He couldn't say, you just go out the pace of the lyric. He just had to say, like it was psycryptic. Hold your own was the first one. When he heard that. He came in and he listened just to saying that I had in my nightbook and downplaying the boats, and he was like, that's it. So that was the first one where we were like, okay, he wants me to just do poetry. We were like, what's the biggest rap producer of all time? He's telling me to stop rapping?
Even me, Everyone, and welcome to episode seventy six of the podcast Greg Here. This is the second episode of a brand new run of Midnight Chats, ten new conversations coming in total, arriving every Thursday at midnight, and we've given everything a lick of paint, a small freshen up, so we hope you like it. We kicked off this new series of episodes last week with Karen O from the AA Years, and tonight's guest is equally as incredible.
It's Kate Tempest. It's good timing as I saw Kate perform at a festival just last week and still reeling from that. She plays dates this autumn, so do go along if you can, as lots of you will know, it is an experience that goes way beyond your average gig. We recorded this episode a while ago in the middle of the summer June time, just before the Glastonbury Festival, which Kate played, around the time that her latest album,
The Book of Traps and Lessons came out. Of course, she's not just a musician, but an award winning writer, novelist, poet, producer, playwright. We get into all of that, and from our point of view, it's not a stretch to describe Kate as one of the most important and relevant British artists out there right now. So basically it's a pleasure to have her on as this evening's guest. And don't forget you can support this podcast by subscribing to Loud and Quiet magazine.
All the information is at Loud and Quiet dot com forward slash subscribe, sign up and we'll post you on next nine issues for as little as three pounds per month. I try and listen to as an any podcasts as I can, and I've had a number of favorites recently, and You've been on a couple of episodes that I've really loved one, which was from a long time ago, I think with James O'Brien that you did right, probably a couple of years ago now, I think, And in a recent one with DJ Sentex Who We Be and
his podcast, it was a really really good conversation. Do you enjoy doing podcasts? And also, like just generally you somebody that listens to podcasts much, do you check them out?
I actually don't listen to that many of them. When I'm recommended good ones from people that I checked this out, then I've listened to them and I've really loved them. I haven't like investigated them on my own terms that much, but they're kind of the perfect thing when you're especially if you've got like long traveling hours and things like that, it feels a bit more nourishing.
I don't know why, but it does feel like a more.
Nourishing way of listening to stuff when you're passing time, doesn't It feels like it's kind of better for you.
Yeah, it's like eating your greens is healthy like that.
But in terms of like the whether I enjoyed them, I definitely much prefer sitting down and having a chat and it's like a bit more relaxed and the chat's free to go, you know, wherever it ends up going than doing like an interview like print into print journalism, I find like I have found it a bit uncomfortable in the past. We're just sitting on a sofa a photograph of Justin Bieber.
I can see you up there.
It's gaty to face on the cover of al and Quiet Everything. Can I give you one tip if you listened to George the Poets podcast.
I haven't actually know so.
It won a lot of awards at the end of last year. It's just fantastic and it goes to that point you just said about how they feel quite nourishing and quite I think they're really They can be really intimate when they're done very well, and really innovative because they use sound in clever ways. And George's podcast is just incredible. Yeah, you feel educated by it as well.
But he is a fantastic educator, isn't he. He's so committed to his knowledge and to getting his mind around things, and like getting that articulated. I think I could imagine that being amazing, actually cool.
Thanks for the tip. I'll definitely chell it out You've.
Just released your new album, The Book of Traps and Lessons. Just before the album came out, you marked it by playing a show in Catford, which is kind of your it's local, right, played a local theater to debut the new album and play all of it. Is that right? How was that experience playing basically somewhere so close to home? Was that a nice way to launch this new chapter if you like?
Yeah, it was beautiful. It was a really beautiful experience. The theater itself is like a couple of hundred years old. I'm literally just made it up. That's probably wrong. I don't Maybe it's not that old, but it's one of those kind of beautiful I think they built it when Pianos Organs used to accompany pictures cinema, you know, And I think it was built as a kind of picture house. And usually what's on there is like panta, so there's sometimes comedy on there. And yeah, it's in my neck
of the woods. It's like just really close to where I grew up and where I live, and I've always dreamed of playing there again. It was just such a cool thing to do. This was the first time since it's come out that we played it all the way through, but the way that we recorded the album was like there's one live take kind of thing. So I have performed it in full like loads of times, but that was trying to get the right take for the album.
