Kassidy Interview

At the end of last month I was lucky enough to interview the lovely Barrie James and Hamish from Kassidy just a couple of hours before their sold out Glasgow gig- 28th April 2011 in O2 ABC. Due to publications with other sites, it's delayed going up on mine, but thought you might fancy a swatch anyway! 

What a Welcome home…

After playing thirteen headline gigs in sixteen days, selling out three of these dates and running about the country with the enthusiasm and excitement of a small kid at Christmas, Barrie-James O’Neil and Hamish Fingland did not disappoint as they burst into the dressing rooms in Glasgow’s O2 ABC. With just hours to go until they graced the stage of their sold out home town gig, they were the epitome of the confidence and determination that has lead Kassidy to the levels of success that they are achieving.  

“Everywhere we’ve played the crowds have been fantastic to us,” said Barrie with a grin on his face. “People have learnt the words to the songs, totally helping us out with the singing. It’s just a great buzz. Everybody’s coming and everybody likes it. We’re on form just now, so we’re pretty happy.”

Kicking off in Dundee before touring Scotland, driving down to England to play the likes of Newcastle, Nottingham, Manchester and London, before heading back home for the Glasgow date, Barrie explained, “Dundee was the first one. We’ve started our last few tours in Dundee, pretty much because it’s the best place to start… the people there are just fantastic. We just love the banter of Dundee people. We know a lot of people in Dundee, so it’s a good place to start and Glasgow’s a good place to end it, because it’s our home town.”

Selling out their Glasgow gig five weeks in advance, as well as their dates in Dundee and Edinburgh, the guys remain down to earth about why they’re fans are so supportive in their home town.“We have no idea. All we can think of is the fact that we’re very active to anyone who follows us… who follow Kassidy on Facebook or on Twitter. We like to keep everyone informed about everything that we do. We like to make videos and we like to share our music tastes with people and we like people to share their music tastes with us. We just like to know what people think. You know, people who follow us, we want to know what’s on their mind. We’re very personal with people who follow us,” said Barrie, with Hamish jumping in to explain, “We’re really appreciative. It gives us energy.”

Kassidy are famous for their innovative use of social media to keep in touch with their fans, updating frequently and actively interacting with their fans. Recently this included a live performance via live streaming on Facebook.

Hamish explained, “We just heard about the programme and we… well everyone has Facebook, and everyone loves to get involved.  

                                                                                                          (Photo by Henry Lee)

If there’s a spell where we’re not gigging… we love to be active- if we’re not gigging and we’re not recording, we’re like “what are we meant to do? What are we meant to do?!” cause we love performing. So it was like “You know what, there’s this programme where you can do that,” and we thought, “let’s just get gigging!” So it’s good fun; we got a great reception.”

But the guys were exceptionally modest when it came to the fact that they’re not far off 10,000 fans on Facebook. “It’s amazing. It just comes out of nowhere man, we don’t know where these people come from. We don’t know how people hear about us… I’m pretty sure our friends make up fake accounts to try and help us get to the 10,000 mark,” laughed Barrie.

When asked what made the band different, the guys showed no lack in confidence over where the strength of the band lies. “We’re real, we’re honest. We’re a real band,” Hamish quickly and confidently stated. “There are not a lot of real bands anymore. We live in the same house, we write songs every day, we record ourselves… we don’t stop- ever. We’re a real band. We’re a family.”

The enthusiasm and excitement that this band has for their band and their music, is something that you cannot deny. Barrie explained, “We want to write the best songs, and we want to be happy with our own songs and our song writing and we want to play, we want to be the best live band out there. I think we’re pretty close to getting there.”

“We are close to it,” continued Hamish. “You’ll see it tonight. We are. It’s confidence. We’re doing well just now. You’d rather be hated than just be alright. So if you can be loved or hated, you’ve got to be one or the other. Who wants to be mediocre?”

Tsunami Charity gig- The main act!

Scott lackadaisically wandered onto stage and broke into one of the biggest songs off Frightened Rabbit’s second album, Modern Leaper, followed swiftly by The Twist. He then announced that he hadn’t actually made a set list, to which there was an outcry of requests from the audience. He selected, Less Rude, providing a rare performance of one of their songs off of their first album, Sing the Greys.

