King Creosote Interview

Real name Kenny Anderson, King Creosote has proved that you can stay local while becoming global.

Located in his hometown of Anstruther, King Creosote has taken Fence Records from a small hobby into an indie powerhouse. Helping to launch the careers of KT Tunstall and James Yorkston amongst others, the most striking talent on the roster may well be the royal regent himself.

Looking back over a year which has seen him release new material, tour the country and push his own festival Homegame to ever greater heights King Creosote spoke exclusively to ClashMusic backstage at the Nordoff Robbins awards in Glasgow...

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What were your highlights of 2009?
High points? Homegame obviously, number one. It is every year, numero uno. But this year to launch an album at Homegame is quiet special.

The final performance at the event was astonishing!
Absolutely mad, yeah! It was cool to be in Anstruther to go out in the audience and get the whole crowd singing and just to get that reaction. Fantastic.

Are you still focussing on Fence events?
I did quite a few festivals over the summer, and then I said right let's stop, it's a lot of travelling it's a lot of being away from home and I really wanted to get back into working on Fence projects that Jonny (Pictish Trail) certainly doesn't have time to do. We have done things like re-launch the Fence-zine which is like a real labour intensive project. It's got a CD-R album, the works - so we launched that at Halloween and there's been a lot more limited edition runs of things. I've been working on a lot of different box sets, projects like that.

And a new album?
I'm working on this new thing that is my next album. It's not going to be recorded, we're doing it live so it's not recorded it's a live album and it's in two halves, the songs are in the order of the album. It's arranged like an album but the twist is that I make the audience record it for themselves. I tried it at Halloween and it was amazing. The people were really focused on the music. They made their own recording of the album - which they probably won't listen to themselves as a live recording never matches up to
the experience - but what they are doing, with my blessing, is passing the recordings around. So what I'm doing is fuelling the numbers which want to come to the next one but the album is evolving with time. It's called my 'End Bit Of Strange In Umpteen Years' so I've done the first bit of strange in my first thirteen years and the second bit of strange in fourteen years cause the clocks moved on.

How will this evolve in the live setting?
I'm going to do more players and I'm going to add y'know and re-arrange the songs and stuff I'm quiet excited about this I'm going to get different members of the collective that are at the next Homegame to stand in at different times doing it in a small room, there's only 40 in the room so we'll have to do it like 7 times over the weekend which should be cool.

How can you police this, to add some discipline to the live setting?
Well the thing about recording your own show is to police it, to make sure people don't mess around. After the seven Homegame shows, the forty or so that experienced it were definitely going to the next one - they were were not missing it so after about seven times I think there will be enough people out there to help in the recording. And it was an amazing experience because folk were focused on it and got totally take in by the tunes so yeah I'm chuffed by my idea - as you can tell.

You played an accordion tune tonight, will that feature on the new album?
I mean the first version of the album was basically two of us - there was a drummer and he was like triggering samples, a few gadgets and it had an acoustic guitar on it. We arranged all the songs just the two of us. Just the two of us with lots of gadgets. So the second time round I'm going to get a bass player in and it's going to be more accordion and i'm just going to evolve it, keep changing.

How did you learn the accordion?
My dad was an accordion player, in fact my dad's an excellent accordion player, and when I was growing up I think one of the sons had to take on the job and I was the eldest so I got the job. So it started when I was seven. I wasn't overly impressed by having to play Scottish music but it was good training for learning bluegrass music and now I use the accordion more for the tones it makes. I used to have a ceilidh band and like most ceilidh accordionists it's like a thousand notes per minute but I kinda released that accordions have got their own character and they just make a great noise to sing against so.

What do you wish to achieve in 2010?
Well as I say our Homegame's in the diary. I've got this live album idea, I've got a solo tour coming up and I hope to start getting to play outside the UK. So Domino Records are putting together a sort of compilation of two songs from each of six albums, my first sort of release in America so I'm hoping to do just a few shows over there. I didn't want it to be a greatest hits I picked the songs to give as broad a spectrum of what I've attempted. So I mean 'Kenny Beths' my first record with Dominos was quite lo-fi and quirky and rockabilly and so it's like the same kinda journey. I want to just have a fair crack at it, you know if you don't like these 12 songs then you probably won't like what I've done.

Transcription by Lindsey White

For more information on the Nordoff Robbins Tartan Clef awards click HERE.

The Tartan Clef Music Awards were part of Homecoming Scotland's Finale Celebration weekend, check out www.homecomingscotland2009.com for more information'.