If you see what I'm saying.
I felt like a really grounded and profound way of launching because it's like you say, it's homewards and it made me feel just so full of love really, and it's such a positive way of walking out onto stage, just all this love in me for where I'm from and who's there and.
Lots of friends and family and stuff supporting you.
That night, the pub across the road put a banner out of their window saying we love you, Kate Pub across the This is why it's deep, because it's like, if you're from there, it's so powerful that to feel that coming at you from your home.
The local pride, like that's beautiful, mane.
It was like it made me cry that I couldn't believe. I could not believe that. I just thought, wow, yeah, I just felt really overwhelmed and felt really really happy to be able to do something that made people go like yeah, cool.
You know.
And the theater said that they've had loads of contact from people that you know, I didn't know anything about them being there, and lots of interest from people and all their kind of social media followings have gone up, and they're dead happy with that, and like they were being really nice and saying thanks for doing this here bonkers amazing at night.
And talk a bit about the recording of the album shortly, but in terms of the writing of it, just tell me a little bit about that because you worked with Dan Kerry again, he's done the music for it, and you worked on it in Stretton, which is a place where you've worked on your material for a number of years as I understand, But what eventually has ended up on this album they've been pieces of work that you've
been putting together for a number of years. Or did you sit down and kind of attempt to try and write it in one go with sessions with Dan or how did it come about that way?
The writing is so the writing of the album actually was motored by the process really that Rick was helping us to find and discover this whole album unlike anything we've ever done before. Because what happened was Rick Rubin saw me on a TV show about five years ago in twenty thirteen, or maybe it was early twenty fourteen, and I was performing an extract on my poetry on this show and he'd seen it and he gave me a call and.
Said like, hi, hey, hey, Rick, and no number.
And he had been really moved by the performance, and he wanted to make a record because what he saw was a poet. He didn't know that I was also a rapper that I hadn't you know, musical ambitions or anything like that. He didn't know about me. He just had seen this poet and he thought, well, I'd love to work out how this could be with music, you know, make an album. He saw something and the intention there that he wanted to pursue. At the time, I was
extremely busy. I was about to put out everybody down. I was touring Brendny Ancients, I was doing rewrites and Wasted and Hopes he devoted, was about to start touring just two plays that I'd written. I was also working on my novel, which was really hard, and I was working on my.
Poetry collection Hold your Own. There was like loads of stuff was going on.
So he was just extremely patient and we just kept communicating slowly. Right, All this to say is such a long way of saying it. All this to say that the first week we actually managed to go there and do some writing at Rick's place. Dan and I, you know, a year probably went past, but we'd been talking. We've been talking, and this process that he was interested in
had we'd begun to talk about what it was. But basically he'd said like loads of cryptic stuff that we didn't understand because he couldn't tell us what he wanted. He could just tell us when it wasn't quite right. So we said we made him demos in stretum, like you say, we sent him to him, and he was like, it's not quite right, it's not this. And then he was like, look, I don't want any drums. We were like, what,
I don't want any drums? And then so we made like about ten like folk songs with a guitar, you know, like like really bizarre. That shows you how willing we were to like just follow his guidance and just do what do what we could, like throw ourselves out there.
When we could.
Anyway, we went out to Malibu to his studio in Malibu's incredible studio called shangru La, which is like paradise.
Is it like paradise? You walk through and it's like beautiful setting, like the bus studio. This a legendary bus studio there obviously that Bob Divin's old taught us. But then like it looks like a green oasis like the pictures I've seen. And Rick Ruben's like padding around in the garden without any shoes on and just looking totally zen, waking up and eating grenoda and doing yoga. He just looks very identic. Is that really a reality? Yeah?
Amazing, It's unbelievable, very different to what we know, you know, to how we used to reality being Suddenly it's like, wow, this is a new reality that we're very happy to be involved in.
For a little bit of time. We like, we went out there with this kind of bag of folk songs. We didn't know what we were doing with.
He started this process and it's like Rick, he kind of wasn't really around, and we were just like, what We've come all this way and he's not really here. And then basically we had to get our heads around what it was that was going to start happening.
And what it was is that he would come in for about an hour in.
The late afternoon and he'd listened to whatever it was that we'd made, and he talked to us.
About it, and then he'd go away and we'd keep writing.
