Just before they take to the stage at another hometown gig at their beloved Exeter Hub, Noize Makes Enemies editor Martin Kendrick met up Teddy Hesper and Eileen Spruce AKA garage rockers Le Chat Noir for a bevy and a natter down the local.
MK: So how are you guys? – looking forward to the gig?

TH: Should be a good gig, the first of these nine gigs we’re doing I woke up with a really, really sore throat and I thought “I’m going to die” at the end of the first gig I woke up the following morning and I couldn’t speak at all but, I’m feeling ok again now. It’s just one of those things when you have a few dates in a row you just kind of get used to it and you start getting your energy levels back again – were pretty up for it now!

MK: Your in the middle of a mad little spell of 7 gigs in 9 days at local venues, have you enjoyed it, is it taking its toll yet?

TH: We just like the challenge of it really you know, I’d gig everyday if I could really – we just love playing live.

MK: Are long tours something you like to do?

TH: Yeah, because at the moment we’re just getting all the gigs ourselves, we’re just trying to get as many as we can – we’ve done pretty well because we always get people coming up to us and saying “wow you’ve got so many gigs that’s amazing” but sometimes its just because we keep ringing places up until they give us a gig.

MK: Do you ever get spotted at gigs by people who then ask you to do other gigs?

TH: One of the biggest compliments ever is just loads of soundmen and people who often come up to us afterwards and say that was really, really good we really enjoyed it -because obviously they see bands everyday! I get a real kick out of that really! I think a lot of people are surprised when they see us come up on stage they think oh you know two people not going to be a very cool band but we do our best and Eileen’s a bit of a secret weapon, she hits it quite hard for a girl!! – For anyone really!

MK: Do you prefer local gigs to elsewhere in the country?

ES: No, I prefer playing up North really because everybody’s more enthusiastic about everything and know how to have a good time, where as down here it’s more like they just don’t know how to have a good time.

TH: It really varies from venue to venue to be honest, I mean we’ve played a few times in North Devon and there’s a really good sort of grungey rock scene up there. I guess there’s just some gigs were people seem to be there because they want to have a good time and get into it and that’s great, and then there’s other times when people hang back a bit and don’t look like there enjoying themselves. But then they’ll come up to us afterwards and say, "I really enjoyed you guys!"

ES: I remember there was this guy in Bodmin who was like this one-man mosh pit to every band that went on it was so funny!

TH: Live music is about entertainment and enjoyment so I think, yeah we have found that as we’ve gone further north people just seem to be there to enjoy themselves more really, yeah I don’t know why – but we love playing around here, especially the Hub.

MK: What, for you, is the best thing about being in a band, and the best thing about being in le chat noir in particular?

TH: I just love going to different places and meeting new people, I don’t understand when we meet some bands and they just don’t seem interested in interacting like their at a gig but they keep to themselves, for us we love just talking to people and finding out what people think about our music – it makes a night for me even if there’s hardly anyone there, if just one person comes up and says I really enjoyed tonight you know that’s job done really, I just love, even if you just touch peoples lives in a little way that’s what makes being in a band great for me.

MK: If my high school French serves me correctly, le chat noir translates as the black cat – how did that name come about?

TH: It’s a combination of different things. There was a club in Paris called Le Chat Noir in the 18th century, it was a kind of crazy cabaret joint where people came from all over the world to mingle - loads of artists and musicians all came there and shared ideas and I guess I see that our ethos is to fuse quite a few different things going on to make something new, I hope. And hopefully it’s just a name that’s something a bit different.

ES: I’ll give you the secret answer – it sounds cool!

TH: You know, we didn’t just want to be another “the something” band.

ES: Well I guess ‘le’ means ‘the’.

TH: Yeah well I guess it’s a twist on a theme – people do get it wrong sometimes though!

MK: You started out recording songs by sending them from the UK to the US and back?

TH: Yeah, well we kind of knew each other before, I was in another band in Dorset and I was a bassist. That band was a 5 piece and by the end of it was just quite unwieldy and I was sick of the politics of having too many egos in a band. Being in a 2 piece we just connected on a musical and friendly wavelength it was just a complete back to basics thing really.

MK: Did you find doing it that way it was difficult to actually get songs written the way you wanted them?

TH: I suppose, but modern technology just kind of lets you do these things really easily it’s something that never would have been possible 10 / 20 years ago – I think were living in a very democratic age of music where these things can happen so much easier. We’ve built up a big fan base online. I love using technology to our advantage.

MK: How have things progressed since you both got together over here and properly formed the band?

