“I had some great passive influences as a kid, in that, my dad loved Leonard Cohen; he’d always play him. He’d play Cat Stevens, R.E.M., Joni Mitchell, just the greatest singer songwriters of all time; Queen, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, that was the soundtrack. I wasn’t really exposed to bad music until I started finding it in my early teens.
It was kind of strange because I was raised on this greatness and then when I started to choose my own music, I wanted to listen to pop music, like a rebellion with terrible music! I realised that the stuff before was the good stuff and went back to that, Fleetwood Mac, Paul Simon the works. I think that seeped its way into my consciousness somehow, it led me to focus on my storytelling and the lyrics that I have in my music right now. It’s so important to me to have lyrical depth in a song, but I also love pop music, so I like to package it in an accessible format where it’s not so high brow it turns off listeners.
Belle Mt. is midway between band and solo project. The first couple of years was just me writing on my own, cowriting and working with my producer. I then got offered a live show supporting UK singer songwriter Maverick Sabre, that became the first Belle Mt. show; it was in Exeter. I had to put together a band for it and I knew that my go-to drummer was Chris (Burgess), who’s still our drummer today. We work well together. I met Ben [Worsley – guitar/bass] at an open mic night in South London that I ran, and I just loved his approach and his feel.
Usually the process is that I write the songs, work on them with my producer and then I bring them to Ben and Chris, and they put their stamp on them, they each bring a sound and identity to it and so it becomes, especially in the full band live shows, more of a collective thing.”