Speaker 1: I love it. I've been looking forward to this. The
band is Lemon Drink and the track is Patsy Kensett
and we are going to speak with Lemon Drink in
just a moment. Welcome everybody. This is Matt Connorton Unleashed
and we are live from the studios of WMNH ninety
five point three FM and glorious but very very very
cold Manchester, New Hampshire on this Saturday morning, the last
day of January, January thirty one, twenty twenty six. Welcome.
Of course, we are live from the studios of wm
and H ninety five point three FM, and you can
stream the show from anywhere, go to Matt connorton dot
com slash Live. We've got a great show ahead for you.
We've got a couple of world radio premieres coming up
in just a little bit, but right now we're gonna
open the show with our conversation with Lemon Drink. I've
become a big fan in a short time because I
really really love their sound and I think via Microsoft teams,
I think we've got the whole band here. Let's see
who is who is with us? Do we have so far? Christy,
Lauren and Paul. Is everybody here, Hi, Hey, welcome to
the show. Everybody welcome, and you are in Glasgow? Is
that correct? Very very good? Is it now? What's the
weather like there? Here? It is bitterly cold. Does it
get cold there?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's colder than the Manchester Napster,
but it's pretty pretty cold.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, oh really, Uh yeah, it's it's just been
it's been absolutely brutal here. But but I love that
track Patsy Kensitt and uh. At the end of our
conversation too, we're gonna play We're gonna play the earlier single,
that Demon Child song that I love a lot. And
there's another song too that I'll probably play later in
the show that I really like, A Drink for You.
I listened to that one too and just love it.
So everything that I've listened to I've really really enjoyed.
But this is coming out, So the single is out
Friday the thirteenth, Is that correct, that's right?
Speaker 2: Valentine's Day?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, excellent. Can you tell us about that
song because I feel like this kind of a humorous
theme there with the lyrics. Tell us about Patsy Kensitt
and also too and I'm curious why why you chose
this for a single. It's a great track, but I'd
like to know the relevance of it in your world.
Speaker 3: Sure, So, yeah, it was one of the first songs
that me, Sophie and Kirsty Casey interchangeable use of.
Speaker 2: Names and I wrote.
Speaker 3: Actually so we wrote it years and years and years ago,
and we started with the bridge, which is if anyone's
ever written a song knows that that's a really odd
place to start.
Speaker 2: With the songs. But we used to.
Speaker 3: So my mom had been seeing this guy and he
was just like comedy gold on Twitter. He was just
he was the worst in real life.
Speaker 4: So we just do We didn't so, I mean, Christie
used to go on his Twitter formally known as Twitter, Yeah,
and just like laugh at his tweets because they were
so unself.
Speaker 2: Aware and hilarious. But one of the I do is
he used.
Speaker 3: To just randomly retweet selfies of Patsy Kensit without any context.
Really yeah, very odd behavior. And he did lots of
other very funny stuff on Twitter. But that's where the lyric.
Speaker 2: About Patsy Kensick came from.
Speaker 3: Because yeah, we just it was like every fourth or
fifth tweet was just like a retweet of a selfie
that Patsy Kenson had tweeted, which was odd. But yeah,
so we'd written the bridge years ago. It took a
long time to then try and get into what the
song would actually be about, because just written a song
about him felt it was just very niche and too specific.
But once we kind of hit onto the theme of
just people, but mainly men who are you know, big
egos just like to take up the full room with
their own self importance. And when someone you know starts
dating a person like that, it means that they unfortunately
have to be you have to then also spend them
on by not through choice. So it's that's the kind
of wider theme of the song. And once we kind
of got into that more relatability. So when because we
wrote this long before Paul and Lauren joined the band
in our previous drummer Harry as well, and I think
once we brought that theme to the rest of the band,
it came about quite quickly because everyone knows someone like that. Yeah,
you know, everyone unfortunate experience at least once in their
life of being around a person like that. So after
that it came together quite quite quickly. So and yeah,
and that's also why it's called Patsy Kensit just because
over here in the UK she is a bit of
an icon. So and that because obviously was the catalyst
of the whole song. That and you know, we did
take the songs a bit teeky and playful, so it
just felt absolutely natural that should be the name of
the song as well, even know it was technically nothing
to do with or about Patsy, not about Patsy Kenzy.
