DEAP VALLY INTERVIEW 2013

After their recent 3 sets in 3 days at Brigton's Great Escape Festival 2013 I managed to catch up with one of the most exciting bands of 2013 thus far...Ladies and Gentlemen be upstanding for DEAP VALLY!


Interview Transcript

Lindsey Troy (Guitar/Vocals) & Julie Edwards (Drums/Backing Vocals)



You're playing 3 gigs in 3 days here at The Great Escape 2013, hows that been for you?

Julie: Well it's been great, really fun although there was a power outage on the first night, they didn't check the levels or something and overpowered it I think, I dunno why it happened during our set and not with anybody else. The power of Rock I guess (laughs)

Would you say your live show encapsulates the band differently from your recordings?

Julie:Yeah that's what we're ALL about, the live shows definitely.

How did the recording go? Did any of the older songs evolve further during the sessions?

Lindsay: Some of them maybe but not really that much.

Julie: Little tweaks here and there

Lindsey: Tracks that maybe started out a bit boring did change during the recording.

Julia: Yeah, although nothing radically different, just certain sounds.

How do you compare the live show to the album? Is it the show that you try and capture on tape?

Julie: Well that's what we wanted to get, our live sound recorded without any fuss.

Lindsey: the goal is to make the album sound as big as it does live which can be a challenge as we are a live band and all of the chaos that spontaneously happens on a stage in a room full of people with all the sounds and feedback's and all kinds of things are the small details that MAKE the show. I think that the studio engineers tend to try and get rid of that stuff and make a weird 'clean' sound.

Julie: We really wanted to let everything hang out and I think that approach works with our minimalism too, you wouldn't want to tidy it up too much otherwise what would there be left? You need all the noise and hiss and contextual sounds.

So there was lots of bleed?(i.e. the guitar sound being picked up by the microphone on the drum kit and vice versa due to volume and lack of sound dampeners)

Julie: Yeah we went for bleed definitely, most of the songs we just jammed out in a room together so on all the drum tracks there was bleed from Lindsey's guitar amp. I think that helps it sound like a live show with the sound bouncing all around you, I mean you can control it to a certain extent but why do you want to right?

The Black Keys, The White Stripes, The Yeah,Yeah,Yeahs and now Deap Vally…what have you all got against bass players?

Lindsey: (laughs) we don't hate bass players!

Julie: My husbands a bass player!

Lindsey: My brothers a bass player

Julie: MY brothers a bass player too!

Lindsey: weird, maybe that's it!, it's psychological. I dunno. Bass is great though, we don't hate bass

Julie: The Black Keys have a bass player now anyway, a friend of ours plays bass for them as he's a sick bass player.

Lindsey: But bass is awesome, bass is fun. I'll probably pick up a bass on some later songs (laughs)

No 'slap' bass though surely? ('Seinfield' intro)

Julie: Are you kidding that'd be cool

Lindsey: if I could I totally would!

How have you found UK shows in comparison to L.A audiences?

Julie: We haven't played in L.A in 2 years now.

Lindsey: No! maybe a year, whenever the smell was.

The 'smell'?

Lindsey: (laughs) it's a venue in L.A, whenever that was, that was the last time.

Julie: I think there might be more men at the shows here than girls.

Lindsey: yeah last night there was a lot of guys at the front which sometimes makes it harder to gauge if there are any girls in.

It's sometimes said that UK audiences are more reserved and just wait to be entertained where some audiences in Europe like Spain for example
are 'with you' from the first song, what do you think?

Julie: Yeah but L.A. is that times a million where everyone is the son of the head of a record company or something and has their own band or whatever.

Lindsey: I'm sure it can be like that everywhere, we've had some of the craziest shows in London too. Brighton as well. The last time we played here at the end of our tour in January at 'The Haunt' there was crowd surfing and moshing, it was awesome.

You have a supporter in Vincent Gallo, how did that come about?

Lindsey: He came to a couple of our shows.

Julie:Yeah well he emailed our MySpace page and frankly we don't get messages on our MySpace page much and it said " I am The Director Vincent Gallo, I think you guys are a really great band" and I said that there was no way that was real and that it was some fake thing although Lindsey was a believer and she wrote back and then from there he kinda became our mentor at a really crucial time where we were a baby band who had played a handful of shows, we had a few songs and we were being approached by A&R people who were already trying to get all involved and he was just like "you need to stand by what you do , you are the people that know it, you're the artist, the creative ones here and nobody else knows what you're doing" and he's such a great artist and we have so much respect for him and to have this coming from him is so meaningful to us. He taught us to not be little pussies about it, especially at that time when lame people were trying to control us and I think it was really valuable.

Did you try and borrow any of his gear? (known for his fastidious vintage instrument collection)

Lindsey: Yeah he told us that he had 1600 guitars! But I didn't get to see any of them.

Julie: We love his album 'When', especially because it's from 2001 and the first song is 'I wrote this song for the girl Paris Hilton' and at that time she really wasn't even 'Paris Hilton' yet ya' know? I think he'd met her on the scene and then she was in that video for him (Honey Bunny) that was amazing.



Has Jack White made any inroads to you to disprove your view that he'd "disapprove of you" and your unregimented attire?

Julie: That was a joke! I thought it was because he wouldn't like the way we dressed.

Lindsey: We love Jack White and hope to work with him sometime. We are going to be in Nashville for 'Bonnaroo-2013' festival. (Jack White's 'THIRD MAN RECORDS' is based in Nashville)

Julie: Although he's really hard to pin down as he doesn't own a cell phone.

Jack White is famous for his eye for detail when it comes to stage clothes, do you think it's ever acceptable for a drummer to let the side down by wearing trainers?

Julie: Well here's the deal, I play barefoot I don't know how to play in shoes, it's a weird sensation and I just don't do it. I try not to hold bad footwear against drummers as it needs to be functional as well. I guess trainers are flat footed and flexible and it is like 'sports' playing the drums. They should all try and play barefoot personally although i'm sure there are some drummers who's feet you don't want to see (laughs) hairy feet.

Lindsey: Hammer toes? (laughs) although you don't really see them behind the kit right?


Deap Vally's debut album 'Sistrionix' is released on the 24th June 2013 via Island Records/Communion




Thanks to Deap Vally, Matt Brown at Stay Loose and Zippy Cooper.


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