© Shane Gilliver
THE FIRST INTERVIEW
By Chiara Rosati
Friday, 03.12.24
Meet The Misty, a dynamic indie rock band that emerged from the vibrant music scene of London with a captivating blend of influences and a unique story. The trio quickly bonded over their love for British music, and it features Connie, the artistic mastermind and lyricist; Steve, the gear-obsessed guitarist; and Archie, the groovy bassist. Their musical journey faced many challenges, including the pandemic that forced them to create remotely, but this only strengthened their connection. With the release of their debut album, "Poorly Planned Missions… Executed Worse," set for February 4th, the power of their creative synergy is palpable. From recording in a homemade studio built in France to their commitment to quality gear, The Misty ensures that their sound is nothing short of exceptional. The blend of heartfelt ballads and melancholic anthems makes their music relatable and profound, inviting listeners to join them on their emotional journey. I caught up with the boys in December 2024, two months before the release of their album. We sat on the top floor of Hank’s Guitar Shop in Denmark Street, where Connie and Steve work :
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Steve: We're all like Power Rangers. Archie’s the red one.
Archie: No. Connie’s the red one.
S: I'm the pink one.
Archie: I would say I'm the blue one. I'm usually the diversity hire.
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Do they all have a different personality or something?
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S: Yeah, they all do certain things. But when they come together, they create like a Megatron.
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What about your band? How did you guys find each other and how did you know you were going to be musically compatible?
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Connie: I came to England from France in January 2020 to form a band. I already had a solo project in France called The Misty. I really wanted to find some like-minded people who also liked the same music I did. I grew up listening to British music, so I was like, why not just go to England to find these people? Because, well, if I wanted to be a sushi chef I would probably go to Japan to train, so I just showed up in London. I was living in Brick Lane, and I didn't really know anyone. I went to record shops, jams, all sorts of stuff, and then, all of a sudden, I found Archie, Steve and our first drummer Joe within a week. I found Archie in a music school. I went there and asked the drum teacher if he knew anyone. He played my demos to a drummer who was friends with Archie, so that’s how I got him. I found Steve through Gumtree. I put an ad saying I was looking for a guitarist who likes this and that and he just replied. We met in a pub, and it was kind of instant.
A: I was really sick. I thought I blew it because we had organized to meet up and I was in bed, dying.
C: Probably with COVID because it was two weeks before the first lockdown. We were supposed to have our first rehearsal, we even had a gig booked, and all of that got cancelled by the first lockdown. It was a total mess. I went back to France for six months. Archie went back home. Steve stayed in London. Things just stopped literally right after we started, then it sort of resumed after the first lockdown. Anyway, in answer to your question, it was really quick with both of them.
You must have a crazy connection!
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C: I remember talking about Led Zeppelin with Archie and about Arctic Monkeys with Steve, specifically the teaser that they did for the Tranquility Base album. Steve said that's the kind of stuff he’d like to do, so I knew he was probably the right guy. It was mad because for six months after we met, we couldn't see each other and we just texted over WhatsApp, but we still remained a band. We became friends.
A: We were sending little audio clips of us jamming to the material, as well as ideas and what we were listening to.
S: It was weird because most bands get to do that in a room at the start. That's like a special time for a new band, but we didn't get that.
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It must have been quite difficult.
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A: I didn't meet you, did I?
S: No, we didn't even meet.
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But you already had a gig?
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C: Yeah, exactly. I found them at the beginning of March. Then a gig came up at Lion Coffee Records and I was like, perfect, I just found the guys.
S: It was probably a good idea we didn't do it.
C: Yeah, yeah. I came back six months later, July or August, and I moved in with Archie in Cricklewood. Then we started going to rehearsal. The two of them first met in September.
S: I remember the first time we met. I had a van at the time, because I was a locksmith. It was a locksmith van by day, and it was a band haulage system by night. Our first rehearsal was at Cargo Rooms in Tottenham. I only had two seats in the front. I was driving and Connie was in the front with me, because he gets carsick. The first time I met Archie, I hugged him, and then chucked him in the back of the van. Literally within 10 minutes of us meeting I already had a picture of him in the back of my van, surrounded by guitars and amps.
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Your kind of heaven.
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A: These guys always insist on bringing all their gear everywhere.
