LEWIS DURHAM of KITTY, DAISY & LEWIS: What Will Be… Will Be
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
First appearing on the scene eighteen years ago, Kitty, Daisy & Lewis have made something of a name for themselves when it comes to their collaborative and exploratory music endeavors. Hailing from London – more specifically Camden Town where they are renowned for building their own professional recording studio – the trio of siblings are well-known multi-instrumentalists who incorporate everything from R&B, Soul and Punk through to West Indian influences in their music.
With over quarter of a million record sales behind them, Kitty, Daisy & Lewis once again return to New Zealand on the back of their latest offering Superscope, released just last year. I caught up with Lewis Durham, the middle child of the trio, to discuss how they approach both songwriting and recording and just what did happen to their mum when they were last in the Hawkes Bay …
Does being in a band with your siblings make the musical process simpler in your mind or harder?
“Well we have been playing together now for like the best part of twenty years so we’ve kinda learnt to get along with each other if you know what I mean. As you do when someone has brothers or sisters you just constantly argue and there is no democracy, you just say what you want because you know that at the end of the day you’re still family and it doesn’t really affect anything; but in a professional capacity of working like if you’re playing on the road, doing shows or working in the studio making records you do have to get along otherwise things don’t happen.
So I guess our relationship is different to lots of other families but it doesn’t necessarily make it easier or harder, sometimes it’s both. When you are working with other people sometimes it can be hard to get across what you want or the way you want something to sound or the way you want someone to vibe on music. With my sisters I know they understand usually from the first time where I am coming from but also vice versa, then on the other hand it can lead to like ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, you always do this’ and all that [laughs] so it goes both ways.”
Being connected as family I suppose you must also have like an unspoken language in some ways, in other words you get each other immediately.
“Yeah, I mean we also have some unwritten rules I guess. Like with a song they usually take more of the leeway first on where the song goes in terms of production and things like that.”
It’s well-known that all three of you are multi-instrumentalists, how did this love of playing develop?
“I don’t know, again it’s hard to say because I only know it from my side, but like it was never the case of we had lessons in guitar and whatever, we never really had lessons. But we had a piano at home and we had a guitar and we would kind of mess around on those. I think if you can play the guitar you can kinda pick up the bass and start working things out. I guess we had access to two instruments so we could pick them up and play and I think that’s where it came from really, there was just instruments lying around. We had a harmonica when we were kids, so Kitty picked that up to play and I guess most people at home don’t really have a harmonica so it would never have really occurred to someone to pick it up to play.”
Now as you pointed out earlier, you have been playing together for twenty years, what learnings have you taken away from your time in the music industry for someone so young?
“I think in terms of music industry stuff we’ve been lucky because we have always been able to do what we have wanted to do musically. Within the industry, we’ve been lucky enough to sell a certain amount of records and have enough popularity to keep going and I think what we’ve learned is that records don’t really sell anymore so it’s not really about that it’s more just about live music now and being able to sustain that way.
It’s funny when you give advice to people like starting out or playing music whatever there’s really not much you can say except do what you love and if people enjoy it and want to hear it they’ll make that known. Although a lot of it is luck I think” [laughs]
[laughs] Sometimes I do believe it is sheer luck. But often if you come out with the right sound at the right time it can set you up for life.
“Yeah, I dunno. It’s weird isn’t it? I dunno … fuck knows. I try not to think about it too much, you know what I mean?” [mutual laughter]
Let’s talk about the latest album Superscope, it’s heavy with rockabilly and blues. It has also been noted by several reviewers that there is no ska this time around. Did it not fit the aesthetic of the album?
“Yeah it wasn’t a conscious decision to do any West Indian style stuff on there it was just kind of the way it panned out. Actually there was a song that was a Rocksteady kind of thing that me and Kitty wrote but it never made it onto the album, it just didn’t seem to … I dunno we didn’t put it on for some reason … it didn’t seem to not work, it just didn’t fit in somehow, not musically because of the way it was, we just didn’t feel it was right.
I think when you are making a record you just have to focus on what you think is right with where your head is at, at that time, and it’s not a case of we don’t do that anymore it’s just a case of that’s the way it developed. Also partly you can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again; don’t get me wrong Ska music is one of my favourites types of music and that’s predominantly what I listen to in my leisure time, but I dunno there’s no real reason why none of that is on there. Maybe on the next record!” [laughs]
I have to agree with you on that point though, I think fans or critics get hung up on a sound and they expect the band to continually produce that sound. There has to be some kind of evolution for any artist to survive…
“Yeah, exactly; you can’t keep doing the same thing. But then again as I said it wasn’t a conscious decision, it was just something that naturally happened and by the end it was like ‘Oh man there is nothing with a ska beat on there’ and it was like ‘Oh, ok, whatever’”
But that’s cool though because it makes the album more organic as you went through the process of creating this album and it just is what it is.
“Actually it’s kinda funny because when we came out of our second record which is when we had the first song which is kinda Ska-esque on it if you like, people were like ‘Oh, you’re doing ska this time, what happened?’ or ‘Why aren’t you doing the old rock n roll stuff anymore?’ so it’s like every time you release a record people kinda backtrack one if you know what I mean?”
I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to approach music with a preconception.
“Yeah, you just gotta do what you feel at the time.”
While we have just discussed music developing organically, I have to ask, did you have any blueprint ideas or themes going into the album?
“Not really, because me, Kitty and Daisy have quite different outlooks on music and production and writing and stuff; we all have very different angles on it. Which leads to I guess all our records being something that isn’t focused on one thing, there’s always loads of different angles in the songwriting. Like Kitty’s songs are completely different from mine and Daisy’s and vice versa so I think in that respect it always seems to make a record which has all these different journeys in it which I think somehow all seem to mesh into one in some crazy way.
