@alpaca.presents
by Brandon van der Berg @vdb.brandon
Eve was fantastic to talk to, a brilliant human being who is engulfed and enthralled in her work and musical background rich in historical gems and culture. We covered all of it in this amazing chat. Read below. Find her on Instagram or Spotify For Fans Of Katy J Pearson, Fleetwood Mac, First Aid Kit. 1) In your bio it says you make “Bible-Black Parables”, could you explain what that means? I think its got a varying meaning, but predominantly I’m very inspired by religious parables and religious scripture but I say the dark side of it- *a few artists came in to retrieve guitars and such and we got back to it straight after, it was a good laugh* I don’t know what I said. I think its my response to certain parables and how other people may receive them. So, I guess I’m taking more of a twisted darker turn on some stories not just religious scripture but some old folk tales and yeah turning them into a new story. 2) Jono, your manager has described himself as the bands “moral support therapist” could you expand on the bands relationship with your management? So Jono first and foremost is a really good friend of all of us. So I worked with him when I was with the BIMM label HUBB records and he was my ANR representative so we worked alongside him for a while releasing “Railroad Blues” and over time we’ve gotten bigger, we’re starting to get somewhere and the admin was crazy busy for me and I thought actually, what we need is a really good manager, I was like “I know one” and Jono was really keen, yes he does the emails and the people and front stuff but he’s always there so he is the moral support therapist. He's the seventh member of the band. 4) This current band as it stands now is only around 5-6 months old but you talk of them as your best friends, if you could point to a specific moment where you thought everything was coming together, which would that be? Ooo. It’s interesting because some of us have been in the band for a really long time so Me, Ben, Anna and Jono have been solidly creating in the band for like 2 years now? And then we had other members who had left so when we starting advertising, luckily josh and Arthur came in and it was like an instant click. Practice after Practice of us being a bit crazy especially me and anna we are a bit mental together and slowly everyone’s humour started to blend together and they realised they could be ridiculous like us. I think it was soon after they joined we got to the final 20 and then final 5 of the Green Man Fest Competition. That was this massive thing for all of us, and not just those of us who had been in the band for a longer period of time but for all of us as musicians because this was an amazing opportunity, we weren’t expecting it and I think that just gelled us together because it really, really motivated us to get to the next step. I think them being at green man together where we did the performance and then had the weekend to just have fun together, obviously we go out together but most of the time we spend together is spent working and doing practices and gigs and its really fun but at the festival we were just able to enjoy each other’s company. 7) You come from Bridport In Dorset. The town was a successful port and makers of rope and netting back in day, I’m curious, do you think this has ever influenced you aesthetically? Ooo, aesthetically, that’s very interesting. Bridport is a small town, and from when I first started playing everyone has been so supportive, there’s a pub we still go back to and play often as a band and we are always welcomed, and that’s been a thing since I first started playing in pubs when I was like 16. We launched our fundraiser in Bridport and that overwhelming response of support, the people have always been there for us. Coming from a small rural town, it’s a really great community, there’s always this like push of just believing in us and going like “yeah, you go do that!”. 8) Dorset has mythical creatures like ‘The Mer-Chicken’, ‘The Moign Down UFO’ and ‘The Shapwick Monster’. How has coming from quite a superstitiously aware place in England affected your moving to somewhere like Bristol? I think there’s a lot of story in most small places coming from a rural sea side town, in Dorset town there’s all these mythical stories and that have inspired me massively, I am absolutely in awe of the way we tell the stories and the way we write myths and keep retelling things. I think that, being from Dorset, has had a massive impact on that, not necessarily relating to myths in that sense but moving from a small town to Bristol was like ‘oh my f*cking god what the hell is going on’, I was so used to small community and knowing what was going on to not and that completely changed how I started writing and I’m still inspired by folk tales and nature which is what I was mostly inspired by in Dorset but I think the shift in scenery and the way I’m viewing the world and learning about the world as I grow older has shifted massively as I’ve gotten older. 