Acoustic Guitar
Acoustic Guitar
Flyte | The Acoustic Guitar Podcast Sessions
Catch up with London-based indie folk duo Flyte in this bonus Acoustic Guitar Sessions episode. We talk first and favorite guitars, writing for two voices, and enjoy a performance of “Chelsea Smiles” from their latest album. Visit Flyte’s website to hear more of their music.
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Welcome to the Acoustic Guitar Podcast. I'm your host, Nick Grizzle, for this bonus Acoustic Guitar Sessions minisode. I had the pleasure of catching up with London-based indie folk duo Flyte. We talked about their first and favorite guitars, writing for two voices, and much more. Flight kicks things off with a performance of "Chelsea Smiles from their latest self-titled album.
Flyte:The West End and the Blue's rolling the windows down. This is our town. Nothing will ever stop us now, because when we're in blue once in a while, chelsea smiles, chelsea's hands on the bonnet of her riot fan, on the corner scorned for a beating. There'll be meeting Chelsea's eyes making trouble under Chelsea's skies, calling all her D-announcement speakers, rating the lost and found. Because this is our town, nothing will ever stop us now, because when we're in blue once in a while, oh, chelsea smiles.
Will Taylor:I'm Nick. Will: yes and I'm Will, and together we are Flyte.
Nick Grizzle:How did each of you get started playing guitar and what brought you together?
Nick Hill:I think we actually have a very similar story about how we started playing guitar. Will: do we? Yeah? Nick: Well, we both had the same sort of 15 pound guitar from Argos, 50 quid.
Will Taylor:Was it 50? Yeah, it was 50 quid. Nylon classical guitar from Argos which is like your Sears catalogue and it's like the most... It's the most non-committal thing that your parents can do if you say that you're wanting to start the guitar. Yeah, and you're, I was. I was a 10, 11? Will: I think I was about 11, 12.
Will Taylor:Nick: Yeah and they're like well, let's see. So let's get you this 50 quid hunk of junk from Argos and see how it goes. I got a lot of miles out of that. Will: I got a full-size. Nick: but did you get a?
Nick Hill:full-size one, I got a little mini kids one.
Will Taylor:Yeah, I got the full size.
Nick Hill:But maybe that's why mine was 15 quid and yours was 50.
Will Taylor:Maybe. Maybe that's why I'm more legendary than you are on the guitar. Nick: Yeah, that might be that way.
Nick Hill:That's what it is, dang shots fired.
Nick Grizzle:What brought you guys together to play music?
Will Taylor:It's kind of a slightly... it's a story of a few chapters because we actually did know each other initially from being in the kind of council run musical theater like every Saturday morning when you're a kid. Very bad productions of West Side Story and Half a Sixpence, and but there was, I remember, guitars flinging around then at that point already.
Nick Hill:Yeah.
Will Taylor:But we would then again then. The second phase of that was that we went to different state schools and there was a battle of the bands and Nick's band beat my band in Battle of the Bands and then years later then we actually were collaborating. So there were a few little little steps to get there.
Flyte:Yeah, run-ins.
Will Taylor:When enemies become friends. Yeah.
Nick Grizzle:I love that kind of story. Can you tell us a little bit about your process for songwriting? Do you write songs individually? Is it more collaborative together from the get-go? How do you go about it?
Will Taylor:For both these days. It's very collaborative. I mean, where we're talking to now is sort of where we do. We write songs for other people too, and in you know, when we're not writing songs for the flight records Because we like to avoid using production early on at all, you know even actually when making the latest Flyte record, we didn't, I'd say, use production necessarily. We did it with tape and the desk.
Nick Hill:And we didn't demo anything at all.
Will Taylor:No demos or anything like that. So our process is very much based on acoustic guitars and voices. And when we write for other people, even if they're like big pop people, one of our things I guess that they're getting from us is that they come around to my flat and they sit here at this table and we write with acoustic guitars and there aren't you know what we consider the distractions of logic or pro tools, you know, and building up the sound too soon, making sure the actual song itself is solidified at its core and the important things are there, and then you can take that song and it can then, you know, step up a gear outside of the context of you know, I think it's made us better players as well.
