Interview with Drugstore
"Well you can bring me flowers…! Bottles of wine, love letters… we’ll take whatever you guys bring on, you know, it’s gonna be a very intimate, and I think special show." - Isabel on what she'd like from our audience...
The life of the band Drugstore so far can be seen like a festival tent after three days shielding the British elements. At the starting point, to where we find them now, they are steel rods in the ground of alternative music, in firm foundations of a strong fanbase – they counted Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke among the throngs – and genre defining music. The part In the middle, where the tent relinquishes its tautness, is the period where they disbanded, where the exhilarating frontwoman, Isabel Monteiro found her light dimmed by UK residential bureaucracy, leaving her homeless, broke, isolated… but luckily, with her creativity intact, and now, a story to tell. The hardship, selfishly for us, has given us ‘Anatomy’, their newest album, and a few UK dates…
Is now a good time to talk still, Isabel? Yes, absolutely; I have my coffee, my cigarettes, I’m ready.
You’re a lot more prepared than me. I feel trapped inside my office, because it’s sunny outside – is it sunny with you? It is, I live in Kew Gardens, which is a very green, beautiful area of London and yes, it’s lovely here today, it really is.
Whenever I imagine Kew, I think of it as a luscious paradise within the city, is that a fair representation? It is a very luscious area, but it’s a little bit trapped in the 1950s, you know, there’s a very old fashioned feeling about it, but I really like it because I lived in a very rough area of London, the opposite, for many years, so this is a nice change.
We’re very excited about you coming to Norwich in April, especially as it’s one of only three dates for you coming up… Yeah, that’s right, you know. The Norwich Arts Centre was one of those places that for some reason, we never ended up playing. We toured so much, for over 15 years non-stop, but ended up never playing the Arts Centre and it’s a great venue, really beautiful, so I’m really looking forward to playing in Norwich.
I love the NAC; it still has the majesty of a religious building, but you’re allowed to have a lot more fun in it! Yeah, yeah, good! We’re looking forward.
The gig is obviously being put on by independent promoters, wombatwombat – have you been warmed by the faith of promoters in putting these gigs on for your comeback? No, I think it’s been absolutely fine putting these gigs on. We’ve known Annie who runs the wombat club for a long time now, and she’s a hardcore Drugstore fan and I think that at this late point in our career, I just want to do gigs with people who like the band, and who are as delighted to have us as we are to play. It’s a mutual love.
Annie has such a wonderful reputation in Norwich for the acts she brings to us – people trust her tastes… I think she’s just a proper music lover, you know, and it’s good that around the music industry there’s a bunch of people who are doing it because they really love music, so that’s exciting you know, that’s how it should be.
You have a legion of fans out there, and new LP, ‘Anatomy’ is an album that might not have seen the light of day without them – did you expect the response you’ve received? I’m gonna be honest with you Emma and say no, I didn’t. I was kind of petrified because I thought it might come across as a bit ridiculous to disappear for ten years and then come back with an album, but I kinda had to do it and I was pretty, pleasantly surprised that so many of our fans are still alive, which is something in itself! And as passionate about Drugstore as they were ten years ago; I don’t know, we seem to have a very intense relationship with the fanbase, you know, especially with this project. They part financed the album as well; we signed to a small Indie label for half the album, but then the other half came from the fanbase, so it feels really special, it really does.
Pledge is the ultimate thankyou to fans, even though they’re making the financial commitment, they feel like the winners in the end. I thought one of your most ingenious gifts to donators was your offer of calling you on the Agony Aunt hotline! Did you receive many calls?! That was extremely popular – you wouldn’t think so, but we had sex advice over the phone, we had singing songs on the phone… I think for fans, they get so much more than they used to in the past and it’s a completely different dimension to the band, you know, they get to see completely different aspects of who we are as people as well… And it’s fun as well! I think it has to be fun and engaging, so I absolutely loved doing it.
There’s an immediacy that fans can have with an artist now, but I don’t think it’s spoilt any of the magic by interacting with your favourite band, it’s just a bit easier. Yeah, I mean, I have to say something from experience Emma – the people who are kinda cool and obscure and try to keep a profound mystique are usually those people who have absolutely nothing to say! So I don’t know, we’ve got something to say and I kinda like getting involved with the fanbase. I also live a very isolated life, so it does make sense for us to connect with people this way.
