And then after a year I was not interested in being in a folk band. I was like, I want to do more than that.
Hello and welcome to Midnight Chats, a podcast of casual interviews with leading musicians, published weekly at midnight to suit these informal and often under researched conversations. This week's episode is hosted by me Stuart Stubbs, editor of Loud and Quiet magazine. Joining me on episode one hundred and seven of the podcast is artist, musician, theater maker, electroclash pioneer
and queer icon Peaches. Peaches started making music in her home city of Toronto in nineteen eighty nine in a folk group called Mermaid Cafe, but it was in the year two thousand when she really became the artist we know her as today, releasing her seminal debut album, The Teaches of Peaches. She originally intended to be a director of musical theater and physical performance, as all always been a big part of her shows, where she often jumps into the crowd and quite frankly, freaks a lot of
people out. Peaches spoke to me from her home in Berlin, a city she first visited with previous Midnight Chats guest Chili Gonzales, an old friend of her since her early days back in Toronto, where the pair also used to play in a band called The Shit. A link to the film that I mention that features early footage of the two of them playing in Berlin is below this podcast in the show notes, along with links to a
few of the other things that we cover. I'm not exactly sure when a new Peaches album will be, but in the meantime, she has recently dropped a new single made for Lockdown called Pussy Mask. There's also a link to the illustrated video for that track below. There's only one Peaches, and here she is on episode one hundred and seven of Midnight Chats. Have you been living in Berlin since essentially the first time you went there in the early two thousands.
Ish, Yeah, I have. I moved to LA for a while. I've moved to early a few times, Like in two thousand and six. I was there for a year, just you know, making my album, and then I got a place in LA and I was there, you know, for a few years, making rub and considering living there and stuff like that. But I got pulled back in to Berlin.
You've got pulled back to Berlin. There's a few years ago I saw when it came out. I think it was a couple of years ago, the Chilly Gonzales film Shut Up and Played the Piano. Within that, there's some great, really early footage of you and him in Berlin playing in some like basement venues and things. What year with what years would that have been?
When the two thousand, two thousand and one?
Sure, and that was like the first time that you arrived in the city, right, because he had been living.
Well, we lived, we arrived. We actually were visiting in like nineteen ninety eight. We first visited and then he moved there and I went back home. I had a job and couldn't just move. But yeah, we visited there and then came back. Made my first album in Canada in Toronto.
What do you remember from that time? And from those early shows they looked wild and exciting and great. What was That's what it was.
It was just it was just like no holds bar and who who gives a fuck? It's just like, let's you know, whoever was playing, everybody else would just join, Oh can I come with join on stage in your show? You know? Friends that were, you know, performing and things like that. It was always like, you know, like a gang kind of feel like a group, fun thing to do, or even if you were alone, it was just there was never a sort of like a set a set.
It was just let's see what happens. You know. I was, you know, exploring with my groovebox the and I always had the beats programs, but I could always like you know, mix them and shift them whatever way I wanted to, and it just gave a sense of it was more about an energy and spontaneity, which was really exciting.
Would this has been the time that you and Chillie were in the band The Ship or is this post that band?
Definitely post that The Ship was in Canada and I was very me and Chili con Cells and Machi. I don't know if you know. Maki did a lot of production for fives. He worked with Kalai, He's done a lot of it, makes his own beautiful albums. And another girl named Sticky. I was friends with this girl, Sticky, and we were very dissatisfied with our own bands. And she said, I know these two guys and one is my neighbor and he has like a jam space in
his basement, so can we all jam? And I didn't even know them, and we jammed, and I wanted to be in an all girl band, so I was like, I don't want jam with boys or whatever. But it was really fun. We just got super high and then started to switch instruments, which I'd never done before. I had never played like keyboards. They're like, here's keyboards. I was like, WHOA like a kind of I was called the SAH one thousand, but it had you know, filters
and things. I was like, this is really cool. I started to play the drums all in this one jam, and you know I would played electric guitar and stuff. So I remember after that jam, we just all looked at each other and we said, I think we're a band. Now what's our name? And we were like with shit. So that it was kind of like the way that we all kind of got out of our own sort of ideas of what we could do in music and
really set ourselves free. So that started me on the path, the Peaches path, because we all renamed ourselves and I said I want to be Peaches because I want Nina Simone just to sing the words Peach it just the word peaches to me, like, you know, just really on that raw level, just that the passionate way she says the word. I wanted her to be saying it to me. So yeah, that's what the shit was about. And Operate actually Operate came from that band. That was like one
of the first songs I wrote. But that was also Yeah, that was just exciting to like, you know, it's when you have certain bands or you have certain performances and you know that you know whether they were whether they're connecting with people.
