"Somebody insulted me in the pub,

I want to sing about it"

 

 

PR: Kevin, I was wondering if you had heard about Anti-Folk before you heard Jeff's records?

KC : Not really, no. But I am AntiFolk anyway but I think that's something else I think. Like you said earlier, it's a journalistic term; I'm not exactly sure what it means really.JL : It's amazing, I think he's the only person in Europe who's gotten it right! There's no sense to it. Everybody asks in every interview : "What is the point of the AntiFolk movement?" and really there's no... It's truly meaningless, it's just... I think'

PR: The journalists like to have some kind of a sticker to put on people.

JL : I'm actually very glad that it exists because I think it sounds more interesting than singer-songwriter. You know I'm glad to have' and it also makes people more interested cause it's like an interesting title so I think if I just went out and said I was a songwriter, it just sounds stupider.

PR: AntiFolk is also much to do with low-fi. Do you know low-fi, Kevin?

KC : Low-fi? Of course, I am low-fi but tonight I'm not! But most of the time I start out very low fi, yes. Two chords and I never learnt any more!

PR: Would you say you're doing low-fi studio recordings?

KC : Well, yeah, the latest album, the new album which is coming out' no, it's really hard to be low-fi these days because when I started it was two-track, you know, four-track machines so by necessity it became low-fi because you never had enough tracks but now it is all on the computer and there's not even any fucking reel-to-reel or big desks anymore. All can be done at home!

JL : You know, actually, I've been asked this question a number of times so I've finally been able to think of a good answer which you may appreciate. Start thinking about low-fi/high-fi as the opposite of what people usually say it is, which is that it's fidelity which is truthfulness which is lost in most so-called hi-fi recordings where you have a lot of over-dubs and you have a lot of' you know, there's a lot of smoothing off and perfecting in the process along the way and what you actually get is much lower fidelity to the original created sound.

PR: Yeah, to the feeling.

JL : Yeah. And if you just record something or you just do it, whatever it is that happens in that moment is the highest fidelity to the truth of that moment and so it's really reversal of the definition and it's true what Kevin says that it's very difficult to do, you know, what's called a low-fi recording because everything now is digital. You really have to go out of your way to make it low-fi which is the total opposite of' The point is just to do it.

KC : Then it sound a bit contrived.

JL : Yeah.

KC : And you hear it, you think : 'Why does it sound like this?'. They're deliberately making it sound like this. But all you really want is a degree of simplicity and honesty as close to the performance as possible but it's not always easy to do.

PR: That makes me think of Daniel Johnston of course. Do you know him?

KC : No, I don't, no.

PR: He's this guy from Texas.

JL : He's fantastic.

PR: He's really great and he recorded a lot of cassettes in the early eighties where he just put on this small cassette player on his piano and just bang around and it's very bad sound : that's low-fi!

JL : But the songs' his songwriting is just so fantastic.

KC : Well if the songs are good'

PR: He's a very good songwriter.

JL : According to the legend, he didn't even had a double cassette deck so when anybody wanted a copy of that album, he would just have to record, he would play the songs in the same order and record them again.

KC : Well that's a nice way of looking at it, almost perfect in many ways. Something I would aim for in the seventies and do things like this to but'

PR: Yeah because the emotion is here, if you can do the song without '

KC : Yeah but I always aimed for that anyway, from the day when I walked in a recording studio was to be as close to the way I feel and the way the performances [are] and I was endlessly bogged down with fucking producers. Big record companies, they always bring in guys who are supposed to be good, you know. Most of them' apart from Steve Verroca on Marjory Razorblade who basically was Link Wray's producer among other things. And he had good ideas. Link is a bit low-fi anyway so he had some ideas but most of them they didn't have a fucking clue. These guys from Atlantic Records, all sort of people, oh, you'd be surprised. Even Nick Mason from the Pink Floyd, he wanted to do, I really refused to'

PR: They made you record 'Fever'. A sort of disco version of 'Fever'!

KC : Yeah, with a big fucking orchestra and produced by Mort Lange. This was the first thing he ever did, now he's married to ' what's her name? But then he was just a South African fresh out of South Africa. He came to my door and I said 'I don't want to do this! Any of it!' Anyway, he did these vast arrangements and I refused to go down to any of it and I just went in and sang over the backing tracks.

PR: This is one of the worst Kevin Coyne records.

KC : Yeah. No, I think I did a fucking good job!