S: Yeah. A lot of bands now don't care about gear, but if you turn up at a gig and you're using the house amp and it's shite, your guitar is going to sound shite. It doesn't matter how good you are, because let's face it, we're not Stevie Ray Vaughan, no one in London is. For me, if you have good gear, and you know how to get a good sound, as long as the rest of the band can do that too, you'll be a good band sound-wise. Songs are a different thing, of course, but all our favourite bands live sounded amazing. They didn't use digital amps, they all used proper guitar amps.
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That must be lot of work, though.
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S: It is a lot of work, but then you see the results.
No, absolutely. It makes sense. At the end of the day, you do hear the difference, so it's worth it.
S: There's a big difference. It’s a matter of cohesion as well. It's worth it, absolutely.
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Connie, you said that a French Misty already existed.
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C: I mean, I had, like, four songs because I did an EP before coming to London.
A: I think that's the most money that we've ever made.
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For now!
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C: I actually didn't come to London first. I knew a girl in Paris, which is where I used to live before coming to London. I told her about my plan to go to England. She told me I should go to Sheffield, because she knew someone there who could help me maybe meet a few people and stuff like that. In October 2019 I went to Sheffield and met this guy who's got this project called Studio Electrophonique. Really cool guy. I went to one of his gigs and he was really nice. He gave me a few leads and tips because I really didn't know anything about England in terms of what to do and where to go. I went around Sheffield for like three or four weeks, and I met this woman called Louise in like a thrift shop. She told me I should record an EP to be able to send that to people and she gave me a few email addresses. I went back to France, recorded the EP in my bedroom, and then I went to London. That's what made Steve and Archie interested in my project in the first place.
A: Did you record with your headphone mic and stuff?
C: Yeah, literally just the bare bones. I actually wrote two songs in Sheffield. One of them is called “Crystal Animal” and they really liked it when I showed it to them.
I imagine you came up with the name “The Misty”.
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C: Yeah. I had the name for like, a while.
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What does that name mean to you?
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C: There's a song called “Misty” by Erroll Garner. I really liked his version. For some reason, around the time when I was listening to it, the word “misty” kept popping up for a lot of reasons. There's a movie called ‘Play Misty for Me’ (1971) with Clint Eastwood, which I really liked. At the time, my life was a bit weird. I was kind of a recluse. I didn't go out of my flat much. I was kind of a nerd, just listening to music all day. The word “misty” really sort of stuck and made sense. I've always been happy with the name I chose; throughout all the different phases we've gone through. I've always felt that the word really worked for what the band has become and what it may become in the future. It does encapsulate a lot of things.
S: Whenever someone asks me the name of the band and I tell them it’s The Misty, they're like, “Oh, that's a cool name”. I’m like, yeah, I know it is. The only problem is that sometimes when you say it, if it's too loud, people hear “The Mystic”, and we're not a 90s boy band.
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You’re definitely not on the same wavelength. What would you say are the main influences for you, guys? You mentioned, of course, Led Zeppelin and Arctic Monkeys.
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S: It's weird for me. I'm from York, so I grew up in the North, and a lot of the best bands came from there.
Yeah, it's true.
S: Except for Blur.
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Hell yeah, Blur!
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S: Great band. Better than Oasis. Anyway, I remember that when I was 11, I saw the Arctic Monkeys on MTV playing “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”. I was immediately like, I want to play guitar, so they were the band that started it for me. Then I moved on to The Libertines, Babyshambles, anything by Pete. I was a massive Pete fan. When I was 15, I discovered the Smiths, and they took over. In terms of my guitar playing, the two main influences are Jonny Marr, because he's got an amazing guitar tone and he's a wizard, but also, Bill Ryder-Jones, the guitar player from The Coral. On “Music At Night” there's a section where there's a really cool guitar part. It's not even technically difficult. It's just that what he does is amazing. He really extracted a lot from very little and he's an incredible guitar player. He's massively underrated. I think people will probably realize it in 10 or 15 years. It was actually you, Connie, you told me that. You said I play like Bill Ryder-Jones, and then it clicked. It's because I've listened to The Coral a lot.
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You could tell that there was some sort of similarity between the two sounds.
