Music > Interviews

Interview with Beth Jeans Houghton

28/06/12

It’s as if Beth Jeans Houghton stands in the middle of a swirling vortex of music press, rooted to the ground that she knows she’s on, while journalists spin frantically around, throwing words and notions at her in the hope they’ll stick. ‘Folk’, ‘anti-folk’, ‘comeback’, ‘Kiedis’, ‘hiding behind her costumes’ and ‘sufferer of Synaesthesia’ are the ones delivered daily at her feet, while all the time Beth and her band, the Hooves of Destiny have put their energy into crafting one of the most explorative debuts of this decade, ‘Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose’. Despite her deserved wariness of the press, Beth was a charm as she gave us her time before this month’s Holt Festival appearance…

We’re doing this interview ahead of your date at the Holt Festival this month. Holt’s a beautiful place in the north Norfolk countryside, a calm village close to the sea – is that the kind of place you’d normally like to spend a Monday evening? Yes, that sounds perfect actually! 

It’s a great line-up over the duration of the festival – John Cooper Clark, Alan Bennet… - I just watched a documentary about John Cooper Clark actually.

Oh really? He’s an interesting guy. When he came to Norwich he let us take some headshots of him and his beautifully craggy face... Yeah, he has one of those old rock star faces that make you wonder how they look so good at that age.

I always wonder how you keep a face like that clean, in between the wrinkles. Haha, yeah! It’s like haggard, but in a very handsome way.

Now Beth, because we’re a magazine concerned with our own locality, tell us what it was like starting your musical career in the northeast and what you took from its musical heritage, if anything? Erm… probably nothing! I don’t know, I get asked a lot about growing up in Newcastle and what it brings to my music but I don’t tend to think it does, I mean, it probably does have some sort of influence, but no more influence than me having lived somewhere else really. I just happen to have been born here!

Was there much of a scene starting out, because you did start young? Yeah, I guess there was but I don’t think I ever really felt involved with that scene. The people were a lot older and it was much more of a competition; I think in England, in general, it’s more of a competition, whereas, say, in America they seem to support each other. They’re happy for their friends to get somewhere, whereas here it’s more like a rat race.

Yes, I can understand. Norwich seems to ebb and flow through that and luckily at the moment there’s a generation of young musicians who support each other by putting gigs on for each other and stuff, and it really works. Yeah, yeah, I think we are getting to a point now, I guess, with the collapse of the music industry as we know it, where people are doing more stuff for themselves and that’s really good, but that hadn’t quite happened yet when I started out. People were still after record deals because they still had a belief that that’s what was gonna help them get somewhere.

We were deliberating in the office over whether you’d ever had any vocal training – growing up, how did you find your voice? Erm, I didn’t have any training, but I don’t really know because I used to sing a lot when I was a kid and although it wasn’t the main thing I wanted to do when I grew up, I always really enjoyed singing in the house. I always used to try and go for the parts in school plays and stuff but I was told that I couldn’t sing, so I’m glad I didn’t listen to them! It was a long time though before anyone said that I may have an OK voice. I still don’t feel like I’m a singer though, I just sing because I wouldn’t want anyone else to sing what I’d written really! I enjoy singing, but I don’t think it’s anything special; I do it more because I know more how I want it to go, I guess. I like to be in control of the music I make, but not at one point have I thought of myself as a singer, I just feel like I’m in a band.

Well worry ye not Beth, to our ears it’s a beaut. Now, I was reading the music papers last year and a lot were citing a comeback from you, which made me double take, as you’d only been slightly off the radar for a year or so… Hahaha yeah, and I hadn’t even had a record yet, my debut record!

Is there a sort of unsustainable expectation when it comes to your activity? Yeah, well a lot of it was news to me because I don’t read a lot of the stuff that people write, but someone told me – I think it was my grandma or someone – that someone said it was a comeback record! Then there was a lot more said after that and it is kinda funny, but I just had to ignore it really ‘cause with the press it doesn’t matter how honest or dishonest you are, they’re still gonna print what they like and you can’t dwell on it.

Well I can promise you we’re not a sensationalist magazine! Yay, thankyou!

I think Engelbert Humperdink at the Eurovision warrants the term ‘comeback’, I mean, he’s about 100. Yeah, yeah, exactly; I just thought it was strange because I hadn’t really been anywhere to come back from! I’ve been touring and making music the whole time, but yeah, it was a bit strange.

You came to Norwich, to the Arts Centre about two years ago now, I think and since then it’s been a long wait for us for your debut album, as you’re well aware – - Ha, yeah…

Can you tell us about the time that it’s taken to come to fruition? Yeah, well it was finished about three years ago and came out about two years after that, ha! The delay was just sort of like boring label stuff from contracts, and people got sick who were working on the record, so it was frustrating, but I think a lot of people thought that it took that long to actually make the album, when it only took about three months to make the actual record! Then we had to wait for two years to release it. That was frustrating, but I’m glad that it’s out and we’re talking about the next record now, which is good for me ‘cause I’ve all these songs that are written already for it, which we can’t really do anything with ‘til we record them, so that’s a positive.