And then he'd come back in the early evening for half an hour an hour, just listen again to whatever else we'd made, have another chat with us, and then he'd leave us to our own devices all night to turn those things around that he had said about the demos. So we just basically we must have made like a one hundred demos for this album. So all this to say is that some of those songs that are on
this album did begin their life some years ago. Hold your Own the poem began life as a note that I wrote to myself because I was struggling to work out what I wanted to Hold your Own the poetry collection to say. And hold your Own the poem was me instructing myself. It was never intended for anyone else to hear it. It was like my way of getting my head in order about what I wanted my collection
to do. And that's why I wanted it to do Like that was you know, I was talking about gender and sexuality and shame and all this stuff, which is what that poem is basically telling me to do.
Anyway, So we got to.
This point where I was we were so desperate to try and find ideas. We were really clutching at stores. We didn't know what it was that he wanted us to do. And I was just going through my notebook and I just tried that out, just tried reading that out while Dan played these chords on the bass, and we were getting to the point where it was like, I think actually that was the first time because Rick had been like, I don't want you to listen to
the music. So I was like recording the lyrics outside intentionally not listening to Dan, because as soon as I heard a beat, I would start keeping to the beat. Yeah, like you know, spent fifteen years learning how to stay on a beat. Like it's actually a really hard thing to hear a beat and not get on it. Like I just it just had never occurred to me that when there was music that I wouldn't be in time with the music. But Rick's thing was like, go at
the integrity of the pace of the lyric. But he couldn't say you just go out the pace of the lyric. He just had to say, like it was so cryptic. Hold your own was the first one. When he heard that. He came in and he listened just this thing that I had in my notebook and downplaying the base and he was like, that's it. So that was the first one where we were like, okay, he wants me to just do poetry. We were like, what's the biggest rap producer of the little time? He's telling me to stop rapping?
So Ricky could have just said that, Well.
It's like he couldn't just say that because also the thing is, he can't just tell you what. You've got to find it. You've got to discover, like the process you've got to find out. Also, he doesn't know. He doesn't know any more than we know. He's just looking for this thing all the time. He's trying to strip away everything that's unnecessary, all the convention, everything that's like stabilizers or you know, security, Just get rid of that,
get closer to the essence. That's not an easy instruction to give. It's a process. You have to just keep making demos. That was a really long winded way of saying that the writing process happened slowly over many years. But then once we finally had the shape and we had about six songs that he Rick could some of these are great, five or six of these are exceptional, and we took those six and we were like, Okay, these are really working. And then I wrote around those
six to make it into a cohesive piece. Even as I was doing that, I had to fight the temptation to like narrativize and link too much, because Rick wasn't interested in that. He was like, you know, that's more stuff that gets in the way of the meaning. Put the meaning front and center, put the words at the front. You don't need to you don't need like narrative device, because it should just be there, like a real sort.
Of hands off form of guidance that he provides actially, just comes gently, maybe nudging you in directions to make your own decisions about things. Maybe a little bit unnerving by the sound of it that he's not there nine to five forensically listening to the stuff you're doing, but sort of just popping in and just being like, have you thought that?
Do you know what?
But it's even better that he does it that way, because that's what he needs to do to be able to listen. If he was there all day, then his ears would get as tired as ours are getting, and he would you know, It's like, what would he be doing all day? Actually, Like the whole thing that he offers you is his ability to really listen. It's extremely rare for someone to listen that intently to your work. I've never experienced it before. I think that definitely some bands.
I've spoken to other people that have worked with them, and definitely people are thrown at first by that thing because you're used to a producer being in the room with you, rolling up their slaves and getting stuck in. But he's just that's not what he's about. So Dan Kerry and I did we did the writing, We did the recording with an engineer, great engineer called Sean Opley, and he was just the ears. You know, he's just this like presence at the helm.
It sounds like there's a lot of material, well ninety odd songs that didn't make the album. Perhaps you just you've got there that's been created. Do you think you will put those together into a collection at some point? They feel like they belonged to that time and that was that.
I have this idea. I might be wrong about this, but I just don't think you should go backwards like that. I do a lot of writing towards a project. So for example, my novel that I mentioned and probably wrote a hundred thousand words that towards that novel that I cut that didn't make it. You know that it's you could call it. It's like demos. I made all these demos towards that final cut.
If you allow.
