Trigger caught up with Kate Nash back stage at Gloucester Guildhall to talk about her quick rise to fame, her latest album, playing to true fans in small venues, plans for the future and much more.

During 2007 you came from being quite unknown to being the next big thing with your debut album release date being moved forward by weeks and then you went on to win a Brit award for best female artist a few months later, how did you feel through this period of time?
It was ages ago now but it was a really confusing time for me, it was exciting for me but I wasn’t setting out to achieve that so it was very surprising and confusing but I learnt a lot very quickly and realised that I was lucky to be in this position.

How did the success from it all make you feel?
I don’t know I think i was numb to it, like a lot of stuff I should have been excited about I didn’t really feel anything and I would get more exciting about mundane things and low key things, but there were some things that were amazing like winning a Brit award, but I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as I should have.

Yeah it was probably a big shock just how quick everything happened.
Yeah.

You released your second album ‘My Best Friend Is You’ nearly a year ago now, how did you find working on this album compared to your debut? And did you feel more under pressure due to the quick success from ‘Made Of Bricks’?
I felt under pressure but I locked myself away in a dingy little rehearsal room for a couple of months and I was like I don’t want to write a second record because I need to, I don’t want to write one that people want me to write and I don’t want to write one that I am thinking too much about.

Yeah it’s best to write what you want to write and for yourself.
Yeah I just wanted to write songs, so I said to myself that I can write anything and it can be completely shit because no one will ever hear it so that was the rule that I went with and I lot of the songs that I wrote in the rehearsals became the record because where I was locked away the pressure was taken away from it all as I thought no one was going to listen to it. It was the perfect way to write songs and despite the pressure at the beginning I am really proud of the record and wouldn’t change it.

‘My Best Friend’ is more rawer sounding and features many spoken word moments such as the hard hitting ‘Mansion Song’, what made you take a slightly different approach this time around?
I have always liked people like John Cooper Clarke and my friend was doing spoken word at the time so I got inspired by that and I am also into Katherine Hannah and got into her spoken word and I wanted to do spoken word and it just came out of me really, I wrote ‘Don’t Want To Share The Guilt’ back in 2008 and that was a rant about what was going on. ‘Mansion Song’ I wrote when I was at a festival I was angry with what was going on around me and just typed the lyrics up into my phone and went for the spoken word to get the message across clearer.

Yeah it comes across really hard hitting with the message being loud and clear.
Thanks.

Are you happy with how ‘My Best Friend Is You’ has gone down with your fans and the press?
Yeah I am with my fans, but with the press a lot of people have said stuff because it wasn’t as commercially successful so they said a lot of stuff about that but I think that it is a better thing because you end up with fans who really want to be there because sometimes I do gigs and people will talk all the way through my set whilst waiting for ‘Foundations’ and then leave straight after.

Yeah it’s not what you want you want people to appreciate the music from start to finish.
Yeah exactly you want genuine fans who know the words to ‘I Don’t Want To Share The Guilt’ and ‘Mansion Song’ and the B-sides and that is what I am left with now, which is much better for me as people are more interested in me as growing as an artist.

If you had to pick a favourite song that you had created what would it be and why?
That’s a difficult questions but I really like playing ‘I Just Love You More’ as it is really fun to play live, I also like ‘I’ve Got A Secret’ because I wrote it on the drums and it is different melodically and was a different way of writing for me, also ‘Model Behaviour’ is fun to play.

How do you go about writing your songs and what inspires you when writing your lyrics?
I play the same melody and riff over and over which is plain and simple and very repetitive and then I sing melodies over the top of it and then the lyrics will kind of come, I write them down in notebooks and then work on them for a while, but most of it comes out of me just singing melodies, but lyrically I am inspired by everything such as Kitchen Sinks, dram, mundane, friends, stuff happens to me, how I feel, I book I have read, I gig that I have seen, music that I have heard, relationships, people with weird brains.

What would you say has been the most difficult song that you have ever written?
Most difficult to write?

Yeah.
I need to look at a list of songs
(Laughter)

Writing ‘Pumpkin soup’ was pretty hard because I was stressed at the time, I kept writing it then crying and then ripping up the lyrics sheets and then re-writing them like 5o times over.

Did it ever end up how the original set of lyrics were written?
The lyrics changed because I thought the lyrics were really shit and I hated it, then I got pressured to finish it but then that made me not want to finish it because I hate to be told what to do.