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C: The interesting thing is that when I met them, I was quite fixated on a few things musically. It didn't make much sense because on the EP that I presented to them there was a piano song, a folk song, a psych rock song. I just didn't really have an identity. I was kind of searching for something. These two showed me so much music and they've introduced me to different stuff. Archie had a massive Zeppelin phase, so he made me listen to Zeppelin a lot more than I used to. Steve introduced me to a lot of bands like The Coral, The Smiths, all that stuff. And I feel like that sort of made its way onto the sort of songs that I write now. I feel like now I'm writing on behalf of everyone. They've really rubbed off on me and their influences have become my influences. Obviously, we're all big Beatles fans, and anything 50s and 60s we love.
A: I would say that you tend to be a bit more like late 50s-60s. I tend to be like late 60s-70s. Steve's, I guess, late 50s-60s, as well as 80s.
S: The Kooks, too, like their first album--
A: Used to cover it to death.
S: Yeah, exactly.
A: I feel like the bands that you're in as a teenager in England are the same. I think the songs that me and Steve were covering when we were in our first bands were nearly the same.
S: Yeah, probably identical. We used to do The Stone Roses, as well.
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Do you still work on covers?
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S: We haven't really done a lot in that sense. We've covered “I Want You (She's So Heavy)” by The Beatles at a gig once. We did “Breathe” by Pink Floyd after our single “Atlas & the Pyramids”, because of the way that song ends, so we could go into “Breathe” seamlessly. That used to go really well. I don't know if it was quite worrying though, because people used to really love that part of our set.
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And you're like, do they know this is not us?
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S: Luca (Arshad), the guitar player in Stereo Cupid is a massive Pink Floyd fan and he was like [in an American accent] “Oh, “Breathe” sounded so cool, man.”
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That sounds like Luca. Ciao Luca! Do you guys feel like you are different on stage compared to how you act normally?
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S: No.
A: Connie, definitely.
S: He concentrates more. He's constantly miles away.
A: I think that you (Connie) tend to tell people that you're quite awkward and stuff, but I don't think he's that bad.
S: He talks to the audience at gigs.
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What do you talk about?
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S: We did our first proper gig in York, my home city, in December 2020. He swore at the audience.
A: He basically told everyone to fuck off.
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Really?
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C: I told them to “fucking move”.
S: There were only around 50 people there, but everyone had to be sitting at tables. It was a really weird gig, to be fair.
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I can imagine!
A: I think you and Steve are much bolder now and you really complement each other. You're always kissing or whatever.
C: We do kiss.
S: We do, yeah.
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You do?
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S: Well, we share a bed.
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Should I start shipping you, guys?
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S: Absolutely! On stage I act miserable. That’s because John Squire looked really cool when he played, because he also looked miserable. He's a really good guitar player. Johnny Marr didn't look miserable, but he just looked like he was always on edge. I look like how I feel, a bit on edge, trying to gauge what's going on, just surveying the room really. Archie's quite a cool person, so he's a bassist, and he just instantly grooves along. I think everyone's stage persona working together is what creates the night.
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I agree.
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A: I think the communication is quite good. We tend to look at each other for cues and stuff.
S: There are new songs on the album where we've added harmonies. I think it would be quite cool to play one of them at our next gig in the form that's on the album, like, just stripped back. I’d have it like it would have been back in the 50s. Connie on his own microphone, and then me, Dan [Edery aka Geraldyne] and Archie all around another one. It would just be really cool, wouldn't it? No one does that shit.
A: I don't see many indie bands doing lots of backing vocals.
S: We are more like 50s-60s, like longer harmonies. Every instrument is just as important as the guitar, and it has to be just as present in the live set, otherwise it's not right.
You mentioned your first album. When is it coming out?
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S: 4th of February, Connie’s mum's birthday.
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Adorable! What’s the name of the album?
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C: “Poorly Planned Missions… Executed Worse”.
What’s the concept behind this title?
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C: It was more of an accident. One of the last songs on the album, “Twenty Tongues Together”, has a lyric in it that says: “my mission was poorly planned and executed worse”, which is quite a sarcastic thing to add at the end of a love song. Basically, half of the album is all love songs and ballads, quite hopeful and optimistic songs in major keys. The other half instead, is quite melancholic and tragic.
I did notice that when I listened to the album.
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C: That line out of that song perfectly encapsulates the trajectory that you go through as you listen to the album. It’s like hoping for something just to end up disappointed with the results. Dan is actually the person on the album’s artwork. All of a sudden, it all came together and just made perfect sense.