But I don’t really know, it’s like I have made records with other people and when there is …not like a theme that you’re going for but kinda a vibe or a story I don’t necessarily know if it works better or worse, it’s just a way of doing it you know?
I find albums kind of strange anyway because when we were kids we always grew up listening to singles, you know just pulling singles out of the draw like ‘Oh I wanna hear that one T-Rex song’ and the next one ‘Oh yeah, let’s put The Kinks on now’ and it was never about music has to flow through a journey, it was just we wanted to hear the next fucking best song next you know? That’s what mattered to us and I think to me it still does; like if I’m in a club I want to hear killer after killer tune and sitting down and listening to an album doesn’t really appeal to me that much unless they are records that are really focused in that way.”
Concept albums that have a linear aspect to them, it works but I understand where you are coming from and it has certainly lead to the rise of the playlist.
“Like I rarely sit down with someone and listen to a whole album it never happens, you get halfway through a track and you get an idea for another one or something. I think our brains are too big for that now!” [laughs]
Who takes charge when songwriting or is it completely collaborative at all times?
“Yeah it’s everyone, we usually write lyrically separately and then when we all come together in the studio we’ll work out arrangement and stuff like that for the songs, but lyrically it’s usually always separate. There were some tracks from the record that me and Kitty did together, there is one instrumental which we did in about fifteen minutes so I guess that was a collaboration but there was no lyrics. I think ‘Down on my Knees’ was a very roughly written song that we again put together in twenty minutes. So there are a few on the last record which were kinda collaborations, but I would say ninety percent of it was written separately.”
So how do you see this album in regards to your last that you released in 2015?
“It’s just different. We’ve all moved on I guess in time from where we were at the third album. I think we had new ideas for how to produce it; the third album was done with Mick Jones and this one we decided to do it ourselves again because we had quite strong ideas about how we wanted to do it. For example we wanted to keep it more simplified in the production, a bit cleaner, a bit more straight ahead sounding. It’s just another evolution of the KDL Empire”
[mutual laughter]
“It’s really hard, because art is never about their work compared to another piece of their work. It’s a really hard question to answer; it’s like asking a painter how his last painting compared to another one. I think the thing is in my mind they are completely different pieces of work so I wouldn’t really compare them and I don’t really know how they differ because I try not to think about it, too much of a head fuck” [laughs]
So you complete one album and then move onto the next project and then just keep going in that future trajectory?
“I think we just complete albums just so we can move onto the next one!” [laughs]
If there was one track on Superscope that would sum up Kitty, Daisy and Lewis, what would the song be?
“Oh fuck. I dunno, I would say pick a number between one and ten and the number they pick I would say ‘Right that one on the album’ [raucous laughter] That’s the only way I could answer it because all the songs are so different, they’re all written by different people but yeah, I’m sorry I can’t answer that, I don’t know!” [laughs]
I think that is the perfect answer! Any song is a representation of who you all are!
“Yeah, alright. Cool, I nailed it!” [mutual laughter]
Now all the instruments on the album real – there was no use of synths?
“No, we did use some synthesizers, not many though. The only one that I can remember really that springs to mind is a track called ‘Slave’ which is the fourth track on the record. In the intro there is kinda like a drone thing. We use a minimoog to do that, and there were other things done with an oscillator and stuff underneath but they are quite subtle and you wouldn’t really notice them straight away. So yeah I guess that there are some synthesizers but they are quite well hidden.”
Who would you say are your current musical influences?
“Well you know I think that my sisters are really good writers and because of that I don’t write as much really as them. I take a lot of influence from engineers and producers and the way that they’re doing things and getting musicians to make new sounds and stuff.
The other day I was listening to James Brown, he had a record label called People Records. See he never actually recorded under his name on that but he produced all the stuff that came out of that label and there is some real fantastic funk stuff, so I take a lot of influence from some sounds and the way that those records are engineered and produced. I kinda take that on and I think ‘Yeah I wanna try and implement a bit of that in the studio and take those influences and feed that into one of our projects’. So I kinda take influence from that stuff more so really – this is just at the moment, this is like this week you know [laughs] – than listening to the whole catalogue and going ‘Wow that’s amazing.’”
You guys were last here in New Zealand three years ago, you looking forward to coming back?
“Oh yeah, New Zealand is always like a massive bender, we always get like horrendously drunk and have amazing nights. One of our most epic sessions ever, was in Hawkes Bay of all places, like in a vineyard. We just ended up getting completely smashed til like eleven in the morning. And on the plane out the next day, my mum was lying in the aisle vomiting…”
[laughs] Oh no!
“Yeah and all the stewards were like ‘Miss you gotta get up’ and she was like ‘Fuck off, I’m being sick!’ [mutual laughter] So yeah New Zealand is always [laughs] like loads of fun, can’t wait to get back for a bit more of that.”
So what can fans expect from the upcoming shows? Heavy on the new album, or a bit of a mix of all the fan favourites?
“Yeah the new record is actually quite short in a way, but we will kind of do like ninety percent of the new record and then the rest of it, old stuff. I think it’s good to keep a set mixed of new and old. Like when I go and see bands who I like and they are doing their new stuff, I appreciate that but I also want to hear their old stuff and I also want to hear bits of both. You know I take that on board for our own work, and like to do a bit of everything.”
Kitty, Daisy & Lewis are hitting New Zealand with Blind Boy Paxton for what promise to be three pretty special shows in Napier (9th February 2018), Wellington (10th February 2018) and Auckland (11th February 2018). Tickets to all shows are still available, but get in quick as they are sure to sell out!