Yourself to be too attached to things that you've cut, then you're trapped. You're absolutely not able to move forwards creatively. And so there's a part of you that has to accept and acknowledge and enjoy the fact that, like, you're going to write a hell of a lot of stuff, a lot of it's going to be no good, and the actually the decision to not use it is extremely liberating, and it's like such freshness free. It means that you
can keep going. Because I associate the idea of like mining old material with an element of not believing I can create new material right now. That's like, that is the fear that makes me go back and mine old material.
Why don't I just write something new? Why don't I just start from here. There's a story about like Hemingway. Who was it?
I think it was Hemingway or one of those kind of like one of those kind of writers.
I think it was.
And basically he got to like twenty five and he had a briefcase with all of his notebooks that he had been carrying around all his life. You know, he wanted to be a writer, but he hadn't written anything yet. He wanted to be a writer. He had this briefcase with all his notes and his manuscripts. Obviously, back then there was no that was it. If you had your manuscript, that was your manuscript drags somewhere. Yeah, And there was a fire and he lost it all and it all burnt.
And then he said that it was the best thing that ever happened to him, because suddenly he was free to actually write, actually write from now new You get so attached to old ideas you carry them around, you know. So right now, my feeling is, I'm really really happy that we made the decision to not use those demos, and I'm really glad that we had the ability and the time to write them and decide to discard them.
Sounds like it was a surreal at moments being out at Changri La Yea. Even the day when Rick Ruven turns up with jay Z and brings him into playing your music. What was that experience?
Like crazy, but like stuff like that was happening all the time. It's loads of crazy, crazy things are happening. I can't even begin to tell you, like the amount of just bizarre things, Like me and Dan were just there like what is this place? Like it's like what's
going on? Like crazy stuff happened. And the guys that worked in the studio there's like really nice bunch of people that work as Shangry Light as well, like really cool bunch of people that work as technicians and assistants and stuff like that, and they were all like, this is mad Rick doesn't do this like often, like just bring j up and like, you know, I just want it just happened all the time. But they were saying that it's a sign that he's excited about the project, which is really cool.
I read some quotes from Rick saying that jay Z it really got into jay Z's head what he heard and it affected what he wrote for the next album that he made.
So I don't know if it's true or not, but I definitely I remember him listening and and he was really moved, and then he was like, you know, can I play some of my demos?
I was like, you just go out of his phone the whole time.
It's like you're trying to like, remember, I mean, just a conversation between two creative people about creativity, like you've got to balance it somehow. There's a part of you that's like, oh my god.
But then you have to just.
Be like, come on, like why are you being like this? This is just the persons who loves language like like I do. And how exciting to be able to have a conversation with him about his lyricism or about mine or about music. But obviously he's learned. He's got so much he's learned in his life. All I could think about was like, I'm one step away from Beyonce. I think about to honest, I was just like, man, I suppose she's like almost she's more like a goddess, isn't
she than him? He's like, she's like completely unbelievable, just such power. And that's that's I didn't mean her.
Jay Z. This is great I'm really enjoying speaking to you. But I don't suppose that in the car, is shee? Because I've really liked to meet Yeah.
I didn't mean that. It's just like a funny thing, isn't it. It's like a different, different world, different universe.
It was magnificent that Rick felt good enough about our music to play it to someone so important as jay Z, And it was really cool that he came and listened to the demos.
I mean, I don't know what.
I don't know if I ever if I ever saw him again, I don't know if he'd remember me or it's not like we're mates.
Did you and Dan feel self conscious in that situation?
Yeah? Dan, When Jay left the room, Dan was like, God, look like jay Z.
Basically, I just to put it in context, right, So we're really jet Like I hadn't like i'd got out of bed, I don't know, about four or five in the morning, Like we weren't really sleeping, and the stupid we were staying in these rooms opposite the bus, the bubbling talk Abou's where we were writing, and like I just got up.
I hadn't really like had a shower or anything.
Because it was like Oh my god, I think I understand what it is that Rick's been trying to tell us. I had this epiphany that he just wants poets, just me to do poetry flow, there can be a beat.
I'd had this epiphany.
So me and Dan we were like, I I got straight out of bed and got into the studio. I had on like a dirty shirt, you know, like I don't think I was wearing any shoes of socks.
You know.
It's I mean, it sounds kind of gross to say it, but I was. I was not prepared to meet like, you know, anybody. I was. I was going into the studio with Dan to try and work out this bonkers thing that we were trying to do in this bizarre place. So when he came in, all I could think was like, did I brush my teeth properly?