JL : What album is that?

PR: It's a single.

KC : There's two singles. I did two singles : 'Walk on by'. No, I did a good job. People like this.

PR: String sections and everything.

KC : Yeah yeah, big full orchestra.

PR: [Jeff] You do not have this problem with producers?

JL : Nobody's offered to help us

PR: Would you like that?

JL : Well, I think it would be very nice if somebody who had some good ideas, it would be like collaborating with somebody who has a' I think, I mean, cause I don't really know, I know nothing about making recordings, I feel like that's an art in itself that I'm very defficient in, like, you know, I think the idea of making your own album is one, you know' Even if you make songs, if you make up songs that you feel have value but that has nothing to do with knowing how to make an album and I think it would be very nice if somebody who really knew how to make an album and had good ideas would come by and offer to help us cause I'm often quite clueless.

KC : Well, you beware, you beware, believe me. I think you're doing alright as it is. You seem to manage to avoid that coyness. You know this word coy, this tweeish thing that so many singer-songwriters get in. I particulary think of Loudon Wainwright. I can't stand him.

JL : 'The Magic Number Four'

KC : And his son, his fucking son is well done.

JL : I don't know which one does which.

KC : You know, they're so smooth and clever, it's a bit like John Martyn, you know this' you know' did you see that interview I did in Uncut magazine recently? I said I loathe the well-made songs, well-tailored, you know, the middle-eight and all this macartnesque, you know I never liked the Beatles anyway so you know all my life I tried to avoid all this shit, I just can't stand it. 'This is a good song, you know'. Producers will tell you this. You know' I remember the first time I ever recorded for the BBC which was in 1968, we went in, we did a song called 'Soon' which is on the Siren album and the middle-eight is a bit strange and the producer said 'That's not right, you know, it does not sound right', I said 'Fuck off! This is our song!' you know, the BBC, smoking a pipe, unbelievable. Anyway, I've got a million of those stories. I'll try to avoid to tell them anymore.

PR: I was talking with Steve Bull who played keyboards with you in the early 80s. And he told me that you would ask for money to the record company, which was Virgin I suppose, to record the next album and then you would take a very small studio and use only a few days and record very quickly and keep the rest to pay your house.

KC : Yeah, yeah, no, not to pay the house, it was just' I kept it to have a good time myself, I had a holiday with it or whatever I did : I had two children.

PR: I think that's good. That's low-fi to me.

KC : Sure, we recorded in' he did all these elaborate keyboard things and I said 'Oh, we'll just'' I did a few.. improvise a few vocals and then that was it, then wasn't much to do.

PR: He wanted to re-record everything and you didn't want?

KC : And that album was actually recorded by the Duke of Montenegro, you know. He's a record' he's actually a royal guy, he went to Eaton school and he's kind of hip, you know. And he was the engineer on this record. So there's an intersting fact. But anyway' That's not true actually, to pay me house, this is rubbish, I had enough money to pay me house!

PR: You know, the first time I thought about organizing this show, I asked how you were managing your carrer and your tour. Can you tell that again how you organise the show in a few words?

JL : You just send out e-mails to everybody you kow in Europe and ask if it's possible to play shows and then hopefully enough people write back for shows that are close enough together, that you can put it together in a way that makes sense to travel. And then play it.

PR: You told me earlier that when you're doing that you do not have time to create songs or write comics.

JL : The past year and a half that we've been doing this, at first it was just an amazing experience to be able to come on tour and people come out to see the show that don't know us personaly and this is a big change for us from playing home in New York. But, looking back on it now that it's been a while and we've done that a few times, I can see that the past year of my life that I've been doing this more and more, I'm doing everything else less cause it's so much time e-mailing that I don't know'

PR: It's a lot of work.

JL : Yeah.

KC : Well Helmi [Kevin's wife and manager] does it for me but I've had managers for years and years and years. I got rid of the last one three years ago.

PR: Could you do without a manager?

KC : No, not really. You have to have somebody doing it and I think it's better if it's not yourself. I mean, I used to book myself a while too, this is a thankless task and kind of depressing. It's a sort of selling yourself.

JL : It's a drag yes.

KC : You know that! It's not a very nice thing to do.