Nick Hill:Acoustic players we sort of we sort of learn how to kind of arrange entire songs, kind of just with two acoustic guitars, because when you're playing guitar and writing a song it becomes pretty monotonous. You start playing the song over and over again and you sort of start coming up with parts to make it more interesting. And I think a lot of our arrangements and melodies, that the counter melodies and stuff, are just from just sort of messing up, mucking about why we're trying to, you know, get the lyrics. Yeah, at the time that's such a good point.
Will Taylor:And with two guitars I mean even with one guitar you have the, you have the, the entire scope really of you know, low and high and everything in between, and when you have two you can create every kind of harmony and counter melody you can. Yeah yeah, when we're touring and we haven't come with a band, when we're with the band, nick is on bass and he's part of the rhythm section. I'm on lead guitar, rhythm guitar. Nick: don't tell them that Will: Bass yeah.
Nick Hill:Oh, we're talking to a guy.
Flyte:I forget who we're talking to here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, full strings for life.
Nick Grizzle:You know it's, it's all good, you know stringed instruments we're a fan of here Is it now Is it?
Will Taylor:But then you know, when it's just the two of us sometimes if we're opening on tour for someone, especially in the States, because it's a very expensive thing at this point for us to go out with a full band we'll actually just make it as we are as writers and we'll go on stage with two of us, with two acoustics, and we'll actually use the acoustics as extra voices. Like Nick, for instance, will tune his lower strings down so he can represent the bass and then play up high simultaneously. And I can kind of cover the middle ground and in a sense, what we were able to do is sort of represent the, you know, like a full band arrangement, but within two acoustics. No.
Nick Grizzle:So Will? You said in an interview once that you think of your guitars as actual voices rather than just strings to strum chords on, and I kind of wanted to dig into that a little bit and ask how you develop guitar parts that just aren't like typical accompaniments.
Will Taylor:You know, like you said, you know, we've been writing, we've been writing a lot with Madison Cunningham recently and she and well, we were all three of us kind of like bonded over the fact that it's like we're very shape-based.
Will Taylor:You know, we always like to rely on, like, the shapes we know and then what we can do with the shapes and we can change the tunings and some of those shapes mean something different and we become quite reliant on shapes.
Will Taylor:But what's quite nice is is Is, I'd say, in the you know more recently, what we, especially on this last record, what we've been able to do with chord shapes and chord voicings is really just like lead with the top line, lead with the melody and lead with where we kind of feel we want the chord to go, and we might have to just invent, seemingly invent the chord like, invent the shape that we need, that's required for the purpose of the melody and the harmony that's in our heads.
Will Taylor:So that's been a nice thing. Like I think for the first time a huge kind of wealth of new shapes and movements and and kind of tools on the, on the guitar have kind of emerged from just having to sort of I don't know piece together the right notes we think we want to hear and you know, I don't think either of us are people that can, you know, entirely speak the language of musical theory. So you know it's not like oh, at the ninth and the sixth, and then the augmented to something, or that. You know, it's like it's still we're still just using our ears and we're still guessing to a certain extent, and that's been a very lovely new world to step into.
Nick Hill:Yeah, I think, I think our first producer that we worked with on our first album had Really instilled a good thing with acoustic guitar, which is that and every and arranging in general, is that everything has to hold melody and everything should be there for a reason. I think with acoustic guitar not going for, you know, so something that's just padding basically just like to something that's just sort of to like constant or anything like that, so you have to like add and then still rid the man melody into all guitar parts, I think, to make it really. That's what at least what we try to do, to make it same.
Will Taylor:Yeah, just a gen general sort of strumming pattern is very upsetting to us these days.