 

Throughout the gig, the audience were not only kept entertained by the musical talents of Mr Hutchison, but were also suitably kept chuckling by Scott’s comedic commentary on his songs. Stopping halfway through Nothing Like You, he explained that in the chorus he always has to restrain the urge to palm mute along to “she was not the cure for cancer, and all my questions still ask for answers…” (Palm muting, for all those who aren’t musically minded, is when a chord repeated chord is played faster, but quieter. It’s predominantly used in genetic rock/pop/punk music, hence the jest.) The crowd were loving it, but whether it was the song, the palm mute, or the hilarity created by the combination of the two, it is yet to be decided.

Scott got his brother Grant out to vibe with him to Old Fashioned, where he grab a spare tambourine and brought his dulcet tones to the piece.

One of my personal highlights from the evening was the story behind the song, Snake. Scott explained about his heartbreak over “Midnight organ girl,” to which the audience gave supportive cheers and jeers, telling the audience about how he wrote a song about his and his girlfriend’s draft excluder, which was a multi-coloured snake, so as to woo her back when she moved to New York. It was funny, heart warming and heart breaking all rolled into one.

It was especially poignant as Backwards Walk followed it; to which the audience sang along, word for word. The emotional lyrics, “I’m working on erasing you, I just don’t have the proper tools. I’ll get hammered forget that you exist, there’s no way I’m forgetting this,” were so relevant and immediate to the emotion behind the story that it just made sense that the they went together in the set list.

Finishing the intimate glimpse into the emotional mindset behind the album, Midnight Organ Fight, Scott played Floating in the Forth. This song, which he doesn’t play with the band and feared that he’d “fuck it up,” talks about the suicidal thoughts that he was dealing with when writing the album, and openly said, “it’s just how I was feeling at the time.” It was just beautiful to behold the stories behind some of the most honest and beautifully blunt lyrics ever written.

He grabbed his Frabbit band mates for a broken down version of Living in Colour and Head Rolls Off, followed by Swim Until You Can’t See Land, which is was safe to say that Scott was pretty much drowned out by the audience participation.

After the Frabbit boys, the next special guest that Scott brought onto stage was the lovely James Graham from Twighlight Sad. The unnecessarily bashful singer helped Scott out with the vocals for their cover of the Halle and Oats classic, Private Eye.

Rounding off the evening with Good Arms vs Bad Arms, Scott then stepped on front of his mic and performed Poke entirely acoustically. The entire room filled with the crowds’ voices, along with the almost silent sound of his guitar; it was a beautiful way to end the gig.

The crowd wanted more, however, and Scott came back on to finally finish the set with Keep Yourself Warm, to which the crowd joined in, word for word and note for note.

We all knew why we were there and where our money was going to. But what the acts managed to do was equal the charitable efforts of the evening, with some spectacular performances, making the evening wholly and entirely sweet.

Tsunami Charity gig- warm ups!

I find charity gigs quite bitter-sweet in general.

Predominantly it’s a band or artist constantly reminding you that you are having a great time while other people are struggling through some of the most horrible human experiences, inevitably leading to a mixed emotional bag of awkwardness.

Clearly not everybody feels as I do though, as the tickets for the gig were sold out days before the event. I caved and purchased the last two tickets available; the opportunity to see Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison perform an intimate and acoustic solo set was, and for future reference is not, an opportunity to be missed.

The atmosphere at stereo emphasised the bitter-sweet element of the evening; the excitement was juxtaposed by a relaxed and pensive friendliness. Everyone knew the meaning and purpose behind the night’s performance, but equally it seemed as though everybody was there primarily to experience some truly moving music.

Haight Ashbury made a strong start to the evening. Clearly influenced by American folk music, with a healthy amount of sixties love and protest based lyrics thrown in, Haight Ashbury managed to intrigue the surprisingly large audience for the first act on.

As the second act set up, the crowd grew extensively; a couple of shunts forward and the last bar trip of the evening undergone, two exceptionally stunning ladies came to the stage.

Now it wasn’t only the duo’s looks that grabbed the crowds attention and grasped on tight so that they had no choice but to sit up and take note; by the end of their first song, Gill and Jenny managed to stun the audience into a suitable awe struck silence, followed quickly by a mass round of applause.

The girls are not only exceptionally talented musicians, with both of them switching from guitar to fiddle, but they are so harmonised in their vocals that it came as a complete shock when they announced that this was the first time that they had performed together.

Their hauntingly harmonised vocals were also impressively and imaginatively altered during one of their songs, when one of them sang through their violin string, creating the oddest, yet perfectly suited reverberation of sound.

Their set concluded with a comic, yet original cover of JLS’s Beat Again, where the audience gave enough whoops and cheers to prove that they were most definitely ready for the main performance of the evening.

Frightened Rabbit/Scott Hutchison gig review to follow...