Ahead of their headline show at Headrow House, Amy Brown and Olivia Woollam caught up with Evelyn Halls and Saul Godman, half of Clean Cut Kid.
What’s it like to be back in Leeds?
Saul: We properly love Leeds, we always have a good gig here!
What’s it like to be supporting and now on your headline tour?
Saul: Its exciting.
Evelyn: Its well good, even though you’d think the pressure would be more, it’s slightly less because when you’re a support band you’re wondering if anyone’s going to come and see you because obviously people buy tickets to see the headline. Especially as tonight is sold out, we don’t have to worry about that, it’s pressure free.
We interviewed Louis berry recently and he got signed on his second gig; this was the same for you, how is it doing it backward by building a fan base after being signed?
Saul: It must be a Scouse thing!
Evelyn: He’s really good isn’t he. Yeah its weird, because you’re under the microscope from the word go, the pressure’s a lot more, and there are a lot more expectations every turn you take. Every step you go up there’s more because you’re in the public eye and you’re signed. The expectations are so much higher but at the same time you’re trying to build a fan base that you haven’t had chance to build yet. We’re just made up whenever someone comes to a gig.
It feels as a lot of good music is coming out of Liverpool, how was it emerging from the Liverpool music scene?
Saul: We had a gig with Louis Berry, Liverpool puts stuff on for music and they set up a big stage on BBC music day. The BBC have helped us loads, which is so cool.
Evelyn: It makes us think that the music scene is properly getting noticed and it feels like that like whenever we’ve had interviews on radio one they’ve always asked us, “oh the Liverpool music scene is thriving” and it’s so nice to know that it’s getting noticed. It’s dead exciting to be a part of it.
Saul: There’s such a history from there that everyone who grows up wants to be a part of it and then you get people who have just been involved with it and that’s what’s making them good.
We heard you did 32 festivals! We saw you at Truck festival, did you have a favourite out of all them?
Evelyn: Honest to God it just flew by, the summer was ridiculous, like sometimes we would be recording Monday to Thursday, and then get up and do a festival in Bristol on the Friday, then a festival in Newcastle, for example, on the Saturday and then London on the Sunday and then go back to Liverpool for recording, it was mental.
Saul: Truck festival was actually one of our favourites, and Latitude.
Evelyn: Latitude was our first festival as Clean Cut Kid last year, we played a small stage early on in the day and this year we headlined the Lake stage and going back we felt a lot had happened in a year. It was a really special moment standing on stage with the sun going down!
You’re supporting the Courteeners soon, how do you feel about doing massive arena shows?
Evelyn: Oh my gosh we talk about it on a daily basis, like how you feeling today about it? Nope, not any better. It’s cool – once you get past like 700 people in a room you can’t even see anymore it just blends into one.
Do you prefer to do the bigger gigs or the smaller ones?
Evelyn: There is something about the bigger ones that is such a buzz. Glastonbury, for example: there were 4000 people all singing and dancing and you’re just stood there like what is my job, this is amazing. But the smaller ones you can really get on a level with one person; you can look in their eyes and see them singing.
Is an album on the cards soon?
Evelyn: It is, it’s still cooking, nearly ready though. Needs a bit of seasoning.
How do you go about the writing process, is it all of you?
Evelyn: It’s Mike, he has written everything pretty much, there is only one song that were playing tonight that we wrote together.
Saul: He’s the brains behind it, we feel very honoured we get to play his songs.
What do you hope to come out of the album?
Evelyn: We just want to get all sides of Clean Cut Kid across, because when you do radio singles you only get one side.
Saul: There are so many different feelings as we know 100 of his songs, so knowing that there is only gonna be 10/12 [is weird].
How do you pick the songs?
Evelyn: Different people want different songs. It’s mad, you normally just get a feeling about one and everyone kinda agrees and gradually it’s like “oh that’s going to be on the album”. But I think we’ve nearly got there with the track list.