Katrina Leskanich - 'Hearts, Loves & Babys' - the voice of the Waves shines a light
ALBUM REVIEW
The storm-force vocals of Katrina Leskanich have been making waves since the ‘80s, from the 1983 break-out success of ‘Walking On Sunshine’ to the band’s sunset album 'Walk On Water’ that spawned 1997’s Eurovision winning ‘Love Shine A Light’.
Having released her rather lovely 2015 solo album, ‘Blisland’, under her full-name, surf’s up in 2020, as an ich-less Katrina returns to shore, with a beefed-up sound and a new album of songs. ‘Hearts, Loves and Babys’ recalls the bright and breezy days of the Waves and it could be the best pop-rock album I’ve heard all year.
What’s remarkable, is the strength and depth of the songwriting, with nine of the ten tracks written by this long-time anglophile and London resident. The spirit of the album draws you into Katrina’s world, with subjects spanning the complexity of life, love and family to the joyful simplicity of jumping into your car and hitting the open road.
Her voice is as strong as ever, combining the emotive punch of Heart's Ann Wilson and the assertive attitude of Debbie Harry, particularly on lead-single ‘Drive’. It’s a ‘time to feel good’ album for sure, with fun, uplifting tunes aplenty, including the sunny ‘Holiday’ and jaunty ‘Every Step’.
Yet, there are hidden depths to this pool of songs that demand repeat immersion. The strident ‘I Want To Love Again’ has poignant origins, after close friend Sam Fox asked her to write something for her after her partner had died from cancer. The only cover song featured, is ‘I Can't Give You Anything But Love’ sung with verve and poise in deference to Judy Garland’s perhaps definitive version. The album closes with ‘Willing’. This is not the pattering of Little Feat’s tales of weed, whites and wine, rather an epic tale of long-distance longing. It’s an utterly breathtaking way to conclude and sung with mesmerising soul, fuelled by the searing lead guitar of Darren Loveday.
INTERVIEW
Decibel Report’s Andy Rawll spoke to Katrina about the album and much more besides, including tales of fabulous poodles, circus freaks, potato snacks, poppadoms, dolly mixtures, dinosaurs, Cornwall and California dreaming.
AR: The new album 'Hearts, Loves and Babys' has much more of a rocked-up feel that its predecessor 2015's 'Blisland' .
KL: I look at the songs with a view to do them on stage and how we can make those great. For the last few years, I've put my focus on the live shows and I've got a really good band, so I was thinking, what would be fun to play, like the single 'Drive' and 'Holiday' that has that singalong Celtic thing. I just wanted hooks galore and nothing too complicated. Once I'd check those off the list I ended-up writing some revealing out-and-out love songs, which I'd never really done before. It was a bit of a departure for me. I love Chrissie Hynde and Deborah Harry, so I love the hooks and I like the rock and to combine them both
AR: That's really noticeable with 'Drive' that gets the album motoring in full-throttled style.
KL: I just love Blondie's 'Maria'. I wanted that energy. When I first wrote the chord progression on the guitar, I thought this is definitely a driving song, a car song. Then I analysed my obsession with needing to be the person that's always behind the wheel. I'll do any thing, even bribe people, just to be the one who's driving. Although the song was written before the pandemic and lockdown, it works so well for now. It's one of the places I can be free and I don't have to wear a mask. I can feel like a normal person again when I'm behind the wheel
AR: The song combines that Blondie-esque East Coast attitude with a breezy West Coast style. I can picture myself driving down Pacific Coast Highway, listening to that song, with the ocean on my right and the big trees and mountains on the left-hand side.
KL: That's my favourite thing to do. To fly into somewhere like Phoenix or Denver, rent a car, hit the road and not even have a plan. It feels good to put your foot down and to feel free. It's that quintessential American road trip that we all pine for. That's what I'm doing, when all this is over. I'll head to the West Coast and get on Route 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) and drive from one little cheap motel to the next.
AR: Tell me more about the two contrasting songs that pay tribute to your mother that appear on the album.
KL: They represent opposite ends of the spectrum. We were a military family, so we moved every two years. My mother had six children and we lived in base housing in Georgia and Florida. Back then we didn't have the luxuries, we didn't even have air conditioning and it was a hard life. Her dream, when she was young was to join the circus. So she wrote to the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey circus. Living in Kansas, the circus was everything back in the 1950s, it was the big dream. "I want to join the circus, I want to be a hotdog in a bun". This Italian trapeze artist wrote back and said "listen Katherine you need to do the right thing - get married and have children - this is a hard life for a woman". My mother was allergic to dust, hay and everything. Can you imagine? She was highly allergic to horses as well.
She was crazy, so I thought let's have fun with it in a song. I embraced that. I feel that I've inherited some of that lunacy. It's really fun to break loose, like in the song ‘Crazy Mama’, although obviously it is a little exaggerated. On the other hand, my mother suffered a very slow and painful death from cervical cancer. She lost two daughters as well, which was a tragedy for the family. In the end, I was at her death bed and she was just hanging on and I said: ‘Mama, just go, you can move on’ and that's what inspired the song 'Move On'. I just didn't see that one coming. I didn't want to write, let alone talk about this.
