Barricade: Interviews with the Young Women Who Inspired Hangnail
Hannah Hobson, writer of Hangnail interviews the friends who inspired her play about female friendship and creativity in 21st Century Britain. This includes dealing with internet trolls, rape culture and the fact that the girl you like may well be completely heterosexual.
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It’s perhaps strange to be interviewing Katie in my flat as a grown-up when we must have mocked up similar conversations as children, with my video camera poised between us on the windowsill of her living room. She was one of the first people to be given scripts by me to perform and be subjected to my adolescent direction. This, I will admit, mostly consisted of patiently dealing with my controlling strops that no-one was taking my ideas for the Taylor Swift music video seriously. It is true that we have both come a long way since then.
The Katie who sits on my sofa now comes to mine fresh off a set of weekend gigs. She has been touring her first full length album Weatherbeaten and I regularly tell friends who have never met her that she is the coolest person I know. At twenty-two she has a distinctive sound and is truly forming the audience which she has been forging for the last five years.
I am immensely proud to say I was kicked in the head by her at a birthday party when we were five. (My fault, I was stood in the path of the swing, she tried to warn me.)
Hannah: Okay, first question and this is a question I’m asking everyone, how did we meet?
Katie: Probably on the seesaw at primary school.
H: Did our primary school have a seesaw?
K: No, I made that up, that’s the first thing I’ve made up erm. I don’t know, probably cacking ourselves in the queue to get into primary school with our Mums.
H: Yeah that sounds about right.
K: Did you get the bus? On the first day?
H: No, I got dropped off for the first few weeks.
K: Ah, so did I. And picked up at lunch time but I didn’t want to get picked up at lunch time, I was having too much fun.
H: I probably did want to get picked up at lunch time, I’m not going to lie. I was not a social creature at primary school. But I remember you on the bus. You must have started getting the bus before I did because I remember getting on the bus for the first time and you being like, “hi!”
K: That’s so cute, we were cute.
H: Okay, more serious question-
K: My heart rate’s gone up.
H: Why music, like what led you to music?
K: Erm, well, my parents have always taken me to festivals, as a child. They’re not particularly musical themselves but they love music. Dad always had a guitar in the house and I used to walk past it and pluck the bottom E string. I used to think, oh that sounds like Daytripper, you know – here she hums the riff – and then I thought, why not learn that riff? Then I learnt a few more riffs, all the hits-
H: Smoke on the water?
K: Yeah you got it. I still don’t think I play that quite right but anyway, must improve, yeah, I played my Dad’s guitar. I went to college and I didn’t really have a plan what I wanted to do. I knew I didn’t want to go to uni right then. So I thought, you know my parents are really supportive and they said, we’ll support you as much as if you went to uni but we’ll help you with music instead. They’re still really supportive now. It’s been a really good foundation and I’m really glad I had that sort of support. It’s opened up a lot of doors that wouldn’t have been opened otherwise.
H: I remember, I’d played the clarinet for a really long time and I remember you picking up the flute for the first time and just being able to play it. Like, we must have been about eleven-
K: Yeah it must have been at primary school. Maybe earlier [than eleven] because I did a few lessons while I was still at primary school. I remember it was a kind of afterschool gathering and a woman came in and had all these brass and woodwind instruments laid out on a table at school. And I went in and I was like, “Mum I am going to play the cornet” and she was like, “okay, yeah cool.” I just had my heart set on this cornet and then one of the teachers said, “Katie, why don’t you try this flute” and I thought, I don’t wanna play the flute it sounds rubbish. But I could get a note out of it because basically my dad had shown me how to, you know, blow on top of a beer bottle. Then everyone persuaded me to play the flute but I wanted to play the cornet really.
H: There’s still time, you could still play the cornet.
K: Hey I’ve got your clarinet as well, you know? It is on my bedroom floor right now.
H: Yeah, tells you something about how little I played that clarinet. I remember you getting far ahead of me but it was mostly because I didn’t practice, at all.
K: I didn’t enjoy the lesson structure really. When I started to learn the guitar, I had three lessons with my Dad. We both went to see this teacher and it felt a bit too much like the flute lessons so I decided to kind of take my own path with the guitar because what made me fall out of love with the flute was the lesson structure. Like I’m playing the flute a lot more now than I did-
H: Do you think that you enjoy it more because you’re not doing it for anyone else but you?
K: Yeah definitely, also you listen to a lot more music as you get older and I’ve got a lot more into that acoustic guitar sort of pastoral vibe anyway. When I pick it up, I can hear what I wanted to hear when I was younger. I can make it sound the way I want it to.
H: How do you think gender interacts with the industry that you’re in?
