 Candie
Payne’s debut album, I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, showcases her soulful
sound that harks back to the ‘60s and has seen her compared to Dusty
Springfield. As well as winning critical acclaim (almost making the Mercury
Music Prize shortlist apparently) the Liverpudlian also attracted the attention
of hot shot producer of the moment Mark Ronson, who had also worked on Amy
Winehouse’s Back To Black album. He produced her latest single, One More
Chance.
“We’re on the same record label, and he heard
my record in somebody’s office or somebody’s car or something like that and he
really, really liked it,” she explains. “Whoever he heard it with said there’s one more track that we’re trying
to get on the album but she doesn’t like it and said do you want work on it,
try and do something with it because we think it could be a single. He said yes
and that was it”.
When
your two older brothers are in the music industry it makes sense that you
should follow shouldn’t it? Not so for the singer-songwriter, whose brother Sean
is the drummer in the Zutons and other brother, Howie was the frontman of cult
band The Stands. Not wanting to be seen to copy her brothers, Candie, who lived
in New York
as a child from the ages of six to ten, set off on a different career path,
deciding to become an illustrator or fashion designer instead. That was until
she attended art college.
“I was really at the point where I was hoping
to improve technically. I felt like I’d tapped into my creative side and I knew
where to get inspiration from, but there was, it was literally a technical
thing, I wanted to get better. The technical side – I wanted to be able to
express the things that I wanted to, but I didn’t feel I quite had the ability.
To be able to progress to that point I needed somebody to teach me and it
wasn’t about that at all, it was like a very cattle market mentality to it,”
she reveals. “You did one thing for a
day, like you’d do crafts for a day and the next day you’d move on to something
else and that was it. I just didn’t like
it. For me it was quite a serious thing and I had to be able across what I
wanted to, to be able to express myself. I couldn’t sit there and talk about
Big Brother while I was trying to pour my heart out on to the paper. It just
wasn’t for me, how I go about doing things. It makes you question a lot of
things”.
Around
the same time she was at college, Candie worked at Resurrection, a vintage
store in the centre of town. “It was
known in Liverpool as being the best place to
get good jeans. Like Paul Weller came in once and famously brought about ten
pairs jeans because he couldn’t find any other in the cut that he liked. It was
a one of a kind store, so it did bring in creative types,” she fondly remembers.
”One of the most important things about
the shop was the music we used to play because people would always comment on
the music they’d bring us records in to play and demos to listen to and stuff
like that. We had a coffee machine and we used to make coffee for the customers
and chat about stuff. It was dead important to me, that time. I did a lot of
growing up while I was there”.
“And obviously I got free clothes!” she
laughs.
In
music though she finally found an outlet from which she could express herself
and it was a performance with her boyfriend’s band Tramp Attack that convinced her. “When I
was on stage with them there was a moment where I felt this is what I should be
doing, this makes sense, of course,” she reveals “You know sometimes when you
look back at things in hindsight and at the time and nothing made sense and you
couldn’t see why things were happening for what reason and then when you look
back it’s like of course it was absolutely obvious!”
With
that realisation, the next step was to write song, something Candie had never
done before. She teamed up with producer
Simon Dine who was introduced to her via long time friend Gary Bandit. “He was saying there’s this guy who wants to
write with you but you need to write lyrics and I was just like I can’t do
this. I’ve never written lyrics before,” she recalls. “He was just ‘go on do it, I’m sure you can. Just give yourself two weeks
and see what you can get out of it and if you really can’t do it then we’ll
leave it, but I want you to try it. So
then I just set to work and I was just absolutely amazed that I had it in me, that
I was able to do it. And I really enjoyed and it was tapping into another part
of me, I hadn’t realised was there before”.
With
a much lauded album under her belt, things are going well for the
songstress and Candie is happy with the positive she’s received.
“Yeah, so far I’ve never had any negative
responses from all quarters and that just been amazing,” she says. “You judge yourself ultimately, and it’s for
you to be proud of, but when we put it out there for the people to hear it then
belongs to them, it’s not yours anymore. So when like it, whether it’s Mark
Ronson or someone who’s brought the album and liked it, it’s so just
nice to get that feedback”.
One More
Chance is out on 3rd September.
For more
info: www.candiepayne.com or
www.myspace.com/candiepayne
Words: Helen Duong
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