You turn sixty years old and you stop giving such a damn about things, the way you look, what you write about, what you sing about. There is a certain amount of freedom with age. I don't read anything about myself on the internet or, God forbid, Google myself. I'll make comments on Twitter, but that's about it. I think that whole social media circus can be very damaging to people now. There is a certain amount of freedom and when you've not written a song for six years and your conscience taps you on the shoulder and says: ‘It's about time, aren't you going to do something creative or just do something else?’
AR: Yes, some of the lyrics are quite inspired. In 'Crazy Mama' there's the first reference that I've every heard in a song to the delights of "chicken tikka and a poppadom"
KL: ..let alone ‘a shot of Stoli and a pack of Pom Bears’. I can't believe how many people don't know what Pom Bears are. It's a little German snack that you give to kids, shaped like little bears They're a potato snack, like a crisp. So, yes that's the craziness coming out. I just love how those words sound and who's going to be offended by a chicken tikka?
AR: Many people associate you with fun songs and powerful, uplifting and some might say strident vocals. What I loved on this album are things like the yin and the yang of 'Crazy Mama' and 'Move On', juxtaposed. What comes across is the surprising variety in your voice. You have the Blondie side, with the real urban attitude, but there's also the wistful side that packs a powerful emotive punch, that reminded me a bit of Ann Wilson.
KL: I love Ann Wilson, I grew up listening to Heart. You said you didn't want to say strident, but I would like you to say strident, because one of my favourite singers is Mama Cass Elliot, who was a strident and very purposeful singer. She was straight out there and in your face. She was a folk singer, where it's very important that the melody and lyrics are heard. My favourite song of all time is 'It's getting better', it's just gorgeous.
I do like to belt it out a little bit too. The first band I was in, called Mama's Cookin', did covers and we played on the military bases, when I first moved to England in 1976. I was sixteen years old, but I was managing the band as well. We were playing Heart, Pat Benatar, Linda Ronstadt, Eagles, ZZ Top and all that kind of stuff. I was selling us as an American band, because they didn't have any American bands playing around the bases, it would be too expensive to fly them over, and we were already in situ, so we were the perfect package. It's where I really learnt how to emulate singers like Ann Wilson, Linda Rondstadt and Deborah Harry, as well as Chrissie Hynde, whom I look up to.
AR: It's a ten track album, nine of which are originals that you've written or co-written and there's one cover version 'I Can't Give You Anything But Love', which a classic song that dates all the way back to the late ‘20s
KL: It's a very, very old and wonderful song. I was doing a Christmas show for one of those ‘80s ensemble shows, like 'Lets Rock' or 'Rewind', and they said: ‘OK you can do a Christmas song’. Kim Wilde had taken all the best Christmas songs, so I thought I could take that song and start it with ‘...now that it is Christmas’ (rather than ‘birthday’, as in the most other versions). When I recorded it for the album, I changed the lyrics back. I really love the guitar solo in it, the whole feeling of it. It's Darren Loveday, who's a very elegant and smooth player. The song just puts a smile on my face. It's just easy and just bounces along and it makes me feel good, so it had to be there. As much though I would love to have an album, where everything was written by me, I wanted to honour Judy Garland and that beautiful song.
AR: There've been many covers of that song over the years, most recently the duet by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, do you have a favourite version ?
KL: It's going to be Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall from 1961, without doubt. She had the intro custom written for her, as she liked to do a little narration with the intro, and I love that, it just sets it up. There also all those references from the ‘50s as well, like: ‘...I can't get you a Thunderbird or a penthouse with a view’ she even mentions Woolworths. I just love all the nostalgia of all those lyrics.
AR: Even at the back-end, where some albums tend to slow-down, you have some of the strongest songs, like 'Every Step', which has an alternative rock vibe, with the guitar riff a little like U2.
KL: It's intensely energetic, without really cutting loose, because of the nature of how the song was written. It holds an enormous amount of tension in the energy of the song. I wanted it to be epic and to have that fantastic beat. Within it, there are a lot of lyrics that talk about my love of the South West coast of the UK, particularly around Cornwall. All of the little references to ‘sea-breeze and sunshine, green mountains and sand dunes. Lessons in beauty, so moved by the moon’ that was all inspired by Cornwall. It's a wonderful place and it's the opposite to London, where I live. It's completely rock and roll, unspoiled and cool...if you go far enough. Sure, there are places that have become congested and are starting to look like new London, but I know where to go, where it's rugged and it's off-the-beaten-track and nobody's found it yet. I'm not going to mention it, but it's not Land's End.
AR: You have quite a connection with Cornwall, I read that it was one of the first places in the UK that you played with the Waves around 1982.
KL: I think we were called just The Waves at that time, because it hadn't dawned on us that there was a girl singer and that was something that would garner more interest than just another band with a guy singer of which there were a multitude at the time. Yes, it was our very first gig. We drove all the way out there in our Volkswagen Bus to the White Horse in Launceston.