Like? Did I just sneak to jay Z with bad bread?
I hadn't had a show anyway.
That's the kind of embarrassing thing to admit, Like I rushed my teeth every morning. Everyone needs to know that. But like, just in that situation when suddenly you're like, hold on a minute, am I am I decent?
Like isn't there lots of different kind of remnants of recordings and people that visited the studio, like Eminem's got a grapefruit tree and like various I know that's Slipknot and Black Sabbath to place recorded there and left different items of equipment and stuff. Did it feel like a place full of history? Did it have like an aura?
It definitely has an aura, like one hundred percent got an aura. I mean, Rick's got an aura. You know, it's like you're just it's just an amazing place. So much attention is paid to creativity, either that it just feels like a church or something. You know, It's like, yeah, there is this kind of hush about the place, which is in contrast to all the noise that gets made in there, because everyone's just like so reverent about it because it's all about the music and it's like really
amazing music. And also loads are kind of crazy pop stuff happens in there as well.
It's just bizarre. I don't know, I.
Don't know, like I've never really had any contact with that that well before, so you know, like before I ever went to Dan Carey studio, I'd never seen a studio like that. I've just seen Like what when we said I'm going to the studio, it just meant go into your friend's bedroom. But where I had like a duv tapped up over the wall. Everything was always broken. And it's still like the best thing.
In the world.
Yeah, something like this that we're recording.
This maze that zoom is like, that's a step up.
We like shout out to create Bays who I spent my formative years like working with. It still felt like going to an amazing place, just going to my friend's bedroom and trying to make a track with no equipment. And then when eventually I got to Dan Carey's studio, the first time I looked around there walked in, I couldn't believe it. I could not believe, you know, because it's like for a musician, for someone with an aspiration
to be a musician, I wasn't a musician. I wanted to be all my life, I wanted to be a musician, but I was not able to do it. I couldn't get a record deal, I couldn't find a producer. I didn't have any money. Like it was like I couldn't have It was like I was a poet because out of necessity I had to. I had needed an outlook for my creativity. But what I wanted to do is, you know, be a recording artist. So then when I saw Dan Studio and saw that desk, He's got crazy
desk and he had his first instrument is guitars. So he's got like guitars from all over the world. They're all hanging up around the studio and it's all one room, and he records the drums and the guitars all together in the room. But he's got all these clever ways of like using mics for different It was it blew my mind.
It was like, wow, I want to be here.
I want to be here to be honest, Like the amount of writing that we've done in that studio and Dan Studio.
We wrote all of Everybody down there.
We wrote we wrote out the meat Kale Stair, and we wrote the majority of traps and Leesson's there at Dan's and then like then going to Rick's place.
It's just like.
A bit of a step change. Crazy with this new album, you are obviously going to go out and play it at various festivals. I saw you a few weeks ago at Premia Various Sound in Barcelona and then in the autumn you're going to be doing in a UK tour. What are the moments like before you go on stage? How do you sort of prepare yourself psychologically took out and perform. Do you take a bit of a quiet moment away from Dan or whoever you performing with that night,
or do you put some music on? Do you distract yourself? What are you doing in those moments before you go out and perform?
Two or three hours before stage time, your body starts to feel it, even if your mind is fine. Your body starts to pre empt the adrenaline that's about to be unleashed. I have felt like really exhausted. You get really exhausted and you're like whoa, Suddenly you get really tired. You get nerves. I get crazy nerves for the Catford show. I was nervous from about four o'clock the afternoon before, couldn't eat, couldn't sit still, Like, I get crazy nerves.
Sometimes I don't get them as bad as other times, but I always get them. So then what becomes important to manage those nerves and also for the shows when you're not necessarily feeling particularly present because you've been on tour and things are tiring or you don't get.
A lot of sleep.
On tour, You've got to be on it all the time, and it can grind you down a little bit. So it's also important to have those rituals for those days when you're not feeling particularly ready or aware of what's about to happen.
A couple of hours before showtime.
I've got my habits that I've formed with who I'm playing with at the minute. She's fantastic and she's been playing with me since everybody down and she's like an extremely grounding presence. We have some things that we do, like some meditations that we do, Like little things help. Like yeah, I do listen to music. I listened to music, but an hour before stage time, I can't listen to any music two hours or three hours before I can. So I might listen to music for about an hour.