You know, sure by the time that you first come to Berlin and are doing those those basement shows that I mentioned that were in Chili's film, What was it about that place that has essentially made you stay there ever since? What was it that made you connect with Berlin?
Well, I think at the time in Canada and in Toronto it was still didn't they you know, it was very they didn't really understand what I was doing. It was just always like, you know, if you want to talk, you know, we would always call ourselves the Weird Ones on last you know, we would play these nights and they would always be like okay, and now let the Weird let Gonzales or Peaches or let them on last, because you know, then every at least the night's over.
We just people didn't really understand what was going on. And I remember when we went to Berlin it was just seemed like it was more open and there was just it was just that kind of place in time where people were just experimenting and the paths seemed to build, and the excitement in terms of not even like we're gonna make it, it just more like let's be creative.
Because on your as we were chatting today, I've gone way back into Peach's history and also pre Peaches. So where does Mermaid Cafe? Who I didn't know about until literally yesterday?
That goes really weird.
This is way back, right, this is one of your Is this like this is one of your very first bands? Kind of a folksy roots roots band trio of you. Yeah?
Yeah, so that's like eight eighty nine.
Wow, okay, right really early. Yeah, So there was I saw a short piece of footage yesterday. If you I don't know if it was on like local Canadian TV. It's on YouTube and there's somebody interviewing you in this in this bar, the three of you, and I think you described the music to her as homemade acoustic homemade acoustic pizza.
I think, yeah, we tried to have some kind of like name. But the thing is I mean that that okay, well let's go away. If you want to go way.
Back, sure let's do it.
I yeah, sure, of course. I I didn't really realize I was a musician, you know. I I knew that definitely I was. I would I would have to be part of, you know, the arts and performance. I only knew like musicals, you know, I wasn't really like that's what I knew. I went to theater school. I wanted to be a theater director. I wanted to direct cool musicals.
And you know, you're in university and you want to you say, yeah, I want to be a director of cool musicals, and people like that is not what we're doing here, you know. So I quickly realized I also didn't want to be a theater director because I didn't want to have a heart attack before I was thirty. I didn't want to have to like just all the institutional things you'd have to like deal with, you know, in terms of like just even budget lighting. Then you know,
you don't always have control over everything. And it was just like all of this, It just seemed like it would have been so many compromise, compromise and all this, and so I actually quit in the middle of I got into a directing program. There were like seven of us,
and I quit in the middle of it. I took and was still in university, got like a BFA, so did a lot of took a lot of different arts courses, opened my eyes to a lot of things, had a lot of fights with teachers about what art is or you know, which was really you know, healthy and good and growing. And I started to play acoustic guitar and my girlfriend at the time played acoustic guitar, and you know, we got together even like yeah, that's jam that's how
we met and stuff. But then she got a gig opening for somebody, and I said, oh, can I join? And we spent like a week maybe working. She had a lot of songs and I wrote two, and then actually just a lot of people showed up. I guess we had a lot of friends, but they really liked it, and the owner of the small club said could you play here weekly? So all of a sudden we were a band. Of folk band. So I never meant to be.
It was supposed to be a one night thing. And then another friend of ours, Joe, he taught me acoustic guitar. So he's like, I taught you acoustic guitar, I write songs. I'm going to be part of your band. And so it was just the three of us, and then all of a sudden we were a band and playing a weekly show and writing songs. And then I was like, oh, hey, yeah, I guess I'm a musician. That's cool. It's writing songs and stuff like that. And then after a year, I
was not interested in being in a folk band. I was like, I want to do more than that. So that's how it came in. And then I realized I was a musician. But then I was like, yeah, I don't want to do folk.