K: Certainly, gender and age are a big factor for me… An easy example would be, I run an acoustic night in Beverley and I can probably count on one hand the amount of women turn up. Even though it’s a woman running it, you know? I felt like, this would encourage more women and I still want it to but I think the numbers aren’t there for that kind of music. It’s definitely more men. It’s an interesting one though because, I say the numbers aren’t there but at the weekend I played a festival that was solely female performers which was great and it just shows that the women are out there, obviously and it’s just kind of… I don’t know, I don’t know what the answer is. I think it’s maybe the genre, like it’s erm because when you look at pop music it’s kind of equal opportunities for being a pop artist but in folk music it’s different and I don’t know why that is.
H: Do you think it’s an association with tradition, to a degree?
K: Possibly yeah, I mean folk music was born out of manual labour or industries and the songs were sung in pubs and all of these things don’t include women. I think folk music is very specific in the sense that people are really relieved when they see a young person doing it and I’m one of those people, even though I’m a young person. I’m really happy to see it because it’s not common. And with that comes the gender gap as well.
H: You see another young woman doing it, it must be like the Holy Grail.
K: Yeah absolutely. It’s just really nice to share the bill with a woman as well. There’s a stereotype that women don’t really play instruments, they just sing. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got to work a lot more than I would if I was a guy.
H: You feel like you have to prove that your good enough to stand alongside a load of… men.
K: Yeah and I can honestly say that, more than once, I’ve had the comment of, “Wow, you play the guitar like a man.” Which is incredible on so many levels.
H: There’s so much to unpack there.
K: There is. It just leaves me speechless because I really don’t know where to begin with the countless female musicians from the twentieth century that do incredible things. Like Carole Kaye who was incredibly influential, she did so many sessions with guys with names that would make people go, oh wow. You know? But there’s a woman behind a lot of the production and some incredible bass riffs that I presume a lot of people wouldn’t think a woman came up with. Also, you know, Carole King, she did Tapestry in 1971, that was a massive move for women in the industry. Songwriters, you know, it opened up a whole new world for women and it validated their careers.
H: Entirely, the seventies just generally were such an interesting time for women who were writing their own stuff, performing their own stuff, managing their own production… I’ve got really into Kate Bush lately.
K: She’s another hugely influential woman on the scene who laid the groundwork for… Saying this is how it is.
H: This is probably a connected question but who has inspired you to do what you do? Doesn’t have to be women.
K: I guess, I mean I’m always banging on about John Martyn but he’s a huge influence guitar wise. When I started out, I wasn’t conscious of the whole male/female atmosphere so I just wanted to be John Martyn. I wanted to sound like John Martyn and have, the voice even, I wanted to sound androgynous. I just liked that kind of blurred lines making sounds. So that was a huge influence and then I got hugely into Joni Mitchell. And she was another person that didn’t take any shit from anybody. She just told it as it was, a total pioneer for women in music or in any walk of life. On that sort of vein, Patti Smith was huge for me both in terms of lifestyle and her whole ethos. Not having to sit with one knee over the other and I was really attracted to that attitude. As a child, I remember being sat at the computer and being like, “Dad, tell me someone who sings good songs” and that’s how I found out about Patti Smith. And I remember putting on her hit, erm Because the Night and the cover’s like, she’s got her hand behind her head and got hairy arm pits and I’m like wow that’s so cool! And watching her, being who she wants to be without thinking I’m a woman I’ve got to act like that.
H: There are two Patti Smith books on my bookshelf and I think you recommended both of them to me.
H: Okay, asking this to everyone, who is your favourite female musician or creative?
K: I wanna say a list of names erm… I can’t stop thinking Joni Mitchell when you ask me that. Just because she went through so many guises and that’s so inspirational. You could listen to, I mean all of her albums, but you could listen to Blue a million times and still find something new. To say it’s just her and a dulcimer and a guitar is really cool. And again, an attitude. Also, you know she made her own album covers and bossed the musicians around.
H: Lyrically so interesting as well. No-one says things the way she says them.
K: I’m with you. I can’t listen to her and not want to write something. If I ever have a free night, I get an itch to listen to Joni Mitchell and write a song. I’m like, man, how can you be so prolific and so good! So cool, she’s such a cool woman.
H: To be fair she’s had a long career as well.
K: And a lot of trauma.
H: You gotta have the trauma to back up your songwriting.
H: Okay, last question, what’s next and what would you like to plug?
K: I’m doing lots of gigs, I’ve just released an album.
H: It’s a very good album, I very much like it.
K: Thanks, I’ll give you your ten pound later. Yeah I’m touring now until July and then I’m going away to Europe and then coming back and touring some more with Weatherbeaten.
For tour dates and to buy Katie’s album go to https://www.katiespencer.net/, you can also follow her on Facebook (@katiespencermusic), Twitter (@KRSpencerMusic), Instagram (@katiespencermusic), Youtube and Spotify.