Digging

After a lil break, I had a lovely little lockdown chat with Joey Donnelly, aka Elkyn, as an introduction to his music and his writing process: where he goes from a blank page, the conversations that inspire his music, and the ‘little bits’ that make up his songs.

In this episode I’m talking to Matthew Thorne, the director for our video The Only Boy Racer Left on the Island. You’ll be able to tell I find Matthew’s insights and philosophies very interesting, which is why I forget to actually talk about the music video in question until about 20 minutes in, but hopefully you’ll find something interesting in the rest of what we had to say to each other.

It was a pleasure to talk to him about creation and identity within the video, and his career. We talk about how an Australian artist (and artists in general) portray their national identity within their work, and how important geographical and ecological backgrounds can be brought to the forefront in their presentation. We touch on the separation of the art and the artist, country music, and the behind the scenes of the shooting of the Boy Racer music video.

Luke Saxton is a York-based songwriter whose playing style spreads him over several genres, including acoustic, pop, folk, instrumental, art-pop, rock, baroque, odd pop, I’m making stuff up now but there are Beatles influences, Beach Boys, Harry Nilsson, Nick Drake, and many more that compile themselves on his albums to make something remarkably unique. His songs retain a sense of Britishness, which we talk about in this episode, while also including transatlantic influences, with whole albums refusing to be tied down to one genre.

In this episode I'm talking to Rob and James from the band Marsicans about their songwriting process. Their debut album Ursa Major was released on August 14th 2020, go and listen to it now!

Before Breakfast are a band based in Sheffield, who combine jazz-inflected piano, ethereal strings, and tightly woven melodies to create both a soothing atmosphere and captivating themes, that revolve around the concept of womanhood and identity. 

In this episode, and from hereon in, I’ve tried to focus on how and why artists get into their field, so if anyone is listening and wants to pursue music or art or writing professionally, these are the stories of people who have pursued it, how they did it, and how little money they have now they’ve started 😎

In this podcast I'm talking to Glasgow-based pop duo HYYTS. We were lucky enough to go on tour with these guys and hear these mad songs every night, and we fell in love with them. Check out their new single The Low Sound and you'll hear why. In this podcast we talk about creation, first songs, Brian Eno, jazz piano, and plenty more.

In this episode I'm talking to your friend and mine, Mr Tom Beer of Bull, aka Mr Timothy Meatballs. We talk about Tom's method of songwriting, including imagining a band and then writing them a song...it's a pretty sweet little trick. Press play for that knowledge and MORE

In this episode we talk to Leeds-based band Talkboy, about how we wrote our first songs, inspiration, and writing diss tracks as teenagers

In this first episode we talk to singer-songwriter Amy May Ellis about creative constipation, and the worries of writing during isolation.