You’re very honest with them and you appreciate their intelligence, like with the way you’ve explained the departure of an old band member in your self-made video, ‘Death of an iPhone Cowboy’… If you think that the whole entertainment industry has that philosophy of smoke screens, and that it has to be only good news, that’s not real life and that’s not the reality of any band; it’s ups and downs all the way through. I think it adds to the story by us sharing some of the downs we had, and difficulties we had to overcome. To me, it makes it even more meaningful.
I’ve been really enjoying reading the blog and one of the little treasures in it was that I found myself diverted to watching the 11 Best Goals of the Brazil football team of ’82 on your instruction! That’s sweet! It scares me when people say they read the blog, because when you’re writing, you’re never aware that you’re writing for someone else; you’re just doing it because you enjoy writing and you want to get a story out of your system. Every now and again it hits me, like ‘Fuck! People are reading all this!’ In retrospect, maybe if I had a PR agency it’s something that they’d probably tell me not to be writing those stories, but you know, I think it enriches the whole journey.
I read that you were writing a football song when you were reminiscing about the team of ’82. English football and music together is a car crash, but there’s something about watching the Brazilian team that provides music anyway because it seems like there’s just so much more colour and passion. Is that indicative of a bright Brazil, or have I just got idealistic ideas about the country? I think it’s a little bit of both, you know; there are certain cultural characteristics about Brazilian football that is reflected in the way we play, I think it’s reflected in our personalities, but there is definitely an element of idealism in the same way that every time I meet an Englishman, I expect him to be the perfect gent… and that doesn’t always turn out to be the case, certainly not! But those are out cultural expectations, aren’t they.
It’s a comfort though, isn’t it; people like to be able to put things in neat boxes, and I like to think of Brazil as a colourful, vibant, passionate place. For sure.
The blog is very endearing, and very raw; I was reading ‘The Missing Seven Years and the Journey to the Cave’, and I was trying to reconcile myself – did Britain fail you, do you think? Erm, I just think inevitably, the longer you live in a place, shit’s going to happen! That’s the simplest, most concise way to put it. Things happen, good things happen – some incredibly great things have happened as well. It’s the thing about the glass, I can look at it and feel depressed that it’s not as filled as I wish it was because I always want my glass to be as filled to the brim as possible, but you know, yeah, there were some difficulties but I don’t mind that – that’s just the path of life, you know. Now we just go through whatever life throws at you.
As I was reading the tale, you find yourself taking on the burden of responsibility at what you had to go through, but you’re in a very positive new chapter now obviously. Yeah, yeah, gosh yes. Just writing the album – having the album out there, to me, was a big achievement because I was really coming out of nowhere. I like the music that’s there, it tells the story I want to tell, I have a great band put together, a bunch of good guys. That in itself was an achievement because finding good people is one of the hardest things in life. So yeah, I’m positive, really positive; I’m still doing the things I love doing, and that’s the only way you can live life. You have that percentage where you want to spend as much time as possible doing the things you love and you’re passionate about.
I was interested in the open audition process you had to recruit band members – it must have thrown up a few strange characters and oddities… Oh definitely, the minute you open up to the public you’re gonna get all sorts of weirdos and wonderful people, and crazy people, and people who could not even play the instrument, they just wanted to meet me… I got a couple of lovers out of those auditions –
- All was not lost then! It was not wasted time! But it’s true, it was the hardest thing of the whole process because in the original Drugstore band, I had some great, amazing guys there. So it took a long time to find good, suitable replacements; it’s a little bit like dating, isn’t it – you need to meet an awful lot of losers before you find good people, and that’s just the way of life.
And have the new boys reinvigorated you, do you think? I know you hold a lot of the cards yourself, but are they able to fire you up too? Totally, I totally rely on them. There’s absolutely no way I could have done it on my own; a band really is like a gang of mates, they become a family – it’s so intense, the bond you have with the people you’re making music with. Yeah, I totally rely on them firing me up and keeping me going, it’s an essential part of the process, it really is!
It’s good to hear. And how did you finally meet your mystery man, Chris Belson for the vocal on ‘Aquamarine’? Haha, mystery man; it’s a funny story because some things in the music industry have not changed AT ALL! The minute I mentioned I had a duet in the album, the manager, the label, they all wanted me to sing with someone really famous, of course, they’re just after record sales and I understand where they’re coming from, but to me it was more important to find someone with a beautiful voice. It sounds like one of those TV audition programmes you know, but I was after ‘The Voice’! They were coming up with some ridiculous suggestions – at one point they even wanted me to sing with a digital version of a dead Johnny Cash, you know, and I thought ‘that’s just not gonna happen!’
