Rankins – So I hear the best way to tour is over in Europe because everything is closer.
Rosalie Cunningham – “Yeah, the hospitality is better as well. Not strictly everywhere but a lot of places have a great rock scene as well. I can’t speak everywhere in the states but we had a great time there with my old band Purson. Getting back over there is quite difficult when the money’s not there, especially in my level of the industry. So yeah Europe is probably the easiest and most comfortable for a band like mine.”
Rankins – What are some for the top three things you have to bring with you on tour?
Cunningham – “I bring so much shit with me man,” she laughs. “My band hates me because I bring so much shit. I have all sorts of contraptions like red light masks, all sorts of massage tools, water flossers, yoga mats, loads of weights I never use, a smoothie maker and a bag of vegetables that always go rotten within a week because I never use them. This all paints a picture of a really healthy person but in fact it’s a desperate try at being healthy on the road but I never succeed. It’s honestly the late nights and partying. You promise yourself that you’re not gonna do it this time but it’s so tempting. You meet so many cool people and you say to yourself I’m not going to be in Paris again with these people so it’s easy to get swept away with it all.”
Joshua- Damn, yea that’s a bit of stuff I’ve never heard before. Hey man, late nights in Paris sound awesome. It didn’t fully sweep you away, you are still here. So, do you have any pet peeves when it comes to touring?
Cunningham – “You know I’m actually very easy going compared to most people when it comes to the shitty side. I can slum it pretty badly and not complain. But pet peeves hmm, I mean the rest of my band complains about things I truly don’t care about, but this is going to sound very divaish but being in costume when you’re not in performance mode. Also some of the venues we play at are bars also so people can walk in during sound check and grab a beer. But it’s when they walk up and start asking you a million questions while you’re sound checking is when it gets very irritating. And ill say bad sound, bad sound can really ruin a night for me.”
J- I don’t think that sounds divaish at all. I completely understand, especially the warming up part. I’ll be at a skatepark trying to warm up and a kid will come over to ask questions. It’s like yes I wanna talk to you and show you what you’re asking about but kid I’m warming up. But you as a musician are trying to get that tune just right to play the best you can for the paying audience. It’s not divaish. Time and place.
Cunningham – “Right there’s a time and place. I don’t think it’s necessarily their fault a lot of the time. They don’t know what’s really going on in making a show. They don’t know that you’ve traveled hundreds of miles and you’re exhausted. They don’t know that you’ve lost a piece of valuable equipment and you desperately need to get to a music shop. That you just don’t have time to talk. Or sometimes you’re just sick and you need to just carry on. They sometimes really don’t see it and you’re like dude, this is so weakening.”
J – Speaking of pushing through and carrying on, can you recall a recent tour that was rough that you had to really push through?
Cunningham – “Yea support tours are always hard when the main band is on a bus and you’re in a van. You have to keep up with that crazy routine. Because they just all fall asleep and they don’t know where they’re going. On the other hand you’re busy trying to keep up because you’re driving. But I have been on a bus tour, and it was loads of fun. You kinda have to do that in America because everything is so far apart from one another.”
“Anyways, we were on a tour supporting Sheep Dogs and I wanna say it was an honor to have been brought on but it broke my band up at the time. I had a new line up as a four piece with an amazing keyboardist. I loved it but that tour absolutely destroyed us so that was definitely the most challenging. So my partner Rosco who was driving, who also is the guitarist, mind you we didn’t have any crew because we couldn’t afford it because it was a support tour.”
“It was the height of summer. It was 40 degrees celsius that week in Paris and the city was shut down because it was so dangerously hot. When we arrived after a ten hour drive with the AC broken we were like ‘We’re ready to rock’,” she laughs. “The other two were just like fuck this we’re leaving.”
J – Well goodbye. Farewell. Sounds rough but damn through thick and thin guys. They weren’t cut out for touring I see. So, I’m curious about your fascination with the 60s and 70s sound and fashion.
Cunningham – “Started when I was a kid, I think. Started with The Beatles. You know when a kid has an obsession and it’s like their entire life? That was me. Every inch of my room was covered in stuff from that era. It all started pretty young for me. So I didn’t really have another path after that level of obsession. I was really drawn to the psychedelic side of it all too, especially in my teens and early twenties.
Then I realized there were thousands of other bands inspired by that same thing. Then I became inspired by them and from there I blasted off in that direction.”
