LADY BIRD

INTERVIEW LADY BIRD

LADY BIRD ARE A BAND THAT MAKE YOU feel like telling them everything about yourself. Based on no evidence whatsoever; they feel like the cool, funny, naughty boys from school that I always wanted to be friends with but never could be because it was you know…school. And they could smell a girl with no friends that sat in the art room at lunch from a mile off. You join this girl with no school friends waiting in an excruciatingly long queue inside the Rotunda cafe in Preston Park, fresh off the train from London, in desperate need of caffeine.

WORDS/PHOTOS: WILLOW SHIELDS

Half excited but mostly scared of coming face to face with the Tunbridge Wells triplet ‘Lady Bird’ whom I was utterly obsessed with not long enough ago to not panic. After spilling my tea over myself like the effortlessly cool and mysterious girl I am, I walked into the fresh air and sunshine of the outside and also into a purple tracksuit clad, buggy pushing frontman of the band, who would later be introduced to me as ‘Don Bird of Lady Bird’. Who, when I confessed to being a semi-longtime fan, said something to the effect of ‘it’s always nice to do this sort of stuff with someone who enjoys the music.’ In addition to finding frontman and toddler, there was drummer Joe Walker. A freckled, fiery haired, energy ball of a man. Who’s first question to me was ‘So, Willow, what’s your story?’ With no idea how to respond to such an honest question, I breathed a sigh of relief when guitarist Alex Deadman walked out of the nearest door to join us on the balcony, accompanied by his mum Jane and their dog Harvey. I felt completely accepted and welcomed into their group as soon as I sat down, which was not what I was expecting whatsoever. We went into the cafe and as I sat down with what felt like lifelong friends, I attempted to curb my anxiety.

With jacket potato and mango eaten, setlists and rehearsal schedule debated and ‘Don Bird of Lady Bird’s’ stepdad Martin arrived (a discussion premartin had arisen as to which one he was - see Lady Bird’s Boot Fillers and leave your guesses in the guess box below!). And then they decided it was about time I started asking them some questions. Mentally I was prepared. I wish the rest of my body and the part of my brain that makes words got the memo, they did not. I began with asking them how they were, which obviously was the wrong thing to ask since they all erupted in fits of laughter. After the giggling had subsided, Don prefaced their answers with “Let’s be honest, shall we?” and carried on with “Feel alright now, didn’t feel very good this morning, felt alright yesterday.” Then working anticlockwise round the table, Alex says “Things are getting better, I’m enjoying life again at the moment but that requires me being sober and clean so I’m doing that at the moment. I’m about three weeks in from when I last did anything so I’m feeling more myself, just gotta

keep it up.” then Joe “Good man! I reckon I’m cruising at a fairly consistent nine out of ten. Pushing nine point five at least a couple of days a week.” After his answer the table then begins to debate how it’s humanly possible to be a solid nine out of ten for most of the week, with them concluding it’s probably something to do with Joe’s commitment to his Buddhist faith.

Being slightly out of practice with interviews I defaulted to a question I’ve got used to asking recently, ‘Favourite thing to have for breakfast?’ Joe, “crunchy peanut butter with a big black coffee, every day.” Alex, “My regular is Weetabix but I like a sausage sandwich, no sauce, just butter. Veggie sausage, obviously.” Joe again, “in my bacon days, I used to like brown sauce and sweet chilli sauce with a thick butter base.” Martin makes his

“THINGS ARE GETTING BETTER. I’M ENJOYING LIFE AGAIN AT THE MOMENT BUT THAT REQUIRES ME TO BE SOBER AND CLEAN.”

presence known on the tape, something about brown sauce, at which point Don addresses this by saying “number 2 for the record.” and back to the question “Years ago it would’ve been a steak sandwich, out of Martin’s collection of steaks, probably quite expensive at the time but I saw them as a commodity. Just to pull in some shared experiences. Nowadays, practicing a plant-based diet; a bit of toast.” Listening back to them talk, I realise how giggly the whole band are, and giggly I was. I didn’t realise how much they made me laugh at the time, and I think that’s something that should go on Lady Bird’s permanent record, they make you laugh. Back to the cafe now, Don says “If I have my shit together I’ll have overnight oats”.

I then ask a new one I’ve been trying out ‘Have you ever been on a plane?’ With a “yup” and a “yes” from Joe and Alex, Don says “Good question. Yeah, last time I was on a plane it was Peru. I was actually performing [there], which makes it sound like I do this sort of long distance performance thing all the time but I don’t.” That’s when Alex chimes in with a smirk “once every ten years.” Don replies instantly “Well, at least every 4, as to align with the recommended dose of carbon footprint. But gigs don’t really come in that much. What about you Joe, what was the last plane you got?” Joe thinks and then, “Probably when we went to Switzerland.” Alex says “I don’t know the last

time I was on a plane, probably back in 2019 sometime, couldn’t tell you where I went. I haven’t been on holiday in quite a long time to be honest, it’s starting to show.”

