Month: June 2017

‘I’ve always had a thing about losers and the downtrodden…’

sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment
fij-bickers-2017-600x400
Pete Fij and Terry Bickers

Miserablist indie duo Pete Fij (Adorable and Polak) and Terry Bickers (The House of Love and Levitation) are back with a new album – We Are Millionaires.

The follow-up to their 2014 melancholy masterpiece Broken Heart Surgery – which was Say It With Garage Flowers’ favourite album of that year – it’s another brilliant collection of cinematic, late-night laments for the lost and the lonely.

Like its predecessor, it’s full of deadpan humour and dry wit. With influences including John Barry, The Velvet Underground and Lee Hazlewood, and lyrical nods to movies The Third Man and The Birds, it’s like a soundtrack to an imaginary, downbeat, British, black and white kitchen sink-drama-meets spy-film – part Hancock, part Hitchcock – but this time around, there’s even some optimism.

“I like to think of this album as sunshine with showers – the last album was pretty heavy drizzle,” says Pete…

Q & A

Congratulations on the new record. It’s one of my favourite albums of the year so far, and its predecessor, Broken Heart Surgery, was my favourite record of 2014 – I described it as one of the greatest breakup albums of all time. How do you keep making such brilliant albums? What’s the secret?

Pete Fij: I don’t have a formula or secret. Some of it is about finding a genuine voice that is truly yours. I’m getting better at self-censorship and confidence of trusting my judgement of realising when a song is of a quality that I’m happy with. I don’t tend to record any song I’m not sure about. As a result there’s very little wastage – we wrote and recorded nine songs, which is the album. There are no bonus tracks or discarded songs.

a3831328966_16

The title track of the new album has a line that references the first album, doesn’t it?

PF: Yes – it is a reference to the first album. We Are Millionaires [the song] is a little about the journey me and Terry tried to make on this album – we made a conscious attempt to be a little more upbeat than Broken Heart Surgery, but it was hard to fight our natural default setting of melancholy…

One of the lyrics in the song We Are Millionaires refers to your love of downbeat movies and a beat-up hero who never gets the girl. Do you like to wallow in melancholy? Are you at your happiest when you’re unhappy? Do you feel like an anti-hero?

PF: I’ve always enjoyed films with a darker twist, with an undercurrent of sadness. My favourite James Bond film is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – the ending where Bond cries as he holds his dead wife in his arms was always one of the strongest images in the entire canon of 007 for me. I’ve always had a thing about the losers and the downtrodden – it could be argued that by wallowing in the beauty of defeat, I perhaps haven’t helped my career, but we are who we are.

‘We made a conscious attempt to be a little more upbeat than Broken Heart Surgery, but it was hard to fight our natural default setting of melancholy’

As you sing on the title track, “If this melancholy that we share was common currency, we’d be millionaires…”

Please never cheer up – I don’t think I could bear it. It makes for great songwriting. Saying that, Waking Up, on the new album, is one of your cheerier numbers – it’s a positive song, isn’t it? It’s a beautiful track – the morning sunshine after a long winter. It reminds me of Spiritualized…

PF: Waking Up is an attempt at being upbeat, but the final refrain, “It’s been a long cold winter”, kind of harks back to darker times. Even when looking forward to brighter times, I don’t seem to be able to keep from looking back to darker moments. I like to think of this album as sunshine with showers. The last album was pretty heavy drizzle.

A recent magazine review called you and Terry, “the indie duo scripted by Galton and Simpson”. I’m saying you’re like Hancock-meets-Hitchcock. How do you feel about that description?

PF: It sounds like we’re being compared to a couple of cocks! Both Hancock and Hitchcock had a darkness and a humour running through their work, which is what gives it depth, and I’m glad that people pick up on the humour of my lyrics. I hope it takes the edge off it becoming relentlessly depressing.

How did you approach this record? Did you suffer from ‘difficult second album syndrome?’ What was the writing and recording process like?

PF: We experimented with a fuller band sound with a couple of tracks – we recorded Let’s Get Lost and Love’s Going To Get You with drums and a full band set-up, but it just didn’t quite work. It sounded very polished, and ‘adult’ but it kind of lacked a heart, so we reverted to our previous set-up.

Thereafter it was pretty straightforward, and quite similar to how we’d worked before. Basically, I’d write the songs and present them to Terry, who would add his parts, and we’d work on some of the arrangements together.

