Longbow Media

Listen to the interview on Recess with Spinelli here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve-EK4DeG9M Quick transcription..... RWS: How's the trip going, any highlight so far?

KP: Everything is a highlight. This is a highlight; we're in Saratoga Springs there’s 24,000 seats in this venue.  It’s like I died and went to heaven, I’m just glad to be here.

RWS: It sounds like this tour is largly outdoor amphitheatres?

KP: Yes. I loved it.  It’s a little harder for us because the band rehearsed so much and and we're so good at playing a club setting but nothing can prepare you for playing on a gigantic stage; it's made out of aluminum and the sound shoots everywhere and it bounces off the back of the hill and comes back to you and it was very challenging, first to learn how to hear each other to play on the stage. I’ve been touring the United States for about seven years but that's usually in front of you know, 15 people a night.

RWS: When that transition initially happened, from going from playing in front of 15 people to playing in front of thousands or 20,000 what was your initial mindset change?

KP: It’s actually  actually easier because when there's 5000 people watching you who haven't seen you seen you, some of them are listening and so maybe like 2500 people are actually watching you attentively.  It's actually easier because you feel like you're doing something. Sometimes when you play for 15 people, 2 of those people are listening.  We’ve been ready to do this but nothing can prepare you for it.

RWS: The way we heard about you was through interviewing Adam Duritz of Counting Crows; Adam spoke very fondly of you and told us to check you out, How long have you actually known Mr. Duritz.

KP: In 2012…he sponsors a blog that finds new music and he listens to all of it.  He doesn’t have to do that but he still does.  I mean, I think that’s what makes him great, is that he loves music and he’s always filling the well.  It was so funny when we started to play and he used to come to my shows and it would be 12 people, but then 1 of the 12 people would be Adam Duritz.  It was almost embarressing, you know like “you like me, but I don’t have any fans yet.”  I mean he's like one of the greatest writers of our time and one of the greatest literate writers. it's a very special thing for me.  And Rob too, I didn't know Rob before this tour; they’re 2 of the nicest guys I’ve ever met and they don't have to be, they’re super successful, they watch every show of mine and then they going to put on a show on the kill and after that we hang out; it’s amazing.  I never want it to end

RWS: Have you noticed any doors open or any opportunities come your way because of this?

KP: D’Angelico, the great New York guitar company gave me a guitar.  They sent me to their showroom and I just pick out a guitar to play for this tour and that was so nice.  Being somebody that they think is worthy of an endorsement, that's kind of neat to me. Right before this tour I had a guitar in pawn which I lost because I couldn’t afford get out of pawn.  And then D’Angelico gives me this way better guitar than I had in pawn.  It’s just funny how your life changes so quickly when people help you

RWS: Now with Mr. Duritz, I believe that you've done some work with him in the past, I think I saw that he covered "Kat's Song" and I think I heard that he worked with you on the new albums ?

KP: Yeah, he let us record some stuff at his house, so one of the new songs on this was recorded at his house and actually, a guitar that we used, we found out later was the guitar from the “Mr. Jones” video, which is funny.  I was like “this guitar sounds so Coutning Crows.  So we recorded at his house and he sang on it and he added this four-part harmony like it was nothing.  A few years ago I was watching the Coutning Crows.  We were at the Bowery Electric and the Crows were playing a cigartette show and my friend Nekia was playing a song with them and he’s like “dude, you gotta video tape me doin’ this song” and I’m like “Man I gotta go, I hav emy own show” and he said “this is gonna blow your mind.”  They go into this song and I’m like “that’s funny, I have a song that sounds alot liek that.” and then Adam duritz sings “I took that young thing to dinner,” which is my line to a song I wrote called “Kat’s Song” and I  realize at that moment that they're not doing a song that sounds like my song, they're doing my song. I started weeping, it was like a lifetime achievemnnt award. The Counting Crows have too many good songs.

RWS: As a song writer, would you say you have a certain duty or responsibility either to yourself or to the  listener to write an honest song?

KP: My duty is to connect people and to write things which connect the song with the listener, and the only way you can do that is to have na honest narrator.  When you do that, it doesn’t matter what the story is, it’s going to connect, it’s gonna help people through whatever the situation is.

