As previewed in my last blog entry, this week’s show featured an interview with the frankly lovely Kate Walsh, recorded a few hours prior to her show at the Brudenell Social Club in That There Fancy Leeds.

The scarf isn't hiding lovebites, y'know.

Walsh’s current album Light & Dark – which I reviewed here – is the follow-up to the iTunes # 1 album Tim’s House (although a disgracefully low 75 in the proper charts), released in 2007.  Since that time she’s flirted with a major label who obviously sniffed a star in the making, only for her to decide that this was not the way she wanted to take her work forward, preferring to release on her own label Blueberry Pie.

It’s probably a wise move, as its tempting to think that the pressures from the suits in the corporate boardroom would try to push Kate Walsh into swooning songbird frippery which is not her idiom.  To steal a phrase from my own previous blog entry, the strength of Walsh’s alarmingly candid and beautifully stark songwriting is that she realises that true art lies in reigning in the excesses of the emotional.

Having heard the fragile heroine of her records, it would be easy to imagine that meeting Kate – yes, let’s call her by her first name – would be a retiring, timid little sausage who would need to be coaxed out of her shell with a gentle wave of her beloved chocolate.  Luckily for me – who didn’t discover the aforementioned fondness for the cocoa-based comestible until after our meeting – this was not he case, as Selection Box’s new best friend turned out to be a gregarious and delightful chatterbox who was not only forthcoming during interview, but also insisted on imparting the name of the brand of “the best instant coffee I’ve ever tasted” when discovering my penchant for said brew.

I have to confess I was terribly upset to have to leave shortly after as I could have sat gabbing for hours (well, at least until I was politely told to eff off) – but I had to go and pretend to be the boy that my hairy-chested corporeal essence says I am by playing football for an hour before coming back for the gig.

The gig was gobsmackingly good and featured quite the loveliest-sounding cello I think my ears have ever been party to.  In my book, you can always judge how good the act on stage is by how irritated I get by inconsiderate bar staff clinking and clanking bottles mid-way through their set.  I’m the least violent person I know, and yet me and my mate considered a lynching.

I even collared Kate for another chat afterwards.  Is it possible to be platonically smitten, or is that oxymoronical guff?  Well, it can’t be guff, because I was.  And I asked my wife to have a look for that coffee.

The full interview will be available on these pages to hear in due course…

Giggly teenage behaviour

Show transmitted 26/10/09

Full tracklist:

1.  Diana Ross & The Supremes – Not Fade Away
from: Let The Music Play: Supreme Rarities 1960-1969

2.  The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Higher Than The Stars
from: Higher Than The Stars EP

3.  Kate Walsh – Your Song
from: Tim’s House

4.  Lonnie Mack and The Charmaines – Sticks & Stones
from: Girls With Guitars (various artists)

5.  Don King – Tanajura
from: New York Noise, Vol. 2: Music From The New York Underground 1977 – 1984 (various artists)

6.  The Who – Dr Jimmy
from: Quadrophenia

7.  Kate Walsh – Lullaby
from: Cover Up EP

8.  Kate Walsh – Light & Dark
from: Light & Dark

9.  Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell – Papa’s On The Housetop
from: How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone?

10.  Kate Walsh – As He Pleases
from: Light & Dark

11..  Jean Chapel – Welcome To The Club
from: Good Girls Gone Bad (various artists)

Next show: Laura Rawlings from The BCB Sessions pops in for a chat and reignites our occasional feature Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed & Something Blues.