A: Thinking about it, the photo being in the flat is quite nice, because a lot of the songs and lyrics revolve around the flat where we all lived together for a while. I think it's quite cute.
It’s so special!
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C: Yeah, I'm actually really happy because the photo shoot was done in our flat by our friend Thibault and there’s Steve's guitar case in the corner. The first song on the album is called “Ponder Street”, which is a street that's right in front of where we live.
That’s very sweet, but you composed the album mostly at this last address, right?
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S: Yeah, like 95% of it.
C: We wrote everything in the flat. The only thing I think I didn't write in the flat was “So I Can Wonder Where You Are”. I wrote the riff in the shop.
© Thibault Ravina
Did you also record the album there?
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S: No, we actually have our own studio.
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Wow. That’s amazing!
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S: In London it's difficult to even have a rehearsal space that's not 100£ for four hours, or whatever. We're very lucky to have our own studio space down at Connie's parents' place in France, in a small town. I won't say where because we don't want anyone breaking in, but it’s next to his childhood home. That makes it a bit more special. The whole album, apart from the backing vocals, was done there.
C: We kind of built the studio.
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You built it?
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S: Yeah, early 2021. I sold one of my guitars. I was in two minds whether I actually wanted to go through with it, because the guitar was really cool. It was a vintage Fender. But I thought, fuck it. I quit my job and lived off that money for like five months.
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That guitar must have been very expensive.
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S: Yeah, it was.
A: They were staying with Connie's parents, so he didn't have many expenses.
S: I was in France for three months. Connie's parents took me in as their son, and they still regard me as that now. It's a high honour that I have.
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Oh, that's cute. Are you in the will, as well?
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S: Well, I'll be in with Connie.
A: This is why we ship them.
S: This studio idea came from Connie. It all happened so fast. I remember Connie coming to me and saying that his parents were gonna let us build the studio there. He went on Google Earth and showed me the building. I was like, oh, that’s really cool. It was actually Connie’s idea to sell that guitar and like live on the money from that. I was like, fucking hell I could, but that's a really cool guitar.
C: We went to get it together, as well. It was very special.
S: Yeah, we did. We drove for, like, four hours to get that guitar from Lincoln from some old guy and it was like a really special day. In the long run it was great because I feel like when something changes in your life it's all part of the journey to where you're going. This moment right now might not have happened if I didn't sell that guitar.
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It's true and actually crazy.
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S: I remember that as soon as I sold it and I was able to quit my job, I didn't give a shit about the guitar anymore. I didn’t have to get up at fucking 6am, five days a week and get home at 7pm and do a job that I didn't particularly enjoy. Me and our old drummer, Nick, we went with Connie to France.
A: Emigrated to France.
S: We stayed 90 days though, whatever the government decided, and we built the studio. I went back to my old ways of being able to glaze windows.
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Man stuff.
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S: Man stuff! We got a live room and a control room. In between there, we cut a big hole in the wall, and we've put double glazing glass, so you can see through, but the sound's not leaking. Connie had an upright piano in his bedroom, and we thought that'd look mint in the studio. It’s bright white and the colours we've got in the studio are all purples, so this was like an Elton John scene. It was amazing. The piano is very heavy, so Connie decided to hire a crane. I was in bed, I looked out the window, 8am, there's three French blokes elevating a bloody white grand piano up in this little French town. That was surreal. It was a big joint effort. Connie's girlfriend was massively in on the decorating aspect of it. Connie's dad and mum were always asking what they could do. His dad's a surgeon, so he usually dresses well. Next minute, he's got jeans covered in paint and a t-shirt. He doesn't really speak much English, so we just communicated through caveman ways, gestures, glances…
A: Man stuff.
S: Man stuff. He built these acoustic panels, and we hung them. We needed as much sound proofing as possible. The two doors for the control room in the studio room were super thin and they were panelled. You could literally breathe on them and the sound would go straight through. Connie’s dad was at work, so we didn't have our main man to help us. Me and connie decided to go to a French hardware store. We took the doors off the hinges, bought loads of cotton wool, and then got this beautiful red fabric. We didn't really account for the space between the door and the frame, so we wrapped the fabric around the edge of the door. We used a fucking staple gun, so it took us about an hour and a half to do this. We thought it looked great, so we hung the door back on and it just wouldn’t shut. We did the other side of the door at the same time, but we allowed for the clearance. We had to cut the fabric off the edge of the door, so the door would actually shut. Obviously the second door took us half the time because we'd cracked the code by then.