ES: A lot faster, its fun I like it, I always thought that being over here we could record but I actually find that here I can actually play music without having to be judged really badly because, back home, you just couldn’t do anything creative because you always knew there’s someone out there better than you, and your told that! That no matter what people were always like “that was crap”.
I’ve always wanted to play music, I just didn’t know what – even at times back home I had a lot of friends that were in bands and stuff, and they all found it really hard to be in a band because they all worked, all had stuff to do, it was really hard to get gigs and things like that and it was like I don’t want to do that dude, I just don’t want to do that. Whereas over here, and especially in Europe, it’s just really cool for music and just everything else generally.

MK: You’ve been compared to bands from The Black Keys to MC5, but I think probably the obvious comparison for me would be the white stripes, as much to do with the image as the sound, would you think that was a fair comparison?

ES: NO, IT’S NOT FAIR!!! I HATE IT!! If people would just stop looking at the boy girl drums guitar thing, there’s just so much more to it than that.

TH: I can see where people think that we fit into that Detroit sound because it is that back to basics rock thing. But I think we’re a very different band to them really, I see that band as more of a vehicle for Jack White’s song writing, whereas in this band were more of an equal partnership – Eileen’s a really good drummer and Meg White – I just think it’s an offensive comparison to Eileen mainly, because I think Jack Whites a good songwriter and performer, but I just don’t like her (Meg’s) drumming at all. But in some ways it works to our advantage, some people come to see us and think were going to be like The White Stripes, but when we start playing you’ve got this incredibly heavy drummer playing more complex things – it works to our advantage because people have these expectations all the time.

MK: do you think it’s more of an image thing?

TH: Maybe its an image thing, its one of those hard things because, you know, I love wild west and stuff, it’s imagery I've always used in bands since way back before The White Stripes were even known I was making this kind of music, so I don’t see them as an influence on us really. We never sought to be a two-piece with a girl drummer and guy guitarist, it just kind of happened. But I can see why people make that comparison.

ES: But you got to get over it really quick, seriously!

TH: There’s lots of White Stripes fans on myspace are always really nice to us, there’s the occasional persons who says, “your trying to be the white stripes” and this and that but most of them are really friendly and welcoming, and a lot of people have found us through their stuff.

MK: What was the first music you remember hearing that made you love music and want to make it yourself?

ES: Glam rock! Roxy music, T-rex, Bowie – loads of stuff that my parents used to listen to.

TH: I think we’ve actually got quite different musical backgrounds, Eileen’s parents are quite a different generation to my parents – my parents grew up listening to 60’s and 70’s music, where as Eileen’s are more 70’s and 80’s. I mean my dads a big fan of Van Morrison, The Eagles, Springsteen and stuff like that. That stuff hasn’t been a direct influence on me, but I just love good song writing. I think every song has to start with good song writing: weather it’s a great vocal hook, or a great lyric or you know, bands these days are more technical than they’ve ever been before but sometimes I think there’s some essence of what makes a great song that’s been lost in some modern music.

MK: Who really inspires you, musically and in life in general?

TH: Musically, my favourite band are probably the pixies, their a big influence and American alternative music generally I love pavement and alt country bands like Calexico and Sparklehorse – stuff that people won’t necessarily hear in our sound but when I look at it I can see where, especially lyrically, because I write a lot of dark tales, like murder ballads and that has defiantly been a big influence on me.

MK: Your pretty much at the end of recording your 2nd album DEADWOOD, the demos from it you put on myspace are sounding fantastic - how happy are you with the result so far?

TH: We’ve got all the drums down, and when we get a few days spare I’ll stick all the guitars and bass parts down and hopefully should be finished in a month or two.

TH: Because we’ve got quite a raw sound, it’s quite difficult when you’re recording to know when to polish it up a bit or try and keep it raw. Bands like The Black Keys just put it all on a four track and keep it live and it’s all down in a few hours, and that’s how we started out. When I look back on those early recordings I think it’s got a nice vibe to it. As we do more recording I’ve learnt to do more and more different things and make it more polished, sometimes I have to sit back and rein it in.

MK: How would do you think you have developed as a band during the time between the 2 albums?

TH: We’ve both developed at lot as musicians in the half a year that we’ve been playing together, a lots changed – before this band I was a bassist, I’d never sung in a band before or played guitar in a band before, so it’s been a big learning process for me. Before this Eileen had never played drums in a band too.
The new album’s slightly darker, more brooding. It’s not as in your face and direct, but its still got that feel to it. Its like we’ve become more complex. When we look back on some of the recording, it wasn’t as good as what were doing now, but sometimes we have to just let it be and move on to the next one. We didn’t want to just do the same thing again, it seems like some bands do – that would be one of my criticisms of The White Stripes where, I can see that Jack’s song writing has developed but Meg just seems to play the same thing over and over witch I don’t understand. Because most musicians want to do something different, you want to develop and this album when we first did some of the songs on it we were thinking, “how are people going to react to this?” But people have said how much they really like it and it’s really encouraging.