I do some stuff, might do some general exercise or whatever, like read.
I've got to read.
I'll just chill out, try and try and stay cool, trying not to drink any alcohol before going up.
Got to be careful about when you eat.
Crazy things like that, like better to be hungry on stage, always better to be hungry than full up. Never good to be full up on stage. And this must sound really boring to everyone else, but.
I don't at all know. I think these the preparations are going to because it is such. I mean, it's intense to be in the audience. It must be to fix yourself into that mindset night after night. I'm not surprised to hear you say that you need to go through a bit of a process to get that, you know what I mean.
Yeah, it's crazy, you do.
Like there's certain stones, certain things that we can do, like that clear has introduced me to that encourage certain intentions by in a candle like I just try and get ready. It hits me about an hour before, so I have to I just basically I prepare for the hour before. Then the hour before comes and it hits me and it's like whoa, okay, and you feel it
and things get a bit like it's like woozy. You get woozy, you get like you're kind of drifting around, You get kind of light headed, like you feel like you are I don't know, like moving somewhere.
Something's happening. So yeah, I do things.
I warm up my voice, I put my stock, put my clothes on that I'm gonna wear on stage. That's something helpful because I never used to give a shit about war on stage. And then I met this amazing guy called Harris Elliott, and he helped me understand that even to not make a decision about what you wear is a decision about what you were people like at some level, people are like they're reading it even if you're even if you wish they wouldn't, they still are.
So that's been really cool.
He's helped me work out how important it is actually to just have a shirt that you put on, and then you put it on and it's like right, one step closer then and then eventually when you get to the actual back of stage, then I have to do some stuff like I have to touch this. They have my little rituals that I have to do, and then you walk out and that's it. Like energy work, getting ready for the getting ready for what's about to happen, getting yourself in the right place.
Not to wish ourselves too far beyond the album that you just released. Just the other day it was announced that you are going to be making your debut at the National Theater. He is twenty twenty. Twenty twenty sounds like a year that's made up because it's just somebody. It's like, twenty twenty. I think we're all going to be like in flying cars by that point. We're not.
I'm just going to be dead.
Possibly, Yeah, somebody would have Donald Trump would have nuked Iran. And so I mean in twenty twenty, you're going to be making your debut at the National Theater with a play called Paradise, Right, what can you tell me about that? If you started work on that, how far ahead of the preparations or something like that begin.
I've been working on that play for about three years. Amazing how it works out, isn't it? Like people don't realize once a piece of work comes out, you've already been like traveling through life with it in your mind and body for ages years before it comes out. Usually, this fantastic theater director called Ian Rickson who directed famously directed a great play called Jerusalem, which I went to see not knowing who he was or not having met him.
With my friend Even Manning, who's a fantastic theater maker. Big up Commonwealth, that's a fair company. Anyway, we went to see this play like years and years and years ago, and it absolutely blew my mind, changed my life. It was one of these rare moments where you're like, WHOA, what is this? This was I think before I was even writing theater, before I even wrote plays. I went to see that with her. Anyway, So this guy, I
was lucky enough to meet him. He came to see Brandow Ancients and we started to talk and there was immediately like obviously deep respect, and we've kept in touch and he's always been very generous with his advice about my stage show and my stagecraft. And then he just approached me with this project. It wasn't attached to any theater. It was just a project. He was like, look, I'm interested in this old play Philoptetes. It was the final
play that Sophocles wrote. He'd just been like ten years in the Peloponnesian War as a general and they'd come home and he had built a shrine in his garden to peace, I think, and he'd written this play about essentially it's about PTSD really and victimhood and having a victim complex and fatherhood and sonship. And it's very male really because obviously all those plays were they were played
by men. But traditionally the thing, you know, the themes that it investigates are very are themes often given to male characters.
Anyway, we started this.
Process with like a room full of wounded ex military men and women, because this player is about a wounded soldier, ex soldier who's a bandon on an island with a wound. That was the first time I'd ever really read this play was in this room full of these people reading it who'd served either in Northern Ireland or Iraq or Afghanistan. Really interesting bunch of people that had like so much valuable stuff to feedback about this play and how they read it and what it meant certain aspects of it,
what it meant to them. And this is a play that's over two thousand years old. That was really mind blowing for me to think about the nature of what remains.
You know, it.