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So, you DID manage by yourself!
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S: We did manage, but I do feel like with Connie's dad’s help, it might have been a bit smoother.
Sounds like it.
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S: It's awful going into studios and paying for time because you just have to rush everything. Each member of the band's pushing everyone to get it right. We have paid for a studio, and that's exactly how it went. We're all pestering each other because you got so much tension and pressure on you. We heavily relied on the engineer we had at the time, so we didn't really get much input. We didn't know what we were doing.
A: We would all end the session like, “imagine when we have time to actually experiment with the material, and the money to put ourselves in a studio for a few days or a few weeks”. Then we can actually start to play around with stuff.
S: We can be in there as late as we want.
A: You can try things, and I don't think that many people have opportunities to spend so much time crafting stuff.
Unfortunately.
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A: I think the album really does sound crafted for something that we did ourselves. In the studio recordings that we had, we always felt like they were kind of lacking something.
I understand that. I guess the only thing is that you have to go to France to record.
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S: Yeah, but it’s cheaper for me to fly to France than it is to visit my family in York.
A: If we were using a cheaper studio that doesn't have gear that we like, we would have to spend money on an Uber to get the gear there and back every few days. That’s more than what you would pay to even get extra seats for your gear on a plane.
S: When we went to start recording the electric guitars, just me and Connie for four days, the flight was, like, 44£, which is nothing, so I paid for a seat for one of my guitars.
C: And every time we’re there, there's also this sense of getting away from the buzz of London. You're completely cut off from everything else. I feel like it's really nice and productive, because you'd have nothing else to think about. We're most likely gonna end up doing the next album in there, as well. Now it's really nice because, as Archie said, we've got the gear that we like, an old drum kit, 60s drum kit, some old amps. Now we don't even need to think about the gear, we just go in there and we know what we want to use.
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It honestly sounds like a dream.
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C: Yeah, it is. I think making the next one is gonna be really exciting. We're gonna do it with a drummer. It's just gonna be really cool to be able to actually play live all together without pressure. We can stay and play till midnight, and we just go again tomorrow if it didn't work out. This album is coming out because we've been a band for four years. We have a lot of material that we've lived with for a long time because we've just been writing and writing all these songs, but we've released only four so far. We've got probably about 40 songs in our back catalogue. One of the reasons for making this album was to get some songs out and make space in our heads to be able to write and learn new stuff. It's going to be good being able to get some songs done and released fast in the coming year. We know how we want them to sound, we've gigged them for years and we've been around the demos. We didn't have to explain to someone what we wanted, we just did it ourselves.
S: We just did it. I think I landed in the morning, and we just went straight in. We set everything up and started experimenting with sounds. I want to capture exactly what is coming out of the amp because that's the sound I want to hear. I want to be able to listen to it and know exactly what guitar I used. I’m a bit of a gear nerd.
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You do need at least one in your band.
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S: Yeah. Connie didn’t care about gear when we met, whereas now he does because I've expressed how important it actually is. Recording was the hard part. I'm not into recording, Connie is. That's my weakness and his strength.
C: We've learned so much making it because it's the first album I've ever made. You've made an album before, or one or two.
S: I did, yeah.
C: I can't wait to just apply what we learned to the next album.
S: Yeah, I'm gagging to get back in the studio now.
There are 10 songs in this album. Did you select some songs that you had already worked on in the past, having found a sort of underlying motif connecting them, or did you also record new tracks?
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C: We had nine songs, and I wanted ten on the album, so I wrote one more. They were all written within a year, but I wrote this one literally a month before going in the studio to do the album. It just all came together naturally. We had this sort of back catalog of songs that seemed to be all linked thematically. They all seemed to fit perfectly in the album’s story. We took just one of the songs that we've already released, “The Never-Ending Line”, but the other nine have never been out.
A: “Ponder Street” is quite odd. It's been through a few changes. “The Never-Ending Line” has, too. There's definitely a sonic thread.
S: These changes were poorly planned and executed worse, weren't they? I was on holiday in Turkey with my girlfriend. Connie had gone to France to start recording and do a bit of writing. I don't know what I was expecting to come out of him being there, maybe a couple of recordings, but he ended up sending me five or six acoustic tracks with vocals. I was like, oh shit, I've been relaxing in Turkey while he’s been working in the studio, but when I heard them, I was like, yeah, it'll happen.
