Oh… I love Chai-Ovna
Oh… I love Chai-Ovna
To say I was nervous undertaking my first interview was an understatement. Especially when I got given some damn-fool questions off the editor. Okay, I know he’s drunk all of Sons and Daughters’ pernod last time he met up with them, but that doesn’t mean he has to give me questions like "Oh, ask them to furnish you with an eccentric image or two" What the fuck? Anyway, I calmed my nerves and met up with the very engaging foursome, named as follows… Adele Bethel, David Gow, Ailidh Lennon and Scott Paterson.
IN: You were in Germany yesterday with dEUs? How was that to perform on the same stage as them? They’ve got such a history… not sure if anyone is a fan?
David: They’ve been together a long time, I mean for us we were really tired cause we had just got back from a 10-week tour in America. We literally flew back that day, that night rather. We were really jet lagged, but it was a fun show. I think it went really well. But, it was nice to play with dEUs, I love that single, Suds and Soda.
Scott: They were really good last night.
IN: Yeah, They’ve just been doing it for so long, so I can only imagine. Maybe you guys would like to talk about some of your other influences, because your music to me is kind of like this cauldron, this witches’ pot of all these different styles, you can hear them individually and they are all blended together seamlessly.
David: SLAYER!
Scott: I don’t like Slayer. Loads of stuff, there is almost too much. Cure, The Stranglers, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash… loads of stuff, loads and loads.
David: Bon Jovi
IN: Of course, it’s so obvious. So, lets go right into the Glasgow stuff… You worked with Edwyn Collin? How was that?
Scott: It was great, it was really really great.
IN: He wasn’t too difficult?
Scott: No, not at all. He’s a really lovely sweet guy.
Adele: He is really humble, despite his past and what he done. We had to really press him for information.
Scott: He is kind of a mad professor. He’s got this studio that filled with great old gear from the 1950’s and 60’s. I think he styles himself on kind of Joe Meek, and that kinda crazy left of field producer. And it was just really great, and he makes you feel really relaxed in the studio and he’s got loads of great ideas.
David: He’s really funny as well and he’s got a really wicked sense of humour.
Adele: (laughs) Dark.
David: Very dry and dark. He’s quite absurd. He was always talking in stupid characters.
Adele: He’s probably the most eccentric person I’ve met.
Scott: Him and his engineer, had these kind of fake 1920’s BBC kind of voices that they’d put on, and they’d talk to each other in these voices for like ages, for like half an hour for something… (funny proper voice, "What do you think we should do with this track?" and dadodododod… it was really eccentric, but it was really funny and made you feel really at home.
IN: Tell us about Postcard Records and the influence that it has had throughout the decades in Glasgow
Scott: It was the first of those kind of, you know, catching labels, you know, Chemikal Underground had put out tons of things as well… So it was the first of many, and yeah, I think it influenced a lot of people, you know, right through the last 20 years.
David: Plus Orange Juice as well. Very important.
Scott: Especially Orange Juice, I think.
David: Such a part of the fabric of Scottish history.
Scott: They’re one of bands everyone had forgotten for a long time, and then now in the last two years a lot of people start talking about them again. It’s good, you know, there are a lot of other kind of forgotten bands that are getting their dues again. Definitely Orange Juice.
IN: What are some of your favorite Glasgow tearooms?
David: ummm tearooms?
Scott: Oh… I love Chai-Ovna, this one that is next to the University that we go to. It’s done up like a kind of Moroccan…
Ailidh: Where is that then?
Scott: You know it? Oh, you should go, you’d love it… You get food, and you get like any millions of teas. And the best tea, is this stuff called Yogi Chai and it is like cinnamony and milky and like really sweet and really really good. And they do like falafels, it’s all really good stuff there.
Ailidh: Wait a minute is that next to…?
Adele: You know where the…
David: It is off Tigel Street…
Adele: What’s that club called, the Hob?
Scott; no, Eeey, The Hob. It’s off of Tigel Street, and you go into it… and in the winter, and it is what you imagine a hobbit house to be like. It’s all really cool, everyone sits on cushions and they got those hookahs, you know, those pipe things.
IN: So Yogi Chai is you favourite?
