Wed 15 Mar 2006
interview with mark
Source: essex chronicle

Who are you, where are you from...and why do you exist?

We are Morning Bride, thanks for asking. We hail from various holes in the northern hemisphere, but London town is our common denominator (and our burden). We exist because, with the world the way it is these days, it would be rude not to.

Your music has been compared to...?

hmm, Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra, Mazzy Star, 'Automatic...' period REM, Kate Bush, 'Jehovahkill' era Julian Cope, Rilo Kiley/Jenny Lewis, Leonard Cohen, the softer Velvets stuff...........

But you'd prefer to be compared to...?

We really don't mind - without sounding snotty, nobody sounds like us anyway.

Influences?

Really too many to mention, but ex-girlfiends are unwittingly very helpful when it comes to the songwriting process.

Achievements/highlights?

I'll hazard a guess that Wednesday the 15th will be a shining highlight. Making it this far with smiles on our faces is quite an achievement.

How important are nights like the Chelmsford Americana night to your band?

Extremely important. The people who run nights like Alter States, and e.g The Gilded Palace of Sin in Brighton, do it because they truly love music, and care about it enough to provide a platform for the grassroots to flourish. The audiences in towns like Chelmsford are always better also - we make far more of an effort to really communicate our music at shows like this. Often less so in cynical, over-egged cities like London, where everybody likes to think they've seen it all before and therefore disappear up their own a****s.

What defines 'Americana' anyway? Are you happy with that description?

I don't know what defines it, for all I know it could be a pizza, but labelling disperate genres is never easy and so i sympathise with those who use it as a catch-all. Authenticity is in the ears of the listener. And Amity (lead singer) is as American as illegal FBI torture techniques, so that'll do for us.

What can Chelmsford expect from Morning Bride on Wednesday (March 15th) ?

Beauty, passion, heartache and pleasant aromas.

Been to Essex before?

I bolted out of the city and spent a very happy year living at the Naze in 2002, doing nothing except walking, enjoying the wildlife and writing songs, and I still get out there as often as I can. So Essex has a little corner of my heart under house arrest.

What does success mean to you?

writing and playing songs that we love to people who open up enough to be affected by them.