Speaker 1: Sure sure, yeah, I mean, and there's other examples of
that in music, like you know, Rosa Parks by Outcast
has nothing nothing to do with Rosa Parks for example.
But but so I have to know though, so the
person who inspired the song, or at least the you
know what what the song initially was, are they still
in your life in any way?
Speaker 3: No, no good. That's why I think as well, it
became the right moment to do it. Obviously, if I
think until they very thankfully broke up, I think it
just like would be a.
Speaker 2: Bit too close to home. But luckily, you know, they're
long long, long gone. So yeah, I'm sure that she
knew so that she.
Speaker 3: Was okay without doing it.
Speaker 1: Well, she she probably uh, she probably gets a kick
out of it, right, Yes.
Speaker 2: She really enjoyed hearing it for the first time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, that's really cool. That's really cool. So
I mean this this sound of yours, I mean it's
sort of, you know, kind of dreamy. You probably hear
that word a lot, you know, kind of that that
sort of dream distorted type of sound. And it seems
to be the other songs I think have kind of
a similar vibe. I mean, but the band has been
around for a while, right, and I'm curious if if
the if your approach to this has kind of changed
over the years. It sounds like the lineup has been
pretty stable, right, You've had you did have a different
You said you had a different drummer at one point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we h.
Speaker 2: Oh need to learn.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we had the same drummer for a really long time.
I think you guys parted out with him, didn't you,
Sophie and Percy before I joined, and he left recently
to be a dad. He's such a good dad. He's
got a little boy, so understandably he's dedicating his time
to that. Then we had a couple of successive drummers, briefly,
but we've we settled on someone that we think is
the right fit now, which is nice because it means
we've got that stability to get cracking again. But yeah,
that Paul is a relative, well the public to the
public that we're ending. But yeah, that's been a pretty
seamless kind of transition adding pauland because he's really good
at what he does, and I think has just really
enhanced everything that we do, the older songs, new songs
that we're writing. Yeah, I think that's really helped us
kind of I don't know, just kind of easily find
a sound that feels natural to us. And we're kind
of finding that we're writing things that we think, oh actually,
yeah that kind of line up with that that we've
written all this and it's we can feel a progression
in ourselves, which is nice.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, yeah, no, that's excellent. And then what's
kind of the live situation there? Are are you doing
a lot of shows? Are you touring at all? What's
what's going on with that? Because I bet these songs
sound really good live, I would imagine, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean we like to think that they do.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, I think just because of all the
the drummer changes and kind of getting everyone up speed like.
Unfortunately we've not been able to play live shows for
a little while, but that's us now, full five key
stable line up and ready to hit the ground. So
we've got a headline show to launch a single on
the twentieth of March at a really great venue in
Glasgow called mccool's, really old established venue, independent important especially
for the Scottish and British.
Speaker 2: Independent venues are really important support.
Speaker 3: And then after that, yeah, the whole is tours, know
more more gigging. We just were ready to kind of yeah,
as you say, let people hear them live because I
think we do have this fun, raw, energetic quality that
you know, you just hearing them live, you know, you
get that better than anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I can imagine absolutely. And then now
is this is the single part of an upcoming EP
or what's what's the situation there? There's so many different
ways to release music now and so many different strategies,
But do you have an EP coming up that this
is going to be on?
Speaker 3: This one is a standalone So we're launching Patsy. So Patsy,
I think made sense to do as a standalone single
because this it definitely hints at the music that's to come.