“Everything in that time era of psychedelic music and fashion is super versatile. As you can hear from my music I don’t like to be stuck in one genre when it comes to making or listening to music. It’s all very playful. I didn’t get too stuck in its tropes with all the psychedelic lyrics that were coming out at that time. That all became a very worn out feeling after a while but everyone didn’t seem to take themselves very seriously in those times. It all seemed very playful. The weird thing is all that music and fashion still feels fresh.”
“When I was about fourteen or fifteen I started collecting vintage clothes. I got really into the whole 60s mod style. I even had a little short bop hairstyle and neat little dresses mostly in mono chrome then I got into colors later on. I went on a progression like slow-motion through that period till the point I was full on glam rock in the end.”
J – There definitely was a lot of creativity in those decades. Speaking creativity, when do you feel most creative, in the daytime or during the night?
Cunningham – “During the night annoyingly enough. I really wish I could switch that around. My partner and I have turned our bottom floor of our four bedroom house into a studio. But it’s more like ill start with every intention to finish. I’ll start somewhere in the afternoon then I’ll feel kinda labored. So then I’ll have dinner, go for a walk or something then suddenly I’m on fire. I’ll start at ten o’clock when I had planned on going to bed at midnight but it’s actually four am again.”, she laughs and rolls her eyes.
“A lot gets done during these times but it’s quite annoying.”
J – On the bright side at least you’re not going through spells of mental and creative blocks. Burnout.
Cunningham – “Yes, it’s certainly not that. What is frustrating I don’t have time to fully commit to the creative side at this level. Because I am a self-employed musician running my own band. So much of it is admin boring stuff that no one realizes is a big part of the job. So, all of the time I just record ideas on my phone so I can come back to it later. Sometimes the feeling and magic is gone then I’m mad at myself for not capitalizing on it more when I had the chance. As I’m sitting with a thousand emails.”
J – That’s a good point. You have to capitalize on opportunities because they may never come again, especially creative ones. And if you go back to him later they may have taken a completely different form.
Cunningham – “It will be a different form. It almost always is. unless you get enough of it done at the time they can tap into it again. If you just put a little bit at a time down in your phone it’s not the same. But you have to remain balanced because of the real world stuff you have to get done. Maybe there’s too much touring or something but I’m not giving enough attention to the idea that I have. because the ideas that I have are coming fast. I’ll keep putting it on the back of the to-do list. but I need to act on the idea that got me to this point in my career in the first place.”
J – Were you able to catch any of the final Black Sabbath show over there? And the reason I ask is because your song duets there’s a lyric that catches my attention, ‘ the lights are showing your age, get down honey, get off the stage, get down, get down’ , Maybe I’m interpreting the lyric wrong but is it referring to a situation kind of like the Ozzy situation where not only age but health is in the way and people are saying to give it up. And he went literally to the very end. Do you think you’ll go to the very end?
Cunningham – “No but a bunch of my friends went. What’s happening to so many people now. Terry Reid now too. Everyone are dropping like flies. yeah I love to go all the way to the end. But I don’t want to go out like Ozzy. I don’t want to ever be that ill. Especially not in the public eye. But he’s a legend all the way to the end. a true Rockstar. so of course I would want to do this all the way to the end. But I wouldn’t want the fans also to show up just to feel sorry for me. And I think that’s why a lot of people actually do give it up because it just becomes pretty sad at a certain point for some people.”
J – Before we talk about the end actually, how did you go from your band Purson, to your solo project and to the involvement of the band Lucifer.
Cunningham – “Yes! So with Purson everything just got on top of me business-wise. We had three managers and we had done a lot of stuff. We had two back-to-back tours and everyone thought we were doing really well and how great stuff was happening for us and everyone was very confused when we broke up. Everyone was asking if you just released a new album with this new record label, what happened? In all honesty, I feel like everything was just pulling apart. All the money and everything just didn’t make sense, everything was just disappearing. I couldn’t tell where anything was going and it kept getting scarier and scarier. I kept getting further and further into debt.”
“And like we’ve all heard before when you sign a record deal a lot of times you get into debt. All the money seemed to be running away. That mindset I was in at the time is like I just have no choice, there’s no way forward. And maybe there actually was another way forward but I didn’t have the right people around me to talk to about all this. A couple of the band members were becoming disenchanted with the whole thing, especially from the last American tour I spoke about earlier. They were exhausted from all of it. We were all really young. and everything was going too fast. It wasn’t what everyone in the band was wanting to continue to do forever. but I did. so the only option I saw fit was to just break it up. cut ties, cut the debt and do it under my own name.”