Took ages from me to like process any of my thoughts about it because I was at the same time, I was touring and I do other things. But Ian linked me up with this fantastic woman called Helen who wrote me a literal translation of the play.
So like literal like in the Greek.
It wouldn't say Iland, it would say see surrounded land, because that's how they said it. And she knows everything about ancient Greece, and she can like speak ancient Greek, and she's crazy.
She's an amazing women.
So she gave me this real literal translation. And I've just been slowly working on drafts and drafts and drafts, trying to set the play free from Sophocles, trying to set myself free from the burden of trying to do a cover version of a song that is so fantastic. You know, Sophocles is obviously the great, great tragedian, and this version that will open at the National Theater, which is unbelievable, by the way, in the big room there as well the Olivia. It's unbelievable. That's like a crazy
ambition that I had that I didn't believe. I didn't even tell anyone that I had that ambition, and now.
It's going to happen.
And so basically the play is very different in many ways to the original, but it's true to its essence. One of the main changes is that I've introduced a chorus of women, and that the players playing the male parts will be women because it makes the construction of these gender roles even more apparent when it's women playing men playing men, you know, because these characters really are playing men, like the soldier of the General.
Got Leslie Sharks performing in it right. Magnificent actor who I was first introduced to via the full Monty Wow. She was in that. More recently she was in Three Girls. If you saw that, I did see that incredibly powerful bit of TV making. I thought, if you started rehearsals, people started into the players, yet start later down the line.
We haven't started rehearsals, but what we have been doing is throughout this process is that every now and then, when when I have a draft that's ready because of the caliber of director Ian is because of the power that he has, Like he has been able to get us in a room with a bunch of actors so that I can hear what these lines actually actually sound like.
Because it's all very well writing a conversation between nine people, but until you hear that, you've got no idea if anyone else can follow it, or if it's working or all that kind of stuff. So we've had like a few workshop days and the actors have just been incredible. It's just been like for me, it's like a revelation obviously to suddenly have.
You know, the orchestra there and they're just it's amazing.
There's playing, they're singing this stuff, this text, and I'm like, I can follow it. It's like, Okay, that needs to change. That needs to change. Leslie came and she read the part of Philip T's and my partner, who's like obviously seen this play since its very beginnings when I started to write it made her cry. There's this performance just in a rehearsal room. You know, that's how powerful an actor she is. Also, my partner's pretty sensitive, so.
I can't wait to see it, really excited. We've obviously heard you talk a little bit about the work that you've done musically, the poetry books that you've written, the novel that you've written, the plays that you've written and now adapted, and things like that. Of all of the disciplines that you're involved with, when you look back at any of those things that you've done, have any of
is one been particularly challenging? You've found that's really kind of wrung you out as a process that you found was just the most difficult thing that you've done.
I definitely would say that the novel that I wrote was like it was extremely invigorating, but it was extremely challenging. I think also because of the time constraints that I was under, like I had to fit in like the writing. It would be like, right, I've got two days I come off tour. Here, I'm going back on the road. There, I've got two days and I've got to turn around
like another forty thousand words. So it was like, so being up against that was like, okay, obviously in my life, like my actual life just disappeared, and I threw myself at it, and it was incredible, Like I was learning so much about a form that I have loved my whole life, you know. I mean, it's taught me so much more about the novel trying to write one. Getting to the end of writing one, I thought I knew a lot about novels because I read so many.
Actually, I mean, like having an idea even.
That like merits to form. It was like that was the most invigorated thing. I was like, oh my god, this idea is big enough. And during all these maps and like the first draft that I wrote that I sent around to the publishers, like I didn't even have any punctuation in it, really because I didn't properly. I'm not very good at grammar. I'm just I'm not, like I never have been. My dad's really dyslexic, so it's my sister.
A bit might be. I don't know.
I feel really comfortable with words, so I don't think it's that. But maybe I'm just a bit done with Grandma. Like I don't know, I just can't. I don't get it. So it's like the first draft of the novel. Like the publisher she didn't know. She didn't know who I was. She didn't know that I was like a poet or anything. This is ages ago when she signed the novel up.
She just thought I was a writer, and she was like I love it, but you know, I really you know, this is what a speech mark is and like this is what an end.
Ash is for.
And I just thought I was writing this, like, you know, cool experimental novel, because like most of the novels i'd red had been like experimental and how they laid out speech or whatever. But I realized that you have to know the rules to break them.
The final couple of things, because I don't we've got too much more time.
