Interviews
It happened out of curiosity, a simple ‘tweet’ landed us an interview with talented Scottish artists, French Wives. I must admit, I boycotted the hell out of Twitter, but it proved to be something incredibly beneficial for Wo’Ha and myself. I likely would have not heard of French Wives if it were not for the booming social media website, but that is not what you care about. You care about the music.
French Wives is an indie-pop band made up of 5 young, vivacious and brilliant musicians, who also happen to be incredibly witty and comical. I was fortunate enough to interview French Wives’ guitarist Scott Macpherson. Besides learning more about French Wives as a whole, I also discovered that Scott is quite passionate about the beverage industry (connoisseur of sodas), 60s/70s artists and pop music. I was also impressed by his outstanding sense of humor as well as a tendency to go off topic, which I found rather endearing. Learning more about Scott and his band mates only intensified my desire to share their genuine talents with you. And with that, I present Wo’Ha’s first interview with the ever so charming band, French Wives.
Interview with French Wives’ guitarist Scott Macpherson:
—-Name, age and the age you first started playing music:
We are Siobhan Anderson, Chris Barclay, Stuart Dougan, Scott Macpherson and Jonny Smith. We’re all in our early 20s and have all been playing music since our early childhood. I got my first guitar for my seventh birthday and wrote my first song (called sunburn, with an excellent chorus of s-s-s-s-s-sunburn s-s-sunburn) shortly after.
—-Bands you were born with or grew up listening to?
We all come from very different musical backgrounds, but the other night on the way home from a festival Stuart, Siobhan and I had a massive pang of nostalgia listening to the Backstreet Boys in the car. Seriously though, I grew up listening to a lot of blues music and popular interpretations of it, as well as other things which have weaved their way into my current listening schedule, like David Bowie, The Housemartins, Pulp and Del Amitri. Obviously as kids we all had the usual phases with the likes of Sum 41 as well!
—-Did you grow up in a music-oriented household or are you the first in your families to enter the music industry?
With the exception of Jonny’s grandfather, who was a really good jazz drummer, I think we’re all the first in our immediate families to enter the music industry as performers. My brother played drums for a while, but I think that’s just because he likes to hit things.
—-Growing up, did you think you would be where you are today?
I’ve always wanted to be a musical performer but the music industry isn’t really the way the youthful me imagined it. I recently found in my parents’ house a hastily written life plan by my 12/13 year old hand. I think I’m supposed to be playing at Wembley Stadium now, according to it!
—-How did you guys find each other as band mates?
Unfortunately the story of how we got together is rather uninteresting. I responded to an ad made by Stuart looking for someone to join his band, and we formed French Wives out of that through friends of friends.
—-Where does the name “French Wives” come from?
Ha, this story is just as uninteresting as the last! It stemmed from a conversation about Jarvis Cocker marrying a French woman, and someone remarked that everyone has French Wives these days. It rolls off the tongue quite nicely, unless someone weights the phrasing of it the wrong way, that drives me wild! There’s also an erotic film from the 70s coincidentally called French Wives. None of us have seen it, but not through lack of trying.
—-What genre best defines French Wives?
We’re a pop band at heart. When we write songs more often than not we’re striving to write a good pop song, which we then supplement by trying to make it a bit more interesting and intelligent. Indie-Pop if you will with a slight folk twist, but not as folky as we’re sometimes made out to be.
—-Who is your favorite artist or band that you find most inspiring?
I’m not sure that the 5 of us could agree on one person to be our favourite artist or the one we’re most inspired by. In terms of inspiring stories the return of Edwyn Collins and the documentary and book made about it brings a tear to the eye.
—-When you guys aren’t making music, what kinds of things do you do?
We were all at university when we started out, so we were studying until the last couple of years when we all graduated. Now that that’s out the way and we’re trying to make a career out of music, when we’re not playing we’re mainly working other jobs to try and pay the rent (I, however am currently unemployed!). A few of us are big soccer fans and watch it a lot as well as playing a LOT of FIFA. Writing that has made me incredibly depressed that I don’t do more!
—-What should fans expect when they come to watch you perform?
Hopefully a fun, fulfilling, musical experience. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but likewise the songs can be quite serious so there’s hopefully a bit of a mix involved. If they had come to see us perform at Wickerman last week they would have seen a band who had drank quite a lot of Buckfast (a tonic wine that is quite the delicacy in Scotland!)
—-What French Wives’ track means most to you as a band?
Again, I’m not sure if I can speak for the five of us, but certainly the first two singles we released (Halloween and Me vs. Me) have a certain emotional connection with us as a band. Halloween was the song that kind of made us realize that people, albeit at the moment not very many, genuinely liked our music and Me vs. Me was one of the first songs we wrote as a band (although originally it was a 15 minute opus!) and has been a bit of a stalwart for us over the past few years. It’s strange though, because both of these songs have changed quite a bit for our album, but hopefully for the better!
—-What/Who is your dream record label or producer?