JL : But the positive side of it is at least you know what's going on cause the one time that we did it where somebody else set it up for us, it was like everyday there was some unpleasant surprise : there was drums kits rented for us everywhere that we didn't want, amplifiers, hotels for us everywhere where we had friends we could stay with, really useless expenses and a tour manager that we did not need who was also getting paid from us, you know, all this useless extra stuff. That was all surprises every day. So, even though that's more work doing it yourself, at least I know everything that's gonna happen and there's no extra useless stuff.

PR: Did you hear Jeff's song 'Don't Let The Record Label Take You Out To Lunch'?

KC : Well I remember the title but I can't remember the details.

JL : I'm sure he's lived it.

KC : Yes. They do often take you out to lunch. Well, they used to but not anymore.

JL : Well, it would be very nice if somebody was able to help us in the way that we need to be helped and not in a lot of other ways that we don't need.

KC : You want somebody who really understands what you're doing. That's really hard to find.

JL : Yeah, I don't know...

KC : Somebody like you, Pascal.

JF/PR: Well... (laughs)

KC : No but I'm serious, I mean , guys like him they sit around and you do the things, you do bits and pieces, you can really be very practical, like ou've been putting this gig together, all, the things you might do. This is all good. I know you have a wife and child but you could make money at this too if you do it right. That's all I'm saying.

JL : It seems like a very difficult and thankless job to be a manager, you know and as well, to do it myself, at least I know' if it's a manager doing it, they're not gonna have' it would have to be a very special situation for somebody to have to pay so much attention to what the performer wants. It seems like for ourselves we know what we want so we're best able to'

KC : Well if that suits you, that's fine.

PR: The song is about the fact that you want to know where the money comes from and where it goes. You don't want no'

JL : Well nobody tells us because for us, it's such a little money, you know, it seems like'

KC : But things might change.

JL : If it's a 1000, if I can make a 1000 dollars for doing this thing a little differently than that, it's a big deal and we could use the money to pay the rent. So, it's important to me that the drum kit not be rented if we don't need it to be rented. But maybe it's too much, it seems like nobody bothers with this. It's too much trouble and you're either in the music industry people, either' you're either really gonna be making money so that it doesn't matter to follow up the details or you're not gonna be making any money so it doesn't matter that way either. So, that may be the way that it is, cause the way it's been since we started doing this about a year and a half-two years ago and built it up. To be able to turn the profit on it. It takes a lot of work to chase all the details and make sure everything is okay and it becomes a full-time job and that's never what I' I always wanted to draw comic books you know. This has been a nice extra thing but it's turned into a bigger part of my life that I planned on.

Q: So you're thinking of taking some time off?

JL : I keep saying that but then you know, all these things happen : oh, I've got a chance to play with Kevin Coyne, you know, how can I pass it off, you know? So, here I go, I leave home again, but I can't go just for one show you know so I set up another tour and then one thing leads to another you know and it's very tempting because you know, you sit at home, writing, drawing, whatever, there's nobody applauding you when you're done, there's nobody, you know, giving you money'

KC : This is the loneliest business of all : the writing and painting are extremely lonely occupations.

JL : Yeah, it's very unsocial.

KC : This is nice to meet people.

JL : Absolutly. I mean, nobody ever interviews you.

KC : I agree with you entirely you know. I spent all those years at Art School and Junior Art, all kind of academic and I never thought I'd actually sell pictures but I can sell quite a few now. But at the same time, I do think one of the reasons why I left it alone for fifteen years was because I could meet people this way and I didn't have to stand in a fucking, you know, lonely room, raking my brains and writing's the same, it's an incredibly lonely occupation. Nobody applaudes at the end or says 'Well done' then you're full of doubt and you might be living with somebody, a woman, who's not necessarily interested in what you're doing or some guy, you know' It's very' you turn to drinking in all manners to get' I did certainly but'

PR: I was thinking, if you had' if you were starting all over again in music now, would you be doing like Jeff or would you still sign with Virgin Records?

KC : Oh you do when Richard Branson rings up, yeah. He's a mutli-millionaire. I think normally, it takes a very strong person to say. When you haven't got much money. No but I think it's very different now. But is it really different? There's still the same sharks out there and still, people enter the music business, there's no book, there's no money, they all think they can do anything, oh easy money! I had a lot of guys, I had gangsters running my life and all sorts but I think at the same time, you know, one of them is in prison now, but I think at the same time, it was all a challenge and I certainly don't regret any of it but if I started now, I wouldn't know what the hell to do so I'd do exactly what I did before cause I didn't know a thing you know. What do I know. Well, I had been with Dandelion, with John Peel first, since he late sixties.