He should be consulted, really, haha! I thought so! So I kinda went on Soundcloud and MySpace and listened to hundreds, literally hundreds of singers, then this unknown guy pops up who had an amazing voice, I mean, beautiful. I actually love the fact that he’s unknown, that he’s never been on a big stage and it just sounds wonderful – perfect for the song.
And what of Chris Belson now? Have you kickstarted him into doing more? Do you think it’ll help him in some way? I think he’s sitting at home planning his millionaire popstar career as we speak! Waiting for the phone call from me and my agent...! No, it was important that he was just a cool guy, who understood and just wanted to do it, so I think at some of the gigs we’re gonna get Chris to come down and sing the hombre part, you know, the cowboy part with us. We’ve also been asking some of the guys from the support bands to come up on stage as well, so we’ll see who’s gonna be singing in Norwich, we haven’t decided you.
I read that you said, ‘My kind of happiness could never be measured up in digital Indie sales’, so now, what’s your measure of success, or your pillar of happiness that you mark yourself on? There’s two elements to that; one, you’ve got to be really happy with the stuff and what I’ve done, I’m really happy with; the other thing, which a lot of artists don’t acknowledge, or are embarrassed or afraid to acknowledge is that you want other people to like your stuff. When they say, ‘oh, if other people like it, that’s a bonus’, I believe that’s bullshit. You know, look, I’ve put a huge effort into putting this album out and putting dates together and putting a band together, and going out in public because I want other people to like it. That, to me, kind of completes the whole creative process. If you’re telling a story, you’ve got to be telling the story to someone who’s going to be listening to you, so yeah, I do value feedback, I like it that fans like the stuff and that, to me, makes sense. It would be a lot easier not to release it, and stay inside my cave and just say, ‘I love it, I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks’, but the minute you step in the public arena is because you want other people to like it. I’m not afraid to say I want people to like it, and to love us, and to keep us going.
I think you’re in a very safe position to say that, because the album is fantastic, and we’re very excited about the Norwich gig. When it comes to the gig, what, as an audience, can we do for you? Well you can bring me flowers…! Bottles of wine, love letters… we’ll take whatever you guys bring on, you know, it’s gonna be a very intimate, and I think special show. We always keep it open to see what happens.
Emma Garwood
Drugstore bring one of their three dates to the Norwich Arts Centre on April 13th. For tickets, go to www.norwichartscentre.co.uk.
The life of the band Drugstore so far can be seen like a festival tent after three days shielding the British elements. At the starting point, to where we find them now, they are steel rods in the ground of alternative music, in firm foundations of a strong fanbase – they counted Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke among the throngs – and genre defining music. The part In the middle, where the tent relinquishes its tautness, is the period where they disbanded, where the exhilarating frontwoman, Isabel Monteiro found her light dimmed by UK residential bureaucracy, leaving her homeless, broke, isolated… but luckily, with her creativity intact, and now, a story to tell. The hardship, selfishly for us, has given us ‘Anatomy’, their newest album, and a few UK dates…
Is now a good time to talk still, Isabel? Yes, absolutely; I have my coffee, my cigarettes, I’m ready.
You’re a lot more prepared than me. I feel trapped inside my office, because it’s sunny outside – is it sunny with you? It is, I live in Kew Gardens, which is a very green, beautiful area of London and yes, it’s lovely here today, it really is.
Whenever I imagine Kew, I think of it as a luscious paradise within the city, is that a fair representation? It is a very luscious area, but it’s a little bit trapped in the 1950s, you know, there’s a very old fashioned feeling about it, but I really like it because I lived in a very rough area of London, the opposite, for many years, so this is a nice change.
We’re very excited about you coming to Norwich in April, especially as it’s one of only three dates for you coming up… Yeah, that’s right, you know. The Norwich Arts Centre was one of those places that for some reason, we never ended up playing. We toured so much, for over 15 years non-stop, but ended up never playing the Arts Centre and it’s a great venue, really beautiful, so I’m really looking forward to playing in Norwich.
I love the NAC; it still has the majesty of a religious building, but you’re allowed to have a lot more fun in it! Yeah, yeah, good! We’re looking forward.
The gig is obviously being put on by independent promoters, wombatwombat – have you been warmed by the faith of promoters in putting these gigs on for your comeback? No, I think it’s been absolutely fine putting these gigs on. We’ve known Annie who runs the wombat club for a long time now, and she’s a hardcore Drugstore fan and I think that at this late point in our career, I just want to do gigs with people who like the band, and who are as delighted to have us as we are to play. It’s a mutual love.