Last year was kind of marked twenty years of peaches. Do you allow yourself to take a minute to think about the things you've achieved.
That's a good question, I think pandemically speaking, I have to find it dangerous to do that and just fallen up, like so, I haven't been doing that during the pandemic, but I do like to look back and see like in terms of like understanding what sort of performance wise and lyric wise and music wise, what I was doing, and how I would like to do it, or how I could reconfigure it or recontextualize it, or how it has or has not still gained relevance or meaning to me.
Another thing that I was listening to yesterday was your I don't know if you would call it your debut solo record or is it a kind of the record that you made under your birth name rather than Peaches. Do you consider that your debut or do you consider Teachers the Peaches your debut.
I mean that consider Teaches the Peaches my debut. That was like another It was like very big part of my life and experimenting again, like it was after I had the folkn and then I was like, I just want to have a band, and you know, it was my experimentation with writing and experimenting with my voice, and you know, a self funded. It wasn't like it was on a label or anything like that, so it's good.
I was listening to it yesterday again for the first time, and I was enjoying it. I thought like I could kind of see how you'd gone from even though I only saw a clip of Mermaid Cafe, I could kind of see how you'd gone from that to that record.
But then how do you how how do you see the kind of transition from because Pete when Peaches, when Teachers of Peaches came out, it just felt so fully formed and such a like from a listening point of view from a fan, it just felt like it was just everything was right, it was all in its right place.
I think that's what happened. Yeah, it just that that was the moment where it all came together. So I think that, you know, when I was talking about the ship, that was the band. You said it was under my real name, Meryl Nisker, but the band was called Fancy Pants Sudilm. But when I made the album, I'm like, maybe it should called my name because it's my you know, kind of it's all me. But I'll call the album fans Panzylm because that's like just the project, you know.
So I was just sad, like I think interesting in that, but it was popular and it could have continued. And then when I started fans Pants Hudim, they were not having it. I had no audience. I never really had an audience for that at all. Nobody nobody, They weren't having it.
So was that just a timing thing, which is like the mood at the time in Toronto? What was the I don't know.
I just wasn't connecting with people, and maybe I wasn't, you know, really I was just experimenting, but it wasn't connecting. And that's why the ship was so important, because all of a sudden then it was like, Aha, I feel like I'm connecting. I'm getting closer to understanding, you know, my gut feelings about how to perform and what I want to say.
You spent a year or so studying theater, thinking that that was going to be your thing. Within that course, did you study performance art? Was that part of it?
I don't know what performance are was?
Right? So there was nothing from that course that essentially led directly to what became Peaches.
No, and I think that, you know, I just came by. I think I realized that, oh, you can be a performer and a writer, and you can direct, and it can all be in your own hands. That was the point, you know, I was like, someone else doesn't have to tell you what to do or how to produce. It or what to say or you can all do it on your own, and you can also can completely change it and also have the spontaneous element that theater never has, you know, it always is kind of one step behind,
you know, it never has this full spontaneity. So that's that was what. So I learned what I couldn't do in theater and tried to do it.
What were you what were you learning on that course? Then? Was it about what was the syllabus that they were teaching you about? That essentially turned you off it and made you decide, actually, I don't want to be doing.
This because I just wanted to make cool musicals and you know that was not in the curriculum.
Was any musicals in the curriculum?
No, no way, no, it.
Wasn't a thing. My wife teaches at Golden Smith's, which is arts, and I know about I still now and they have a musicals degree there now they do. That's fairly new.
Yeah, wow, what what what happens there? Should I be going there?
You should be going there? I mean, they just they study and they make their own musicals.
I think do you think you could put in a good word for me?
For I'm pretty sure they would have you. I'm pretty sure. I mean I can, I can, I can, I can pull what what short strings I have?
What is interesting to me is that, you know, ten years into my Peaches career, I was asked to do a production at a very you know, underground but well sought after a theater and I got to make my musical.
Is this Peaches Christ Superstar?
No, this is Peaches does herself?