Scott: Yogi Chai is really good, yeah. But, honey chai is really good as well. There was one time I went and the guy just made me something and I’ve never been able to find out what it was since, but it was the best drink I’ve ever had. Every time I go back, they don’t know what it was, the guy just made it, on spur of the moment.
IN: I myself have been drinking a lot of green tea now. I notice you get really jacked up, like this morning I had two cups and I was bouncing off the walls. Which is a good thing when you have to get a lot done in the morning.
David: And it’s good for you, Green tea.
IN: I think so. It also raises your metabolism.
Ailidh: Really?
IN: Yeah, a few people have been telling me to get off the coffee, I drink coffee with sugar, and a girl friend of mine said that if you replace the coffee with green tea you’ll lose like 2 kilos in a few weeks or something.A green tea diet… Hey what about the Future Pilots?
(Incendiary is met by way of response, with four very puzzled faces)
Scott: Say that again sorry?
Adele: Future Pilots AKA? I don’t know them at all.
Scott: I don’t know them at all.
Ailidh: Are they also from Glasgow?
Adele: Oh yeah… that guy… from?
IN: The Soup Dragons.
Scott: Oh I met him once.
Adele: Oh yeah. He doesn’t really, I don’t see them around much, you know what I mean, I don’t know if they even lives in the city.
Scott: They don’t play out a lot.
Adele: It’s quite a special event really.
Scott: I thought they stopped going.
David: No, they’ve recorded something the last year.
IN: What is the music scene like in Glasgow?
Adele: We’ve just not been there…
Scott: Yeah, we are a little out of touch because we’ve been on the road.
Adele: There are a lot of new bands, and always something going on.
David: There are always a lot of bands just bubbling under.
Scott: I mean when we just got a record deal, and people like Franz and stuff just got a record deal, there was loads of stuff going on at the same time. There’s a lot that is still going as well, and I presume that there is a whole lot of new bands as well. It is always really vibrant. There’s always lots of really different stuff going on. You can go see music most nights of the week. It’s a small place and when you go to gigs you kind it’s always the same people, and you always see your friends.
IN: How is it now, when you go back, because you are not really around anymore, how are you received? Do you get mobbed? Or boo-ed from the streets?
Scott: Ohh nooo, (laughs & giggles) They don’t think any different of us. Because your not any different, you are just the same person.
IN: You’re still based there?
Scott: Yeah, the crowds are great… our favorite crowds is always our hometown, I mean Glasgow is great for music, like touring bands, they always like Glasgow audiences. I mean, if you’re from Glasgow, it is just double that, you know, it is just the best reception you could ever get. We love going back to our hometown.
IN: You’re going to Australia in less than a month… this will be the first trip to Australia? This is exciting for you right? Because isn’t it the home of the Sons and Daughters TV originally from Australia?
(Suddenly there are laughs all round)
David: I never thought about that actually.
Adele: Oh god, I never thought about that either. People have asked in Australian interviews I’ve done, people think we got it… people go, "did you know…" You know it’s coming, and you’re like, "ummm-hummm". (giggle)
David: I mean, the show is on 5 days a week.
Adele: It’s still on.
David: Maybe what they’ve set up, it is not actually gigs, but Sons and Daughters conventions. (laughs) We’ve been duped into doing loads of shows.
IN: It will be really funny to see who turns up, maybe just a bunch of housewives.
Scott: Well things are going really well in Australia, all the journals we spoken to are really excited about it. And it looks like the tours going to sell out as well. So we’re really excited.
IN: As far as audiences go, are their stereotypes for different European countries?
Adele: Not really.
David: Actually, maybe a tiny little bit. It depends, it’s not so much the country as if it’s your own crowd, and it’s pretty similar really. We been playing a lot of support tours as well, and the crowds can be quite varied between them, you know, we just finished a tour with Bright Eyes and the crowd were pretty much youngsters.
IN: Surprising right? In the US or over here? In the US their crowd is so young. Yeah, one of my really good friends from high school is their sound technician.
Scott: Who? Jacob?
IN: Yeah! He’s the best right?!
Adele: Jacob, he’s lovely. (she blushes profusely)
IN: He always talks about how strange the crowds are here, because it’s all middle-aged men and in the States it’s the complete opposite.
David: A lot of young devoted teenagers that absolutely worship and love him.
