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Trippy Wicked and the Cosmic Children of the Knight Interview: Gotta Keep Moving

There's only two cosmic children. They're in here.The UK has a long, storied love affair with blues-based rock and roll, and stepping right in line with the tradition are Trippy Wicked and the Cosmic Children of the Knight, a passionately independent trio from St. Albans whose latest full-length, Movin’ On, was recently reviewed here. Comprised of Pete “Trippy Pierre” Holland on guitar/vocals, Dicky King on bass and Chris West on drums, Trippy Wicked harnesses a totally live feel on record while balancing it with clarity of sound and a modern production. Similar to the criminally underappreciated Shovelhead, the dynamic between the three players is as much a part of their sound as the guitar tone.

West was kind enough to take time and field some questions via email about the band, their experience recording at Chuckalumba Studios (Electric Wizard), self-releasing albums in the digital age and bringing the blues into a heavy context. Q&A, as ever, is after the jump. Please enjoy.

Mr. West doing what he does.Talk about bringing out a blues influence in a heavy context. Who are some of the blues artists who inspire the band?

Blues obviously has huge influence in a lot of rock and metal music and personally I grew up with blues music from my folks. Musicians like early ZZ Top, Clapton and JJ Cale were played a lot and my dad had some old records like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, that kinda stuff. We use a lot of the shuffle rhythm in our music which is a major blues identifier, it can give music life and it’s those beats that make you nod your head. Our track ?Clothes on My Floor? as a 12-bar vibe to it as well.

In terms of specific artists, well we do a sludged up cover of Seasick Steve‘s ?Things Go Up? which goes in our live set sometimes and I’m gonna piece together some footage of us jamming this soon. Howlin Wolf‘s powerful vocal style slips in every now and then and Pete has taken some lyrical ideas from blues as well. I love the melancholy feel you can get from it. There’s a couple of tracks by Skip James from the ?30s, ?Hard Time,? ?Killin? Floor Blues? and ?Devil Got My Woman,? that are far removed from the 12-bar good time blues and they really convey the bottom of the barrel feeling that originally inspired this type of music. “If I ever get off this killin? floor, I’ll never get down this low no more”. That line says it all.

How did you decide which songs from Lowering the Tone to carry over? Was there something you felt was left unsaid in that material?

We re-recorded four of the songs from the EP and “The Water” and “Sea Shanty” made it to the album. We chose them because they’re favorites of ours, we knew we could getter better versions done, they say a lot about our style and we knew this album would reach more people. We’ve written so many songs over the last few years and some of which we absolutely love but now and forever only exists as home demos on my computer. It was important to include these two tracks to set them in stone and make sure people could hear them.

Lowering the Tone was recorded live for the most part. Was the process similar for Movin? On? What was the experience like at Chukalumba?

It was a similar process but with Lowering the Tone we did everything in one room in one go; drums, guitar, bass and vocals. At Chuckalumba we recorded drums, bass and 1 guitar track all together but the amps were in a different room. The second guitar track, horns and vocals were all done afterwards.

Recording at Chuckalumba was an amazing experience for the band and it really bought us together as a trio. We’ve The "up the nose" shot.all recorded with other bands but we’ve never had to go away and stay somewhere and as friends we’ve never spent as much time together as that. Luckily we got on ok! In the day we worked on the album and the rest of the time was spent hanging out, drinking beers on the beach and watching films in our caravan. John is a very easy going guy and the studio feels like it’s been built from the ground up by his own hands. We learned a hell of a lot over those seven days and we’ll be applying it all to our next recording experience.

With the three of you, the live dynamic of the band carries over onto the album. Is there something in particular you wanted to bring out of the sound of the band?

Awesome. Mission accomplished. Pretty much the main aim was to make a record that carried the weight of our music and kept the live feel to it. We are first and foremost a live band and if we tracked everything separately and used a click it wouldn’t be us.

What?s the story behind ?Southern??

Pete took this one: “The story behind Southern is leaving the planet Earth with a good load of green to explore space. Light years away. Sad to see Earth go, but love to see it leave. To be free in space with good fresh air from the hemp on board.”

The songs on Movin? On have memorable hooks and are accessible, but not necessarily over-simplified. Talk about the writing process for the album. Was there material scrapped before recording?

Cheers.Writing good songs and good music is important to us. It may be mostly riff based but each song is more than just a collection of riffs and the structure and mood of the music is just as important. Movin? On is a mix of songs that naturally came to the front after Dicky joined late last year and some that we’ve written since he’s been on board. We chose the ones that worked best now we have a bass player and those that express our variety of styles and experimental nature.

The writing process is evolving over time but generally Pete writes most of the riffs and the music at home and then we’ll jam the ideas in the studio until we have a final structure. Lyrics tend to come after the music and Pete experiments as we’re jamming the stuff with different vocal lines to see what works and what doesn’t. Pete?s a prolific fellow and he’s constantly coming up with new ideas and our style is constantly evolving.

Andy Birchwood?s cover art suits the album perfectly. Was there direction given to him or did he come up with that piece on his own?

Yeah we’re getting a lot of love for the album cover and it’s great that people say it fits the music so well. We’re very happy with it. It’s almost entirely based on experiences from the recording session that we described to Andy. He took our descriptions and turned them into this amazing piece. The overall image was inspired by a painting on the wall of the social club of the caravan park we stayed in. It was a hand-painted picture of scenes from the Jungle Book in UV and it was huge! It covered the entire back wall of the place and just looked insane.

You guys are obviously passionate about self-releasing. Would you work with a label? Maybe start one of your own and sign other acts?

I chose to release the album myself for a few reasons. I wanted to go through the process for the challenge and the learning experience. It has been one of the hardest things I’ve done and one of the most rewarding. There’s also the fact The art as discussed.that I don’t really know how to approach labels. I have sent some stuff to a few and I’ve only ever received silence as a response and it felt a bit like buying a lottery ticket. I decided my time would be better spent working on releasing this than chasing labels and waiting round hoping for a phone call. We’ve already got seven new songs on the go so waiting around was not an option.

If you’re gonna self release then put everything you’ve got into it because just having a CDRr with a black and white single sheet inlay just shows a lack of effort or care about your music. I think my passion for it stems from a reaction to my own naive belief when we started the band that after a few gigs and demos we’d be picked up by a label and touring the world. It took me a while to realise my ignorance and when I did I educated myself on what I needed to do and went at it. I don’t believe in making a half-arsed attempt at something either. It’s all or nothing. Don’t waste your time waiting to be picked up by a label, the tools are all there to release your own music so go and do it.

We would definitely work with a label if the opportunity arose and the deal was right though, but I’m quite happy if we have to prove ourselves first. There’s a limit to what I can do with our music and there is obviously so much more a label can help out with.

Will you be touring to support the record?

No plans at the moment though we are gigging at every opportunity. We’d love to tour but we’ve not organised one before, we?re still working on stuff for the album and there’s only so many hours in the day outside of a day job. I’m hoping that next year we may be able to tour or at least play some new places and play a little further afield.

Any other plans going forward, closing words, or anything else you want to mention?

Yep. Thanks to yourself for the excellent questions and taking the time to review our music. Head to our website to listen to our album and see what else we’re up to. We’re currently working on our acoustic material as well as writing new music for the full band so sign up to our mailing list to be kept up to date on all our projects.

Trippy Wicked and the Cosmic Children of the Knight on MySpace

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