MK: On your website you say that Deadwood is “darker and more mature” than Tales from silver city – was that a conscious decision to make it that way or was it just a natural progression?

TH: I don’t know, I don’t think we ever make conscious decisions about it, we just play and it just happens on a subconscious level. We don’t ever think, right now were going to write a quiet song or a song that sounds like this. Were just playing and something just happens so we latch onto it and see where it goes. I think bands too often put too much focus on trying to do something a certain way, we don’t ever try and let a song sound like this or like that – I always find that the best songs that we do, we just stumble across them and it comes naturally.

MK: You have plans for a European tour – how much are you looking forward to touring outside the UK

ES: We’re slowly building up to it, were really aching to go to Europe, there’s so many people who say “come play in Europe, come play in our town” we’re really so looking forward to it! I really just want us to go to Europe and if it goes well the next thing would be to move out and just tour all over the goddam place!

TH: I think a lot of bands with our sound do better over there, like The Kills, there bigger in France than they are here. They just seem to have an appreciation of the sort of music were making, I think people over there are just slightly more open minded and more willing to give something different a chance, rather than just listening to their one genre of music.

ES: I just seems that here everyone’s into a whole thrash, emo scene, it sucks man.

TH: I can be quite a good challenge because, a lot of the time, it helps that were not metal or emo but we always get put on the bill with metal bands that are nothing like us at all. I just see it as a challenge because if we can win the fans of those bands over then that’s great! We do get people who look like they only ever listen to metal coming up to us and saying “we really enjoyed your set”, and I don’t just want to appeal to this type of person or that type of person.

MK: What are your expectations of Europe?

ES: I just want to get over there and do it, my expectations are so open wide, and if it turns out all right – that’s so cool, but if doesn’t, that’s cool to.

TH: I’ve been to Europe quite a lot but Eileen’s never been so it will just be cool to meet completely different people, go different places – it’s all great experience.

MK: Your live shows have been described as energetic, physical and leaving stages looking like battlefields – is on stage where we really get to see what le chat noir are all about?

TH: Yeah, I think people who have only heard our music online or just heard the CD; it’s not an accurate representation of what were like when we play live.

ES: were like two of the quietest people ever, but when I play, I don’t know, it's almost dumb, but its like the music just takes over and you just get into it.

TH: I don’t understand when I see bands that are just like their doing a rehearsal or like their playing in their bedroom. When I play live I want to give it everything I’ve got every time, weather there’s a hundred people or two people there, we always give it our all and I just love performing. I’m one of those kind of people who if I had to get up and talk in front of people or make a speech I’d just be nervous and wouldn’t be able to speak. That’s one of the reasons I love music – another side of you just takes over, its not an act, just a completely different part of you comes out and I love it, I just cant get enough of it.

MK: You recently signed to new Devon label Garage Sale records, what was it about them that made you decide to pen your first deal there?

TH: Well, its more a kind of symbol really, its more a kind of collective than a proper record label but you know, it’s the way a lot of DIY labels start up. Like we were saying earlier about how modern music is getting more and more democratic, when you collect people together, it achieves more. Weather its just sending stuff out to a venue or whatever it just seems to give you a bit more credibility, that’s not the only reason for it. We just wanted to get together a bunch of bands that we really like and just try and have a bit of solidarity basically, and just try and promote ourselves in as professional a way as possible.

MK: What are your hopes and plans for the next few years?

ES: There’s so many!

TH: The general aim is, I think we’d love to be able to make just enough to live on and do it for as long as we can, to go on a journey and see where it takes us. We just want to keep playing live music as much as we can.

ES: Yeah that’s it really, after that who knows?

MK: Would you like to go back to the States and tour?

ES: (shakes her head)

TH: A lot of people like our music over there, especially around the mid west, Detroit. We get allot of people from slightly out of the way states, not the well known east or west coast places, saying “please come and play if you ever come to America” and id love to, if we do go out there, I wouldn’t want to play the big places I just want to play the out of the way places.

ES: Yeah probably, where these just one dust road with one bar.

TH: We’ve got a lot of things we’d problably do before ever considering it though, we want to focus on Europe for now really, then one step at a time.

ES: Europe, then the world!


LE CHAT NOIR – ‘Tales From Silver City’ (album review)


LE CHAT NOIR - EXETER HUB 7/5/07 (gig review)