|
Interview with Olli Cunningham - keyboards. 26 March 2002
Matthew Jay continues to gather
recognition and support across the globe. His music is picking up a strong
following through a relatively small amount of exposure, but as yet, most
fans don't know much about the musicians who work closely with Matthew,
both in the studio and in live performances.
Here then is the first of a number of planned exclusive features on Crooked
Smile, spotlighting the artists who contribute to the Matthew Jay sound,
starting with Olli Cunningham.
QUICK BACKGROUND:
Olli joined the band as keyboard player in February 2001 and is also the
Live Music Director for all gigs.
He sometimes plays a bit of percussion in the live shows: tambourine etc.
He accompanied Matthew in the performances on Joolz
and Jo
Whiley (where they had to use a tape loop as backing for Let Your
Shoulder Fall' because they couldn't fit a drum kit into the studio)!
CS:
So how did you get involved with Matthew?
Olli: Through Matthew's management. They were looking for a keyboard
player because they didn't have one for the live band. Everyone else had
been involved in the record, but the people who played keyboards on the
record weren't able to do the live thing, so a mutual contact put me in
touch with Martyn (Matthew's manager).
CS: Did you have to
audition?
Olli: Yes. (Laughs)
CS: And had you heard
of Matthew Jay at that point?
Olli: No I hadn't. Not at all. But I got a few copies of his stuff
and liked it straight away, you know within two seconds of putting it
on.
CS: So what was your
background before playing with Matthew?
Olli: Classical keyboards, session playing, touring with bands
round Europe, just getting experience really.
CS: So you're the Live
Musical Director. What does that entail?
Olli: It's taking the songs from the album and arranging them in
such a way that they come across as well as they possibly can on stage,
bearing in mind the fact that there are only five of us on stage. A lot
of it is organising rehearsals. It's like an arrangement thing, like being
captain of a football team: you're making sure that everyone is doing
what they're doing as well as they possibly can and making the live show
as good as it can be.
CS: In his recorded
tracks Matthew often accompanies his own vocals with overlaid vocal harmonies.
In a live performance, how do you handle that? Do other members of the
band take those parts?
Olli: Yeah. I usually do all the high harmonies and Garf, the bass
player, does the lower harmonies, and Matt does the singing. That's another
thing, I mean obviously in the studio you can put on as many harmonies
as you want on with as many voices, and that's where for the live set,
I'll listen to the track and say, well, bearing in mind what everyone's
playing, we can only use those harmonies, then basically pick the most
important ones that lift the tune up. There's a few loops that we use,
like in 'Remember this Feeling' there's a drum loop that we use, but that's
controlled live, it's not like we play a tape and then play over the top
of it. It's a sampler which has all the sounds in it and then a little
sequencer that I run from on top of my keyboard, and I have control over
when it starts, when it stops and what sounds are in, what sounds are
out. It's quite an organic way of doing it. It doesn't restrict you in
the live thing, in terms of having to stop here or stop there. You can
pretty much play it and go with whatever the vibe of the night is.
CS: Are there any live
recordings in existence?
Olli: There was a CD which was given out during the Starsailor
tour in the UK It had 'Become Yourself' the studio version, and a live
version of 'The Clearing' which was recorded at The Lomax in Liverpool
in June (2001). We put that together at Abbey Road Studios. It was a promotional
thing, so you couldn't go and buy it in the shops. That's the only official
live recording.
CS: Can you give me
an idea of the scale of venues in terms of size? The smallest gig you've
played to the largest?
Olli: Well the smallest one was I think called the Louisiana in
Bristol. It's like a living room. It was a great gig. It was a sort of
Southern American style bar. It's only got a capacity of about 150, but
that's a very big squeeze! The largest venue we've played is probably
The Forum in Kentish Town, London, supporting Starsailor last November.
CS: Did you go on any
of the tours in the States?
Olli: No, I didn't, cos Matthew went over there three times and
went over with Sam (Hempton). That was kind of a practicality thing. It
wasn't practical or the right time to take the whole band over there.
CS: So those US gigs
were a more acoustic sort of thing then?
Olli: Well Sam plays electric guitar, and Matt plays acoustic but
it's a very different interpretation of the sound, different but good.
CS: Did you get any
feedback from them about how they were received over there?
Olli: I think it was very good. I think in Canada they went down
very well. I think they did a music festival over there, North by North
West, and their gig that they did was one of the hot tickets.
The band was actually meant to be going out to America in September for
a week or ten days, but after September 11th that obviously all got cancelled,
and after that there was a kind of stop on all trans-Atlantic gigging
schedules.
CS: Who takes care of
the technical side of the live performances?
Olli: We've got a front of house sound engineer and all that kind
of stuff: professional people whose job is to make sure the sound is really
good. It's important to have people like that around you when you're playing
live. When you find someone who's really good and gets on with the band
and really understands your needs it becomes a hundred times easier. Brandon
is the guy who did all that in Europe. He's a fantastic sound engineer.
CS: Of all the live
gigs you've done so far do you have a favourite?
Olli: Funnily enough it was probably the last gig that we did on
the European leg of the Starsailor tour in Hamburg. It was in a small
club, the name of which I can't remember. It was like an old meat packing
factory. It was quite a cool venue. The stage was really tiny and we were
all pretty much standing on top of eachother, and I think the reason was
that in Germany the record wasn't out, so we were playing to people who'd
never really heard of us or seen us, and knew nothing about Matthew Jay.
So the reaction that we got, bearing that in mind, was phenomenal. And
we were playing very well as well on the European tour, as a band. And
Matthew I think was really enjoying himself on stage. And it was just
a lot of fun, so that was the top gig.
CS: Has there ever been
a gig that's gone disasterously wrong?
Olli: No, not really. We try to set ourselves quite high standards
performance-wise, you know doing our songs justice on stage, so we're
not selling anyone short who's coming along to the gigs. Obviously, there
are technical problems sometimes that you can't really do anything about,
but they happen to every single band whether you're playing in a 20,000
seater arena or in a 200 capacity club: you get feedback or monitors going
down. Those sort of things tend to kind of annoy you at the time. You
think "Oh God that was terrible," when in fact, from the audience's
perspective, they probably didn't even notice. So I don't think there
was one awful gig. The main point of last year was to get a consistency
going of performance so that we could really enjoy playing the songs live,
which I think we succeeded in doing. It's a young band. We've only been
together for 8-10 months. I mean it's not a long time. Most bands, Starsailor
for example, have been together for quite a few years before they got
signed. So they have that time to develop as a bunch of people, get to
know each other. Bearing in mind that we've only been together for such
a short time as a live band, I think we did alright last year. I think
Matthew - although he's kind of new to the whole recording industry thing
- over the last year he's realised that it's actually really enjoyable
to be up on stage. And as a band we've really noticed how much he's come
along as a performer, and it's great for us to be playing in a band with
a guy as talented as that.
|
