Interview: Beth Jeans Houghton for Luna Magazine (Destiny, prophecies and dirty washing)

In the midst of touring all throughout Europe, Beth Jeans Houghton and the Hooves of Destiny had granted themselves a two week break to return home to catch up on some washing.

With coffee and cigarette in hand, Houghton chatted to LUNA from from her cosy bed in Newcastle, England about the undisclosed perils of life on tour.

“We played a show somewhere in France where we had this amazing woman who had loads of washing machines and dryers and she was doing all of the washing for all of the band as we were playing.  It’s really funny when you come back home and suddenly you really appreciate everything you have – like they didn’t have toilet seats in a lot of the European places, stuff like that. And then by the end of the two weeks at home you’re back to your normal self again.”

At the youthful age of 22, most people are only part-way to figuring out where their career is taking them.

Houghton, however, has been walking her chosen path for her entire adult life.

“I don’t feel young a lot of the time. I’ve been doing this for six years which is like a quarter of my life.  I didn’t go to college or university so I never hung out with all the people, so I never really felt my age in that sense. And six years, to me, seems a long time to be doing something before the project goes out,” she explained.

“It’s really exciting and it’s good and I certainly appreciate that I’m doing a lot for my age but when it’s happening to you it’s hard to have any perspective on it if you’ve never done anything else. And I don’t really know anyone else my age to know what they’re doing with their lives.”

Whatever she’s doing, she’s doing it right.

As her career has spanned some of the most formative years of her life, Houghton has developed a beautifully eclectic-yet-coherent repertoire of material described as “a blend of psychedelia, glam rock and chain gang folk”.

“I guess, my sound changes – over a period of months, it can completely change.  Also I feel like some of the songs are quite diverse in themselves – just like other people’s tastes that lie in completely opposite genres of music and different types of art and all of that stuff. So I think it’s a natural thing to happen,” she said.

“But then again, the songs that I’m now working on for the next record are wildly different that are on Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose and then again all the songs that were on Hot Toast. So I think that’s just a natural thing.”

Hot Toast was the band’s debut EP release, over two years ago, and rumour has it the record was titled in reference to Houghton’s intolerance of wheat products.

“At the time that was just a huge joke. I actually only just called it that because I like the two words and I actually really like hot toast.  But in the time since then I have become gluten intolerant – or realised that I am – and I don’t eat wheat any longer. So it’s quite funny. Maybe that was a kind of prophecy.”

As for the new album, Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose - what prophecy could possibly evolve from that?

“Wow! I don’t know a nose job maybe. I don’t know!"

“That was just named when I was with my friend Jess on a ferry back from Amsterdam. We were at the bar and she stuck a sweet wrapper on her nose and we were trying to see – you know if you have something in your teeth and some people won’t tell you because they think you’ll be more embarrassed if they tell you than just finding out later.  We were going to see how long it took for someone to point it out, and they didn’t. So then I wrote her a letter on the back and signed off, ‘Yours truly, Cellophane Nose’, and I liked the sound of that. I liked the words.”

The rest is history. Well a very brief history so far.

Although the album has been written and recorded for about two years, Houghton has spent a lot of time negotiating contracts and deals with record labels and it only emerged into the light of day two months ago.

However, she assures fans it was worth the wait to maintain the integrity of the beautiful music she creates with her little family of Hooves – Dav Shiel, Rory Gibson, Findlay Macaskill and Blazey Blazey.

“I actually live with two of the Hooves – Blazey and Rory – and Dav, the drummer, lives across the road. So I’m literally with them everyday whether we’re touring or not. It’s lovely, it’s like a family.”

Any southern hemisphere fans will have to wait to see Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny but prophecies suggest it won’t be a very long wait.

“We don’t have any concrete plans yet, but I would absolutely love to go there. And I want to go to New Zealand because I’m half-Kiwi and I’ve never been over that way before.”

Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny’s album is available now on the the independent UK label, Mute.

Also keep an eye out later this month for the release of their new single Atlas.

 

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Author: Gemma Boase

Source: Luna Magazine

Original article: HERE

Date: April 10, 2012