SMOKE FAIRIES… two women with vintage guitars and a passion for REAL music.
JON ‘MOJO’ MILLS talks Jack White, Richard Hawley, acid-folk and the process of “getting there”.

Shindig!: When did you form?
Jessica: We met at school when we were 11.

SD: Who inspired you? (I can hear early ’70s hippie folk like The Trees combined with an earlier coffee house and blues styling).
J: I think music from the ’70s was something we gravitated towards because records from that time were around the house.

SD: Fave old artists/records?
Katherine: A lot of the records I remember listening to growing up were stuff like Deja Vu (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young), Joni Mitchell, Grateful Dead, some Led Zeppelin, America, that sort of thing. Later we started getting more into English folk as time went on, like Waterson & Carthy and Pentangle.

SD: Fave new artists/records?
J: We recently played a few shows on the same bill as an Australian band called Middle East and they were amazing – very much worth seeing live.

SD: How did you meet Jack White?
J: We met him in a bar in London after a gig we were playing down the road. We just wanted him to hear some of our music and we had a few of our records with us. There was a DJ there, so we asked him to play our first 7” ‘Living With Ghosts’ on the turntable. The DJ obliged.

SD: How has the association with higher-profile artists like Richard Hawley helped you?
J: We have just sung some backing vocals on Richard Hawley’s new EP, False Lights From The Land. Obviously having approval from highly respected artists is great for our profile, but it is also wonderful to have someone like that to learn and get advice from.
K: The best part was probably singing ‘Shallow Brown’, a mournful traditional sea shanty. We were all sat around a chair with Richard in the middle singing a cappella – definitely an experience we’ll remember for a long time. We also went on tour with him last year and got to play in some really atmospheric venues, travelling around Britain’s old theatres.

SD: New guitars suck don’t they? What drove you towards your early/mid-60s Hofners etc?
J: They are going to have more quirks, which will become part of a song. I think it is nice to have something with a history attached to it.
K: They just have more character in both sound and look. I started playing on an archtop Harmony and then wanted a more electric sound, so bought a Harmony Stratotone. I like the clunky warm tones and the feeling you are playing an instrument that has a unique history and sound. I think of them like a person in a way – sometimes they have their off days, they don’t like certain lighting or sound systems. They can be a bit temperamental, but so can we!

SD: Medieval England or 1920s Deep South?
J: Tricky one. Both of those times had their problems but the Deep South had moonshine.

SD: Dylan or Donovan?
K: Dylan.

SD: You’ve travelled around a lot – how has that affected your music?
K: Travelling gives you the chance to meet such a breadth of characters and find alien situations that are endlessly inspiring. We have lived in a couple of cities (New Orleans and Vancouver), and grown attached to them and then had to leave them behind. I think it’s just given us that inevitable sense of loss and disconnection that has always inspired musicians – the theme of travelling is just part of the Blues I guess. Vancouver had so much space, with its mountainous backdrop, and New Orleans with its incredible history and darkness had a kind of laid-back intensity. It’s all seeped in somehow. We are more settled in London now, but touring around brings back that familiar feeling of passing through somewhere with a feeling of slight disconnection, which I’m sure will help to inspire songs in a similar way.

SD: What’s next?
K: We are looking forward to playing Green Man and End Of The Road Festivals. We have also just played at Richard Thompson’s Meltdown at The Royal Festival Hall and the Serpentine Sessions with Laura Marling, who we’ve just finished touring with around the US. Our album is due for release in September so we’ll be very busy around that time as well.
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