Welsh Bands: Derrero Interview by Rebecca Burns Ashley - guitar/vocals Andy - drums/vocals Dave - bass Mary - keyboards/bits

Do you play any instruments other than those you play in the band?

Dave: I can play a bit of the Penny Whistle.

Andy: I can play the Kazoo. Erm, dunno, what else? The Jew's harp. Well, not really.

Were any of you in any other bands before Derrero?

Ashley: Yeah. We were all in college together doing Fine Art and we were in a country kind of rocky, raw-gutsy band.

What was it called?

Ashley: Big Chief

Andy: But we'd all been in bands before college, too.

Where and when did you meet?

Ashley: We (the boys) met at Art College in Falmouth, Cornwall in 1991? Yeah, about six or seven years ago.

Mary: And I'm from Cornwall.

Was Derrero always called Dererro?

Ashley: Yeah, although we went through other ideas before we decided upon Derrero.

Where does the name come from?

Mary: It's from the film, 'The Man With Two Brains'. He's got a rabbit thing on and he says "I don't find that very amusing, Derrero!"

Andy: It's just a sort of obscure reference. I think we were probably trying to think of band names while we were watching the film and that just sounded suitably obscure.

What have you recorded up to now?

Dave: We released a double A side vinyl single on Size 8 records called Tiny Shoes and Dipstick quite a while ago. Then we did the album, Derrero, on Big Noise. And an EP, called Small Pocket Machine, in the same year, also on Big Noise.

I'd find it quite hard to describe your music. People must ask you what kind of band you play in. How do you describe what you do?

Dave: We try not to really.

Mary: Helpful!

Andy: We sort of say things like 'guitar-based', avoid the word Indie, but people would probably label it that.

Mary: Quirky pop.

Ashley: It's almost like a mish-mash of stuff, isn't it; each member of the band's going to call on different musical backgrounds, what they listen to...

Andy: It is pop, I guess, but it's quite heavy in places. We used to call it experimental because we were kind of open to different instruments and things, drum machines...

Ashley: We never sort of collectively formed an idea that we would be electronic or punk or something, it was just 'here are our songs and we have this idea to do this' - it's quite a mixture of things.

Who writes the lyrics?

Andy: there are two songwriters, Ashley and me, and for each we write our own lyrics and sing our own songs.

Are your lyrics usually about positive things or negative things? Are they personal?

Dave: Yeah, what are they about?!?

Ashley: They're like little diary entries or something.

Dave: Stream of consciousness...

Ashley: It's not like 'oh, I'm going to write a really profound love song'. There's no great message, it's just about little things you do in your life. They're all quite kind of coded, and sort of personal, but obscure. There are little bits of trivia, you know.

Andy: They're very personal, yeah. Perhaps maybe a little bit in-jokey sometimes.

Do you think people might not immediately understand what you're talking about, then?

Andy: I think they would. I mean it wouldn't follow like a story but certain sentences would go together.

Dave: It's more poetry than prose.

Andy: Yeah...

Ashley: I've always thought about the thing the guy from Pavement does, you know, to write lyrics, chop them up, move them around.

Andy: Cut and paste.

Ashley: It's quite abstract. It's as much about what the words sound like put together as anything else.

Andy: I think it's important that we went to art school, and now we're in a band, because we have quite an arty approach, in that we're not interested in writing love songs.

Ashley: Just in the way we construct a song like you might approach a painting or something. You know you build it up and add bits in, add texture or colour to it.

Because three of you have a background in art, do you like to be involved in the artwork used for your recordings?

Andy: Well, we haven't up until know because we all have different ideas and it was easier to get an independent other person to design it, with our input. But now we're using this...(one of Andy's designs, for the front of 'Radar Intruder', to be released in October). It sort of lent itself to that kind of thing cos' it's quite cartoony...

Ashley: Big Noise offered us studio time which then evolved into a whole set of recordings and then into releasing something. At the time it was just 'let's release it' rather than 'we need to get a whole campagin together', or 'there might be singles or there might be more to it'. Whereas with this (Radar Intruder), there's more thought gone into it, into the whole overall kind of campaign so that the paintings can run over into other stuff.

Dave: I wouldn't call it a campaign exactly...

Ashley: Well it is in that if you're going to get T-shirts done to go with it there's an identity that follows through with it. Also we've decided to really go to town with it rather than do it on a budget and not use full colour and stuff...

Do any of you like any Welsh bands?

Mary: yeah...

Ashley: Gorky's (Zygotic Mynci)

Dave: Topper

All: Yeah, Topper.

What are you listening to at the moment?

Dave: Cornelius and Alabama 3.

Ashley: Robert Wyatt. Not a huge amount of new stuff. I like discovering older music. Anything from like sort of Zappa....

Andy: Sparklehorse. Beach Boys.