C: I think the album retrospectively makes a lot of sense. Now that I listen to it, it feels like a really cohesive thing, although most of the songs kind of sound different. I'm actually really happy with the result.
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I listened to the whole thing, so I know that it sounds amazing. Who wrote the lyrics?
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S: It's just Connie. I don't like my lyrics. I just say things and I tell Connie to use them. That's my input.
A: Sometimes when we're chatting shit.
C: Yes. It happens all the time. On the song Steve wrote, “But For How Much Longer We Will See?”, I wrote: “time saved is time well spent”. Steve said that. We were walking and I think we were talking about the bus being late, or something. He said that a lot of time saved is time well spent or something, so it's his words on this song.
A: He’s more of a muse.
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And Connie’s the artist.
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S: I'm fine with that.
A: This is why we ship them.
S: I'm more of a guitar player, but I'm super proud of that song. It is one of the best things I've ever done. Honestly, I think it will probably be the best thing that I ever do. Because it's really fucking good.
C: I disagree with him. I think he's got a few more.
S: “But For How Much Longer” is on the on the B side. I wrote that at the flat. I bought a bright orange Gretsch guitar, which screams country music and country jazz chords. I had to play in a completely different way because how I normally play doesn't work on that guitar. Where we work in Denmark Street, there's this old guy. He's 79 and he comes in the shop quite regularly. He's called Doug, and he's a really sweet guy, very knowledgeable, incredible guitar player. He's been here since the mid 60s. He worked in the shops, he's kind of done it all. He's a massive Chet Atkins fan. I remember him showing me two arrangements that Chet Atkins did. I just wanted to learn these songs to enjoy playing them. There are no vocals, it's just music, just one guitar, that's it. I was sat playing them at home one day. I meshed these two songs together and like took bits from each and sent it to Connie. I always know when I've written something good because I'll send it straight to Connie. If he instantly says like, that's fucking good, then I'll be like, there's a song.
C: I remember it so well because I was in France on the seaside. I was on holiday, and he sent me that thing and I listened to it through my phone on WhatsApp. When I heard it the first time, I knew straight away that it was gonna be a special song and one of the highest points on the album.
S: Going back to why I don't write lyrics, I tried to write some for this one and I tried singing them and I fucking hated it. I'm not doing the music justice if I can’t live up to its standard. Connie had already written lyrics to it, and I told him to let me have a crack at it, too. I'm not ashamed to admit that I failed. I don't care because the guitar's great.
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Yeah, exactly. At the end of the day, that's your thing.
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S: That’s enough for me to be happy. Connie’s version was obviously inherently better than mine, because he's a fucking genius, but I just wanted to see what I could do. This other song, “So I Can Wonder”, is a part one, and then “But For How Much Longer” is a part two. We didn't write them like that. It just happened. We had the idea literally in the final stages of mixing, I think, wasn't it?
C: These two songs, they belong to the same world. They’re a 50s moment between the more sort of modern indie, folky stuff. It was total chance that I ended up writing a 50s song for the album that would match his. It feels like two different takes of the same sort of theme.
S: You put them together and they just match. Yeah.
C: They’re a really interesting moment in the album.
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What's your favorite song in the album? You can all have like different answers, obviously.
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S: It's “Time and Again”. I love reverb on guitar, it's the best thing. It's just like the perfect way to start the sad side of the album, with a minor chord, just one single strum of A minor. I do think the song’s really good. It's very James Bond-esque.
A: You instantly hear the difference in sound. I do really like it. It's one of the most atmospheric songs. I also like “Never-Ending Line” and “Twenty Tongues Together”.
C: I actually never thought about it. They're all quite dear to me because they encapsulate different moments and memories. I really don't know. I think I'll have to go for “So I Can Wonder Where You Are” just because it's the very last one I wrote for the album and it's the freshest to me. I wrote it on Steve's guitar which to me kind of makes it special...
A: This is why we ship them.
C: Yeah, this one's got a few things going. I'm quite happy with the lyrics and the harmonies. The four of us in the room, which we did quite a lot on the album, really stands out on this song.
Which one was the hardest to record?