I know how that feels
(Laughter)

Have you started work on your next album yet? Or do you have any idea of what direction you want to go with it?
I have started but I have no idea which direction I want to go, last time I really knew what I wanted to do and did it but this time it is a bit scary because I have no idea what I want to do, I have written one song but it is not finished I haven’t written any lyrics I have just written the guitar part and bass part, but I just don’t know where I’m going to go with it.

Do you have any time scale of when you want it done by?
No not yet.

You are currently on a 17 date tour of the UK calling at some really nice small venues, what made you want to do such an intimate tour? And how have the shows been so far?
I thought it would be a good way to end the tour as this is my final tour.

Yeah from this albums tour cycle?

Yeah, I did a UK tour and played places like Sheppard’s Bush Empire and really liked the venues but I really wanted to do a small UK tour as I used to do it all the time in 2006 and 2007 so I thought it would be nice to end the cycle that way and go to places that I haven’t been to in 4 years and it has been really fun and it feels totally different, it’s more selfish I guess because your more involved with everybody and you can communicate better, where at bigger venues it is more like you are performing, where at these shows everyone is together and you can talk to individuals which I prefer.

How have you found picking a set list for the tour and has the set been the same throughout?
At the beginning of the tour we worked out the set list over the first few shows and you tend to move songs about and then you get a show that tends to go well with all songs working and that is what we have been doing and as it was the London show last night we might decide to mix it up and do whatever and we only have 5 days left now.

Your tour finishes in a week’s time, what do you have planned once it comes to an end?
Sleep, well I am currently working on this project for schools, it is an after school club for girls and like an all girl music club because I have found out that statistically there are a lot less composers that are female and I want to change that and encourage girls to get involved in music so I have been interviewing girls in schools and have been starting work shops.

How often are you going to be doing these workshops?
I need to figure that out but I want to get in there a lot before they break up for summer holidays.

So are you planning on going to lots of different schools?
I’m doing 6 different schools and just setting up workshops and getting them to start bands, play and write music and also getting them to work with my lighting engineers, sound engineers, roadies etc and then at the end of the year we are going to put on a big gig that they run.

You have played many shows across the world and also appeared at various different festivals, but what would you say your main touring highlight has been so far?
Playing in Rio De Janerio it was one of the best shows that I have ever played and the crowd and people there are just so fucking cool, they go crazy and they are really loving and welcoming and you can have so much fun and the bonus is you are in Rio, so that was like the best show ever.

Bon Jovi recently stated that Apples Steve Jobs is killing off the music business with the digital revelation, what is your take on this?
About Apple?

Yeah that and digital music in general.
Yeah I would agree it’s defiantly killing off an art form and I feel sad that some people don’t even know what Vinyls are and they don’t buy CD’s and all their record collections can be deleted by the press of a button and that doesn’t make sense to me, An MP3 is usefull for playing in a dressing room and travelling around but I like having a record collection and listening to CD’s on a CD player and experiencing the artwork that people have put time and effort into, but it is the way that things are now like video killed the radio star, MP3 killed the CD.

Social network sites seem to be a big tool in the music industry these days, with artists communicating with their fans over it and some even ditching their own website and having just a social network page, what are your opinions on social networks as tools in the music industry?
I think it is a necessary tool but they can also be really annoying because everyone is a blogger now or journalist and you get people who say I think this etc and it’s really irritating but at the same time it’s really good for communicating with your fans on Twitter, My blog, Facebook etc and sometimes MySpace.

Yeah MySpace seems to be fading out now as it is slow to run and very hard to run.
Yeah.

Where do you hope to see yourself in a year’s time?
I hope to have done lots of cool stuff with the after school clubs and that some girls have started bands from it and got more confidence and that I have written a new record.

One last random question that we ask every artist, if you could be an animal out of a zebra or Giraffe which one would you be and why?
Which animals?

A Zebra or a Giraffe.
A Giraffe defiantly.

Everyone goes for Giraffe.
There better.

I prefer Zebras.
Zebras are cool but I like the long neck and the way that Giraffes run and have you seen Giraffes fighting with their necks?

No.
It’s amazing you have to YouTube it, Zebras I feel you will be much more of a prey but with a giraffe you have much more of a status.

And you can see where you are going.
You can see everything.

Thanks for your time is there a message for your fans reading this?
Thanks for the support and look out for the after school clubs and if you don’t know about Joan Jett then you should google her.

Interview By Trigger