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Artist of the Moment: Louise (Influences)
Written by Louise
Jimmy’s blog was so long, it seemed inappropriate to tag this on at the end, so I just thought I’d link to it. Here’s my background and influences and the like. If you’re interested…:
Gosh (she gushes) well, where do I start? Gosh! I’m so sorry, Mike, Rob, Ed…oh god, who’s the other one?! Sophie!
Ahem. Not really the right format. Here we go:
I live in London. Have always lived in London, except when I lived at school and then, some years later, at University, in Bristol. It was at Clifton that I began to write music really. My family are quite musical anyway so it had always been around – I learnt the piano from a young age with Mrs Loveday, who taught me to play with 2 pence pieces resting on the tops of my hands (you have to cup your fingers somewhat and move those, not your whole hands…well, when you start anyway).
At Clifton I learnt the clarinet and percussion and had singing lessons. I also learnt the sax for a while too, joining the Swing Band in the Upper School just so I could ogle Ben Protheroe (please don’t tell him).
I received a music exhibition when I attended the Upper School. Quite proud of that. Practised the clarinet loads to win that bloody prize. This meant that while everyone else did CCF training, I spent my time hanging around the music department ‘practising’. In actual fact, most of my best friends were also music scholars so we just messed around! Big up to Oli and Andrew right here! Wrote all my GCSE pieces in this time, on a wonderful music programme called Sibelius, which does it all for you… The piece de resistance was a harp solo piece that, according to the harp scholar, Rebecca, was actually impossible to play…
Anyway, wrote my first song on the piano while on holiday in Cornwall – a lovely grand piano in proper Du Maurier country. Terrible song – opening line: How long must I wait for you? Boring.
Aled, my cool friend, then came to stay in Itchenor and taught me 4 chords on the guitar – still don’t know many more – we listened to Tracey Chapman and I remember writing a clever little song referencing her Fast Car. *cringe*
The rest is history really. I wrote, and continue to write, lots of fragments of things, never really getting anywhere, with major output coming in the shape of one whole song, about once a year. My most productive time was my first year of Uni when I was really quite lonely and depressed! Here are some what I wrote, innit:
Off the Track (Acoustic. 2005) by AbubillaMusic
and then this one you might recognise:
Let Love Shine (Acoustic. 2005) by AbubillaMusic
Re-recorded with the SMCC as this:
Let Love Shine (The SMCC Version) by AbubillaMusic
My main influence at this time was actually KT Tunstall when she played with Red Light Stylus:
And:
At uni, my boyfriend at the time introduced me to Patty Griffin – I will always be grateful for that:
My favourite song of all time:
I played a couple of gigs in Bristol, which was very fun, and now I write with Abubilla! I love writing in a group. I have no problems writing melody lines – I just can’t come up with the chords… Although I did write this one recently, on all my ownsome:
I do go on, don’t I?! I haven’t picked up my guitar for ages but, if I did, I might be influenced by this:
Or maybe this: