Let's do some magic tricks and we can do another one, or we can do another magic trick.
Done!
We're going to do magic tricks, last chance, and then we'll explain scuff and then we'll put another one on yours.
All I really remember is the sweetest of your sounds and the way you send me round.
I'd like to see your magic tricks to feel the wire in my ear again.
Please, I'll go down.
Welcome back to the Toad Sessions. We've got Sparrow and the workshop have very kindly come across.
Was it your first gig in Edinburgh last night?
Yeah.
So it seems to sort of make sense while they were around to invite them in to do a Toad Session.
But you guys haven't been going for all that long, have you? You were saying that's six to eight months, was it?
Yes, January.
Yeah, back January.
Or Dylan Gregor have been going since January. I joined March.
March, yeah.
Just the kind of...
And then...
Well, no, not just to feel the sound, but it was good because that's around the time we started getting more shows.
Now we've been playing a lot more regularly than we ever expected, so it's been really good.
And thanks to kind people like yourself who are inviting us over to do a session.
But you were saying, Jill, that you've been singing and sort of playing music or something, virtually all your life,
and it's only in the last couple of years has it occurred to you to start writing songs?
Yeah, really. Well, it was actually because some really nice friends who just kept encouraging me to do it.
They were like, just write the songs yourself, you can do it, and it's so frightening.
But once you start, it's addictive.
I think I was classically trained on violin, and I got a bit burnt out by the formality of that system.
And I think that was one of the inspiring moments to start trying to write my own stuff, because I hated that.
I think back when we were at art school, it was Ricardo Romano and the Amazing All Stars.
But yeah, probably been in about 20 bands since then.
And when you go through a lot of bands in that respect, do you actually start to have an instinct for when something's a bit special?
Or does it all kind of...?
No, yeah, you definitely do.
I've never felt so strongly about any of the music I've played before.
I was like, well, I don't know, I don't even know if I want you to play drums, just make some noise and see if it works.
So there was a lot more input than just being a metronome.
How about yourself though? Is that how you would kind of imagine things?
Or is it just something that's happened because Gregor happens to be good?
Well, I think partly it's because Gregor happens to be good.
Partly it's, you know, in my imagination when I thought, sometimes I'll have really bad expressions for how I want a song to sound like, oh, a rolling train or something in my head.
Oh, this song would be good with a... I don't know how to describe it, kind of.
But actually, it's funny because a lot of your drum rhythms do have almost exactly that.
So should we kick into one of the session tracks then?
Yeah.
What's the first one that you're going to play? I've written it down somewhere. Last chance.
That's right.
This is a new one, isn't it? It's not on any of your recordings yet.
No, not on any recordings we've done.
Oh, we played it at the show last night. Yeah.
Yeah, so it's still kind of a babe in its infancy, but we're getting more comfortable with it.
Say, forget about your past, forget about the times I let you down.
When I'm late, you come a little close to me and grab my hand.
It's a nice chance for slow dance. Who's gonna ruin my plans?
I could have sworn I killed you. I even checked your pulse.
But I can feel you punch in the air right now. I'm not so sure.
Who's David Gibson?
Good question. I think we're on the...
No, that was Tiffany.
No, that was Tiffany. She ended up on Crack and then she came out Rehab and released a new album.
Oh my God.
What was David Gibson's name?
I really am alone now.
Definitely.
I can't remember David Gibson's name.
Into the blue or something, wasn't it?
Yep.
I don't know how that goes.
Are you chasing the dragon or chasing the doggy?
Chasing the dragon, it sounds a bit more rock and roll than things really are around here.
People get too comfortable where they get too...
You see the older musicians, successful ones in particular, all the time. Life becomes good and songwriting becomes shit.
And you kind of need to keep torturing yourself in order to produce good music.
I suppose in a way, inadvertently, you move around.
I guess I do get lonely a lot for certain things back home, whatever that means really.
And then that makes me write about things that piss me off.
Or sometimes just about things that I like, I guess.
But the gun is really an angry song, I guess, at the core about an abusive relationship.
Not necessarily mine.
You already seem to have had a hell of a lot of interest in record labels and things like that.
Right down to some really big boys getting in touch. But you're saying you're not absolutely convinced about whether you're ready to make the jump
or whether quite what you're looking for in the next step.
I have to confess, it's the fastest I've ever seen people pick up on things around here.
What questions are you asking yourself?
It must be a bit weird, I suppose, that you write for yourself and play for your gigs and suddenly people are all over you.
It's a bit funny, we haven't actually, last night was actually the first time we played outside Glasgow.
So it does kind of feel a bit premature in terms of that.
I think we'd quite like to just play around a bit more, play a few more gigs further south, Manchester.
Is this just to figure out what kind of a change you are first?
I think a lot of the songs are still kind of developing, changing as we're just playing live.
And we're getting more and more comfortable, kind of playing live.
It's a bit of a compliment.
Everything's fine.
Every smile was like a rifle,
Smashed into a thousand shots.
Horses that smile.