It’s not called a release for nothing – did you feel like you’d kind of exorcised those songs when the album was finally released? Yes, stupidly I did think that I’d exorcised them and then I realised that I had to tour them for like a year, haha, so I’ll feel like I’ve exorcised that record once we have another record out, because this is still the one that I’m promoting. I do love it, and I love the songs and love playing them live and stuff, but the new music is difficult and sometimes it is difficult to go back. You know, there are songs about boyfriends I had when I was like 16, who I don’t think about any more, but having to sing that still now, when I didn’t think I would be, is…

It must be like looking through an old photo album every day, like a forced nostalgia… Yeah, it is; I don’t think people realise how personal songs can be sometimes – I know that’s my own fault – but at the same time, at the time you write it, it’s something you need to get off your chest, but I’m the kind of person who will write a song, play it for about 6 months at the most, and then need to move on and never want to see it again. But I’ll get used to it! I’m happy that people want to hear it.

We’ve been really enjoying the album in the office, all of us with our varying music tastes, and it’s allowed me to start wondering about new material you may have. With ‘Carousel’, It reaches new levels of tempo and energy – being the album closer, is it a hint towards what new material may be like? You know, that was older than a load of songs on the record but I just felt that it was a good closer because a lot of the songs have a string part in them, but with that one, too many of the other choruses have strings on them, on the quartet sections but this one doesn’t have any lyrics on, whereas other ones do and I kind of felt like with that one it was all about the music, because I’d already said everything. I felt that was a nice place to leave it on, I guess.

When you were recording the album, you spent your time in America and I recently saw you tweet, “Can I just marry the whole of LA?” Might we lose our northeast girl to the west coast of the US? Yeeeah, I��m afraid that might be the case. I’d like to live there.

What’s LA got that Holt hasn’t, eh?! Oh goodness, I don’t know, I feel bad!

You’ll change your mind when you get to Holt, I imagine. Yeah, I’m sure, haha! I don’t know, since I was really, really young I remember the first record I heard on vinyl was Joni Mitchell’s ‘Ladies of the Canyon’. I was fascinated first of all by the vinyl, and that whole record just encompasses a time and a place in the 70s in Laurel Canyon. From there I discovered Neil Young and The Mamas and the Papas and Frank Zappa and to me it was just this magical place where it’s warm and there’s palm trees and people are making music and even though they weren’t all living in the same house, there was a sort of sense of like a commune. They always intrigued me, communes. My love just sort of blossomed from there and then I went, and it really was as I had imagined; even though Laurel Canyon isn’t really the place where people play music, it’s kind of more Echo Park now and stuff, there’s still that stuff going on. It’s kind of just a magical place really and has a nice vibe, I guess.

I’d love to go – I went to San Francisco in March for my honeymoon – - Oh that’s so cool, congratulations!

Ha, yeah, it was a great place, like New York’s hippy cousin, or something. Yeah, well I’d always thought that I would want to live in San Francisco and I love it, but compared to LA it’s quite cramped, I guess. When you’re in LA you’ve got the mountains and the desert and the ocean and the city and all of these different places and I don’t know, I just feel like that’s the place for me. Have you driven along the Pacific Coast Highway?

No, we wanted to though, to hire an open-top mustang and cruise down the coast – - Oh, it’s amazing; it’s really cool.

I’ll have to remarry, just so that I can tick another place off. Yeah, yeah, definitely; I’ll have to get married – I need to marry an American, that’s my next plan!

I have to ask you about the band as well, because I don’t know if they were with you when you came to Norwich last… No, I must have done.

So is it just that now you have formally named them the Hooves of Destiny? Oh no, no, they’ve been the Hooves of Destiny for five years, but it just took a long time for people to agree and put it on everything! That was a problem for us where people would still bill it as just me and then I think people would come expecting me with an acoustic guitar and be disappointed, then people who would probably want to come and see a band didn’t, because it wasn’t billed as that. But we’ve got that point across now; they’ve been with me for five years now.

And definitely a permanent fixture for you then? Yeah, for sure.

We run a tattoo convention in Norwich, so have a strong relationship with body art and I couldn’t help but notice your offerings of ink dotted around your body – - I’ve got either eight or nine tattoos; I’m not sure. I’m trying to slow down, I mean, I never wanted to be like a tattooed lady, but I do have nine tattoos now!

But they’re quite discreet, quite small… Well kind of, but now I have one each on the palm of my hand; on one palm I have a bird and on the other one I have ‘Thank You’ in Underwood typewriter font, quite big in the middle of my hand. I’ve got one on what I like to call the ankle of my arm, you know, where the knuckle of your wrist is?! Then I’ve got two on my other wrist, a crayola crayon on my arm and I guess they are kinda discreet, but every time I look down, they’re there.

I don’t see mine anymore, I forget I have them ‘til I finally let go of my cardigan in spring and think, ‘oh my god, what’s on my arms?!’ Haha, yeah, I know!! Mine are really in my face but I got the ‘Thank You’ one on purpose on my hand so that I’d see it every day and remember to be grateful. I think it’s easy to forget and a lot of people focus on what they don’t have and get a bit bummed out about that, but they need to be thankful for what they already have. It’s all about being happy and sad in the same situation.

Emma Garwood