So this to celebrate ten years of pages, yeah.
And so and so. In that way, I was responding to jukebox musicals that at the time had nothing to do with the actual music of the artists, you know, like we will rock you, you know. So this was before they decided to you know, honor Freddie Mercury and and delve into more of his personal life. So we were rocky. Was this Do you remember this musical which is.
Like the little yuristic Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like set in the future when music's been banned.
Music's band and we have to find a secret guitar. Yeah, you know, things like that, and then have you seen it?
Did you get?
I saw it in German. I was invited to the opening.
Brian May was there actually for the opening and it's like really, I was just like, I'm not having this, but yeah, So it was kind of a response to jukebox musicals and also response to what people would say about me in the myths, myths around who I am and what I am and then so it was quite exciting for me to take my love of musicals from like early uh, you know, Buzzby Berkeley style to you know, west Side Story, to like you know, Tina Turnier as the Acid Queen or you know, other kind of Ken
Russell film versions of musicals, and to more experimental ways to like Twila Tharpe style or you know, like just bringing all the history and bringing all my love and going like, finally I get to do this musical. And I have been doing the research for the last ten
years on myself. So that was super, super satisfying. I wanted to tell you a story about when if we want to continue on the musicals, But when Rocky Horror, the Rocky Horror Show came to Berlin in like two thousand and nine or something like that, and I was super excited and my my friends, I think got me a ticket. My friend got me a ticket for me her and her mother to go see it. So I
was super excited. And when you walked in, they gave you a little package with a piece of toast in it and some cards and some confetti and stuff like that. So I was like, great, everybody's up for it, you know. And the first thing that happened is, you know, the narrator came on and was like broad and drug, you know,
but it's all in German. Not that I speak German, but and I just yelled at barring, you know, like your breast thinks and all those things you're supposed to yell, and everybody in the theater just turned around him looked at me, and I was just like what you know. I mean I was handed you know, the tools, and this is what you do. So anyway, yeah, you's what you meant to do. And then of course, like there's a light comes on and I'm like jet it, you know,
I'm going on. People are staring at me whatever, not as much. But then in the middle, like you know, they had an intermission and my friend explained to me that the actor who was playing the boring Man, it was his first time back on the stage in like years, and he had had this huge, horrible drug problem and it was like a huge thing and he was nervous and all this. So I didn't know any of that. I was just trying to play a love. I didn't
know that. So everyone else is like playing on that stuff and I'm I'm just like trying to have a good time. But and also people started, as Germans do, they started to drink during the intermission, and then everybody kept turning to me during the show, like.
What do I do?
Now? I do? Now? What should I say? You know, because they realized that they were supposed to do that, Like they were showing me like the cards and like cards for sorrow. Yeah, let's go. So it was it was kind of funny. It was very a very German moment too.
So you said that you met Jali because you were introduced through a friend and to kind of jam in the basement and stuff. Where does Feist come into your life? Because I kind of see the three of you as a sort of gang of sorts, seen as the amount that you've worked together over over the years.
Well, and also there's Taylor Savvy, and there's Marky and then there's you know a whole host of other people. Uh, Fist comes into it. I think Chile and Feiss were dating, right, okay, way wait, way way way back, and then and then Feist became after that, Fist became roommates with with Savvy, right, and then after that Taylor moved out and I became roommates with Feist, so we were roommates and we were we yeah, we were roommates.
And the pair of you came to you did it? You came and did an early tour here in around two thousand, right, and you stayed with Justine Frishman from Alastica.
Yeah, yeah, well I had done some tours, I did tours with Chile, I did my own tours, and then Justine asked me and Chile to come on tour with her in America and then then just I stayed with her and her at her place with her roommate you know,
h M I a Maya and uh. Feist was still in Canada, and I was like, would you can I just bring you over here because you need to come to Europe, like I think she just I don't know, I don't even remember, but somehow maybe I even I was just like get over here and you can just join my tour because you know, we would always join each other's show and just and then you can start working on your stuff, not that I was like, and then you can start you know, she was of course
working on it. But yeah, she came over and was doing shows with me. Yeah, I know, I'm going to continue on because I know where you're getting out with the Justine Fisher and thing. But so we played at ninety three.