I think the sound if you look kind of our
original stuff and then this, it does feel like a
more mature, elevated kind of sound than what where we've
come from, and definitely hints at what's to come. But
the sort of that sort of like vintagey, nostalgic kind
of sound probably sits alone with Patsy, but that dreamy,
sassy qualities definitely. You can definitely hear that in the
other songs to come. So loads of songs kind of
ready to go, but Patsy just forms part of her
own own kind of special universe.
Speaker 1: Okay, interesting, and I was reading too. Is this correct?
So that you recorded that with Andy Monahana from Santa's Name, correctly,
that's correct, but only the single, right, the previous singles
you did not record with him, correct?
Speaker 3: He mixed Demon Child, so the Child we recorded, Yeah,
so we recorded that at the Chunky studios, so he
didn't engineer and record that with them, but he did
mix it for us. So that final sound, the final
kind of recording of Demon Child, we worked for Andy on.
So that's why we knew we really wanted to do
a song from start.
Speaker 2: To finish with him.
Speaker 3: Oh, actually, Patsy, because he is he is great what
he does, he's fantastic, and he's just he's a really
good guy. And you know, we're big fans of Frighten
Rabbit as well, of course, So yeah, it was a
real dream working with him.
Speaker 2: So it was great.
Speaker 1: So as far as the EP, is your plan to
work with him on that as well, or are you
gonna or is that gonna be a different direction or
do you know yet? I don't know if you've started
working on it yet, but we don't know yet.
Speaker 2: I think that's the thing. We've got.
Speaker 3: All of the songs are kind of still at the
demo stages and then all of that still to be
worked out. But yeah, plans are a fit, which is exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I mean he definitely captured something here,
so that's great. Although I have to tell you that
song I really love is it a drink for you
or a song for you? Oh? A song a song
for you? I really like that one a lot too.
I'm gonna try to sneak that one in later as well. Yeah,
really really good. Yeah, and I think too, so the
debut EP Better Run. When did that come out? Was
that four years ago?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately it came out I think four day before the
UK locknown Sorry.
Speaker 2: Time of life not great? Yeah, I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we played our EP launch show on the Saturday,
so it came out the Friday, watched on the Saturday,
and then Lockdown UK and I think started on the Wednesday,
so I think there was also like we held a
super spreader event.
Speaker 5: Oh no, yeah, it was nice to go out with
a bit of a bang though.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is this has been such a consistent thing
that comes up on the show over the past several years.
Is so many artists who you know, either just released
something or they were about to go on a big
tour or something right before everything just went to hell.
Speaker 5: It's nice to see that people are still kind of
trying to come back though, Yeah, which is you know,
tenacity is the key I think with these things, and
it's really great to see that people still, you know,
tried to keep making music and yeah, yeah, derail them.
Speaker 1: Well, I've always said I always say too, you know
when the subject comes up. The pandemic was awful, obviously,
but we have to find these silver linings where we can.
And I think one of the one of those few
silver linings is a lot of musicians found new ways
to kind of be creative and and find ways to
or find ways to collaborate with others online, you know,
from a distance. The technology to do that was all
already there, but not everyone necessarily was embracing it. And
I think people were forced to embrace it in ways
that they hadn't before. So so that's that's a good thing.
And and so a lot of people, you know, it
couldn't really tour, but you could still make music and
and uh and a lot of a lot of great,
great stuff came out musically from that. So but yeah,
so so what ended up happening? So so right before
so you played that show and then everything shuts down.
But from what I was reading online, I mean, you
still had some success with the EP right in terms
of placement and airplay and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was really well received, and I just the
unfortunate thing is not being able to obviously what you want.
As event, we were on a really good you know,
grassroots you know, getting somewhere it felt really good, and
then obviously what you want when you release an EPs
to then launch that into tours and playing lots of
shows and getting really good support slots, and just unfortunately
that none of that could happen. So it was as music.
It was well received, but we couldn't really capitalize on it,
And because it was our DBP, it was tricky because
it just meant there was so little to like work with.
