SUMMER CAMP INTERVIEW AND PLEDGE

by Molly Cairns, 05 July 2011

 

Summer Camp have teamed up with Pledge Music for a pre-release campaign for their debut album which will blow your brains. They announced this at the end of last month and have so far reached their target but have extended it because there are still loads and loads of great things to buy so head over to Pledge Music to see what's still up for grabs and watch a video of the charming duo, Jeremy and Elizabeth, explaining it all.

 

'We have some really exciting new plans regarding our debut album, which will be released in a few months. With the help of the wonderful people at PledgeMusic, we’ve created a pre-release campaign that allows you to directly help us make our album.

No matter what you pledge for, you’ll get a download of the album before it goes on sale anywhere else. As soon as the CDs are manufactured, they’ll be sent out too.

As pledgers, you’ll also be given free and exclusive access to our PledgeMusic updates, which will keep you informed of our progress. There’ll be footage from the studio, blog updates, photos and even some never-before-heard recordings. And by pledging, you’ll be helping us fund the release of the album.'

 

Also a percentage goes to Shelter From The Storm Charity, so that's awesome. Some of the things you can buy include some Summer Camp made brownies, Elizabeth's sparkly jumpsuit that she wore on the telly last year at Reading, Jeremy's bass guitar all the way up to a dinner party cooked by Summer Camp, an intimate gig in your living room and even have them remix one of your own songs or write a song about you. That would be so cool right?!

 

 

We interviewed Summer Camp earlier in the year just as they were finishing up the album for Issue #2 of BEAT mag, here it is! Order your copy here.

 

Words by Elizabeth Sankey and Molly Cairns

 

It’s odd when you have to interview bands for your job, and know all the little tricks and (mean) ways of leaving awkward silences so they reveal more, and can alter your questions when you’re transcribing so you seem more intelligent, and then suddenly you find yourself in front of the dictaphone.  You may think you’re articulate and poised, but within seconds you find yourself babbling uncontrollably.  Interview karma strikes and you experience the disarming paranoia that washes over every interviewee the second the ‘stop’ button is pressed.  “Jeremy I came across as a douchebag didn’t I?  We shouldn’t have let them buy us tea, we're so arrogant!  Oh god why did I talk about my rash?”  So that’s why it’s nice of Beat to let me introduce our interview.  I’m Elizabeth Sankey, half of Summer Camp alongside Jeremy Warmsley (previously the solo artist known as Jeremy Warmsley).  To be honest this band is nothing more than a happy accident, but like the broken leg that gets you attention from a hot nurse, we’re limping with this one for as long as we can.  Here’s our interview with Molly Cairns, who looks reassuringly similar to Claire Danes in 'My So Called Life'.

 

How are you guys?

Elizabeth: Good.

Jeremy: Gricked, a mix between great and wicked.

 

How did it all start and why are you guys called Summer Camp?

J: Well, we didn’t ever really sort of start the band. What happened is, one weekend Elizabeth had made me this mix tape and I jokingly suggested that we do a cover of one of the songs on it, with her singing over it. I’d never heard her sing at that point, we just thought it’d be something fun to do together. And then we did it and I was blown away by her voice. We kind of worked on all the music together and it was really exciting, so when we finished it we thought well it’d be nice to put it up on MySpace and pretend we were in a band and so we put up this MySpace and Elizabeth has all these old vintage photos that she collects and she found this photo of these seven dorky looking kids at summer camp and we put that up as our band photo. And we thought wouldn’t that be funny if people actually thought that was us and let’s say we met at summer camp. ‘Oh! Summer Camp would be a great name for a band!’ Let’s call it Summer Camp. And then, we still don’t know how but, Transparent blog found it and posted it up, then Gorilla vs. Bear posted something as well. And suddenly we were like ‘Wow! Not only was that really fun, but people like it! So we should do more of this.’ So we started writing songs.

 

Did you feel it was like extra pressure for when you revealed who you were, because of who everyone thought you were?

E: Yeah it was really scary, because we were very aware that outside of our little bubble – where this kind of things is important, we were really aware that only a handful of people had heard it. But yeah for us it was kind of scarier. I think it’s scarier when you do something thinking it’s just for fun and then it kind of gets taken out of your hands a bit!

J: We actually both know Sahil from Transparent; he was the first person to write about us. Elizabeth was still writing for the NME at that point and the NME new bands editor actually asked her to write a feature on Summer Camp.

E: Obviously I said no! But I don’t know, looking back on it, it was a great way for the band to start, but at the time it was really overwhelming. And also it was really terrifying because we didn’t know how we were going to tell people who we were.

 

How did it come out eventually?

E: We hadn’t really planned how we were going to do it and then we had this interview with this paper and we stupidly said we’d do a phone interview and Jeremy accidently said my first name, but that was all and they had promised us that even if they worked out who we were they wouldn’t print it, because we kind of planned other pieces with the NME and that we were going to tell them first. And they printed it! And so it was just kind of everyone knew, it was completely out of our control.

J: It was actually quite good having it out of our control because it just sort of happened

 

How long was it that you managed to keep it under wraps after you made the MySpace?

E: October (2009) to about...

J: February. We had gigs booked in March anyway so people would have found out.

E: But we were kind of expecting we would do the gigs and people would come and be like ‘Oh it’s them. Okay’.

 

How was your first live show?

E: I mean we were awful, we were really bad. I’d never sung live before! We had done some warm-ups but the first sort of official thing was at The Lexington and it was packed to the rafters and really hot and I mean we were a band who had only played five times before and we were playing in front of people who were really serious and in the industry and at the time I didn’t think we were ‘that’ bad. But when I look back now, compared to what we are now, that was just a whole other world away. For me it was so terrifying to be doing something I never ever thought I’d do.

 

Are there any venues in London that you’d love to play that you haven’t already?

J: I’d really like to play the Scala.

E: I want to play somewhere weird, somewhere like Battersea Power Station.

J: That’s a great idea.

E: Or like a huge abandoned building. Like one in the city, with all the computers left, that’d be amazing.

 

What are you up to at the moment?

E: Erm, we’re just doing our album. This is our last sort of day before we get really, really busy. So we haven’t finished it, but it’s kind of crunch time.

J: Yeah, I think the idea is get it done before the end of today so that all that’s left is the finishing touches.

 

How’s the process of making your album been?

J: Making it sound really good. We worked really hard on the demo and then Steve just took each song and picked out all the things that would make it better and did them!

E: It’s been amazing; we’ve been working with Steve Mackey, who’s the bassist in Pulp as well as many other things. And he’s just been fantastic. We’re really difficult to work with, because we’re control freaks but he’s really good at making it how we want to sound and listening to us.