Feet east, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's close to where I am now. Yeah.
Yeah, And so Feist was just she was kind of my big girl called bitch lap Lap that was her name. Yeah, And and you know, we didn't bring a sound person, so there was a sound person there who came down and was like, hey, you know, like let me let me, let me know what you need. And it was Paul Epworth.
He was a pretty good, pretty good sound.
Guy, pretty pretty good sound guy to have. But you know, we didn't know he was he because he you know, he was doing the sound there. And and uh, Justine came to the show of course, and Maya was was was filming because that's what she was doing. She went she was doing more documentary filming. And this was like before and it's just a funny moment that then we all went over to Justine's house. So it was like Me, Phiz, Maya and Paul just hanging out. It's just so funny,
just like key guys, we're in Justine's place. Wow.
You know, had you been had you been an Elastica fan in the nineties.
Yeah, oh yeah, I was. Alastica Alaska had that energy that really you know, there was like something about Alastica that made me think maybe it's just because of the beginning of uh of you know, where they had the toy Toy electronic you know beat, but I always thought there was some little bit of an electronic feel to them, like they could even maybe go electronic because and they had this really just very very stark, direct playing you know that I really liked, you know, in the same
way that the B fifty twos had that like very you know, early B fifty two.
Sure, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, your.
Instrument knows what it does and it just does this and you know, which is the way I wanted to make electronic music. So that was influence. And also yeah, thee.
And what was going what was going on here? And I'm just trying to think back to around two thousand what was going on?
It was electrode clash.
Was it? Was it already electro clash? I think that. Yeah, it came a bit, Yeah, that's what did they not come up?
It was then? No, it was then. I mean I was asked to play these electroclash nights and with electrocats. I didn't even know it was a thing, but I was like headlining these nights of like you know, the Zeitgeist where it was like, you know, mostly and led by by women, which was amazing, and like a music movement led by women, which was like very performance oriented, very you know, uh humorous, very self conscious, but also very spontaneous and uh yeah, I think I already said
very performative. So it was like Chicks on Speed, which I.
Didn't know, but you know, and then there was like what was that single, that Chicks on Speed single that first we.
Don't play guitar.
Song?
Yeah I got to play. I got to be the anti guitar player on that. And then there's like Letigra, you know, the plastics, and then and then there's like miss Kitten. You know, we were all doing this kind of stuff, but it was really not even influenced by each other. It all came out really at the same time, like, hey.
Did you ever play a trash?
Yes? I did play a trash. I played a trash. I mean even on the there's like a soundtrack. There's a version of Rock Show Live from the Trash recordings.
That was a great cub.
Was it called the End The End?
Yeah?
Yeah, the night was called trash.
With Errol Yes, yeah, right in the town. Yeah.
And Errol was a you know, big part of all that whole scene too, and Too Many DJs, you know, making the connection between electronics and rock together.
I remember like Fuck the Paint Away being on that Too Many DJs mix.
Yeah, I was going to say, that's where a lot of people in those circles heard about Fuck the Paint Away. And it was like with Lou Reed, was it take a Walk on the Wildside or Bishop or something? Yeah, So you know, so it was like, yeah, when when rock was still like.
A thing, thinking about all of the kind of I suppose the different types of crowds you've played in front of from like that when you were playing in those folk clubs, you know, when you you've toured with like big kind of stadium rock guys and you've done clubs, and you've done your big theater shows, and you've done so You've played so many different types of shows and so many different types of people in front of so
many different types of people. Are there any crowds or kind of situations where you think, oh, I'm not sure about this one.