Annie has such a wonderful reputation in Norwich for the acts she brings to us – people trust her tastes… I think she’s just a proper music lover, you know, and it’s good that around the music industry there’s a bunch of people who are doing it because they really love music, so that’s exciting you know, that’s how it should be.
You have a legion of fans out there, and new LP, ‘Anatomy’ is an album that might not have seen the light of day without them – did you expect the response you’ve received? I’m gonna be honest with you Emma and say no, I didn’t. I was kind of petrified because I thought it might come across as a bit ridiculous to disappear for ten years and then come back with an album, but I kinda had to do it and I was pretty, pleasantly surprised that so many of our fans are still alive, which is something in itself! And as passionate about Drugstore as they were ten years ago; I don’t know, we seem to have a very intense relationship with the fanbase, you know, especially with this project. They part financed the album as well; we signed to a small Indie label for half the album, but then the other half came from the fanbase, so it feels really special, it really does.
Pledge is the ultimate thankyou to fans, even though they’re making the financial commitment, they feel like the winners in the end. I thought one of your most ingenious gifts to donators was your offer of calling you on the Agony Aunt hotline! Did you receive many calls?! That was extremely popular – you wouldn’t think so, but we had sex advice over the phone, we had singing songs on the phone… I think for fans, they get so much more than they used to in the past and it’s a completely different dimension to the band, you know, they get to see completely different aspects of who we are as people as well… And it’s fun as well! I think it has to be fun and engaging, so I absolutely loved doing it.
There’s an immediacy that fans can have with an artist now, but I don’t think it’s spoilt any of the magic by interacting with your favourite band, it’s just a bit easier. Yeah, I mean, I have to say something from experience Emma – the people who are kinda cool and obscure and try to keep a profound mystique are usually those people who have absolutely nothing to say! So I don’t know, we’ve got something to say and I kinda like getting involved with the fanbase. I also live a very isolated life, so it does make sense for us to connect with people this way.
You’re very honest with them and you appreciate their intelligence, like with the way you’ve explained the departure of an old band member in your self-made video, ‘Death of an iPhone Cowboy’… If you think that the whole entertainment industry has that philosophy of smoke screens, and that it has to be only good news, that’s not real life and that’s not the reality of any band; it’s ups and downs all the way through. I think it adds to the story by us sharing some of the downs we had, and difficulties we had to overcome. To me, it makes it even more meaningful.
I’ve been really enjoying reading the blog and one of the little treasures in it was that I found myself diverted to watching the 11 Best Goals of the Brazil football team of ’82 on your instruction! That’s sweet! It scares me when people say they read the blog, because when you’re writing, you’re never aware that you’re writing for someone else; you’re just doing it because you enjoy writing and you want to get a story out of your system. Every now and again it hits me, like ‘Fuck! People are reading all this!’ In retrospect, maybe if I had a PR agency it’s something that they’d probably tell me not to be writing those stories, but you know, I think it enriches the whole journey.
I read that you were writing a football song when you were reminiscing about the team of ’82. English football and music together is a car crash, but there’s something about watching the Brazilian team that provides music anyway because it seems like there’s just so much more colour and passion. Is that indicative of a bright Brazil, or have I just got idealistic ideas about the country? I think it’s a little bit of both, you know; there are certain cultural characteristics about Brazilian football that is reflected in the way we play, I think it’s reflected in our personalities, but there is definitely an element of idealism in the same way that every time I meet an Englishman, I expect him to be the perfect gent… and that doesn’t always turn out to be the case, certainly not! But those are out cultural expectations, aren’t they.
It’s a comfort though, isn’t it; people like to be able to put things in neat boxes, and I like to think of Brazil as a colourful, vibant, passionate place. For sure.
The blog is very endearing, and very raw; I was reading ‘The Missing Seven Years and the Journey to the Cave’, and I was trying to reconcile myself – did Britain fail you, do you think? Erm, I just think inevitably, the longer you live in a place, shit’s going to happen! That’s the simplest, most concise way to put it. Things happen, good things happen – some incredibly great things have happened as well. It’s the thing about the glass, I can look at it and feel depressed that it’s not as filled as I wish it was because I always want my glass to be as filled to the brim as possible, but you know, yeah, there were some difficulties but I don’t mind that – that’s just the path of life, you know. Now we just go through whatever life throws at you.
