A
couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to interview The Puppini Sisters for my
job with The Vintage News. They were
mid-way through their winter tour and were stopping off in Brighton at St
George's church in Kemp Town. The start
of the evening didn't go quite to plan - their car broke down on the way to
Brighton which meant that instead of interviewing them at 6, we eventually had
our chat at half past ten. The ladies
were so lovely - you wouldn't even know they'd just spent four hours in a
Little Chef! It did mean that we were able
to enjoy the whole concert - with the entire first floor gallery of the gorgeous
17th century church to ourselves.
After
the concert, with the furniture being packed away around us, I managed to grab
a few words with Marcella Puppini, Kate Mullins and Emma Smith. I must apologise for the wording of some of
the questions. I was quite tired (it was
10.30 and I hadn't had any dinner!) and I basically forgot how to put words in
their proper order!
So,
the interview...
Sadie Doherty (Me) - Hello, I'm here with The Puppini Sisters. How do you think the gig went?
Marcella Puppini - It was great fun for us, so if it was great
fun for us, there is a good chance that everybody else had fun as well.
Emma Smith - It's definitely a good
sign if we're having fun!
SD - How has your sound changed since the last album?
MP - Well... we actually evolve
constantly. Obviously, we have a new member
in the band; Emma, so that is bound to bring changes and they are all wonderful
changes. And we evolve with whatever we
listen to, with whatever we love. At the
moment, we are very interested in four-to-the-floor...
Kate Mullins - Yeah, giving it a disco
beat definitely helps [us when performing] live, to give it that energy and
people actually then stand up and start dancing to it.
SD - I did notice that quite a few [of the] songs sound different to how are
on the album...
KM - We must've done Boogie
Woogie Bugle Boy I don't know how many thousands of times... Mr Sandman, you know,
all of those kind of songs so many times. For us, we just need to keep it interesting...
and fun so we enjoy singing them.
ES - It's important to keep it
varied for our regular audience. They
want to hear a bit of variety, they want to witness our sound changing with the
years as well. That's the whole part, the whole point of being a fan of a band -
you get to witness their development.
KM - We always write a set list
assuming that somebody's come last year and the year before and you want to try
and keep it fresh.
SD - It's the tenth anniversary of the Puppini Sisters soon, are there plans
for a big celebration?
MP - Ooh, we hadn't thought
about it, so thank you for that!
ES - Marcella always cooks lamb
of leg at any...
KM & MP - Lamb of leg?!
[all
laughing]
ES - Lamb of leg?! No, leg of
lamb! ...at any kind of celebration, she's whipping out the legs.
MP - Yep, all legs!
KM - Yeah, we'll have to think
about it. We should commemorate it,
you're right.
SD - So you have done quite a bit in America (apologies for such poor wording),
do you get a different reaction over there?
KM - Yeah
MP - Well for them, it's
more... it's part of their heritage, so they know it really well. Everybody knows who all the sisters groups
are. They say [in an American accent] 'oh,
that arrangement, that was The Andrews Sisters, wasn't that The Boswells?' ... 'no,
actually that was us'. They really want to get involved.
ES - yeah, they're really in to
it, it's a really big deal out there
SD - One of the reasons you've spent a fair bit of time in America is
Michael Bublé. How did that all come about?
KM - He asked us! He said he'd been listening to our Christmas
album whilst exercising for the last couple of years and decided to do... well,
I think he decided to do one of his own a long time ago. But you know, ended up
taking three or four of the same songs as from our album. And we took that as a nice compliment and then
he also very kindly asked us to come and collaborate on Jingle Bells. So we had
a fab time, a fab time.
ES - And we're on his new album
as well; To Be Loved and that's a track that we did called Nevertheless which
is a Dean Martin tribute.
KM - Yeah, he's very talented, [a]
very, very nice guy, we've thoroughly enjoyed working with him
ES - Yeah we do love him
SD - Apart from Michael Bublé, you've done a few other collaborations - not
necessarily musically, but Vivienne Westwood for the Jilted video and Janie
Bryant [who designed] your costumes for the Hollywood tour. How was it working with them?
KM - She's [Janie Bryant]
amazing, she's a lovely, lovely lady as well, we're still in contact.
MP - Yeah, Janie [is] really
talented, she's got such an eye and she can capture the look with nothing. She doesn't need to even get proper vintage,
she'll find things that look vintage and she has [the look] completely.
SD - She seems to have really
honed her craft working on Mad Men.
KM - God yeah, she knows what
she's doing.
MP - And she's really good fun
as well.
ES - Which you have to be if you
want to hang out with us!
SD - It's really nice watching you live because a lot of bands will just
say 'this is this song, here it is', but you really interact with the audience...
KM - Well, today we were
slightly hysterical because we broke down on our way here, so there was a lot of
pent up 'arrggggh'...
SD - We should say that the car
broke down rather than you broke down!
KM - No, no, not us! The vehicle
broke down, but inadvertently, we may also have broken down.
MP - We did.
ES - We spent four hours in a
Little Chef is Warwick
MP - [a little despondent] I broke down
there...
KM - So there was a little bit
of hysteria to the banter today, but nonetheless we do always try and keep it
as fresh as possible and really try and listen to the audience and interact
with how they're feeling.
SD - What is next for The Puppini Sisters?
KM - We've got a lot of plans,
we're working with lots of different producers and working on lots of different
sounds.
ES - there may be a new album
in the pipeline, so watch this space
SD - When you are writing new material, how does the process go? Do you all
sit down together or do you go off separately?
MP - It used to be that
everybody would write separately and that worked really well. But then we decided to try writing together a
little bit more and that is working brilliantly. We've been collaborating with other people as
well, [it] is always great to bring in fresh ideas. We tended to be a little one stop shop, each
of us - we can write, arrange and produce pretty much - [even] sew the
costumes!
MP - We're going to Germany...
KM - We're going to raid the Christmas
markets for presents.
MP - And then that's it! Then it's
turkeys for about two weeks...
KM - ... Goose! We're a goose
band not a turkey band!
MP - Oh yeah, you're doing
goose. I've never had a turkey in my
life, I'm Italian - we have pork. Just
as an aside - do with it what you will!
Thank you to Marcella, Kate and Emma (and to Tom and Jenny for setting up the interview).
Just
in case you were wondering, I was wearing a wool, Betty Levay dress with a lovely
grapes/leaves brooch I was given. I'm
also pretty pleased with my hair, I didn't have time to re-set it after the Chap
Ball so I just had to brush it out.