Adele: Boys and girls, they love him.
Scott: "I love you Conor" (laughs)
IN: Are they throwing underwear on stage?
David: Didn’t see any underwear.
Scott: Definitely some soiled underwear in the audience.
David: I think if it was encouraged, it would’ve happened. He would start singing a song, and they would start singing along, and he would just stop, saying please, I can’t handle you singing along with me.
IN: Good for him, it would be quite annoying, like when the telephone is echoing, quite annoying.
Ailidh: Yeah, it’s hard enough when people clap. And they don’t clap in time.
(laughs)
Adele: We get that a lot. (laughs)
David: You can’t pay attention, you got to…
Scott: You just got to listen to Dave.
David: Yeah, Dave’s not listening to the clapping. (David laughs)
IN: So a show like tonight, Festival show with a bunch of bands… Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah from NYC and Australian band Architecture in Helsinki, it’s a really interesting little festival eh?
David: I don’t know what to expect.
Scott: I am really looking to seeing all of those bands as well. Loads of bands I’ve never seen before, well I’ve seen Black Rebel one time before, but I’ve never seen Clap your Hands yet.
IN: BRMC puts on an amazing live show. I mean I think, I’ve seen them like 6 times.
David: yeah, we’ve seen them in London. (smirks and smiles at Adele) Yeah we were crowd surfing.
(Adele laughs devilishly)
David: We were right up front actually.
Scott: It was a tiny club. Tiny. Really sweaty.
David: It was good, it was a good atmosphere.
IN: Out of those bands, are their bands you want to meet as well? Is it friendly backstage, do you walk around and introduce yourselves?
Scott: Sure, well we just got here, but generally yeah… you don’t really meet any bands that are stand-offish. And if they are, it is probably really understandable, because they are probably just really tired and have been touring for too long or whatever. Most bands are really nice.
IN: I have a question about caged birds… and how you guys feel about them. It’s actually personal, because when I was coming over here there was this beautiful grey African parrot on the corner at this antique shop that was whistling at me, which I thought was really fitting cause I really wanted to ask your opinion of keeping birds as pets.
David: Something like a parrot…
Scott: it’s a bit big…too big to keep in a wee cage.
Adele: If you’re going to have an animal, you shouldn’t have it in a cage.
Scott: It should be free to fly about I think. Well Adele had, what was it called, free the birds? (laughs) Feed the birds?
(more laughs ensue at this point)
Adele: I had this club at school called "Feed the Birds". When I was like 10, no 9 maybe, it just involved like people had to feed them every morning and make sure they there okay.
IN: Wild birds? Yeah… I put a bird feeder on my back balcony, but they haven’t found it yet.
Scott: They will.
David: Did you put food in it? (he laughs pout loud)
IN: Yeah, I put food in it… but then we got mice, because I had the extra food in the house. My boyfriend made me throw out all the food, including the stuff in the feeder. Maybe when winter comes, they’ll find it.
Scott: It’ll be just a couple of little birds, and then they’ll tell their friends and before you know it.
IN: I just don’t want those big ass birds coming, cause then they poo everywhere and it’s a mess.
David: Get a cat.
IN: Get a cat? But they eat birds.
Scott: But don’t keep it in a cage. (he laughs)
IN: I actually don’t like cats that much, they are a bit creepy, and I really like dogs.
Adele: I’m a dog person.
David: I use to think cats were creepy till we got one, I like them now. I know what you mean though; they’re a bit sly.
IN: I like cats, I get along with them fine, but there is a wall there, for me and I know it. Anyone have any pets?
David: We’ve got a cat. We’ve got a couple of cats.
Scott: My moms got a cat.
Adele: I want a dog, but I can’t have one.
IN: I know. Well, you could get a little one and keep it in your purse.
Ailidh: Oh, like Paris Hilton.
Adele: Oooohhhh god… (she laughs)
IN: Some small dogs are cool, treat them right and not like a little baby then they grow up good. Not like some Jack Russells, who have Napoleon complexes… Yeah, it is not really a reality living in a city and touring eh?
David: You need to have a lot of space as well.
Adele: I’ll force my parents to get one.
David: A Fair Weather Dog, just go around and see it when you can be arsed.
Words by Zoe E Gottehrer.