The producer we’re currently working with for our album, Tony Doogan is great. I still can’t quite believe we managed to tie him down to do the record! He’s worked on loads of pretty much legendary Scottish records, like If You’re Feeling Sinister as well as other bands such as Wintersleep who we all really like. In terms of record labels, I’m not really sure if there is a dream record label. Obviously it would be great to be on one of the bigger indie labels who seem to do really well for their artists, like Domino or XL but we shall see!
—-What city, so far, has the best audience?
That’s a bit of a hard question for us, because we’re not really well known outside of Scotland, particularly Glasgow. However, our first couple of London shows had great crowds because they were at these amazing club nights. Manchester is always really nice to us as well. Last time we were there I stood on Johnny Marr’s foot! He didn’t stick about for the show, unfortunately.
—-What’s the weirdest thing that’s happened to you when playing for an audience?
Unfortunately, I’m not sure if I can remember any stories funny enough to properly answer this one! Once we played a gig and quite a lot of people thought we were Two Door Cinema Club, which was quite weird!
—-If you could go on tour with any band, which would you choose?
Someone who’s really good and gets really big crowds of people who would be responsive of and enjoy us. That’s probably quite a lot of bands! Either that or Fleetwood Mac in the late 70s, just to see it all unravel in the most luxurious of settings.
—-When you go on tour or perform outside of Glasgow, is their anything you cannot leave home without?
A phone charger! I say this because I always, without fail, forget mine and it just makes everything else really, really difficult. It’s not as difficult anymore in the UK, but if we ever play outside the UK (we haven’t yet, but want to do so SOON) I’d need to bring a lot of Irn-Bru with me (a non-alcoholic Scottish beverage, this time) as I’m pretty much addicted to it. I lived in North Carolina on exchange for 5 months and struggled without it. You guys do have proper Mountain Dew though, which is really hard to find over here. I’ve turned this question into a conversation about sodas now!
—-Do you have a venue, city or country that you would most like to perform in?
Anywhere that will have us, within reason! I think we’ve covered most of the UK cities we want to play in, it’s just a matter of increasing audience sizes in those cities! We’d love to play SXSW and are hoping to go next year as well as playing major US cities, which would be a total dream.
—-If you were to live in another time period what would it be?
Everyone in the band makes fun of me because before I joined French Wives I only really listened to really old music, so if I could have been 18 in about 1964 that would have been amazing!
—-What was the last thing you listened to on your iPod/playlist/etc.?
As I type I’m listening to Spotify with Hall and Oates currently playing. Before that was Patrick Wolf, and after that is Dexy’s Midnight Runners (Geno, not Come on Eileen!).
—-What is the most embarrassing song you have on your iPod/playlist/etc.?
Up next after Dexy’s is Heaven 17! I think if my dad heard me playing that he’d disown me!
—-Favorite musical instrument?
A cello played really well sounds beautiful. I played the cello at school, and famously lost it, but I was never really good enough to have the complete tonal control over it that makes it sound outstanding.
—-Celebrity Crushes?
All the obvious ones! Update, Heaven 17 just came on and my dad was NOT impressed. My mum’s digging it though.
—-Favorite curse word?
The “c” word can often almost be used as a term of endearment in the Scottish vernacular. I definitely employ it more than I should, so we’ll say that!
—-Have you set any band goals that you would like to achieve within the next year?
For the remainder of this calendar year the goal is to get the album finished, releasing a single from it towards the end of the year. After that there will be a lot of touring before the record comes out at the beginning of next year, which will be followed by more touring. There are a lot of business things we’d like to do over the next year or so. We still don’t have a manager or a booking agent, so we’d like to sort them out as soon as possible and we’d like to be on the radio more often than we are!
—-If you could recommend anything to your fans/audience base what would it be and why?
I’ve said Buckfast and Irn-Bru haven’t I? Aside from thirst quenching treats, probably to get listening to as much Scottish music as possible. There are loads of amazing bands here just now, some of whom they’ll be aware of but some they won’t.
—-If French Wives had to be transformed into animals, what animals would you be?
Ha, Stuart got asked this question in another interview just the other day! I believe he said sheep because we’re always there but no one notices, but that’s a bit depressing. If I’d been asked, I would have said dogs, simply because I love dogs and they’ve got such a cushty life.
—-Can we expect a new EP or track release in the near future?
Our album is due out next February, and there will hopefully be a single released from the record towards the end of this year.
—-I’ve got to ask, what is the relevance of Balloons to French Wives, which are found in your “Covered in Grace” and Rubix videos and photographs?
The answer to your balloons question lies in the artwork to the EP we released in February, Feel Safe Small, which included some balloons. Since balloons were the sort of centerpiece of the artwork we kind of used them thematically in the promo for the record, hence the balloon photos and the Covered in Grace video. The Rubix video, which was such a fail (they were meant to do it and be impressive!) just happened to be filmed the same night as the photos were taken so we had loads of balloons kicking about to use!
—-Lastly, What is the best website for fans to follow news/events and general happenings with French Wives?
In terms of listening to our music, Bandcamp is definitely the best place and in terms of news and pointless witticisms we’re also on Facebook and Twitter!
-Wo’Ha Music
