Interview with Catherine by Sacha Markin
With their first gig fast approaching, two members of the Sheppertones have agreed to meet me in the local for a swift chat, before they head off to the rehearsal studio. I’m running a little late for our meet, but wander into the pub to find Catherine Shepherd and Jim Mason propping up the bar, guitars slung on shoulders, fresh from a game of pool. Jim – the Sheppertones bass player, who is also prone to bringing out the harmonica – is an old school friend of mine and I’ve seen him regularly gig over the years. But having never met Catherine before, I am curious about her role as lead singer (and guitarist) in this new group, and, indeed, what the Sheppertones are all about – although we’re lacking the complete band today as we are minus Sam Scarrott (lead guitar and backing vocals) and drummer Jim Kean.
It’s a balmy mid-summers evening, so we retire to the back garden of the pub, armed with assorted beverages (kindly supplied by Jim). After some pleasantries, he ambles off to catch up with some locals, while Catherine and I start to chat about events that lead to the creation of the band. Catherine, dressed in skinny jeans and a white shirt, is animated as she talks – she’s bright, pretty and breezy in nature, but drinks shorts and deftly rolls her own with the best of them. There’s a casual but spirited air about her, and she talks openly, without hesitation.
Her first confession spills out: “I was bit late with the whole music thing, as I didn’t pick up a guitar until I was 21. (She is now 28). I went travelling and bought this little guitar. I bought it really to play other people’s songs around the camp fire, but quite quickly I started writing songs. When I got back, my friend Kate was going out with Sam and he offered to accompany me on guitar if I wanted to gig. I thought ‘Yeah, why not, brilliant’ so I did a few solo gigs with Sam.”
Sam Scarrott, now 30 and another friend of mine from way back when, is an accomplished musician in his own right, from the various bands and ensembles he has played in over the years, down to the fact he also teaches youngsters how to pluck those crucial chords.
“I played with Sam quite a bit, and I concentrated on the writing. I knew the other guys and had also seen a few of their own gigs. Then one day Jim Mason told me if I ever needed a bass player, to give him a shout. And I never really wanted to be a solo artist – I wanted to be part of a band with the whole co-writing of songs, and sharing the entire experience more. Then we asked Jim Kean if he would play drums – and here we are.” So Jim Mason, 30, and Jim Kean, 26 – both already experienced musicians with their involvement in other bands in the past – joined Catherine and Sam to complete the line up. Catherine pipes up: “We are quite new, but we’re fresh!”
Catherine is full of straight-forward enthusiasm about her place in the band, and it’s certainly infectious, but she readily brushes away compliments – especially about her unique and fairly striking voice. Reviews from the listening public on the band’s MySpace site compare her vocal abilities to artists such as Alison Krauss, Sheryl Crow and even Chrissie Hynde. No small measures then.
And with that, Jim M appears – swaggering over to our table, proffering new drinks for us both. Fine for Catherine with her short, but hey I’ve barely touched my existing pint. After a little chitchat with his fellow band-mate on the state of play and this evening’s rehearsal, Jim (and his mop of mad curls) is off again inside the pub, leaving us ladies to pick up where we left off.
I wonder what the ’sound’ of the Sheppertones is, but Catherine shrugs and concedes happily: “I’d probably say it’s a bit of everything. We didn’t sit down and say ‘Hey we’re going to be a country band or a rock band’ etc. That’s probably why all the songs are so different – we have some rock stuff, some chilled out songs, even a little bit of Motown here and there. It really is eclectic.” And undeniably it is – from the jumping countryfied ‘Sad Eyes’ to the melodic ‘Pour Me Another’ and the catchy upbeat sounds of ‘Postcard’. Catherine goes on: “In fact, I think it is quite refreshing to hear a band that can do a bit of everything.” A confident statement, but I’m inclined to agree with her.
Catherine seems surprised when I tell her I’ve been listening to the band’s ‘Sad Eyes’ EP on their MySpace site and that I saw it had received well over 10,000 plays to date. And these are the very songs Catherine wrote and brought to the Sheppertones table. “I had about 30 odd songs that I’d written – with my baby taylor guitar. I brought some of them along, for something for us to start from, but as a band we really developed them. The lyrics and melody stayed the same, but the band as a whole just lifted them up. I kind of wrote Sad Eyes as a ballad and now, it has turned into this full-on country-type song. So we have developed a sound that is everyones – and not just mine.”
The six tracks which are currently available online were recorded by the Sheppertones earlier this year at The Running Frog studios in Windsor. Catherine explains: “We did that pretty early .. getting together. We formed in November and laid the tracks down in February. We felt it was important to have them down before we gigged, because gigging is obviously a great opportunity to say to people “This is our music, you can find it on … etc”. A lot of bands gig for ages, then think about recording, but we decided to do it the other way round.”
