KATE STABLES: A lot of people think this song is about me and my twin, Emily, and I’d like to think it might be, but the truth is, it’s not. Well, I often feel like I start writing songs about one thing and then over time I realize they’re about loads of other things too, so maybe they’re partly about me and her. Often a song may not necessarily be about one particular relationship, but rather a type of relationship that you share with different people at different times in your life.
I wrote Two Wooden Spoons when I had just moved to Paris. It was a long time ago, so I only have snapshots of memories, but I do remember it being a really close friend’s birthday, hence the line, “Happy birthday, happy birthday, watery eyes.” The whole song is kind of about that friend and the friendship where you end up being almost a carbon copy of each other just because of how much time you spend together and how much you grow together. I feel a little wary of saying too much, actually, because I don’t think the person in question knows the song is about them. I feel bad that it’s not about Emily. Emily totally deserves a song, she’s brilliant.
Because of that song, I ended up being asked to play at a lot of weddings, which is amazing. People will just contact me out of the blue and ask me to come and play “Two Wooden Spoons” because it’s “their song” and if I can do it, I will. So this song has led to some really touching encounters with people that it means a lot to, and that feels like a real gift. It’s funny though because I often get asked to play at the reception as well as during the ceremony, but nobody at a wedding reception wants to hear someone play songs they’ve never heard like it’s some kind of open mic disaster. They’re like, “What the hell is this guy doing? Where is the ABBA concert?
I feel like “Two Wooden Spoons” was my first song that ever got radio play, but now that I think about it, I’m getting confused about the timelines. My memory of thinking “Holy shit, my song’s on the radio” was before I moved to Paris, but I’m pretty sure I wrote that song there. Well, I’m sorry, now I don’t know what the truth is… I feel like my grandmother! [laughs loudly]
Either way, it was an important song from the early days. Many people know it from a compilation called People excluded which was composed by Rob da Bank. There were a whole bunch of compilations like this with titles that were folk puns, but it was surprising how far and wide this one seemed to reach. Even to this day, people come up to me and say they first heard my music through ‘Two Wooden Spoons’ which is on that compilation, so I feel really happy that that happened because that was really important something, I think.
BEST FIT: I read that when you first moved to Paris, you and Jesse occasionally performed together as a duo called Two Wooden Spoons.
Yes, exactly. When we first moved here, we didn’t have our own place, we didn’t have any money or jobs or anything, so we used to go out and cover songs in bars quite a lot. We ended up calling ourselves Two Wooden Spoons because sometimes we are like a pair of spoons!
What are your memories of recording with John Parish in Italy?
It was just great. Such a golden time. But, funny as it is, Two Wooden Spoons is a little weird Curling ball because it was recorded in Paris and Bristol, not on the farm in Italy where we did the rest of the album.
I think another good thing about “Two Wooden Spoons” is that it’s the first time I’ve worked on a record with Jamie, who became the drummer for This Is The Kit, so it’s nice to have a time capsule like that. I remember how easily and perfectly he found the type of drum personality I wanted. We had tried with other drummers and friends in Paris, but it wasn’t quite there, although I will say that I think the version that went on the album had two drummers. The other is Julien Barbagallo who now plays with Tame Impala!
What can you tell me about Curling ball demo album that was released in Japan? Did you have a stroke there or something?
I don’t know if “hit” is the right word! But Jesse has some really good friends in Japan and one of them was Naoki [Iijima] who had a record shop in Tokyo called Disc Shop Zero. Sadly Naoki has passed away now but back in the day he was obsessed with all Bristol music and that was mostly what they sold.
Naoki really fell in love with Jesse’s band The Moonflowers and also his later project Morning Star and through that he kind of discovered my music. When we were together at Whalebone Polly, Rachael Dadd lived there with him for a while, so me, Jesse and our daughter went there on tour, where we played a real mix of songs from our different bands. I assume the demos were released to go along with the tour, but maybe I’m remembering things in the wrong order. Either way, for some reason they really wanted to release them.
I often forget they exist and that they are on the internet. Sometimes someone will have them on a Spotify playlist and this really old demo will come up and it makes me feel really, really weird. Still, it’s interesting and good to have this time capsule. Naoki was a brilliant man.
I saw you have Curling ball reissue coming soon from your own label.
Yes, we do! We’re going on tour again and everyone’s like, ‘Wait a minute, we don’t have any Curling ball, so we clicked a few more of them. It’s good that it somehow came out again, because the first album is really something, isn’t it? This is an important milestone.