Yeah, I've been talking loads, don't.
I podcast absolutely.
Thank you for giving me space to talk about my world.
Our pleasure. Thank you for sharing all of your experiences that made it sound like a counseling session, which isn't quite kind of isting on a couch, Yeah it is a bit Yeah for people listening, we are just sat on it. There's no there's no windows in this room. It's just a couch in the corner. But it's fine. It's nice and quiet. By the time this goes out, glass and brief as all all you have happened. You're
performing there this year, yep. But exciting is that Stormsy is one of the headliners, which feels like a really exciting moment for British wrap for like the culture that surrounds Stormsy and everything needs achieved the last few years. I just I can't wait. Basically, it's going to be really great. You're a big fan of hip hop generally and rap music, you know very much kind of like your beginnings kind of came in that area. So is that significant kind of symbolic moment do you think and
are you excited. It sounds like you're probably looking forward to it.
Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing that. I think he's a fantastic artist. I think he absolutely deserves to be on that main stage, headlining that festival. I can't wait to see what he pulls out the bag. I imagine it will be a really groundbreaking performance for sure. I think, like British music, British lyricism is in a really good place.
Who else do you really really like?
So many people?
My favorite, one of my favorite alms of the years so far, it's Little Sims.
Yeah, it's a great album.
Recent record is fantastic.
It's a great album. She's fantastic.
I love her commitment as I perceive it to her integrity. I really perceive that she's somebody who's extremely committed to integrity.
I really respect that.
And I think her lyricism is like I think it's like she's powerfully talented.
You know, she's got powerful talent there. I love her flower.
I like the way she sticks with the flow, like she like sticks She sticks with the flow, like the whole way that all the way through, she stays on it stays on, it staysn't it.
Are there any achievements that you've still got your eye on down the line? I mean you've been involved. You know, you mentioned the National Theater and what thrill that's going to be to be able to have have Paradise on there next year. Is there anything else that is splitting around in your mind that you just sort of think I would love to do that.
Well, Basically the thing about the National is that, like years ago, and I was touring Brand New Ancients. I think it's okay for me to say this because it's true, and so I'll say it. But years ago, when I was touring brandw Ancients, they said, would you like to come and do Brand New Ancients in our temporary structure
that we're building outside the theater called the Shed? And I was like, Okay, you're up for taking a risk by programming new work by a poet, like you know, it's different kind of stuff than what normally goes on, but you're not prepared to take the risk fully and program it in your main space. You want to put it in the shed outside And I was like, I'm not really up for that, but you can put me
in the main house. I definitely want to tell this story in the main house, like for sure, especially that particular story. You know what I meant and what it was about and who it's about. And then so I was like, thank you, but nah, I'm not up for being in the shared Actually I'm not really up for that. Like, you know, five years later, seven years later, even it was twenty twelve, it would have been seven years later.
It took seven years of me just continuing to work and now okay, yeah, okay, now you can be in the main house.
Yeah, okay.
Now this play that I've written, which is I feel like the characters in it similarly, I want their stories to be heard in a huge space. I want these stories heard in a big space. These are big stories. So I mean, the reason the fact that I said, oh, I was an ambition. It was only an ambition because
they'd said, oh, come and be outside. So that's why I had this urge to see if I could convince them that this kind of storytelling belongs in these big spaces that were built for language to be spoken and you know, for rhythm and right, like this is what these theaters are built for. Design is based on Epidavos the Olivier Theater, which is one of the old Greek theaters anyway. So you ask me about ambitions, but I
don't really have specific ambitions. I've just got these kind of reflection ambitions, the things that have happened or come into my path. What I will say is that I absolutely, I absolutely hope that I'll continue to be creative.
That's my main ambition.
That's the thing that I think about, and I pray, you know, I really pray for Like, I just want to continue to mate work. I hope that I have got lots more albums to make in me, and I hope that I continue to finish fired. I definitely would love to write another novel. Basically, I would love to live a life which is always full of creativity. I don't necessarily believe that it will be my work forever, like I'm very aware that that's not the case for
most artists. But I hope I'll continue to be able to mate work for sure.
Thanks coming on our podcast, Katie. It's an absolute pleasure having you on. Wish you all the very best with this album obviously, but also all of your work on the Players hitting the National Theater next year. Thanks much, nice one.
Thanks everyone for listening.
Anyway.
Good Night, H