Interview: Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, musicians

Published on Monday 30 May 2011 20:05

Using vintage gear and recording on vinyl, three siblings plus their mum and dad are certainly making the music scene sit up and take notice

• Daisy Durham, Lewis Durham and Kitty Durham of Kitty, Daisy & Lewis. Picture: Larry Busacca/Getty Images

WHEN Kitty, Daisy & Lewis titled their current single I'm Going Back, they were calling it as it is. When it comes to music and fashion, the precociously talented multi-instrumentalist Durham siblings from Kentish Town are all about throwback style.

This idiosyncratic family band, comprising – as it says on the tin – Kitty (vocals, drums, guitar, ukulele, banjo, harmonica, trombone), Daisy (vocals, drums, accordion, keyboards, xylophone) and Lewis (vocals, guitar, piano, banjo, drums), plus dad Graeme on rhythm guitar and mum Ingrid on double bass, rock a raw, infectious and authentic distillation of rhythm'n'blues, jazz, ska, bluegrass, country, swing and almost any other pre-1960s genre you might care to mention – except rockabilly. Don't call them rockabilly; they get it all the time and they're fed up with it.

In their quest for period fidelity, all their music is lovingly played and recorded on vintage gear and released on vinyl – a selection of vinyl, no less. As well as the more conventional CD and digital download formats, their new album Smoking In Heaven can be purchased as a double 12-inch vinyl gatefold long-player and in a limited edition of eight ten-inch 78s.

Jools Holland and Amy Winehouse (both fans of the trio) have made it their business to enshrine such bygone musical traditions in their own work but even they don't go as far as releasing their albums on 78rpm vinyl. But then they probably don't have their own custom-built studio in the family home, such as the one painstakingly kitted out by middle child Lewis – he of the matinee idol looks and enormous collection of old 78s – with old-school analogue equipment, including reel-to-reel tape decks and vinyl cutting lathe. Lewis Durham is 20 years old and completely consumed.

At 18, Kitty is the youngest of the siblings but, like her brother and sister, has ten years of performing experience under her belt already. She recalls how her dad used to play guitar and sing them to sleep when they were tots. Arguably, music was their destiny – mum was the drummer for influential femme punk four-piece The Raincoats. Though that is not an era the kids reference in their own music, it wasn't long before they took up music for themselves, outstripping their parents in musical knowledge and dexterity.

Kitty denies that there was any element of sibling competition in their musical development: "No, not at all. It just happened naturally and it was fun. That's the only reason why we did it, why we're still doing it, cos it's just good fun to play. It was our way of entertaining ourselves.

Since I can remember there's always been instruments lying around the house – pianos, tambourines and God knows – just so much random stuff that you would be curious to pick it up. A lot of parents would say, 'no, don't do that, you'll break it,' but they let us do what we wanted. I remember my dad teaching me a couple of chords but basically we all just picked it up ourselves."

Kitty's first instrument was the drums. When she asked her dad for a drumkit, he simply brought his old set down from the attic and let his six-year-old bash away. "It's battered to pieces now but we still use it on stage."

Although all three Durham kids take their turn behind the drums, Kitty is the group's rhythm queen. When it came to writing their own songs for the first time for Smoking In Heaven (their 2008 self-titled debut album was primarily a covers collection), the instrument-swapping trio made the most of their complementary skills.

"It was bloody hard at first – we almost gave up," says Kitty. "But we learn stuff from each other. For me it's all about rhythm, I put that into everything I play, even the harmonica and the guitar. I find it quite difficult to come up with lyrics, but Daisy's different. She doesn't really play guitar so she finds it easier to come up with lyrics and melodies first and then she'll come to me and say, 'What are the chords that will go with this?'"

There was a vicious rumour going round that Daisy liked some "modern bands," but you won't catch Kitty sneaking off to her room to listen to JLS or some other 21st-century pop contraband. "There's nothing in the charts that I can relate to. It's all pretty much crap at the moment, which is a shame. But I'm open to a lot of things, I'm not just stuck in one zone."

What, I wonder, would have happened if one of the family had been into sport instead of music? "I doubt that would happen any time soon," says Kitty, witheringly.

Arguments, however, she will readily admit to. These are frequent, heated and blow over quickly. "We always swear at each other and say, 'I'm leaving the band,' but we're family at the end of the day and we're not going to split up over something silly. I couldn't really imagine doing it with anybody else because the way we play together it just fits.

"I think my family's a bit weird probably. We're all really close to each other, we go out to the pub together every night. We're more like mates."

For the moment, the family that plays together lives together, but Daisy will be getting married this summer and it seems her younger brother and sister are keen to fly the coop themselves. As their reputation as a rocking good live unit spreads, so do the touring demands which take them further from home. They have already supported Coldplay on the American leg of their Viva La Vida tour, playing stadiums and arenas which must have felt a long way from their local folk club roots.

Other claims to fame include a cameo appearance as buskers in the Dustin Hoffman/Emma Thompson film Last Chance Harvey. But at the mention of a Blue Peter appearance some time in their past, the poised, mature, road-hardened, stylish and very cool Kitty suddenly comes over all Vicky Pollard.

"Oh God, yeah… basically, I was really annoyed at the time because I was 13 or something and they (the Blue Peter producers] found that interesting or some shit, so they came into my school and filmed me in my lessons. They basically did this whole day of filming with me just cos I was young. They even recorded a gig, the soundcheck and everything and then we went into their studio and we almost walked off because they had these stupid dancers come in halfway through the song and we had an argument with them and then we finally did it and got out of there and when they did broadcast it they cut out everything apart from the performance and replaced it with a tortoise!"

On the plus side, at least she got a coveted Blue Peter badge out of it.

• Smoking In Heaven is out now on Sunday Best Recordings. Kitty, Daisy & Lewis play King Tut's, Glasgow, on 14 June