Piewatch grasps the facts with I Am Not Lefthanded

After spotting I Am Not Lefthanded in the showcase we have been steadily warming to their music. The Piewatch Team agree that in many ways they sound like Scars On 45 and that excites us, a lot! Read on for info on the band, why Kathryn doesnt want a super power and the answer to that questions burning in all of your minds… “daddy or chips?”

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Piewatch - Hi I Am Not Lefthanded, thanks for talking to us! First things first, who’s who and who plays what?

Kathryn: Hello Piewatch, well thanks for having us!

There are three of us: myself (guitar, piano, vocals), Daniel (bass, viola, vocals) and Benji (drums). We tend to sort most things out between us, but in general I write the lyrics, while Daniel keeps an eye on the production. Benji’s a free agent, he tends to let us know when something we’ve worked out is good, and when it needs more work.

Piewatch – Strange name, what’s its origin?

Kathryn: I actually used to be lefthanded, when I first started school.  My over enthusiastic teacher decided it would be better for me to learn to write with my right hand, which I still do. Who knows, maybe I could have turned out a very different person!

Piewatch - When, where and how did you meet?

Daniel: Kathryn and I met in Dublin, several years back.  We were playing in a few different bands, together and separately, but nothing really clicked. After Kathryn left for California, I moved to London, where I started working in the Camden Barfly – that’s where I met Benji.  We worked 13-hour shifts every Friday night for about two years.  Every up and coming UK band came through the Barfly then – we spent a lot of time talking about who was great, and who was way over-hyped!  When Kathryn ended up in London, we started playing together again and Benji just fit.  Being a three-piece made us all work a lot harder than we had before there’s no room for lazy playing with such sparse arrangements!

Piewatch – Where do you get your inspiration from in order to write your own material?

Kathryn: I think we get melodic ideas from a lot of different places – some are mine, some are Daniel’s.  They tend to shift about when we play them to each other.  In terms of lyrics, I write a lot of them as I work through things in my head.  Although there’s usually about a six-month delay between something making me care enough to write about it, and the actual finished song appearing in public. It’s led to some confusion from people close to me, when they think I’m writing about something they’ve just done.

Piewatch - Who are your musical influences? Any unexpected ones?

Daniel: I think we’ve all got some different influences, which makes for interesting discussions sometimes.  Benji definitely comes from more of a hard rock background, which really helps give us an edge when we bring the songs to him.  We honestly really love hearing him drum, although sometimes if he comes to practice having just listened to Tool on his iPod, he can be quite tough to keep up with!

Kathryn: I grew up with a lot of music in my house – mostly country, like Johnny Cash, thanks dad – so I think some of that’s stuck in my subconscious, but I really grew up finding different inspirations in songs rather than musicians. I listen to everything from We Are Scientists to Dan le Sac to Clutch to Weezer really easily. A good song is a good song!

Piewatch - How would you describe your music if you only had three terms?

Daniel: Soulful, uplifting, honest. At least, I think that’s what we’re putting in, so I hope that’s what people get out of it!

Piewatch - What would you say are your biggest achievements musically?

Kathryn: I think it’s all about connecting with people.  It’s easy enough to write pop that doesn’t offend anyone, but we want to write songs that resonate , that really makes us feel like we’re doing something worthwhile.  My favourite connection, was when I got an email from a 15 year old kid.  He and his girlfriend’s favourite song was ‘Long Goodbyes’, the opening track off our first EP.  But her family were moving to America and they were going to have to break up.  So he asked me for the tab, so he could learn the song to play it for her before she left. Love is so important at that age (before you get cynical and jaded in your twenties!), that just got me right in my chest. That’s something worth doing all this for.

Piewatch - What would you say are your most investor friendly qualities?

Daniel: We’ve been at this a while, we’ve seen other bands we know succeed or fail based on the work they put in – some of them on major labels just got lazy the minute they got signed and let it all slip away.  We’re 100% dedicated to this, we released our first EP with an indie label, but we didn’t like the way they did it, so we’re working on our own because that’s the way we want to be.  We’re touring as much as we can, which will only increase when we’ve an album to promote.  We’re doing a national tour of Ireland in May, then spending the summer in Northern Europe as much as we can, and then heading to the U.S. for an acoustic tour in September.  We’re going for this full-throttle and we’re determined to work as hard as we can for it.

Piewatch – Thing-a-Week, great idea! Care to give us a run down of what to expect?

Kathryn: The idea behind Thing-a-Week is to keep us working hard, showcase what we can do and spread the songs as far as we can.  We take great pride in making our own videos and artwork along with the music, and it’s to challenge us to keep coming up with something fresh every week.  If we can do that with no money, imagine what we could do with the £15,000!

Daniel: I think as well, that the internet has become so important in music discovery, and content is by far the best advertising.  If we’re putting something up every week, that’s one more thing for people to share with their friends, plus if you like a live or acoustic version of a song a lot, there’s your incentive to invest in us so we can create a proper studio version.

Piewatch – Any surprises, mishaps or comical moments when gigging?

Kathryn: We tend to survive alright on stage, touring on the other hand can be a different matter.  There was one afternoon that Benji and I landed in Belfast International airport for a gig that night, and Daniel was meant to pick us up.  We spent about 20 minutes on the phone arguing, and we couldn’t work out how we just couldn’t spot each other before it dawned on me that he’d gone to Belfast City airport, and was in fact an hour away across the city!  We made the gig by the skin of our teeth, though Daniel didn’t hear the end of it for quite a while…

Piewatch - Who do you like in the charts at the moment?

Daniel: The UK charts don’t really have a lot that inspires us at the moment, hopefully something we can work on changing!  It is great to see so many strong female singers coming through though – Florence and the Machine, La Roux and more.  Plus I have a soft spot for that Owl City song, but only because it reminds me of The Postal Service!

Piewatch – Any artists you really like on Slicethepie at the moment?

Kathryn: There’s so many people in the showcase at the moment, I haven’t even had time to give them all a decent listen.  I like Ryan Inglis’ songs, he seems to have great support behind him too, which is great.

Daniel: I really like Paul Shevlin, there’s some really interesting talent coming out of Northern Ireland at the moment, everyone should go invest in him right now!  And Derek Daisey’s songs keep getting stuck in my head these days…

Piewatch – Which of your own tracks is currently your favourite and why?

Kathryn: I think Boats has been our favourite song to play for quite some time, it’s one of those songs that just came together so easily, almost out of the air.  It just makes us smile.

Piewatch - Where can we see you play next?

Daniel: We’re playing a show in the Windmill in Brixton, on Good Friday – 2nd of April.  It’s their first barbeque of the year with 5 bands, we’re on somewhere in the middle, it should be a great show, there’s always a really nice vibe down at the Windmill.

Piewatch – What is coming up next for I Am Not Lefthanded?

Kathryn: As well as keeping ourselves busy with our Thing-a-Week, we’ve started a national radio campaign in Ireland with our latest EP, Time To Leave.  We just had our first play on BBC Radio Ulster on Monday, here’s hoping there are many more of them.

Piewatch - If you could have any superpower what would it be?

Kathryn: I wouldn’t want a superpower, I’d just want to have amazing technical ability (and unlimited resources) so I could invent a lot of awesome gadgets, like Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne. Then I could take over the world!

Piewatch - And because no interview is complete without a total WTF question… Daddy or Chips?

Kathryn: Tough call, but I think I’d have to go for Daddy.

Piewatch - Any last comments, plugs, or shout out’s to the fans?

Daniel: Not one, draw your own conclusions. Thanks so much for having us!

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