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Artist Interviews
Q&A: Lucy’s Diary
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 20 August 2010
Founder and frontwoman Lucy Joplin started the band Lucy’s Diary after encountering the UK antifolk scene and meeting guitarist JJ Crash at an east London open mic night. Bonding over their shared love of late 70s pop-punk like Blondie, Buzzcocks and Siousxie And The Banshees, the pair started to create angsty, cheeky pop-punk with big guitars and raw lyrics.
The band’s debut album ‘Rock Kicks’ is out this week via Blang, which precedes their debut single, ‘Not Your Type At All’. We caught up with JJ to ask the Same Six.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
The songwriting emerged from Lucy’s diary, which she started writing after her mum died – Lucy was only thirteen at the time and it was quite a shock, especially as her dad wasn’t living with her and her sister then. Kings Cross was suddenly a scary place and the diary became somewhere to escape while living in lots of different places. Some of the events became songs. I met Lucy when she played a few of these songs at an open mic at the The Rhythm Factory. She asked me if I was up for playing guitar for her and forming a band and it went from there.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
The Diary – each song is a story from the diary.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
Lucy writes the songs, then plays them to me on acoustic guitar. We rehearse and arrange the songs, then our producer and drummer Ian Button (ex-Death In Vegas guitarist) adds drums and records at the rehearsal studios or at my house.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
70s punk-pop bands like Blondie, The Pretenders, The Undertones, The Buzzcocks and older psychedelic stuff like Love and The Kinks. We both love The Moldy Peaches, Jeff Lewis, Milk Kan, Filthy Pedro (Antifolk stuff) and of course Hole/Courtney Love – insane genius bitch, very rock n roll.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Open up your heart.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
At the moment we are just really happy we actually made the album and still enjoy having a listen. If other people like it then that’s a bonus – we were thrilled that track one of the album (‘Not Your Type At All’) got a spin on the Jonathan Ross radio show on Radio 2 and also Tom Robinson played a different track on his ‘BBC Introducing’ show. It will be interesting to hear what other people make of it. Maybe to get more gigs – that would be cool.
MORE>> www.myspace.com/lucysdiary