We tend to record in short bursts – four-hour sessions, in part due to time and budget constraints. We did maybe 30 sessions like that over a two-year period. We don’t believe in rushing things! Having extended time between sessions does give you the chance to reflect and it kind of avoids going down too many dead ends.

de1ea4e0384611efb1dd1bbc6e20ac6949fccc92
Terry Bickers and Pete Fij

The new album feels like a close cousin of the first one. You haven’t gone all experimental on us – it’s a natural progression…

PF: Broken Heart Surgery was definitely more stripped-down and bare than We Are Millionaires. Some of the songs on this album have over 60 different layered tracks – there are loads of tiny textures on this record, even though it’s not ear-screechingly loud. It’s a more expansive sound than Broken Heart Surgery.

‘Hitchcock’s The Birds gets referenced on the album, and when I sing, “we both love black and white movies, inhabit a monochrome world, where the beat-up hero, never seems to get the girl,” I’m thinking of the fantastic last scene in The Third Man’

You often use film references in your lyrics, so I’m saying that this album is a sequel that’s easily the equal of the first one – it could arguably be better than its predecessor…

PF: Films are a massive part of my life and they always seem to crop up in my songs – Hitchcock’s The Birds gets referenced on the album, and when I sing, “we both love black and white movies, inhabit a monochrome world, where the beat-up hero, never seems to get the girl,” I’m thinking of the fantastic last scene in The Third Man.

That leads me nicely to my next question. One of my favourite songs on the album is If The World Is All We Have. Is it your attempt to write a Bond song? It has an exotic, dramatic and cinematic feel…

PF: I wrote it about 10 years ago, originally as a failed attempt to enter the Eurovision Song Contest. I recorded the song way more uptempo with a female vocalist – it sounded like a cross between Madonna and Depeche Mode, with a nod to John Barry, but then Andrew Lloyd Webber got fast-tracked as the writer for the UK entry that year, so the song got shelved. I always thought it was strong, so I dusted it off and we slowed it right down to make it more Bickers and Fij-esque and it worked pretty much straight out of the bag. Underneath our melancholic surface, a lot of our tracks are actually pop songs.

‘There are a few things on my musical bucket list that I realise are highly unlikely to ever happen – write or record a Bond song is one of them, appear on Top of the Pops is another’

Would you like to write a Bond song? The last few have been poor, haven’t they? I think you guys should do the next one…

PF: There are a few things on my musical bucket list that I realise are highly unlikely to ever happen – write or record a Bond song is one of them, appear on Top of the Pops is another – there are two good reasons why that’s not going to happen…Writing a song for Eurovision and appearing at The Royal Albert Hall are the two on my radar that while unlikely are not entirely impossible. On the subject of Bond themes, I’d argue that the Adele song for Skyfall was pretty good.

The first song on the new album – Let’s Get Lost Together – is about a relationship, as is the whole record, to be fair, but it strikes me that it could be about you and Terry and your working relationship. Is that a fair comment? Musically, it has a bit of a Velvet Underground – third album – feel…

PF: Yep – It’s a bromantic love song to Terry, and it’s about us. I wanted to channel the spirit of Nancy and Lee’s Jackson, where they bicker and wisecrack between themselves, though you know there’s still a spark underneath the barbed comments.

The first single, Love’s Going To Get You, is about being unable to escape from the inevitability of love, but would you say it’s more about the downside of love? I get the feeling that it’s more pessimistic than optimistic – or is that just me being cynical and knowing you and your penchant for melancholy? 

PF: It’s about being a passenger in love – how it takes over and you are powerless. It originally ended with the repeated refrain “Cupid’s a sniper”, but we thought that was just too dark – even by our standards.

You’ve got some gigs coming up later this year. What can we expect?

PF: Small attendances! Aargh – there I go again with this loser shit. Positive Pete, positive. Stadiums with laser shows.

Finally, if We Are Millionaires is the sequel to Broken Heart Surgery, can we expect the third in the trilogy? If so, what will it be like?

PF: I don’t know – I mentioned to Terry that I’ve never made more than two albums with any musical project – both Adorable and Polak made two albums before splitting, so making a third album with Terry would be uncharted territory. I’d love to do an album with proper orchestral backing…. and then play it live at The Albert Hall!

