Kill It Kid Interview

Kill It Kid Interview 7/10/09
Scott McLoughlin

Scott McLoughlin catches up with Kill it Kid singer songwriter Chris Turpin post-performance at Edinburgh’s Cabaret Voltaire.

Scott McLoughlin (SM): I’ve really struggled to define your genre, and I bet everybody asks you this as well (Chris laughs). What would you say it is?

Chris Turpin (CT): It’s a music born out of the folk tradition; it takes influence from American folk music, and the great American songs. Some say its Americana. It’s Kind of Delta Blues as well. Generally I call it blues.

SM: Hence the French Chart Reference

CT: Indeed yeah, well that’s what Itunes call us.

(Chris Turpin announced on stage, to some of the bands own surprise, that Kill It Kid are currently number 3 in the French itunes blues chart, despite never having been to France)

SM: Has it surprised you the amount of success you’ve had considering how fast you’ve got to where you are now?

CT: Yeah, it really has. I think as we got signed so early from becoming a band, that we thought that was normal. Then we thought that everything else would go at that sort of pace; whereas now actually it’s started to slow down, and we’ve become a bit more impatient.

SM: Having just released the album [Three days ago], are there any songs of particular importance to you?

CT: Yeah the last song on the Album ‘Taste the Rain’ is the last song that we wrote – that I wrote – before we recorded the album. It’s a very different set up to anything else on the Album. The drum kit was kicked to pieces; we stripped it all down. We played up symbols, and taped on tambourines and played the whole thing with hammers and mallets. It was quite emotional I guess as well. It’s the last song we wrote and the last song on the album, and we recorded it in two takes.

SM: I perhaps should have prepared more questions, this might turn into the shortest interview you’ve ever had (CT laughs). Yeah, so how do you go about writing your material? Do you listen to stuff before or…?

CT: Erm, usually it’s a couple of lines, and that will resonate. And you write them down, and you work them out in a book and you keep writing and writing, and see what happens. And then normally I’ll write words first and then put them to music. Whereas I used to just write music and then put words to it. It’s quite different. For example ‘taste the rain’; that was a complete set of lyrics before it even touched the music. Always try to put a little piece of yourself into the song, so its, you know, real and interesting and honest.

SM: So do you write independently then translate to a five-piece set up?

CT: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Like the song ‘Bye Bye Bird’ we do was written like a ‘Hollis Brown’; like a Bob Dylan folk song. I played it to the band and it turned into this sort of huge 2:4 kinda big drum rhythm. But yeah, I don’t tell any of the guys how to write their parts. Occasionally I’ll have a suggestion I had in my head when writing them. It’s literally, write a song, take it to the band, and it can go anywhere.

SM: Are there any artist that have been outstandingly inspirational to you? A source of inspiration? Or that you’ll listen to every time you are going to write something? Like a muse or something?

CT: Yeah, Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan times they are a changing. The obvious one, erm. The very early blues players like Robert Johnson always play on my mind. Reverend Gary Davis, his very early recordings as well always on my mind. Tom Waits, sometimes. Mainly the first set though.

SM: What has been your favourite live experience so far? I know you haven’t been a band for a long time, and it’s early days yet.

CT: (Haha) yeah well, there’s been a fair few. We did one next door to the London dungeons very early on, like twice the size of this (Cabaret Voltaire), which was amazing. Like a huge cavernous area with these huge railway arches, that went for like the size of a football field. That was a great gig. More recent; waking up in Zurich that was an odd one.

SM: Yeah, I can imagine.

CT: Yeah, that was a very odd one. Actually to be honest, the best one was at the beginning of this tour. We played in ‘Moles’, which is in Bath. Which is our hometown. And it sold out, and erm yeah, it was an amazing show. ‘Send me an Angel down’ which was our first single; everyone in the audience was singing along, and we’d never had that before.