This week, MySpace Trawl offers something totally different to our previous discoveries. We’ve gone off the electronica-edged artists and this week's offer is some good old Scottish folk music. King Creosote be his name, and Fife is where his lovely music is made.
We can imagine what you’re thinking. Folk music! Boo! That’s not very hip or cool. Folk music is what 50-year-old men listen to whilst they sit round campfires late at night and sing about saving the earth from its immediate threat. Hopefully by the end of this, you’ll come to realise it’s not like that at all.
Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote is someone who’s not at all new to the music world. For over a decade now he’s been making music in various ways, be it on his own, as part of bands, or overseeing it. Mr Creosote set up and runs the Fence record label, housing some of the finest names in folk music.
We’ve already mentioned that King Creosote is a very busy man when it comes to music, and it’s easy to see why. With 33 albums to his name, he doesn’t exactly sit around and twiddle his thumbs like most artists do. This year has only seen one albums-worth of new material, but some previous years have seen up to six albums released!
The four King Cresote tracks that are available on his MySpace site showcase music from one of the most recent releases. 678 from KC Rules OK shows simple singer-songwriting that's effective and extremely heartwarming. King Creosote’s soft Fife accent floats beautifully over simple guitar work that builds throughout the song with accompanying splashes of piano for good measure.
All of the tracks contain nice and easy lyrics that don’t talk much digesting and are easy for a listener to understand and relate to. There’s nothing more annoying than when bands or artists write lyrics that only they seem to understand as they're personal to them. “Don’t talk to me, all the secrets are to keep,” is one example in the track Locked Together, which also mentions Safeway. To our knowledge, not many songs talk about Safeway, so he has our utmost respect!
As mentioned, Mr Creosote has been around for a good ten years, so it wasn’t hard for him to answer a few of our questions:
You’ve been performing for over a decade in various bands or as a solo artist, do you feel that you'll now continue to be a solo artist or would you like to go back to performing in a band?
As it happens, I’ve had a band since November’s 2005 Twisted Folk tour. We played as a four piece – on the fly drums, le baron rouge basses and the Pictish trail guitars – but I’ve since enrolled Christian Madden from The Earlies on keyboards for the summer. Whether I have a band or not depends on finances, usually. After the summer, I’m hoping to a load more stripped down shows.
How would you rate the Scottish scene compared to the English one?
The Scottish scene is easier to keep tabs on, the English scene is a different scene depending on which city you're in. I never felt part of any scene until the Fence collective came along, and now we've a few regular and local gigs/festivals, we've created one of the best! but I would say that.
Cats or dogs?
Neither. I’ve never been one for pets, and right now anything that moults makes me sneeze.
Do you feel that it's more the independent record shops that will push your music and others like it out to the masses, instead of major chains like HMV who seem to focus on musical trends?
The indie shops work on a word of mouth level. They look after their regulars, and tend to be run by music fans. Thing is, they struggle to get good deals on CDs and struggle to compete price-wise, and this leads to difficulties getting certain things. Fence is in direct contact now with some of the best indie shops across the UK, so we're very much onside. Both of KC's label bosses are involved heavily with independent record shops, and so they know how important it is to help them out and to stay loyal to your local record shop. However, if you're going to make a living at this, your average Joe needs to see an album in the bigger stores to believe it actually exists!
Where did the solo name come from?
I had my label name "Fence" first, and needed something to put on it. Simple as that. Why I wrote the "King" part I don't know, but right from the off, I liked the contrast of high and mighty with foul and carcinogenic. Having said that, I don't know of anybody who doesn't have happy associations with Creosote. Summer evenings, busy dads, the tarry smell…
If you were a King for a day, what country would it be and what would you do?
I’d be king of North America for a day. At 8.30am I’d lock up the President and his war-mongering cabinet, by 9am I’d have handed control of my army over to the country who is first out of the World Cup. I’d introduce a maximum wage to curb greed, and by noon I’d make sure our ailing planet was top of the list of priorities. I’d have politicians on the lowest pay scale, I’d cut thru' a load of red tape, power down nuclear arsenals and power stations, remove my business interests from the world all over, throw Bill Gates in jail on a trumped up charge, ban mobile phones, reduce the number of TV stations to three again, give Wal-Mart to the first local flower seller who answers the ad, liquidate Monsanto and Enron and all that lot, and finally at 5pm hand the keys of office over to a native American with a degree in food nutrition.
So there you have it, a brief dip in to the weird and wonderful world of folk music. With so many records to his name, they’ll be at least one or two tracks to suit your musical pleasure. With the current indie scene becoming more and more clogged up with repetitive bands doing the same thing, it's good to see there’s an artist who won't buckle to conform to what is popular and is doing his own thing.
Read & Listen:
King Creosote Official Website
[story by Matthew Laidlow]