• We Are Millionaires – the second album by Pete Fij/Terry Bickers – is released on July 21. For more information, visit https://petefijterrybickers.bandcamp.com

Pete Fij and Terry Bickers are also playing a few UK gigs:

July 22 – St Paul’s Art Centre, Worthing

August 29 – Backroom at The Star Inn, Guilford

August 30, Rialto Theatre, Brighton

August 31, Aces & Eights Saloon Bar, London

September 1, Aces & Eights Saloon Bar, London

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘I’ve got the next four albums planned – track listings and all…’

sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment

 

DlLe4Uvw

Whybirds drummer Luke Tuchscherer’s brilliant new solo album, Always Be True, is full of rough-hewn alt.country songs and anthems for the downtrodden, and its influences include Steve Earle, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Uncle Tupelo. 

Among the highlights are the rousing opening track, Waiting For My Day To Come,  the epic, tear-strewn ballad When The Dream Dies and These Lonesome Blues – a instant country classic that deals with death, drinking, cigarettes and the devil. ‘I really wanted to make a ’70s rock album, like Darkness on the Edge of Town or Damn The Torpedoes’, he tells me…

Q & A

Let’s talk about your new album – Always Be True. The title seems particularly relevant in these troubled times, where fake news is high on the agenda, wouldn’t you agree?

Luke Tuchscherer: I would certainly agree. Though, to be honest, we started recording it in late 2014 and I’ve had the title in mind since then, so I wouldn’t say that Trump and co had a direct influence on it, or the Brexit battle bus lies or any of that.

The title comes from the song Be True, which is a declaration of fidelity to my then girlfriend, now wife. But in a wider sense, it’s about being true to yourself, to your dreams and beliefs, as well as simply doing your best to be honest in day-to-day life.

It’s your second solo album. How does it feel to have it out there? 

LT: It’s a relief. It’s like an albatross has been lifted from me. I’m really thankful that it’s finally out and really happy that people like it.

 

LT album

How long were you working on it?

LT: As I mentioned, we started in late 2014. It was due out in summer 2016. For various reasons – some good, like Tom (Peters, producer) getting married and some awful, like band members losing loved ones – it took longer than planned. But that’s not the story of the album, that’s simply what delayed it. And when those big life events happen, well, as much as I like music, I’m afraid they take precedent and the music takes a back seat. However – much like the first album actually – even though it took a couple of years to complete, in terms of actual recording, it was only a few days.

How do you feel this record differs from your debut? You’ve said it’s a collection of songs that you want to play live, whereas with the first album, that wasn’t the case. Can you elaborate on that?

LT: With the last album, you had to be careful which songs to play in which venues. Unless it was a “sit down and shut up,” type place, then you couldn’t play half the songs off it.

Trying to play Hold On or I Don’t Need You To Tell Me to a festival crowd wasn’t even worth attempting.

This time most of the tracks – though admittedly not all – can be played solo, or with the band, to pretty much any audience. Obviously I’m not gonna pluck out A Song For Jack Brown in a noisy venue, but for the most part, they work.

The new album has a much bigger, more full-on sound that its predecessor – 2014’s You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense – doesn’t it?  What did you want this album to sound like? How did you approach the songwriting and the recording?

LT: It certainly has more electric guitar! But if anyone followed what was happening in The Whybirds, they’d know that a large part of what I do is that rockier alt.country sound. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as an acoustic artist just because of the first album, as that would be a great example of me not being true to myself… There’s that album title again!

‘I know what I’m doing for the next few records. There won’t be such a gap between albums – for the next couple at least’

Regarding the songwriting, I’ve got such a big backlog of songs that it’s very easy for me to pick the 10 that best fit the theme. No bullshit, I’ve got the next four albums planned, track listings and all. Now, obviously they’re subject to change, should I write something new that fits in, but for the most part I know what I’m doing for the next few records. There won’t be such a gap between albums – for the next couple at least.

You made the record with Tom Peters at The Den, in Bury St Edmunds. How was that? What was the recording process like? Was it a quick album to make? 

LT: Other than the delays mentioned, the sessions went really well. Very smoothly. Tom’s brilliant. He’s a great friend of mine and an awesome producer. I can’t recommend him highly enough.

Did you have all the songs written before you went in to record the album? What were your musical  and lyrical  influences for this record?

‘I really wanted to make a ’70s rock album with this one. Something like Darkness on the Edge of Town or Damn The Torpedoes’

LT: Without being too anachronistic, or overly reverent of the past, I really wanted to make a ’70s rock album with this one. Something like Darkness on the Edge of Town or Damn The Torpedoes or something, If Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker was the template last time, I think those albums informed this one.

The opening track, Waiting For My Day To Come, is a bit of an anthem, isn’t it? It’s a big tune. What can you tell me about that song? Are you still waiting for your day to come? Could this album change all that?