Yeah, that can still definitely happen, which I think is exciting, you know, yeah, because in the early years, you know, like I would play in more of an art crowd, and I would do things like I would wear white pants and stand there with a microphone and just let blood come, you know, outro from like I was having my period and get really embarrassed and people would be horrified. And then I would you know, rip those pants off and and run around the room and chase chase, like
every collectors that I didn't even know. They were just like what about that? You know, And then years later if I would do the same thing, they would be in the know. So it was kind of fun when, you know, when people don't know about you too, because then you just can have your way with them and you know, which is really quite fun. You know. When I would open for bands like Queens of Stone Age, a lot of those, and I'll call them dudes, would like turn around in protest to not look at me
like what is this? What is this music? Who is this person? So I would like run off the stage and say like, hey, the stage is that way, you're facing the wrong way, you know, or my banter became very good that way. But you know, there are a few times some you know, where you're just you're booked for something and just people don't get it and you're like, oh,
I'm back in this place. But also those are really exciting because you can see the sort of evolution during during the performance of people getting it or not getting it, and that's that's real and that's fun.
It's so fearless to me for you to have done that, you know, for you to have to have especially when you weren't, as you say, is when people didn't know what to expect to get to go out there and do that. Have you always been that fit? Are you? Are you that fearless in everything you do? Have you always been that well?
Well? Well, I mean I never, I guess I it was never you know, when I would do the other bands, it never needed to be a feelss. It was kind of sort of like the situation came up and I was like, oh, whoa, okay, let's work with this, you know. Like and I guess also when especially like opening for whatever said band was big at the time that you know, I was not a part of that scene. My model was stay on stage, just make it to the end, you know, because if you don't, then you know, nothing happened,
you didn't win. You just just stay on there. What's gonna what's gonna you will what will happen if you stay? Just stay Because so many bands I know, they would open, they would just leave the stage just like forget it. What's the point of this? I try to keep just trying to like figure out what where's my way in or how how what an interesting situations could be, you know, without putting myself in danger.
Sure, And I mean you must have had some shows where staying on the stage, even in that moment by the end of the stage completely worked, and like you had that moment. You must have had those moments where you're like, I'm glad I stuck this out because it's now we've turned a yeah.
With with the you know, on the Manson tour, because it was like six weeks. I had gotten so good at banter. I'd had so many good tricks up my sleeve. It was so much fun in London. I knew that you couldn't that, you you know, I started a bottle fight. I knew they only had plastic bottles, so I threw a plastic bottle, and then the whole show people were
just throwing bottles at me. And you know, of course I was saying binary things like you throw like girls and things like that, and your sheep dressed in black and stuff. But all the time I had a plan with the catering service. I was like, can I borrow a big like a water cooler filter thing container? And I had it in the back and so they're all like throwing and yelling at me, like it was really hilarious. I wish I had I don't have this on video.
And then at the end of the show, I'd be like, oh yeah, and I brought it out at this huge bottle, you know, and they were like, we have been fucked with. Then they realized like she started this and we've been fucked with. And I threw it in there. You know, I didn't hard, but I threw it in there. The crowd and they were like, oh, wow, we've been had. So I just started to have fun with it because it was not fun at the beginning.
Have you seen anyone else perform who has kind of affected you in a way that maybe some people would be affected by seeing you perform? Have you been to see a performance if someone and gone, wow, they went for them? Yeah, that was amazing. Yeah. Who have you seen?
Well, it's it's a little known band from Canada called.
Stink Stink Mit.
Yeah. And they always you know, they were just they were just so messy and amazing. And I remember Betty Ford. She would perform without pants on, you know, like walk through the crowd no pants on, and people were like horrified because you know, some people decide no top, but they would they'd just be like looking and look down, like, oh, don't look down, you know, but but they were just they would just really do your head in and it
was really exciting. Christine, I don't know, you probably know Christine, Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, So Christine is like, you know, my daughter, basically my performance daughter. Yeah.
She's amazing, isn't she.
Yeah, yeah, you.
Know top of the pops here in the UK.
Yeah, I was I was on it.
You were on it, right, but it didn't They didn't air it. They didn't air it. Why did one? What? What did you perform on? What made them not not air it?
That was one of those moments where nobody understood me. It was like, why is she on this? The audience was like they were not having it. I think it just wasn't a hit and it just didn't work and people didn't understand it. They like to say that it was too The legend is that it was too raunchy, but you know, people just didn't get it. They were pointing out my very short shorts and my you know, puba care coming out, but I don't know, it just didn't work.
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Anyway, goodnight,