Interview: French Wives
French Wives are Siobhan Anderson, Chris Barclay, Stuart Dougan, Scott Macpherson and Jonny Smith; a exciting, Glasgow based band that make colourful, interesting indie-pop.
Debut EP “Feel Safe Small”, will be released on Monday 21st February from brand new Red Hat Records, followed by an extensive UK in support of the release. See tour dates here.
What’s the story of French Wives?
French Wives are a 5 piece indie-pop band from Glasgow in Scotland who tell far too many in jokes for their own good.
How did you all meet and how long have you been involved with music?
I should tell some cool story for how we met, but the reality is that Stuart and I (Scott) met on myspace (cool kids) in response to an advert to join a band. From there on in we basically recruited friends of friends until we had the band we have today.
Who or what is the inspiration behind your music?
I wouldn’t say there is one solid inspiration or muse for anything we write. Without sounding too pretentious, if that’s possible, I think that if something is inspiring enough to warrant writing a song it is normally a fleeting, yet important thing.
How would you describe your music in five words?
accessible yet intelligent indie pop
Big Brave Boy
What kind of music did you listen to when you were 14?
I only really listened to Led Zeppelin and Jonny listened to the same music he listens to now (pop punk).
What can you tell us about your debut EP“Feel Safe Small”?
The most important thing to tell is that it is out nationwide on 21st February. By that I mean on all your normal download sites. The physical copies are limited edition and outside of a few independent record shops in Scotland they’ll only really be available at gigs, so come see us too.
Do you prefer performing live or recording?
Personally I prefer a bit of both. I like to tinker about with things whilst recording (probably a bit too much) but I’m also generally speaking an attention seeking child, so I enjoy playing live a lot as well.
What is the worst thing about being a musician?
Being really skint all the time and the subjectivity of music driving you mental all day and all night. Music is such an egotistical path to undertake that the slightest patch of self-doubt can drive you round the bend for a long period of time.
What the best piece of praise you’ve received so far?
I’m not sure actually. It would be a bit of an ego trip to reel off nice things that have been said about us, so here goes…. I jest. There’s a journalist for the Scotsman, Billy Hamilton, who I feel has understood our music the best since we’ve been around. I believe it was him who was the first to write about us without typecasting us into this bracket of indie-folk bands which was a scene that we never felt part of. We’ve always appreciated that a lot.
How do you promote your music?
In as many ways as possible. We don’t have management or a booker or a big label or anything at the moment, so everything we do we do ourselves to the best of our abilities. sure it would be nice to have some help around, but we’re just trying our best to get our music out there ourselves by doing things like this interview (thanks for this by the way!)
And lastly, what’s the plan for 2011?
To promote the EP coming out next month we’re going on a UK tour, which will take up February and March. Following that we’ll basically be working on material for an album with work planned to be started towards the end of the year. Hopefully we’ll get to some festivals in the summer again as well, as we’ve always had a great time at them.
Follow French Wives on MySpace, Facebook and Last.fm.