RWS: How do you know whether or not you are being honest?

KP: I know because, there’s a poem by Robert Graves, which I always go back to.  It’s actually what our LLC is named after.  It’s called “Love without Hope” and in four lines, Robert Graves tells the story of this bird catcher in industrial England, he spends his day in this park, everyday his job is to put larks in his hat, take them to a baker, baker gives him a piece of bread, maybe a piece of coal and that night he goes with food in his stomache and he doesn’t go cold; that’s all he has to do, just grab the birds before it gets dark.  On this particular day, he’s leaving the park, he’s got his birds and he sees this beautiful white carriage drawn by two white horses and inside is this beautiful squire’s daughter and here, this lowly a birth bird catcher, sees this girl and he looks at her and shee looks at him and he tips his cap; the birds fly out, the larks fly to the heavens and she she watches them go to the heavens and he’s made this impression on this girl he’d never have a chance with.  Now he goes home and he’s cold and he’s hungry, buthe’s made an impression on this girl.  I’ve never been a bird catcher, bu I know from that story, I can relate and I think about that story all the time and if I wonder if my narrator is being honest, I just compare it to that, “Love without Hope.”

RWS: Was it a reliefe when you were finally able to put your thoughts on paper in a cohesive manor that could be understood?

KP: Yeah, but I can’t do that every time.  After each song you write after every record you write, you’re just starting over.  You’d think that you would get better, but the only thing that gets better is your expectations, I’ve definately gotten better at finishing songs, I’ve gotten better at writing with people.  This last record was writted to be a breakup record.  That was fun for me to go like “how does this fit in?”  “There’s a song called 18 year old girls.”  18 girl like looks like a grown-up but she's totally not.  It’s funny the idea of this character who’s come out of a relationship and he’s gonna bring this 18 year old girl around to his friends and they’ll be like “what are you doing, dude?”  So I am looking for more perspective, than I am looking for the next what I can’t have.  What gets me off about songwriting is finding different angles and funny scenarios. End of Transcription MIXCLOUD: https://www.mixcloud.com/RecessWithSpinelli/ INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/recesswithspinelli/ TWITTER: www.twitter.com/RECESSwithSPINS FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/RecessWithSpinelli YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/user/philturnscout SOUNDCLOUD: https://soundcloud.com/longbow-media TUMBLR: http://longbowmedia.tumblr.com

Locklsey perform at the Vapor Night Club in Saratoga Springs, NY on 17 Jan. 2015 RECESS: First question, could you please explain what doo-wop punk is?

LOCKSLEY: When we used that term, it was more of a goal to be achieved. That was what we wanted our band to sound like, a band that could be described thusly.  Maybe it’s sort of an unachievable notion.  We were doo-wop punk, now we're punk wop-doo

RECESS: Over the past year, your band has launched a sudo hashtag campaign entitled #whereislocksley; is this like a “Where's Waldo” thing?

LOCKSLEY: You find Waldo, that happens; where Locksley is very very hard to find.  I think it started as a question we were asking ourselves, but it also seems like an appropriate hashtag if you are looking for Locksley.

RECESS: Was this more of a physical question or was this a “where are you guys mentally?”

LOCKSLEY: I think it's kind of both to be hones., We used it in relating to both.  

RECESS: Speaking of “Where is Locksley,”  You guys split of for a period of time, right?  

LOCKSLEY: You could say that.  I’d call it an extended hiatus.

RECESS: An extended hiatus?  What was the purpose or reason for the extended hiatus?

LOCKSLEY: I would just say a lot of different life things that happened to all of us kind of all at once, so sometimes people just need their own space, I think. That sums it up pretty well, I think that everybody needed a break to refresh, recharge their batteries a bit.  We had been touring pretty hard and working pretty hard four, five, six straight years and it was just time for a little bit of a break and it served us well.

RECESS: After getting your batteries recharged what was the reason you guys got back together, the catalyst?