Ashley: there are certainly a lot of things, you know, like the whole kind of debt you have to pay to people like Neil Young or the Beach Boys and the sort of things that were coming awake at that point...

Mary: Disco!

Dave: What, the band from Newport?!

Mary: No! Just Disco!

What's your most memorable gig? And was it memorable for good or bad reasons?

Mary: Well I've only played one with them!

Ashley: Was it memorable though!?

Mary: No, because I was behind the curtain and my friends were laughing at me, heckling it was, more like!

Andy: It was when the landlord who'd booked one time came up with a Walkman, with our demo in the Walkman, saying 'you're not the same band, you've got a girl singer', and he was like implying we'd pulled the wool over his eyes or something! And I was saying 'No, it's us! We were just singing in a bit of a high voice!" And he was a real arsehole, and basically we nearly had a fight with him.

Did you do the gig in the end?

Andy: Well, it was during the gig that he did this! And he went round the pub asking everyone if they wanted us to carry on.

Mary: and they went 'yeeeaaah!'

Andy: We had a couple of pissed mates with us who were well up for getting the crowd into it, and all the punters liked it so...

Ashley: We'd put the PA away by this time so we thought 'Oh sod it, let's put it back up again and finish the set'... ...But obviously, you know, the Catatonia Tour and some of the bigger gigs, the things when it was sort of breaking the territory, things that we'd never done before - they were great.

What are your next recording plans?

Dave: we haven't got any recording plans at the moment because we've got loads of stuff recorded that hasn't been released. We did a lot of recording at the beginning of the year.

Are you constantly writing new stuff?

Andy: yeah just to keep it interesting for ourselves, while we wait...

Ashley: we're rehearsing a lot of new stuff at the moment. It's kind of evolved into you know you spend 8 to 10 months working on a handful of songs and then pick the best when you next hit the studio.

Do you have a record deal?

Andy: Well Big Noise are quite a new label and we're the first band on it. We just put stuff out on it but we haven't signed anything. It's kind of like an understanding. They've put some money into it and we owe them back.

Ashley: Obviously if someone offers us a bigger deal and it's worth doing then we'd keep Greg and Ceri (of Big Noise) on as management, anyway.

Andy: We've got a small record deal of sorts in that they put our music out for us and we don't have to pay anything, just put it out.

What do you think of the mainstream music press, and what do they think of you? Do you think they have a great bearing over what people think of bands, and whether they rise to fame or not?

Ashley: We haven't come into a lot of contact with them , but obviously you've got to be aware of what you say, because they hold a lot of power to, even if they don't realise, kind of create the whole scene and give people what they think they want. And then they keep feeding that monster or whatever, so you've got to capture respect...it's a big thing.

Andy: People do definitely believe in their influence, yeah.

So have you sent any of your recordings to the music press?

Dave: NME reviewed the last album.

What did they think of it?

Andy: positive.

Ashley: It was a really good review for a first release.

Andy: They said it was a 'glorious and wilful racket'. It read pretty well.

Dave: I like the Sunday Times reviews, they're pretty good. They're not like mainstream stuff - they're really obscure stuff.

What do you do when you're not doing Derrero-related things?

Mary: I've just graduated. I was at Newport doing Film and Animation.

Andy: Drink.

Ashley: We do quite a lot with the band, anyway...

Dave: We're always doing music things.

Andy: I paint.

Ashley: I would like to paint. I did have a studio for six months when the band were in Brighton. Andy you do the work you want at home, whereas I prefer to have a space where I can make more of a mess. Hopefully if we start to make a bit of money, eventually, I'll be able to get some studio space.

What do you think you'd each be doing if you weren't in Derrero?

Ashley: I always thought I'd become a painter, really.

Dave: An artist. Realistically, though, I'd probably be an art teacher.

Mary: Aah, would you?

Andy: I'm sure you could cut it, Dave!

Dave: Yeah, I think you're right, I'd be on (Cork) Street with Damien Hurst!

Andy: We'd all be avante garde artists!

Ashley: I've always fancied being a writer, though, with cheap red wine...

Dave: with a pipe...and a tweed jacket...

Mary: Yeah, that's one of your fantasies, isn't it. You talk quite regularly about that.

Andy: I don't know. I suppose I might try to be a beach bum, or something, you know, try to live that lifestyle. Live by the sea and just get wasted.

Ashley: And carve things out of driftwood...

And what about you, Mary?

Mary: Claiming as much attention as possible from whatever form! International film star...erm...

Ashley: you just want to get your kit off on TV....

Mary: OY! Enough!

"I don't find that very amusing, Derrero!"

Derrero have a number of live dates set for the next few months - both in the area and further afield - and their new 4 track CD & 2 track limited edition 7" 'Radar Intruder' is now available (since 9 November 1998...)

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