PR: [Jeff] John Peel had this label, in the late sixties Dandelion Records.

JL : What was on Dandelion?

KC : Well, I did two albums with a band calledSiren then I did my first solo album in 1971 on that label'

PR: 'Case History'.

KC : Yes, it's a strange kind, recorded in one afternoon in Wimbledon.

JL : Fantastic album.

KC : As we said, very low-fi, very raw. Well, I sent him [Peel] a tape and he immediatly put it out really. We also got a thing with Blue Horizon Records. Recently, there's some stuff coming out there, but they offered us a deal too. It's the same label as Fleetwood Mac. But I didn't like this Mike Vernon very much.

PR: It did not work out very well with Virgin Records?

KC : Well I had some good time but where is the money, that's all?

PR: So, did they rob you or what?

KC : Well, I don't know, I've got a guy working on that case now. My son Eugene, one of my sons, is dealing with this so I don't really know; I want to find out why I sold all those records and never received any money. I was always told 'Well, you're in debt, you know, you recorded at the Manor Studio and it costs', you've got no way of checking.

PR: [Jeff] So here's your point.

KC : And it still happens now.

JL : Well it seems, yeah , there's no way of checking up, nobody knows, I mean, I'm talking very limited numbers like I wonder wether I sell you know 3000 or 7000 albums but to me, I'd really like to know but everybody tells me something different and there's no way and it would be a full time job to chase it. There's other things I'd like to do with my time also so, you know, I'm out of solutions.

KC : But you know when you say, you've been doing gigs and there's a decent crowd there, you're selling albums in some way, that's what I always thought. The high points, I played in all the big theatres, including the Olympia in Paris, and you know it was not a particulary big crowd that day but lots of places packed and you wonder : «All these people, they're buying these fucking records!'. You walk in all the shops and here they are. And I was very naive you know.

JL : So no particular piece of advice like 'Don't quit your day job'?

KC : Well I think you're doing exactly the right thing. You're looking after your own stuff and you're gonna get it right. Only yourself to blame. You're also an artist and all the rest of it. This is going to be complicated I think. I mean, I just stopped drawing and painting for 15 years, I didn't do anything . I started doing it again in Germany and had exhibitions and people bought this stuff so I thought I'll carry on with this.

PR: Yeah, just like Captain Beefheart did. He quit music to be a painter.

KC : Well, not a big fan' I think he should stick with the music myself. You know, I did some things with Gary Lucas, his guitar player. I've got some recordings of his. He's got some good Beefheart stories, very good.

PR: I can imagine.

KC : But he's very special.

PR: So, you're very famous for improvising in the studio or on stage. You told me that you never wrote lyrics.

KC : No, I never write lyrics down.

JL : Woah.

KC : But I did in the beginning because I thought 'You have to do this, you know'.

JL : [Jeff] That's the opposite for you. Your songs are very long and very written.

KC : But they are beautifully written. Prosewise, they're little masterpieces.

JL : Thank you. There's also some stuff, there's a few songs where there's stuff goes improvise. For me, I don't have enough musical talent, we're learning more and more all the time but at the beginning, we were so rudimentary that there was no real chance to improvise musically and now we know enough more about playing so there's a bit more musical improvisations but it's scary improvising. It's fun though because that's really when you feel like the project is a success is when you take a chance and it works, but then when you take a chance and it fails, it's terrible.

KC : It doesn't always work and that's a thing you have to take a chance with but I'm prepared to do that. And sometimes, I listen to things and I wince at the fucking stupidity of the rhyme but normally I go back over an album, eradicate all the obvious repetitions and things. But, I just like the feeling of saying exactly what comes through your head. I love this idea.

PR: I heard some musicians say that they were very impressed about that thing, like they say : 'Well, we were recording , we did Take 1, it was such song then : take 2 and totally different lyrics!'

KC : Was that Brian [Godding]?

PR: Maybe Brian, maybe this guy on the piano, Paul Wickens?

LC : Paul Wickens, yeah, he wrote some very nice' He works for Paul McCartney now. Eleven years.

JL : Well, some people have a talent for it.

KC : I think they do. You sum it up, some people do it, some people don't.

PR: [Jeff] I was thinking about this thing with 'Anti Folk Collaborations' with Diane Cluck. It's very different from the other stuff you made. It's very sophisticated. It makes me think of Folk, but Kevin doesn't like at all, so'

KC : No, I don't mind, no, I'm not against Folk.