Nick Grizzle:I'd say, I saw that, that song, that video that you did with Madison, especially the making of it. It was so fun to watch from a musician's perspective, seeing that creative process and then, honestly, the recording is so satisfying to listen to after seeing that because it came out so well. Who are some artists that have influenced you like over the years and that kind of are influencing you now?
Will Taylor:Good question, I think. I think it's been a funny one with influence because, well, for me I'm not gonna speak for Nick but, like for me, the, the influence is growing up in my teens and very much in my own terms, my parents weren't particularly influential with what music I was introduced to, which is a good and a bad thing. I think took me maybe a little longer to find my find those old artists that you know were worth listening to throughout my teenage years, but I was very, I was very much fixated on the past in terms of the things that were making me excited, and I would say Paul Simon was a really big influence in terms of being a guitar player. And you know, I guess songwriters that you used that used the guitar. You know, I mean, you could you say that about so many of the great songwriters at that time? They were using the guitar in wonderful ways, Joni Mitchell, for instance.
Will Taylor:And I think there was a period of time in which it felt a little bit like I was a little lost in terms of who the contemporary influences were, and I think that perhaps we've reached a point when I mean just generally in the world, there's a point has been reached when enough people like us, who had that same conundrum, have all started making their own music. And now there's like loads of inspiring people, I think you know, writing songs and playing guitar in particular ways or just making music in general, who have this wonderful wealth of influence and and and some people who are clearly very, very influenced sort of solely by past, past things, but they're alive now and they're making music now and they are fresh still. I think that Adrianne Lenker is a good example of that.
Nick Grizzle:Let's talk about your guitars, the actual instruments that you play. What, what guitars do you typically play and what do you like about them?
Will Taylor:They're in the room right now. You know what's interesting is. This one that's sat right here is quite crucial guitar in terms of the sound that we have on the last two records.
Nick Hill:It's a beautiful J45 Gibson guitar. I think it's 50s, I think it's like late 50s.
Will Taylor:It's absolutely lovely. It's a 1958, I think, j45. And then this is the Martin D35, 1973. So these two are the guitars that we've used. This one is actually my girlfriend Billy's. She's an artist called Billy Martin. She passed me that Gibson because this is one of the ones where it just has a distinctive sound. It's very hard to top this guitar. But there's a song called Everyone's a Winner. [plays] It's a song called Even on Bad Days, which is on the new record. [plays] It's a bit out of tune.
Nick Hill:It's got a lovely dark woody instant... It's one of the nicest recorded acoustic guitars I've ever had in my life.
Will Taylor:Anyway, yeah, I think the video we gave you guys there, or Perfect Dark, actually is the guitar that was being used and Nick was playing on the Martin D35. But I think a really really strong kind of character in obviously its age. But then obviously on top of that it is a fantastically made guitar even at the time, just a very reliable. You know, it's uncontroversial, but we do use these guitars on stage and off in the studio and everywhere else, just because it's very tricky to kind of do anything else really once you've gone there. Our sound engineer in the recording studio is called Dom Monks. He records, like Big Thief, for instance, very beautifully, his particular skill, which actually he learned from Ethan Johns, who you saw producing Madison and I, so the Perfect Dark documentary. In fact I think Dom pops in at the end and listens because he's working with Michael Kiwanuka in the other room and he's such a well, him and Ethan, both just beautiful, just sound engineers.
Will Taylor:You know, in the most sort of bog standard way you can think of. They are just phenomenal at putting a mic in front of something and just making sure that it comes out sounding like a record that Perfect Dark version with Madison at Rack with Ethan. It's not produced. You know, we just worked out the arrangement, stood in front of the microphones, sang the song. I think we sang it twice. We picked the second take and he bounced it off the tape machine and that was it. That was the mix. There was no production. I don't think I even saw him twiddling EQ or anything.
Nick Hill:That was just the end of it, yeah sticking the right mic in front of the right thing.
Will Taylor:Yeah, and I think to be able to work in that way, I think guitars like this are a part of it Totally.
