Blood Red Shoes - Interview

Laura-Mary Carter (Vocals and guitar)
Steven Ansell (Vocals and drums

Blood Red Shoes have been described as all of the following: Alternative rock, Indie rock, Post-punk, Garage rock Punk rock and finally Grunge. In short they're giving music journalists a hard time in trying to label them! The Brighton based duo formed in 2004 after their previous bands (Cat On Form and Lady Muck) broke up. Thankfully for us, they decided to get together, and since then have gone on to play at the likes of Reading and Leeds.

Thank you for taking the time out to speak to us during a very busy time!

You don't appear to fit one music scene / genre wholly, and have supported a wide variety of acts, do you think that proves to be a hindrance being so hard to categorise or do you think it has its advantages?

Steven - Yeh I think in the end it's definitely a good thing - there are a lot of bands who die with the scene that they're part of. I mean if we'd have come out as a new rave band we'd have gone down with that ship wouldn't we? The ship that lasted about a week that is. but you know what I mean.

For us it's been a lot harder to get known initially, certainly in England, because we're not easily fitting into a trend here. We found that certain countries overseas "got it" faster than England and I have a feeling that's because music is less pigeon-holed by the media there.

So yes it's definitely made it hard for us to get going and we still struggle a little bit because of that - but I think ultimately it's just a testament that we have our own identity and aren't part of a bandwagon or a pre-conceived idea of how a band should look, sound and act.

You're a very hands on band, even designing the sleeves yourselves too (potentially inspired by an ex's scarf!!), is there a risk that as your popularity increases so will the pressures on your time, and that might result in you having to change that?

Steven - Yes completely. we're already finding it hard and there's a lot of pressure on Laura-Mary for producing artwork for our releases whilst we're touring incessantly, and that's not an easy thing to get done in the back of a van. There are also so many things going on for our band now, in so many countries, it's hard to keep your eye on everything.

We're fortunate in that we've worked with the same managers for a long time and they understand us pretty well so I feel more comfortable trusting them to make decisions without us than before. But still, that kind of trust and leaving decisions to other people...it doesn't come naturally to us, not at all. Sometimes we just have to let little details slip.

I loved where the name came from (Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers), but what other names did you come up with before settling on Blood Red Shoes?

Steven - F*** we came up with loads. loads and loads, ranging some really emo bad sounding ones like "Broken Buildings" all the way to "Flesh Eating Mothers" inspired by a zombie film. Blood Red Shoes was definitely the best one! I'm glad we settled on it because I think in 10 years I'll still think it sounds cool and hopefully not dated. hopefully.

How did you first start out in music and how did you discover which role you are best at? Were you pushed into it by some music teacher, or was it just the "done thing" amongst your peers? And who inspires you musically?

Steven - We both fell into music at a very early age, playing piano first off. Neither of us were pushed into it, I think we both just went for it for many reasons....ultimately what brought us together and the thing that inspired us the most was the punk scene in the 90s and early 2000s.

That's where we met each other, going to see US bands coming over like Fugazi, Q and not U, The Gossip (before they were a radio disco hit band ha ha), The Paper Chase, Hot Snakes, Shellac, and UK bands like Charlottefield, Econoline, Lords. we both had bands in that scene, mine was called Cat on Form and laura's was called Lady Muck. When those bands ended we decided to try something together and it came out as Blood Red Shoes. A lot of folk from that scene are still around in new bands today that we play with, like Male Bonding, Pulled Apart By Horses, Foals.

You have toured extensively, and you must have had some real "What the!?" moments, what has been the funniest or oddest moment on tour?

Steven - I'm useless when people ask me questions like this. If you sit me in a bar and strike up a conversation I'll probably find a hundred weird stories but when put on the spot...nothing comes out. I remember a really odd moment where we went to a karaoke bar in Tokyo and after a while this cake came out which had been iced perfectly with our record sleeve. Turned out the chef there was a really big fan and recognized us. That was pretty surreal. Recently we got given a bottle of this weird herbal Czech spirit by a fan, which we happily devoured - but it sent us totally bats*** mental, having an argument in the streets of Paris throwing s*** around and screaming, we broke up the band and everything, in front of a load of fans from our show that night. but the next day we woke up and laughed for about 3 hours about it. It was odd but definitely very very funny in the end.

Heartsink came out on the 16th, love it. The video to it looks awesome, and a huge amount of fun for your fans! How much fun was that to make, and were you not tempted to lend a hand in destroying some of those items? On a more serious note, Steve Glashier seems to have been quite an inspired choice to direct, how did you come about appointing him for the video and what was he like to work with?

Steven - Yeh well it was definitely tempting to help break things but we had to leave it to the people who brought all those items. we chose Steve Glashier because we've worked with him a lot before, he's Brighton based and a friend of ours. He shot our first ever video completely free. So we had the idea for the video but weren't entirely sure how to execute it, sat down and went through it with Steve and changed a few bits then it was obvious he should direct it and his company shoot it.

What are your views on music piracy. In the past some of your work has been distributed illegally, do you think music piracy has a huge impact on sales, or do you see it as a means to an end whereby some people might not have had the money to buy the CD in the first place, but might pay to see a show at a later date?

Steven - Of course it has an impact on sales. I mean, the majority of people won't pay for something they can get for free. It's just common sense. I think it's definitely helped the live side of our band a lot, and probably the same for other bands - because you can't get that free.

It's all economics really. That being said, recently I think bands generally are selling less tickets in England, maybe because of the recession or maybe people are more interested in other forms of entertainment, I'm not sure. Personally I don't have a problem with downloading - it doesn't worry me about our future because I know we can make a living touring, and to be honest I think rather than sitting around complaining about it bands need to realize that it's happening and it won't go away so we need to move on. Home taping didn't kill music and neither will this.

That's great thank you!

The new single ‘Light It Up’ out in Nov 8^th

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Blood Red Shoes website can be found here: http://www.bloodredshoes.co.uk/homepage.html