The Staves Interview

Folk trio The Staves enamoured legendary producers Ethan and Glyn Jones so much so that for the first time the father and son duo co-produced a record together. The result is the sisters debut album ‘Dead & Born & Grown’ an incredible blend of the girls angelic harmonies and poetic stories. Scene caught up with Emily to talk about their debut album and how they look after their voices.

Was there much in the way of preproduction on the album, as it doesn’t feel overworked at all, just very natural and charming?

We didn’t really do very much preproduction at all, we went and sat in Ethan’s garden for an afternoon with him and Glynn and we just played through some songs. We would play them a song and Ethan would say “I can hear a bit of that maybe” and we had tea and cake and went home and we were like “ok we will see you in a couple of months” and that was it. We really didn’t have it all planned out at all and we wanted quite a live feel to it. We didn’t want to over think it by being absolutely sure and making all the decisions about what would happen musically before we had actually got into the right space with the right people and kind of discovered what everybody was feeling should happen in the song.

Is there one song that best represents the album?

We sort of had that thought process when we were deciding on what the album should be called and so we settled on ‘Dead & Born & Grown’, which is the title of one of the songs. It’s one of the first songs that we wrote together, I think if you get that song then you really understand where we are going from, it’s very simple it’s just guitars and vocals, some simple harmonies in there. I would say that’s fairly representative of us but then there is also a song which comes at the end called ‘The Eagle’ and that is the most recent song that we have written and that’s also kind of the most representative in a way because that’s the point that we are at now so you have kind of got both ends of the album.

The video for ‘Tongue Behind my Teeth’ has a great cowgirl and revenge theme, who came up with the concept?

It was a friend of ours, we were talking about that being the next single and doing a video for it and our friend was like “I always hear horses hoofs, I always just see you girls on horses” and we all kind of laughed. Then we looked at each other and were like “do you think we could do a cowboy thing?” We went in and said to our video people that we had this idea ‘we want to go to the desert and make a cowboy video but we will be girls, we are not going to be all corset, sexy girls, we want to be like men seeking revenge.’ We were expecting to get shot down but they said ok so we went out to this place in Spain and we were like “I don’t really think anyone has thought this through as we can’t really ride horses, what are we going to do?” It was really good fun.

How are you preparing for the tour supporting Bon Iver?

Very little really, we’ve been gigging all summer but it’s been festivals and not touring and it’s been a really different experience. Festivals are cool but you don’t get into the kind of rhythm that you do when you are touring, you get yourself into a routine but with festivals you have a couple at the weekend but then nothing during the week or maybe one so we have been really looking forward to touring. Just getting out on the road with the same group of people and you kind of tour everywhere together and doing it pretty much every night so we have been looking forward to this for ages but I don’t know if we have really done anything to prepare for it. 

You have done a lot of touring this year, how do you keep the passion in songs when you are playing them night after night?

It’s not something that’s been a problem really. I think it’s just the fact that it’s a fresh audience every night. If we were going and recording these songs every night and it was just us in a studio I think we would struggle to find the desire to sing them but when your playing them for new people, it’s like telling a story to someone and it’s still funny. It’s still a funny story when you are telling it to people who haven’t heard it before so you are enthusiastic about playing it for them and you want it to be the best that you have ever told it so I guess it’s like that. We really feed off what kind of an audience we get.

Do you do vocal training or avoid things to look after your voices?

I am ashamed to say no, not at all, we are really bad. We kept saying about a year ago that we really should learn a warm up or something, but no we don’t do anything at all. I guess when we are on tour, if we are travelling together during the day in a car, which we are usually because it’s only the three of us so we don’t need a big van when it’s not with the band, we just kind of sing all the time. We listen to the radio and sing along to everything so I guess by the time you go on stage you have had a couple of hours of warming up but it hasn’t been a kind of thought out, sit down, lets do some scales and warm up kind of thing.

Which artist do you wish that you had seen before they died?

I would have loved to have seen The Band before Levon Helm died. Obviously the Beatles before John and Jeff Buckley, I would have loved to have gone to a Jeff Buckley show, we all went through a few years of being properly obsessed with Jeff.

What’s the best thing about being in The Staves?

The first thing that came to mind was that I have laughed so much more since I have been just doing this than I think I ever have before and we get to meet such amazing people and travel to places that we would never normally go to like weird deserts in Spain and stuff, Travelling, meeting, laughing, music.

Published in Yorkshire Evening Post& Metro