LT: I wanted to write a song like Lodi by Creedence Clearwater Revival, where I could sing it at every shit gig I ever played, and now I open most shows with it. I dunno if that’s some sort of Freudian slip! I guess I am still waiting, and the song seems to suggest I always will be – ha ha! But really, that song was just what I was feeling in that moment, same as Outside, Looking In. It doesn’t mean I always feel that way about music. I don’t see Waiting… as a positive song whatsoever, but a lot of people find it optimistic, so good for them.

The legendary pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole played on your new album. How was he to work with?

LT: He was great. We sent him the songs, sent him some money and he sent back his tracks. Easy-peasy! One nice thing about having him playing on it though is that my wife and I had Tiny Dancer [by Elton John] as our first dance and BJ plays on that. It was very cool that he ended up playing steel on three songs about my wife.

e380d4_5b26ffaf94f344259837eb831f59299b.jpg_srb_p_600_590_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srb.jpeg

You were the drummer in The Whybirds. How does it feel looking back on those days now? Why did you make the break and go solo?

LT: If it were up to me, The Whybirds would still be going all guns blazing with all four original members, and I’m pretty sure the other members know I feel that way. But it’s not up to me. The decision wasn’t mine. It was just a matter of life getting in the way. All of a sudden, my solo side-project became my main thing.


The Whybirds reunited for two tracks on your new album – Don’t Put Me Out and These Lonesome Blues. How was it being back in the studio with the band again? 

LT: It was great. We played those tracks back in the day but never got to record them, so I wanted everyone to play on them. Taff did his bass parts and backing vocals from Canada, where he lives now. We have our final gigs – for now – this summer. Everyone should come along!

These Lonesome Blues is a classic country-rock song, isn’t it? Depression, booze, cigarettes, women, death, the devil…. It’s got it all! What can you tell me about that track?

LT: I wrote that in 2006/2007, when I was a lonely, boozing, smoking, depressed young man. Hearing it now it sometimes seems like a pastiche, but I really felt all that at the time. If you look at the lyrics, without that barroom country backing, they’re actually pretty fucking bleak. But, I don’t feel that way anymore, so all’s well that ends well…

‘I wrote These Lonesome Blues when I was a lonely, boozing, smoking, depressed young man’

A Song For Jack Brown deals with the suicide of a young man. Why were you inspired you to write a song about Jack? Was it a difficult song to write? How have his friends and family reacted to the song?

LT: I was trawling through Facebook one night when I saw that a promoter The Whybirds used to work with had posted in a group called For Those Who Knew and Will Miss Jack Brown.

Seeing that group and reading those messages really got to me. Jack was a 21-year-old based in Leighton Buzzard. He was a super-talented rugby player, by all accounts the life and soul of the party, and it just seemed so tragic that he’d take his own life. The people left behind were devastated.

Anyway, I got choked up reading the messages and went away and wrote the song. I demoed it and sent it to the promoter saying that I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate or not, but that I’d written this song and thought I’d send it on. He liked it and asked if he could pass it on to Jack’s friends and family, and I said yes.

I started getting messages from people, including Jack’s mum, thanking me for the song. The next time we played in Leighton Buzzard, Jack’s dad came along to buy me a beer and say thanks. Now, as you can imagine, that’s quite a strange and humbling experience. Even though this was back in 2009, I thought I’d include the tribute on this record.

How’s the summer shaping up for you? What are your plans for the rest of 2017, music-wise?

LT: A few festivals, we’ve got some Whybirds ‘final shows’, and then the rest is a closely guarded secret – for the time being…

Finally, what music – new and old – are you currently digging? 

LT: I try, wherever possible, to listen to things that aren’t necessarily close to what I do, otherwise I’d just write songs like Waiting For My Day To Come all the time… But jazz, grunge, rock, pop, blues… I listen to all kinds of music. I’ve been really digging into Paul Westerberg’s back catalogue at the moment. I’ve always liked his stuff from the Singles soundtrack and The Replacements of course, but I’ve been delving in a bit more. For obvious reasons, I’ve been listening to a lot of Soundgarden lately.

Always Be True by Luke Tuchscherer is out now on Clubhouse Records.  For more information, please visit http://www.luketuchscherer.co.uk/ .

The Whybirds will be playing three farewell shows:

June 30 –  Esquires, Bedford
July 7 – Portland Arms, Cambridge
August 11 – The Lexington, London

http://www.thewhybirds.com/