Chris T-T Interview: SXSW 2010

Chris T-T's seventh studio album, 'Love Is Not Rescue,' has been given an 8 out of 10 by Rock Sound Magazine. It will be released March 15, 2010, featuring his new single, "Nintendo." This year, T-T will be playing at SXSW for the second time. Spinner recently spoke with him about his music.

Describe your sound in your own words.

I'm an English singer-songwriter, and I'm most influenced by American punk and indie music and English folk. Billy Bragg and Robyn Hitchcock inspire me -- but, particularly if I've got a band, it's much more like I'm influenced by Dinosaur Jr. and that sort of stuff.

I'm still playing solo. It's an acoustic setup with piano and guitar. And I guess also it sounds unusual in that my accent is very southern English and I sing songs about a wide range of nonsense. It's not all love songs -- it's quite a bit of politics. I'm not quite an extremist, but like a political -- a protest musician.

I also write a lot of psychedelic songs about animals -- what might be called silly songs as well. It's quite daft.

Compositionally, like lyrics, it's like English folk. Musically, I really love that sort of more aggressive sound.

How did you get started in music?

I was recruited by a band, a British band, in the late 90s to play bass because their bassist got injured. It was a band called Magoo, although you probably wouldn't have heard of them -- they were part of the underground scene. I immediately had the experience of touring in a kind of band situation, and I was thrown into playing good gigs and touring the UK a lot.

Then I moved to London, and I really wanted to play solo with electric guitar instead of acoustic, so I picked up an electric guitar and started trying to do shows like that. The nature of that threw me into the indie scene instead of the folk scene, so I was playing alongside rock bands.

I much more enjoyed playing alternative clubs in the UK than the folksy singer-songwriter circuit, which has a more self-satisfied feeling. The alternative clubs have much nicer people on the whole.

I didn't quite answer your question there, but you'll just have to accept it.

What other bands have influenced you?

Lou Barlow is a major influence, and Bruce Springsteen actually is a huge influence. Before I was doing tours on my own, I used to listen to him. I grew up with him. I loved him as a kid, and never stopped.

There's also a female, late 60s singer called June Tabor. She's the best, living, English female folk singer. Elvis Costello has written songs specifically for her, as has Richard Thompson.

And by folk I don't mean -- there's a sort of a psychedelic-folk revival going on in the UK right now. They're really good, but that's not quite what I mean. I mean, the slightly older scene like Bellowhead, who is like a traditional folk orchestra. They play old songs, but in a huge, obnoxious style that's really easy to dance to, and they're fantastic.

You're a writer as well as a musician. Does that give you a different approach to music?

I think I've always been a very lyrics-oriented musician, so what what most people like about what I do is that the lyrics are particularly strong and I really love to tell stories. So I think if what you're talking about is how the writer's brain mingles with the musician's brain, definitely, when you are writing -- whether it's journalism, fiction, blogging, or anything -- you're trying to tell stories. For me, that includes songwriting. A lot of my songs definitely tell stories, and I guess that's partially influenced by Springsteen. He's an amazing songwriting storyteller. Yeah, I really love the idea of trying to tell a story within the song, and have that whole journey -- beginning, middle, maybe a denouement at the end. That's my favorite kind of songwriting, but obviously I don't achieve that every time.

I write a lot of articles, columns or whatever, and they have the same curve as a song. You've got a point you wanna make, and you want to make sure you've got a point made and then get the hell out because you don't want to go on for half an hour. It's similar to writing an article and a short piece of fiction.

Where does your name come from?

It's my surname abbreviated, so my full surname is Thorpe-Tracey. That actually is just a stage name too. My great-grandfather was an actor in the Victorian period and he invented a stage name for himself. Then he had a falling-out with his family. They were ashamed he was an actor, and told him he had to take on the stage name as his real name -- they basically disowned him. So Thorpe-Tracy has only been around for 4 generations, but it's now the family name, which I really like. I kind of know if I'm wandering around and I run into a Thorpe-Tracey, they're definitely related to me within the last three generations.

There's also a motorbike competition on the Isle of Man. It's a crazy little island off coast of the UK. It's completely independent. There are no speed limits on the road at all, and there's a motorbike race every year that goes around the whole island. It's really famous, and it's called the T-T. That was the other reason. It's never simple.

Have you been to the motorbike race?

Yeah, I haven't taken part obviously, but yeah I've performed a few times on the Isle of Man. It's one of the places I know there will be lots of people at gigs, and I'll get treated really well. Not many people go and perform there, so it has its own musical scene.

What's your biggest vice?