“Recording wise, it was always a me thing. so it all made sense because it’s not going to be alienating anybody. it’s all going to be the same music. but I didn’t realize I was pretty foolish. I thought yeah I’ll just start again. But it really wasn’t all that simple. I felt really lost for a while without that kind of support system around me like I did with a band. So it took me a year and a half to build a page and show everyone what I’m doing.”
“I knew that I always wanted to do it under my own name eventually but I didn’t think I’d be doing it so quickly and that way. Purson had two incredible albums and has so much more to give to that band. I thought it would be a band longer than that six years. So I thought well I just do the Rosalie thing now. I felt all signs were pointing that way.
I can’t speak too much on this but my second album with Purson was initially rejected by the record label. That really hurt me.”
She pauses, sighs and stares at the ceiling then at the rings on her left hand, “I had a meeting with the record label on my own about this record that I had poured my whole life, heart and soul into. They still rejected it and wanted me to start again with a producer. That record was something I was really proud of. I was confused. I was like am I being framed? What is this? You just signed me, what did you expect? That whole experience really turned me off to the business side of it. So I thought the only way to get rid of it was to do my own thing.”
J – You’re free from the beast now!
Cunningham – “Yea since then my partner and i have been independent. With some help distribution wise from Cherry Red Records which has been very cool. So no, no one is sticking any oars anywhere. I think that whole experience scared me with working with people. So, when it comes to Lucifer, Johanna Platow and I have been friends for a very long time. We were on the same label together back in the Purson days. She got in touch with me saying that her band had dissolved and she was putting a new band together. I felt bad because on the outside it looked like everything was great. But yeah she came to me saying that she wanted to start a new lineup and she wanted to be all female. She asked me if I knew anyone who would be down who played guitar or bass? “
“Looking back, I was pretty naive not realizing she was talking about me and not just to me. So, I was like no I can’t think of anybody, and I would do it if I wasn’t so busy with my own thing. And I was thinking Claudia would be down too if she wasn’t busy playing bass in my band too. So, she responded by saying I’m not planning on doing too much. like some select shows and festivals and maybe even a short tour. So basically, all the things that she had previously already committed to with her previous lineup.”
“So, while on tour with my bass player Claudia we both agree to do it. We didn’t realize it was going to be such a big thing. As soon as it was announced everyone went crazy and we said to ourselves maybe this is going to be cooler than we can even imagine.”, she laughs.
“So, we all crammed together rehearsing for the first three shows which I didn’t realize was going to be a lot harder than it was. Everyone felt the same way as we’re rehearsing. We felt that it didn’t sound as complex as it really was. There’s genius arrangements there and really good song writing. But there wasn’t very much room for improvisation. In my band I was so used to having a lot of room for that with the other musicians. It has been like that with me for 6 years and with this project it has to be just like the record. There’s no rock endings just straight like the record. And that was actually pretty challenging”
“But in all fairness this is all just in the beginning. We’re just finding our footing and getting to know each other as a band. In terms of everything moving forward with writing, recording and touring I still have no idea. I’m still up to do some stuff but I have two albums of my own I still need to finish.”
J – So in other words she’s bringing you to the dark side?!
And wow you’re fucking busy! Two more records?
Cunningham – “Well one with my band and the other one with my partner and I have a new project I have not even mentioned to anyone yet. It’s called Rabbit Foot. There’s a live version of the first track called Rabbit Foot that we’ve based the band around that song. He has so much material that I’m begging him to continue to come out with more stuff, but he wants to just focus on my career, but I keep begging him because his stuff is so good to release more. I’m the bass player and he’s the frontman. It’s the early stages and I can’t promise anything in the future but I’m excited.”
J – Three upcoming albums huh?! three is a magic number! Well Rosalie do you have any words of inspiration for any upcoming musicians or artists?
R – “Play your damn instrument! It’s so easy to get distracted by things these days. I wish I had more time to play mine. but I make my own rules and I make my own time but I still find myself sitting on my phone and getting distracted. especially in the beginning you do not get good unless you put the hours in.” She points demandingly at the camera, “Stay off Tik Tock play guitar.”
Rosalie’s new album is out now.
‘TO SHOOT ANOTHER DAY’ TRANSPARENT SPLATTER VINYL – Rosalie Cunningham
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