Did a follow up single, Demon Child, and that's why
we ended up doing this as a standalone again, just
try and keep some sort of momentum going. And I
think that did even better than the EP, because by
that point it was twenty twenty one, okay, but still
in Scotland and the UK again, gigs weren't still really happening.
Speaker 2: It was still very much kind of pandemic y vibes.
So again that did really well and.
Speaker 3: Was welle received, but we just haven't been able to,
you know, off the back of those, we just weren't
able to do that the dream scenario of getting tours
and booking shows.
Speaker 2: And getting that kind of more you know, the real world.
That's why you do it.
Speaker 3: You like putting up music, but you put music so
that you can actually play in front of people.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly, exactly. Yeah, So it must be wonderful to
really be in a position now where you know you
continue to have all this, you know, you clearly have
a lot of momentum here and to be able to
finally really do everything and you know, try to fulfill
the full potential for the band in terms of I mean,
like I said, it sounds great, but to be able
to get out there and play and do all the
things you know, obviously, I'm sure you want to do
a lot to support the single Patsy Kensitt, which is
great and I do love it even more now that
I know the story behind it, because because what you
said is true, we all know people like that, So
I think it's highly relatable.
Speaker 5: Everyone that listens to has somebody that they picture in.
Speaker 1: Them absolutely absolutely one. I have eleven or twelve that
I can think of. But but Americans are We're a
bit narcissistic over here. So well, so where should people? Oh? Actually,
before I ask you that question too, I forgot to
ask you one of the obvious questions Lemon drink? Where
does the name come from?
Speaker 2: See?
Speaker 3: I really think you know it's funny we get obvious question,
but we've yet to come up with a more interesting story.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Chirsty, you tell it.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's it's not a fantastic story. But me
and Sophie were just out one night bar in Glasgow
getting some amortosuers and they were perhaps the worst amorts
we've ever had. It was just they just squeezed some
lemon and some memory into a glass. I was like,
this is just a lemon drink. And then that's that
was it, And like, great name for band, and here
we are.
Speaker 3: Like but also I think at that point it was
like to the morning we're probably it maybe felt better,
but the next day it's still stuck.
Speaker 2: So yeah, later is stuck.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's not that's not such a dull story.
I like it. That's a great name and uh and
and here you are going strong with it, So that's
that's wonderful. So in a moment, we're going to I'll
let you all go, and we're gonna play that track
Demon Child, and I'm also gonna I'm also gonna sneak
in a song for you because I love that one too. Uh.
That's that's such a good song. I really really like
that a lot. But where should people go online to
keep up with everything that Lemon Drink is doing. Where
should people go?
Speaker 2: All the usual places.
Speaker 3: We're on all the socials, so yeah, Instagram, Lemon.
Speaker 6: Drink Band on Most.
Speaker 1: Okay, Lemon Drink Band.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, and Spotify as well. Obviously get ready to
stream stream our new her new single Patsy Kensit, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and yet we'll remind people that comes out
February thirteenth. Any chance of a video for that.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're actually shitting it next week and we've got
fun a fun concept that, So keep an eye on
our socials for us releasing bits.
Speaker 2: Oh from that too.
Speaker 1: Oh fantastic, can't wait to see that. That is wonderful.
Well listen, Okay, so thank you all of course, Sophie, Casey,
Lauren and Paul, thank you all so much for joining
us this morning. We're gonna let you go. I'm gonna
hit that track Demon Child, and I am going to
play a song for you as well. But we will
definitely do this again in the future as you're releasing
new music. We'd love to have you back on. Like
I said, I became a fast fan. I really like
your sound and you know, and I like the dose
of humor in this track too, or the track that
we played earlier, Patsy kensit. But and I wish you
much success and we'll talk again soon, I'm sure. Lemon drink.
Thank you all so much, Thanks, thank you. Oh you
got it all. Bye bye, take care