Well, I'm overweight, so I have a vice for cake. That's quite lame, isn't it? Probably LSD is my biggest vice. 'Cause I'm not a big fan of hard drugs like kids in the UK. Like, I don't know about the U.S., but a lot of kids in the UK take a lot of cocaine and drink lots of alcohol. It's a really serious problem. Nobody takes any LSD anymore, but I really like LSD. I think it's really great.

I wouldn't say I take it all the time, just occasionally as a treat, but it's really wonderful. I'm fervently pro-LSD. I think everyone should try it in the right conditions.

Vices -- I'm happily married, so I go on these tours and behave really well. You know, you play these shows and everyone kind of wants you to behave in a more rock 'n' roll way, so I suspect I let people down by doing the show and then going to sleep. But that's how it should be.

I think people in the U.S. or in North America and the UK have different way to approach vices. When I've met kids who drink too much in U.S., they still seem to be ambitious for a good life when they get older, and they still seem to have a sense of they're just partying in a fun sort of way. In the UK, it's where kids seem to not have hopes after taking too many drugs, drinking too much alcohol, or sleeping around with too many people.

It's quite nihilistic, quite hopeless. I don't mind people doing those things, I think it's cool, I just wish they'd do it a bit more happily.

What's in your festival survival kit?

I better not say anything naughty in case I get searched to death on the plane.

If you mean for SXSW, a really good house. Not some hotel -- someone's really nice house, preferably with a pool and preferably with a really good, big fridge. And a room to yourself, so you can get up to whatever you want.

And really comfortable shoes because there's lots of walking at SXSW, some LSD, and a really lot of different T-shirts, so you don't just end up being smelly. And then a manager who can cook really well. Steve, who you just talked to, is a fantastic cook. He makes amazing breakfast. If you have a really good breakfast, you can do whatever you want, party all you want. Good guy to have around, that Steve. And then Internet, some form of Internet.

OK, serious answer: a small child. If you took a small child to SXSW, you'd have the best time ever because all the people who are there would want to say, "your small child is really cute," so it would be a conversation starter. Also, kids love music, so you could open their minds for their whole life. Going to SXSW would just be incredible for an 8-year-old, and they would be the most sophisticated, musically-experienced kid ever. Everyone would just think they're the dog's bollocks.

I don't have a child. I'll have to borrow someone else's small child for a few days.

What's your musical guilty pleasure?

GaGa, probably. Or any really good pop. I love good pop. So all that stuff. I love Rihanna. Gaga's obviously fantastic, I'm not ashamed to admit that.

Jazz as well, you can put jazz in there as well. I have a really soft spot for jazz, but maybe that's not a guilty pleasure anymore. Maybe it's cool to like jazz now.

What about Wagner? Although he was like a Nazi or something, an anti-Semite. Hitler really liked him. But he still made really amazing music.

Which do you like better, the Beatles or the Stones?

That's a good question. I prefer the Stones to dance to or to go out and hear in a club, but I prefer the Beatles for listening to a whole album, and I think the Beatles were a much more talented band.

I would've much rather hung out with the Stones. The coolest Stones are still alive, but all the cool Beatles are dead.

Who was your first celebrity crush?

My first was probably Jenna von O. Do you know who I'm talking about? There was this TV show called 'Blossom,' and the main character was called Blossom, and she had a best friend called Six, and that was her. I must've been about 12, and I absolutely fell in love with her.

I just love American TV shows. I really had a big crush on Ginnifer Goodwin when she was in 'Ed,' before she became a bit more famous. And Kristen Bell, when she was in 'Veronica Mars.' We didn't get that show in the UK, so I had to illegally download it in order to watch it.

There was also a show called 'My Two Dads,' and there was a really hot girl in that. Can't remember her name, though.

What's the craziest thing you've seen or experienced while on tour?

One kind of craziest thing ever -- I'm trying to think back to different tours. God, I don't know. Last year at South by -- no, I can't really tell you that. I'll get in trouble.

I was gonna tell you about a stormy boat. I was on a boat, and it got really stormy. And everyone's throwing up and being sick and really scared. The inside of the boat kind of collapsed because it was shaking around so much. There was a gift shop on this boat, and a kitchen on the boat, like a cafeteria, and they just sort of collapsed in on themselves. So we thought we were gonna drown, but we didn't. We made it.

I don't have anything useful of an answer. All the things just sound seedy and horrible.

We played a show in Manchester once. We had drive up really fast to get there in time, and they said as long as we got our equipment onstage on time, we could play. We only had a 15-minute window to get all our stuff up there. It was a 5-hour drive, and we got there and put our stuff on the service lift, and we got stuck in the service lift for 2 hours. So we basically missed the show because we got stuck in the lift. That counts, right?

I can't think of anything rock 'n' roll.


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Photo: Copyright Adam Gasson