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S: “But For How Much Longer”. I used Connie's guitar, his Jazzmaster, but I wrote it on a Gretsch, and I always wanted to record it on that guitar to get that specific sound. I was flying to France, and I didn't want to spend too much on seats, so I took my Gibson with me because that is on more songs than the Gretsch is. We thought we'd try to record it with the Jazzmaster first, but I just wasn't happy with it. Connie basically came in after work one night and asked me if I was happy with it. I was just, “let’s re-record”.
C: I brought a few mics back from France, so literally, one night after work, we just set up.
S: I thought he was gonna be fuming.
C: Steve is so nice. He doesn't want to cause any sort of problem. If he's not fully happy with something he won't really say it, but I've known him long enough to notice exactly when that happens. We did the song again. We did three takes and with the third one we actually got quite emotional.
S: Again, it all goes back to the flat. All it took to get us happy was in the living room with my amp, my guitar and a microphone. It was really special.
C: You just played it so well.
S: Even now I'm getting a bit choked. I don't know what it is. I've got nothing to be sad about, but it's almost quite sad.
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Nostagic maybe?
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S: Yeah, nostalgic. That moment is over, and you can't relive it. It was also a weight off our shoulders, because it was done. We both had a cigarette and listened to it, and we were like, it's fucking perfect. It was a good night, but also an emotional night. We put “Sex and The City” on, went to bed and had some ice cream.
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Should I ask about your favourite “Sex and the City” character? Connie is definitely the Carrie of the situation.
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S: I don't know who I am. I've never actually seen it to be fair. Maybe I'm hinting that I want to watch it.
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You should, it's brilliant. Do you plan on shooting any music videos?
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C: I'm not sure. A friend of mine who's a graphic designer is doing some animation for the album. Every song is going to have a 30 second animated mini film that that we're going to use on socials. That's going to be really nice, so I don't think we're going to do a full music video. We did one before for “The Never-Ending Line” and it was quite time consuming and expensive because we shot it on film.
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You shot it on film? Wow.
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C: Yeah. We love film.
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It's just super expensive. That's the only problem, but it does look way cooler.
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S: Are music videos important at our level? If you're a big, signed and selling out of arenas, people will go out of their way to watch your music video. At our level, do people really care?
There are other bands at your level who do it, but at the end of the day it's just a matter of choosing a way to promote your music, I guess.
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C: Yeah. The animation is going to account for a lot of the promotional stuff.
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What's next for the Misty? Except for, obviously, the album release.
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S: Well, we get the drummer situation sorted.
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Fingers crossed.
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S: Fingers crossed. Then we're gonna do two or three gigs with the new drummer. Then, as soon as we're ready, we're gonna go back to the studio and just get on it again.
C: We're probably gonna focus on studio as much as possible. The next album is almost done and the one after already has five or six songs. I'd really like to try and get them out within like a year or 18 months because I really want to move to some other stuff after that. I'm actually really excited about the songs that are gonna be on these next two, but I think I'm even more excited about what we're gonna come up with next.
S: I think it will be a mix of everything we've already done.
C: And it's gonna give people a chance to listen to songs that we've been playing live for a while. It’s funny. There’s this song that we’ve been playing for two years, “Crystal Animal” and Sam, who works in the shop next door, “Sixty Sixty”, keeps coming in asking when we’re gonna release it because he wants to listen to it. Noah from Gingerella works in the shop, too. He loves another song, “The Moonlit Clown”, and he keeps pestering me about it.
S: He's even learnt it.
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It’s amazing that you already have so much support.
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S: Yeah, we have a great bunch of people around us. Even Shane, our manager at the shop. At the time we probably didn't realise it, but thinking back on it, he's been massively helpful. He's been a legend for guitars, because he's a gear nerd, as well. He's in music and he knows a lot about music in general. We've got Dan doing backing vocals. He’s got a massive knowledge of music and he's an incredible musician and singer, just a genius. There's people like him around us, really talented people. We’re very lucky.
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And I was lucky to have the opportunity to chat with you, guys! Thank you so much!
Talking with The Misty was a genuinely refreshing experience. Their passion and creativity shine through not just in their music, but also in their approach to collaboration and artistry. As they gear up for the release of their first album and the prospect of new music, it’s clear that this is a band to watch. Their authenticity and enthusiasm are contagious, and I can’t wait to see where their musical journey takes them next.
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