Music; My Single Thread of Coherency

Mstoc's exclusive interview with Dean Frances-Hawksley and Andy Suttie of The Temple Cloud Country Club.

The Temple Cloud Country Club, very unique name. Where did you come up with the name and is there some meaning behind it?

Dean - We originally intended the band to be a kind of internet music collective, a ‘club’ of sorts. This is because there are only two of us and we live in different countries. We thought it would be nice to get musicians from around the world to contribute by sending files and then we could assemble the finished piece. But we’re both control freaks, so we ended up doing everything ourselves.

Andy - The name doesn't really mean anything. Temple Cloud is a small village just south of Bristol, England. I used to drive through it quite a bit. It just struck me as being a very cool, and somewhat bizarre name for a little village.

- Who are some of your musical influences?

Dean - I like the Crazy Frog. Suttie listens to anything mechanical – vacuum cleaners, engines, power tools, that kind of thing. Also, if you spill a box of matches, he can tell how many there are just by looking.

- Do you have a certain theme or feel for your current album?

Andy - I'll let Dean tell you as much or as little as he likes about the theme, but yes, it's pretty heavily themed. It's a full-on concept album, if you want to think of it like that.

Dean - Yes. The album is largely about those defining moments that mark the end of childhood, the moments at which we are ‘invented’ (hence the album’s title). A Hole in Water, for example, recalls my first understanding of suicide, an actor in a TV show I loved as a small boy. Lillian is about the death of my grandma. Indestructible is about witnessing a motorbike accident. These are the moments when we are shocked out of our childish reverie. There’s a song called The Death of a Family Pet, which speaks for itself really.

- Describe your sound/genre.

Dean - I can’t. Sorry.

Andy - Ask someone else. I really don't know. My wife describes it as Un-Easy-Listening, which I thought was quite clever. If you look at the blog on MySpace (We Sound Like what?) you can find a truly odd range of material that we have been compared with. Sometimes people call us prog, and sometimes people call us retro. Actually, can we be both progressive and retropsective at the same time?

-Who are the members of the band and their roles?

Dean - There are two of us, myself (Dean Frances-Hawksley) and Andy Suttie. I write the songs and provide vocals and minimal acoustic guitar. Suttie takes my folksy arrangements and changes them into what you hear on the album – adding drums and bass and piano and whatever else, and producing the whole thing. It’s a very efficient unit.

Andy - There's only Dean and me. I play guitar, bass and keyboards.

- What would you like to accomplish or achieve with your music?

Dean ­- I’d like for our music to be an influence for good health, like eating broccoli or carrot sticks. Musical broccolli.

- What is your creative process like?

Dean - The songs are written quickly and there are many of them. I send them to Suttie. The ones he likes he arranges and sends back to me. That’s the core of it done. After that it’s all details, getting things to sound as good as possible, re-doing vocals and the like. And all without ever being in the same room together.

Andy - Usually Dean sends me a rough demo of a song with acoustic guitar and vocal, and I send it back with a rough attempt at an arrangement. usually we bounce things backwards and forwards by email a few times, adding and changing things before we settle on something. I have a more hands-on role in productions, but Dean has a lot of input.

- What instruments do you use (technical specs for the nerds)?

Dean - We don’t rule out using any instrument, and we don’t rule out ruling out any instrument. We use a mix of real and sampled instruments, whatever we can play, steal or borrow basically.

Andy - I write the orchetsral parts and programme them in Cubase.

- If you could jam with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

Dean ­- I don’t know how Suttie would feel on this one – he’s a far better guitar player than me, so maybe he would enjoy it – but I hate jamming, I even dislike the word. Jamming always seems so wasteful, an activity for stoners. I have bad connotations of drunk people sitting around late at night, reducing every song to three chords, repeating the same verse time and again because they can’t remember the words. Spare me. But if Bob Dylan invited me to his house I would do whatever he asked. I would play Rockin All Over The World for three hours solid if he asked me to. I would even do the moves.

Andy - I was never a fan of jammimg with anyone. I like to play music which is worked out and structured when I play with other musicians. I can't think of anyone I'd rather work with than Dean at the moment.

 - What's on your MP3 player currently?

Dean - I don’t use one. I’m listening to a clarinet quintet by Mozart at this moment. Then I intend playing some Crazy Frog.

Andy - I don't have an mp3 player.

- Any upcoming concert events or releases?

Dean - Yes – the album. The album is out on the 28th of this month. We’re hoping to play live gigs from spring next year.

- Any final thoughts, shoutouts, tips or words of advice?

Dean - Yes, don’t deliberately mis-spell words on your FaceBook updates to make yourself seem tough and ill-educated. FaceBook is inane enough without making matters worse. Unless you are tough and ill-educated, in which case, please don’t hurt me.

You can find more about the band, their album and listen to their music at
http://www.myspace.com/thetemplecloudcountryclub

Or at

http://www.templecloudcountryclub.co.uk