‘Favourite fruit?’ Joe, “Orange’’ Alex, “Apple or banana, I don’t branch out much.” Don chuckles “you don’t branch out. Good joke there.” Then doesn’t elaborate. Martin looks at Don and says “yours is mango, because I buy and eat mango and every time I buy a mango, his hands are all over it.” Don shakes his head and then answers “it seems to taste better than a fruit should. The best experience I had eating fruit was actually just outside Kingston (Jamaica) and I was sat on the edge of the swift river, somewhere near St Annes. And my friend brought me over a tropical fruit, and I’ve tried tropical fruit over here, different experience. This fruit tasted like the tropical juice that you get in those milt bottles but proper, it was ridiculous.” All three of the Lady Birds warned me before we started that they love to talk and will keep talking if I don’t interrupt, but the issue was that I didn’t want to stop them talking. Every snippet of information, every story is an unseen insight into their lives that I simply must hear and absorb. I then brought myself back to the reason I was there, their album. Their songwriting and lyrics are incredibly personal, and experience based. I asked them where they got it from, and I realise now that when talking to Lady Bird in particular you have to be very particular with what words you use, because Dons immediate answer was “my head.” then he elaborates after leaving me to panic for at least a couple of seconds “One of them, at least, from Martin. On my right. the others come from not just me. On one of the tracks on the new album, ‘Karma’. Joe was like ‘I wanna write this song, here are some lyrics I’ve got’. And I said I’ll take the lyrics and tweak the syllable-ige so we did that and ‘We’, Alex can talk about. But usually it comes from our minds.” Then taking the cue, Alex says “Just stuff that’s happened really, real life experiences, we’re not really… we’re not very imaginative, we’re not writing mystical stories about dragons and stuff, you know. It’s really an avenue in which we can release some of our emotions in certain situations. I’m not really a lyric-y kind of person, I don’t really consider

myself a songwriter in that sense.” Then Don suddenly interrupts “I’m going to have to stop you in your tracks there, because one of the best lyrics on this record is by Alex. The last verse of ‘we’, there’s a beautiful bit of the English language. ‘I couldn’t look for trying to see…’” Then Martin supplies us with a piece of his wisdom, “It’s deep. Can’t see the wood from the tree, you’re so busy trying to look for something that you’re missing what’s right in front of you.”

We then talked about inspiration for the album, a question I tend to avoid due to normally being met with a cookie cutter answer, but Lady Bird had wholeheartedly promised me that they wouldn’t say anything boring. Don begins “well we didn’t give up on writing it, that was the first inspiration.” Alex then chimes in “it was a long time coming, it needed to be done in some sense. We’d been aiming for it for a long time and there were various things that meant it was delayed so we pushed it back and I don’t think we were in the right space to be releasing an album any time before we are.” Don then expands almost solemnly “lockdown was a small setback compared to some of the things that came up during the course of it.” then Joe chirps up “In the end it was Don’s baby that was due that actually made us get into the studio and record it all.” Don starts up again “believe it or not it actually helped! And I have to shout out my better half, Tilly, because she supported that. We were in the midst of lockdown one, which was the one that we actually all believed in. We were taking it seriously you know, it was a war time fear situation. However, during that time we realised that we needed to do it now or never. Who knows what would’ve happened, we didn’t know, no one knew. She said you can go, and I got back the day her waters broke, and I left two days early!” The album, ‘We’ named after another album track, written by guitarist Alex Deadman (more on that later). Was written with the help of their friend Lee “a producer from Tunbridge Wells who we spent a lot of time with in the pre-production stage, I suppose. Writing, building, collecting… arguing.” Joe fondly recalls, Alex then says “He taught us how to be critical of our own music and when to stop when you think you have something that’s really viable. And when to keep pushing something, which was essential. We ended up writing an extra 6 or 7 songs in the end that went on the album.” The album itself, as we will hear it, was recorded with Jim Riley in Rochester, who also produced the band’s debut EP ‘Social Potions’ in 2018 and mixed by Alex Newport remotely from LA. Jim Riley, Don goes onto tell me why they picked Jim; “I recorded my first record with Jim in 2009,” at the mention of that, Martin asks about ‘wrongun’ to which Don explains to me “we talk about Ross Wrongun, who we stayed with recording

that record. He was spending thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds back in the naughties on recording Ross and The Wronguns songs, which is my former band that I used to play drums in, and it always sounded shit.” “We did social potions and the album that’s just coming out now [with Jim] and we did [Social Potions] all in one day, four tracks, mixed and mastered and I played it to Ross in the van on the way to a gig; ‘what the fuck? For 150 quid that’s bananas’ so we went with Jim for the album. It was all fabulous.”

From what I’ve seen, heard and in fact been a part of, I gather that Lady Bird have a firm ideology with community at the centre of it all. Be that their personal community, the community they’ve built with their music or the wider-world community. Don begins almost instinctively, “It is essential isn’t it?” and after some jokey chatter, Joe continues; “not just building a community ourselves and having gratitude for people who want to be a part of that but finding it all around in our lives, who our family are, who our friends are. my best mates I’ve known since I was very little and hopefully will know them until I’m very old, or at least until I die. Which would be nice if I was very old.” After agreeing as a group, Don continues “we have our friends we’ve known for a long time that’s community isn’t it? The centre of our community is the forum in Tunbridge Wells, it’s where we started and continued to work together, that’s community! Having a fan base is a community. And we’re a part of this global community now which seems to have less and less face to face contact. And that’s a life threatening problem, or certainly a community threatening problem.” and then Joe argues “I think even with that it’s to accept that we’re having less face to face contact even that’s a narrative you’re buying into. You’re still seeing just as many people as you normally would, you’re just not seeing the people you’d like to see or the people you were seeing before. That’s about where you notice a sense of community where you feel your sense of connection and how you relate to your immediate environment… community’s a core to wellbeing.”