PR: You know, it remind me of early acoustic Led Zeppelin.

JL : Hu, interesting. Maybe cause she has this kind of Celtic voice.

PR: Yes, eary voice like the girl from Fairport Convention.

JL : Yeah.

KC : Well, you see I knew her in the old days anyway.

PR: Sandy Denny. Beautiful voice.

KC : Yeah, but a heavy drinker too. Big boozer and I was too, in the same club in Soho once. Well, I just don't like that kind of' she's got a beautiful voice, there's no doubt about that but there is something about the whole' I don't know, why don't they sing about today? They sing in a language which seems borrowed from almost the Middle Ages on a case, but no always. I like that freshness about what I did today : What's that in the garden? Somebody insulted me in the pub, I want to sing about it. I don't want to hear about Lady Fontleroy's trousers, you know. I'm just not a big fan of that. I liked the violin player, I think he was great. Fairport Convention.

PR: Yes, there was a violin player.

KC : What's his name?

PR: I don't know.

JL : That stuff is so much bigger in England than in America. In America, it's a very, you know'

KC : But Rhino Records put out a whole series of these things.

JL : Well everything is available now, everything is reissued although it was never' that sort of school of music and all those bands were never much in America. They're very cultish in the States.

PR: [Jeff] Do you think your next songs on the next album will be more sophisticated and far from the 'punk' thing?

JL : The songs are very different now. You know, we've been writing more as a band and it's less me alone in a room with a guitar, it's more me and my brother and drums and stuff. And for a while, I was kind of fighting against this and thinking it would be' I don't know, we're just gonna record next week and see, we have some old songs and some new songs and we'll record it all and see what it sounds like together.

PR: You'll be recording in the UK?

JL : Yeah. Our friends have a studio at their house, they have this band, 'Misty's Big Adventure' that we're friends with. Actually, their drummer is the son of a guy who was in an English band, Gentle Giant.

KC : An Irish band, yes, many years ago' Still around. They're still released. Their albums are re-released.

JL : I don't know, it feels like, it's hard to say how long it will go on you know, cause there's no' Songwriting seems like it's not something you get better at; it's just the songs either popp out or it doesn't, for me anyway. It could very be easily that I'll just never write another song. Often months go by and nothing comes out so'

PR: Do you think you could really stop music and just draw comics?

JL : Yeah, cause comics have been my whole life and I always wanted to draw comic books. And music has been a wonderful unexpected thing to blossom and become a bigger part of my life and get to do things like, we're all hanging out and here I am in Paris you know, with folks such as yourselves.

KC : Sure, you don't get that when you're sticking around drawing all day I guess.

JL : Yes.

PR: And it's not only that : you also recorded two brillant cds.

KC : Yes, that's the point.

JL : I appreciate the compliments for sure you know and you get addicted to the compliments also. You feel like, woah, if the day goes by and somebody doesn't tell you that you did something brillant, then there was something wrong with that day and then, you know it's hard, it does get adicting and it becomes like you have to have one person telling you you did something great just to feel like it's normal and then you got to have two people telling you you did something great to feel like you did something good and then I can see where it just builds and build. I mean, right now, we play shows, there's many a hundred people there and it's like tremendous but I can very easily see next year, we'll be like 'Oh, God, there's only a hundred people, it wasn't five hundred, it was a disaster'. It never ends.

KC : Once you start counting the audience, this is a problem. You should never do that. Unless there's only two, this is nothing to worry. I know that too.

PR: I suppose every artist has this problem : what do you do after you're number one? You know, you can only be number one again or two and then you're downhill. But what I mean is : you're a musician.

JL : Depends whose definition but ' it definitly feels like, at least, you know, going by the numbers of the audience that somehow what's been done musically has connected the people more than the art. At least, the way the world is organised now, music is much more immediate, people pay attention to music more than they pay attention to Art. It takes less efforts on the part of an audience to put an album on and hang around their house than it does to read a book or look at artwork. So, it's a lot easier to connect to people that way. But, I don't know, it's hard to say wether that means it's better or not.

 

 (The interview is included in the boot of the show: Jeffrey Lewis And Kevin Coyne, Live In Paris, Le Nouveau Casino, Feb 9. It first appeared in www.modern-dance.co.uk and, in French, in www.froggydelight.com )

All photos on this page by www.froggydelight.com