LOCKSLEY: As I recall very specifically, it was on Sam's birthday we met up to play some golf together.  It was just a question of wanting to play together again, because for a lot of years we played together, lived together, worked together, travelled together and it can certainly get to some touchy points but you also get very, very close with people.  There was some of that just wanting to connect in the way that we communicate.

RECESS: With the band reformed have you guys found a way to express yourselves again, that maybe wasn't there when the band wasn't together?

LOCKSLEY: I think we're finding it.  I thnk everybody's in a much different place now where its less focused on the ends and much more focused on the journey. We also finally restructured our creative process to a point where we're feeling really comfortable with how that comes around now; as where it was never a straight fight, but it was an arduous process to get something from start to finish.  Now we've changed up how things work and it's running a lot more smoothly

RECESS: Could this just be more of a coming of age thing, being that you were 17-21 before and now you're all like 24-30, somewhere around that range?

LOCKSLEY: Yeah you definitely hit that, one of the things that happened for me during this break that we took, was I had a baby.

RECESS: Let it ride was the last song you recorded before the hiatus, right?

LOCKSLEY: Yeah it was in a batch of them.

RECESS: What was that reason that it took so long to get that song released?

LOCKSLEY: Just a lot of things.  On the business end, things sort of collapsed.  We got into a car accident, then we got into business trouble.  There was nothing going on for a while and about a year and a half ago, we started to put it back together and it’s taken about a year and a half to get to the point we are at now.

RECESS: I want to go a little more into the song, “Let it Ride.”  Was there a reason you guys chose  Franco-Prussian reminiscent artwork for the cover photo?

LOCKSLEY: Thats an image of the "Charge of the Light Brigade.”

RECESS: Is that the “Thin Red Line?”

LOCKSLEY: No, it was a famous event in the 19th century, it was…

RECESS: It was the British I think, right?

LOCKSLEY: British, right.  It was  basically like the Spartans, like 300, it was like this charge, a suicide charge.

RECESS: Are you trying o say something about the song?

LOCKSLEY: No, I think we were saying something about ourselves.  It’s more “into the breach,” I think that's what we were saying.

RECESS: Not so much the suicide charge?

LOCKSLEY: Not so much the suicide charge. We’re just saying “If we gonna go, we gonna go,” you know what I mean.

RECESS: Go big or go home

LOCKSLEY: Basically.

RECESS: The music video though, does seem to go along with a war theme.  is the song about war at all or is that just what the director chose for the music video?

LOCKSLEY: The director is actually an old friend of ours, he's actually one of my best friends from middle school.  He and I had been tossing this idea around, it's almost been ten years now, of a paper airplane fight.  We always thought that was funny and Mark Phillips is a fantastic animator.  So we just needed the reason to make that and as we decided to make a video for that song, we kind of came back around to the idea and Mark took it form there and realized that it can’t just be a paper airplane fight the whole time; but that element of paper being the basis and war, he created that story line.   And all the paper is made out of money, which is an interesting piece of our story.  We have never really been openly received by the mass public.  There’s definitely markets where we have found success on a personal level, but we have certainly found success in the advertising market. In the market is where we have found our greatest success and its interesting to see money at war with money.   Trying to define ourselves personally as a collective while also being influenced by that piece.  We've also always been independent, we’ve never had….every step of the way has been a fight to maintain our business but also break out of having to be defined in these realms.

RECESS: This being the first song that people have heard in a number of year, will there be other material released over the coming months?

LOCKSLEY: We learned a long time ago not to make promises

RECESS: Is there an album planned in the future? 2015, ‘16, ‘17?

LOCKSLEY: This thing that you're seeing tonight, it's an entire album, and we've been working on it.  Its just hard in the context of everything else to know exactly what’s gonna happen with it.  There's just sort of a lot of variables that play out.  I hope so.  we're all ready for this thing to call it done.

LISTEN TO THE FULL FEATURE ON THE RADIO SHOW HERE: https://www.mixcloud.com/RecessWithSpinelli/recess-with-spinelli-187-locksley/

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW HERE: https://soundcloud.com/longbow-media/locksley-interview-on-recess-with-spinelli

VIEW CONCERT PHOTOS HERE: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10155209909275181.1073741884.461358745180&type=3