The handful of finished tracks were recently posted on a music review website called SliceThePie.com, and they generated some impressive feedback and a largely positive reaction to the band’s arrangements. Several reviews caught my eye, but there are plenty of examples of the type. For Sad Eyes: ‘Love it! This track has some great vocal melodies, beautifully arranged music and most of it has got a great sense of fun about it’. For ‘Postcard’: ‘Such a breath of fresh air, makes you feel giddy, the vocals and the melody are entwined into one’. For ‘I Don’t Want To Love You’: ‘This is a really catchy song – it’s well sung, and very well delivered in an instrumental sense too. The vocals are well written, and the voice suits them. Overall, this is a catchy, professional sounding track that deserves to be known within the music industry.’
Catherine agrees the reviews were a massive boost, morale-wise, to the band. She says, “Sam set that up. It’s a really good idea actually. And because it is anonymous, you can be as brutal or as flattering as you want. Bearing that in mind, we were totally blown away by the reviews because they could have been really bad. Saying that, there was some constructive criticism, but it is good because it’s quite controlled – you can’t just say ‘Oh that was crap’ because your rating would be awful. So we really were blown away by what people said about us – just having other people’s opinion on the Sheppertones for the first time. We got a lot out of that.”
And what about the band name? Okay, so we’re sitting in a pub in the village of Shepperton, so logic tells me this won’t be a tough one. Catherine rolls her eyes: “The name! We deliberated over it for ages, and came up with some quite decent ones, but then I’d Google it and it would be used already. So we thought we actually just needed to make up a word – so my name is Catherine Shepherd, and the guys live in Shepperton. I think it was actually Jim Kean who actually came up with it. We all thought, that’s cool. And it was the only word that connected us all.”
Some of the Sheppertones recorded tracks feature strings – a friend’s guest appearance that added that extra something. “It was Sam’s idea to get a violinist to play – originally on Sad Eyes – but then I thought what about ‘I Don’t Love You’ too, so she played on two in the end. Charlotte was brilliant – to just come in when we were recording and put her stamp on it.” And so it seems the band might be open to the prospect of guest instruments and musicians on future tracks then? Catherine readily agrees: “Absolutely. I’d love to get some piano in too. Jim Mason plays the piano, but unfortunately he can’t play the bass and the piano at the same time – shame!”
The inspiration for most singer/songwriters must surely come for their own lives, their own experiences, events they are part of and I question if this was the case for Catherine. After some thought, she concedes: “Most of them are based on life experience, I suppose. When I was travelling, I always wrote – call it poetry if you like. And obviously it’s very inspirational travelling – with so many experiences happening to you all the time.”
And while she brought her own compositions to the band when they first formed, she’s keen to stress she wasn’t precious over her work. “Jim (Mason) said he didn’t know how much control I would want over my songs, but I made it really clear to them, if you want to change things, then do! If you feel we need to drop this line, or I need to come in here, or we should change that part of the structure, then say. Please feel free to completely put your stamp on it because that is what I wanted. Things needed to be as equal as possible. And it worked.”
“They have all come up with some amazing ideas and they’re just brilliant musicians, so I’d be foolish to say ‘No, I want it like this’. I am certainly not precious at all and I think that is why it has worked. I think a lot of people, when they have written a song, are like ‘right, that is it and I am not changing it at all’. Whereas we’ve improved so much of my own stuff with the band, and it has always sounded so much better.”
And with that, another Sheppertone Jim Kean – looking studious in glasses – emerges from the pub’s back door with a pint and joins us, followed by Jim M again. The guys are restrained at first, unwilling to add too much to the proceedings, but I’m pleased to have as much of the band together as possible, and there is a effortless, light-hearted rapport that they have with each other.
So, with the first live gig just around the corner at one of South West London’s most popular live music venues, what is the set going to comprise of? “Ah well, we’ve actually got ten songs – two of which are really new!” says Catherine, excitedly. It seems the Sheppertones won’t be playing covers in their set, relying instead all on their own original songs, confirms Jim M. “But”, Catherine interjects “we haven’t ruled out covers for the future completely! I mean, Sam does a bit of Elvis, doesn’t he?” All three Sheppertones present burst into laughter, before Catherine adds that Sam actually has a really good voice – and I’m very much of the same opinion having seen the man himself hard at work before.
But time is pressing as the studio is booked for rehearsals, and they need to hotfoot it to Windsor sharpish. So where next for the band, I press. “Wembley, obviously!” Catherine jumps in, laughing. How about back into the studio? “Definitely”, says Jim M. The atmosphere is more effervescent now. And more gigging, I assume? Jim M nods. “Of course, hopefully people will come back after the first one, and say they like the sound of it, and we can just keep on playing.”
Jim K, the relatively silent party at the table until now, pipes up: “I really like the ‘more gigs’ idea. I mean, that’s why I play music. That’s why I got into music. The Sheppertones stuff is all fresh. Fresh to other people, and it’s fresh to us playing it. So why not just pour it all out – as much as possible.” Catherine claps her hands together spiritedly and repeats: “Yeah, let’s pour it all out – why not!”.
I couldn’t agree more.