to be, like, ‘yeah, I played there!’
So you were mildly surprised to get through the semi-final, to the final – how did you feel on that day? Tere was a good buzz about the place…
Yeah, there was. I’m a queen procrastinator, I’d say, and I try to take things in my stride, but then when I saw the footage that was coming up from the other bands of the interviews and they were all like, stoked and had a strategy – or not a strategy, but they were like, ‘yeah, we think we can win this’, I was like, ‘oh God, I need to just check this out – is this a tiny competition or…’ and
had been so drawn in by your voice previously… You see, everyone said doing an instrumental would be brave, and I was like, ‘really?!’ For me, I didn’t realise that you could repeat material that you’d done in the semi-finals, and then I realised people were, but I thought, ‘hey, it doesn’t matter’, and I’m kind of glad I did. But the reason I did the instrumental was because I
kinda feel like I was looking at myself from outside myself.
it was nothing to laugh about! So the Wednesday before, I just started to get very nervous, like ‘oh god, why am I doing this? I shouldn’t be doing this. I really shouldn’t be doing this – they got it wrong, maybe I should just pull out!’ I didn’t eat ‘til after, so the night of the gig, I ate after it! But when I got there, it was OK; I had my friend Simon Lewis on cello with me, which was lovely and it was nice to share that experience of playing in that great hall with a good friend of mine. And obviously just show off his ninja skills! It was a great vibe when I got there though, and it was great to meet the other three bands from the other semi-final.
In the final, you announced that your second song would be an instrumental, and I was like, ‘oh, that’s a risky business!’ because we
wanted to bring the dobro along, which was totally self-indulgent!
As I said before, you’d done a lot before the competition, and Guy Chambers had written a song for you, is that right? Yeah, that came about in July. I’d previously been working with the Unthanks and Adrian McNally, the producer had been commissioned to produce an album for the Stables in Milton Keynes, as part of their international festival. Tis album was based on stories given to two boat builders who had been donated two items made of wood, items of significance, to build a yacht from, from these pieces – say, a wooden leg and I think there was a piece of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar – they all had stories connected. Te reason that Guy Chambers was involved was because he used to go to Te Stables as a child, so he has a rooted connection. He wrote ‘House of Wood’ and… I don’t know how I managed to get on that! [LAUGHS] I think Adrian emailed me briefly and said, ‘have a listen to this song, and tell me what you think of it’, and the demo wasn’t a demo… it was a proper thing, you know! It was great but my only comment was ‘it could do with some dobro!’ So he asked me if I wanted to come down to London to play some on it, and I was like, ‘Oh, sweet! Yeah!’, then he asked me to sing it. Guy OKed it and the rest is history!
Photography by
Now, in my research, I saw your project that you’d done with Macka and I thought it was great that you’d been able to explore something else, musically. Who is Macka, and how did
18 /January 2013/
outlineonline.co.uk
Tey had to sedate me, had to hold me down, everything. It was wild; I
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