Nick Hill:Yeah, it's crucial, I think, and they complement each other so well. It's like the dark Gibson just sort of giving this woody and the Martin is sort of a little brighter. The Martin is quite posh sounding. Yeah, it is, it's quite posh and sort of like.
Will Taylor:And I know that they're a little unfashionable, those early 70s D35s but it's just a workhorse, it just works. It just sounds fantastic. Especially if you're lowering the tuning a little bit, it really starts to sing in a very special way.
Nick Grizzle:Can you tell us a little bit about what "Chelsea smiles is about yes.
Will Taylor:Yes, there's words. There's a quite long story. That's why we paused and looked at yeah, well, obviously. Well, chelsea smiles as a thing is an act of football violence the Chelsea fans would do to. Yeah.
Nick Hill:They would slit your mouth to make it a big smile, both sides your lip other, the Joker, smile.
Will Taylor:That would be a move that the Chelsea fans, at one point or another, would do to their rivals. So a Chelsea smile, so it's like a pretty, it's a pretty sinister thing to sing about. But, um, you know, really we just love that phrase because of how many meanings it held. You know, had you know three, three and four maybe angles you could use with how that. So actually, you know what we, what we did is we wrote many different versions of a song but we actually had the, the chord progression and the melody there for for some time and you know, not long before we went to record the, the last record, we, we managed to get the lyrics done, kind of pretty much in the nick of time, and we would write them down on the South Bank in London, which is a beautiful view of London. So you know, kind of up on the balcony, the tape, modern, near St Paul's, and so there was a kind of a sort of sense that we wanted to write about London itself.
Will Taylor:The murder mile which is referenced is the street we live on, is Clapton, clapton Road, which is the, the street you go up if you were going to go watch Tottenham play, and so you know, there's just a lot of like geographical references to the parts of London we live, and also Chelsea is in the West London, which is, which is what we would consider, a very posh area of London. We wouldn't go, it'd be quite an upper-class part of of London or always famously has been known, you know, in the last few decades, as as somewhere where quite wealthy people live, you know, and there's a lot of money there, and East London, I suppose, is sort of sort of the opposite, so. So there's also a kind of East and West Rivalry thing happening there and there's that, you know it's nodding to a lot. And then we also wrote a version of the song you know as just a straight football football song, you know, and then kind of mashed it all together.
Nick Hill:There's is also there's also just a girl's name. It's a love song about a girl called Chelsea.
Will Taylor:Yeah, yeah, who's into her music and you know I like the sound of her, you know. And so it's really just a collage of all the different versions of the song we could have written kind of mashed together and we thought there was a kind of a lovely poetry in that and I think that the fact that the melody and harmony of the song itself does such a lot of work, it's a very, it's a very kind of meandering and quite complicated... Quite sinister as well, piece of music and, yeah, with definitely some sinister undertones in the harmony itself, we felt like it was best to not write anything on the nose in terms of the lyrical content.
Nick Grizzle:To hear more from Flyte. Be sure to check the show notes for this episode. If you're enjoying the acoustic guitar podcast, please head over to our patreon page at patreon-dot-com-s lash- acoustic guitar plus. This is a listener funded show, and your pledge of one or five or nine dollars a month helps us continue to produce new episodes. Plus, you'll get instant access to a whole bunch of great perks like exclusive live stream workshops, song transcriptions, and guitar lessons. If you aren't able to make a contribution at this time, we understand. Another way you can support the show without spending any money is to leave a five-star rating along with a review on Apple podcasts. This really does help more guitarists find our show, and the more guitarists who tune in each month, the better. Thanks for listening and for your support of the acoustic guitar podcast. The acoustic guitar podcast is brought to you by the team at acoustic guitar magazine. I'm your host, Nick Grizzle. The acoustic guitar podcast is directed and edited by Joey Lusterman. Tanya Gonzalez is our producer. Executive producers are Lyzy Lusterman and Stephanie Campos Dalbroi.
