Introduction

Born and bred in Cornwall, raised in the middle of nowhere, nourished on honey comb, bathed in mud and rinsed in creek water.....I come in at number three in a brood of six...four girls, two boys. I climbed from comfort to chaos in a few short steps and now I live in London... I haven't quite come to terms with this yet! I have been singing since I was knee high. I grew up at a recording studio next to a creek with no road to it. We lived in the country but modern culture came in by boat every couple of weeks in the form of skinny young blokes with funny haircuts and mad looking ladies wearing loads of make up and very dyed hair... music was everywhere all day, but it rarely sounded good. I went to sleep to the sound of a solo drum kit most nights, all the other instruments were almost inaudible. Now I can fall asleep stone cold sober in the middle club.

Professional Aims

Something happens to me when I start to write a song... it's like all the liberation I don't feel as an adult trying to scrape by in a big busy city comes and inhabits me... I feel like I did as a child running through the woods on my first lone adventure, diving in to the river in march, rolling around in the mud at low tide... I feel the intensity of emotion that I felt the first time I lay on my floor as a teenager and played The Joshua Tree, when I heard Prince and imaged sex, when I first fell in love and started to make my own poetry, had my heart broken and couldn't imagine a worse pain, when I thought my parents had stopped loving me cos I'd been a bad bad girl. When I was trying to work out who I was, like so many kids I struggled to unite the good girl who always thought of others and the girl I thought was too intense, too dark, too brooding, too naughty to take out in public. I hid her away in secret diaries and led a secret life unbeknownst to my family and friends. And like anything you try to keep in the dark she strained to get out and craned her head towards the light, desperate to be discovered in her isolation. Over time I realized I was just exhausting myself with this game and really i wanted everyone to know exactly who I was. So I let her out...and now I get up on stage and show her to the world and god it feels fantastic! It's a freedom of expression beyond any I've ever experienced.

I Like

I walk on the heath, usually by myself. I listen to other peoples conversations. I stare a lot. I read books til 4 in the morning when everyone else is sleeping. I watch films and believe it's real life. Living life vicariously is such a treat, it's chocolate chip ice cream for the mind! But everything starts to feel a bit surreal if I indulge my penchant for escapism to often. I cook delicious food and share it every day if possible. I dress up for no particular reason. I look at myself in the mirror and try and understand that that person is me… I check often just to be sure.

Music Taste

So many great passions that influence unbeknownst to them, and probably unbeknownst to me too. They're embedded in my subconscious somewhere I suppose… helping me to choose the next note and the rhythms that move me to shake my beehind. As I started to gently ease myself out of girlhood, I would lie for hours on my bedroom floor listening to U2, Prince, Eurythmics, Kate Bush... so different... but all made sense to different parts of me. I was heavily in to some of the jazz greats for a while... Billy and Ella Being the leading female voices of their time, which strangely led me to Joni Mitchell... a big passion discovered. I dabbled in a little P-Funk as a teenager.... that was all about dancing.. I moved on to soul in the form Gladys Knight, Bill Withers, Ottis, Al Green, James Brown... Still dancing. Then came Nick Cave...PJ.Harvey...in one breath and I stepped in to the world of the unknown. Bjork opened my ears, burst my chest open and in flooded a whole new realm of possibility. Radio Head hit me hard in the face like they did most people...and Beck for the lighter side of the weird....Next came Little Feet for cooling off and remembering the need for simplicity... I was very taken with Moloko after I saw them at Glastonbury.... That was all about performance...I was performing myself by then so I was taking notice! Fiona Apple struck a chord with me and I have just discovered Nerina Pallot!