As I was reading the tale, you find yourself taking on the burden of responsibility at what you had to go through, but you’re in a very positive new chapter now obviously. Yeah, yeah, gosh yes. Just writing the album – having the album out there, to me, was a big achievement because I was really coming out of nowhere. I like the music that’s there, it tells the story I want to tell, I have a great band put together, a bunch of good guys. That in itself was an achievement because finding good people is one of the hardest things in life. So yeah, I’m positive, really positive; I’m still doing the things I love doing, and that’s the only way you can live life. You have that percentage where you want to spend as much time as possible doing the things you love and you’re passionate about.
I was interested in the open audition process you had to recruit band members – it must have thrown up a few strange characters and oddities… Oh definitely, the minute you open up to the public you’re gonna get all sorts of weirdos and wonderful people, and crazy people, and people who could not even play the instrument, they just wanted to meet me… I got a couple of lovers out of those auditions –
- All was not lost then! It was not wasted time! But it’s true, it was the hardest thing of the whole process because in the original Drugstore band, I had some great, amazing guys there. So it took a long time to find good, suitable replacements; it’s a little bit like dating, isn’t it – you need to meet an awful lot of losers before you find good people, and that’s just the way of life.
And have the new boys reinvigorated you, do you think? I know you hold a lot of the cards yourself, but are they able to fire you up too? Totally, I totally rely on them. There’s absolutely no way I could have done it on my own; a band really is like a gang of mates, they become a family – it’s so intense, the bond you have with the people you’re making music with. Yeah, I totally rely on them firing me up and keeping me going, it’s an essential part of the process, it really is!
It’s good to hear. And how did you finally meet your mystery man, Chris Belson for the vocal on ‘Aquamarine’? Haha, mystery man; it’s a funny story because some things in the music industry have not changed AT ALL! The minute I mentioned I had a duet in the album, the manager, the label, they all wanted me to sing with someone really famous, of course, they’re just after record sales and I understand where they’re coming from, but to me it was more important to find someone with a beautiful voice. It sounds like one of those TV audition programmes you know, but I was after ‘The Voice’! They were coming up with some ridiculous suggestions – at one point they even wanted me to sing with a digital version of a dead Johnny Cash, you know, and I thought ‘that’s just not gonna happen!’
He should be consulted, really, haha! I thought so! So I kinda went on Soundcloud and MySpace and listened to hundreds, literally hundreds of singers, then this unknown guy pops up who had an amazing voice, I mean, beautiful. I actually love the fact that he’s unknown, that he’s never been on a big stage and it just sounds wonderful – perfect for the song.
And what of Chris Belson now? Have you kickstarted him into doing more? Do you think it’ll help him in some way? I think he’s sitting at home planning his millionaire popstar career as we speak! Waiting for the phone call from me and my agent...! No, it was important that he was just a cool guy, who understood and just wanted to do it, so I think at some of the gigs we’re gonna get Chris to come down and sing the hombre part, you know, the cowboy part with us. We’ve also been asking some of the guys from the support bands to come up on stage as well, so we’ll see who’s gonna be singing in Norwich, we haven’t decided you.
I read that you said, ‘My kind of happiness could never be measured up in digital Indie sales’, so now, what’s your measure of success, or your pillar of happiness that you mark yourself on? There’s two elements to that; one, you’ve got to be really happy with the stuff and what I’ve done, I’m really happy with; the other thing, which a lot of artists don’t acknowledge, or are embarrassed or afraid to acknowledge is that you want other people to like your stuff. When they say, ‘oh, if other people like it, that’s a bonus’, I believe that’s bullshit. You know, look, I’ve put a huge effort into putting this album out and putting dates together and putting a band together, and going out in public because I want other people to like it. That, to me, kind of completes the whole creative process. If you’re telling a story, you’ve got to be telling the story to someone who’s going to be listening to you, so yeah, I do value feedback, I like it that fans like the stuff and that, to me, makes sense. It would be a lot easier not to release it, and stay inside my cave and just say, ‘I love it, I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks’, but the minute you step in the public arena is because you want other people to like it. I’m not afraid to say I want people to like it, and to love us, and to keep us going.
I think you’re in a very safe position to say that, because the album is fantastic, and we’re very excited about the Norwich gig. When it comes to the gig, what, as an audience, can we do for you? Well you can bring me flowers…! Bottles of wine, love letters… we’ll take whatever you guys bring on, you know, it’s gonna be a very intimate, and I think special show. We always keep it open to see what happens.
Emma Garwood
Drugstore bring one of their three dates to the Norwich Arts Centre on April 13th. For tickets, go to www.norwichartscentre.co.uk.