10) You’ve also released a song about Bridport’s history called “The River Bride”, what portion of Bridport’s history is this song about? I wrote a series of songs about Bridport’s history and “The River Bride” is the one. It’s about road making and the width of the pavements because our pavements are just massive from where they would dry the rope out in the streets and all the gardens are really long and thin because they’d use that to dry the rope so my relationship with land specifically rural seaside town is because of my childhood and growing up in such a place. 11) Speaking of your earlier years, as someone who has been going since a small child, what did performing at Green Man mean for you in terms of how you define your success as a musician? I think when I was growing up and seeing people on stage I specifically remember certain acts like I saw Caitlin rose perform I still remember what she was wearing and how I felt and I looked up at her and thought “I’m gonna do that one day”, that’s where the love of waistcoats came from as well. I remember thinking as a child “When I play Green Man Festival that means I’m gonna be a well-known musician and I’d have completed it and that’s gonna be my success moment”… So It was f*cking bonkers at the age of 22 and coming out of nowhere this sudden progression “oh you’re in the final 20, oh you’re in the final 5”. I saw my family sobbing at the front it was emotional and I remember when we came back from Bristol the following week obviously shattered and really emotional. I just kept crying and I was really struggling with dealing with it, I had this massive heightened weekend of thinking that this is all I’d ever dreamed and then coming back to Bristol, coming back to work and playing crofters and just having that moment of “Okay you’ve done this really amazing thing and it will keep progressing as a band but thinking that when I reach that moment that will be it, no the show goes on that is just one amazing part of it and hopefully many more amazing things to come”. It's nice that I once thought that that would be it and now I can go “wow I’ve done that and now I can move forward”. 13) You say that there is a lot of religious referencing in your music, in what way is religion relevant to yourself? I’m not religious and I obviously believe in all sorts of things but I’m not a believer of the story itself whether it’s a parable or a folk tale or a myth or anything, I don’t believe its true in a sense, if you want to we could go on and on about what true means in the stories but I’m more interested in how they’re created, why they’re created, why people tell stories, I’m fascinated with passing down stories to generations and why we continue to tell them, by the story as a whole not whether or not I believe in it. 15) Having just recently left university, how do you feel as a musician in the so-dreaded ‘real world’ that follows? Its different to what I thought, going to university I thought… Well you know what its like moving to the ‘big city’ and studying music and then obviously Covid was a massive part of my university years and now coming out of it I’ve made some amazing friends going to university and now we’re playing music together.I’ve learnt some pretty invaluable things from certain lecturers’ and just the time spent honing in on a craft but I don’t feel like all the teachings are coming out in the real world I feel like being a musician in Bristol is that I’m now learning from the people around me. 16) You’re fund raising for your first studio album, usually bands are very reserved to talk about finances with their fans. What kind of relationship do you have with your audience? A really f*cking great one. It, going back to being from Bridport, that community has followed me from a really young age to now being in the band I’m in and that support has been unfaltering which we are really grateful for, and now with that behind us we’re expanding our audience in Bristol and beyond. I think that especially with social media when I first started posting music on social media I thought I had to have this mask on and be really professional and now with the band we just wanna have fun and we have fun and I think the audience sees that we’re just giggling and dancing and we like to have a boogie and a joke. I think we want that to come across in all aspects so we’re just trying to be honest with them and say “we need help, we need support”. 19) Do you have anything you’ve like to promote? I would like to say as mentioned that we have a crowd funder for our album, it can be found on crowd funder if you just type in Eve Appleton Crowd Funder, or on our socials we have a link to it and that will allow us to record all the singles and then d the whole album we’ve got some really fun rewards like signed CD’s and personalised band jukebox where we learn your favourite song and record it and then send it only to you and no one else, very fun. We might be releasing another reward soon, might be. Lots of fun things to be had. Keep your eyes peeled on all the socials because our lovely anna does a lot of artwork for the band and it gets showcased on our account. Find her on Instagram or Spotify For Fans Of Katy J Pearson, Fleetwood Mac, First Aid Kit.
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