AR: Coming up to date, you've become an author with your Metropoodle books about your travels with your fabulous poodle Peggy-Lee.
KL: I live in London and I'm always coming across all these off-the-beaten-track pubs, bars, coffee shops, parks - anything that's a little bit special. I thought it would be really cute if I made it about the Poodle, because who wants to look at me ? You stick a poodle in front of it and suddenly it comes to life. It was a fun project, saying "chicken" all the time to get her attention. If you want to get a poodle to turn their head in a cute way, you blow a raspberry at them. You learn all the tricks of the trade. Then, it just seemed obvious to go to Cornwall and to do a book about a place that I love so much with all the beautiful beaches, coves, the little tea-shops. We then thought we'd call it ‘Metropoodle - my Cornwall guide’ and build it from there. Somehow, there was a little confusion about the dog being called Peggy-Lee, with people asking ‘is this the singer?’. ‘Yeah right, that's the singer in the Red Lion last year!’ So we used Metropoodle because we thought that we could do one in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland...then we had a crazy idea to do one for all fifty US states, which might have been a bit tedious...’so, here we are in Idaho’.
AR: It's kind of ironic, in your family you're the one that did end up running away with the rock and roll circus
KL: Exactly, and you'd think that I would have got more support for it from my mother of all people. She was scared to death for me. She thought it was a terrible idea. It wasn't until 'Walking On Sunshine' was a hit. The biggest, proudest moment for her, was when we won Eurovision because then all her neighbours were talking about it. My parents lived in Norfolk, and were kind of remote and the neighbours were saying: ‘can we get your daughter's autograph?’.
They were going to come all the way out to Ireland for the Eurovision song contest in 1997 and park-up the trailer. There was a point when I said: ‘you're not going anywhere’. That's the craziness. They were going to come to the show in their caravan. Can you imagine if the press got hold of that? ‘Here's Katrina's parents now, cooking hot-dogs over the grill’.
AR: Of course, there wasn't a contest this year, but there was a celebration of all the songs and a new version of 'Love Shine The Light' that featured all the singers from this year, with you and Peggy-Lee singing the final line of the song.
KL: I had no idea where it was going or what was happening with it. If I had taken it a bit more seriously, maybe I would've sung it in time. It's completely out of time with the backing track behind it, but I had no idea what the concept was going to be. They kind of vaguely said it was going to be 'Europe Shine The Light'. The orchestra's going to play 'Shine The Light' then everybody's going to take a line. I thought, this sounds like a disaster, but it worked out really, really well. In fact, I think that 'Love Shine A Light' got a better look-in in 2020 than when we won it in 1997. Back then there seemed to be a lack of fanfare about it all because we were competing with a certain Tony Blair, who came to office on the same day on May 3rd.
AR: Yes, in a similar landslide vote to your own at Eurovision.
KL: It was all about that. I was with Terry Wogan at the airport when we were coming back from Dublin where the contest had been held. He said: ‘You've got to be careful, there's going to be lots of press, stick by me kid’. We arrived at Heathrow and not a sausage, not a soul, no-one. So it was really fun in 2020 that the song got a look-in. It was kind of poignant and emotional. It worked so well for the occasion, where everybody's feeling a bit droopy and bummed-out because of the pandemic, and rightly so. It was a great evening for 'Love Shine The Light'.
AR: In the context of your original hit 'Walking On Sunshine', there've been a few covers. Have you heard the Dolly Parton version ?
KL: Yes, (sings with a Dolly-style country twang) ‘...well, I used to think maybe you loved me’. She even changed a few of the lyrics from ‘and don't it feel good’ to ‘it's time to feel good’. Wow, Dolly changed the lyrics of it, isn't that amazing? Yes, that was my favourite, it came with the fiddles and everything. She was opening her shows with it, so that was fun.
AR: And of course there's the Eddy Grant song with the same name from 1979, that of course is a completely different song. How about it if he did a mash-up of his song ?
KL: There you go, your new career as a pop mashup artist beckons. You should do that, it'll be a huge hit.
AR: Eddie and the Waves, Katrina and the Electric Avenues, I can just see it.
KL: That sounds better, I like that.
34 years after JHJ’s debut single, Mike Nocito and Clark Datchler are still making music.
AR: You did a couple of guest vocals, one which is reasonably well-known, when you sang background vocals on Natalie Imbruglia's hit version of 'Torn', but you also sang on a Hanoi Rocks song.
KL: Yes, I did indeed. 'Don't Follow Me' from their album 'Oriental Beat'. Don't ask me what I was doing on that album. We were playing a club in North West London called The Moonlight, which is now called The Railway (100 West End Lane, NW6). We were both playing there and the band asked: ‘do you want to sing background on this track’?
The story about 'Torn' is that Phil Thornally, one of the writers and producers of 'Torn', is my neighbour and we go back a long way because his brother is married to the sister of Mike Nocito from Johnny Hates Jazz, with whom I went to American high school at Lakenheath High School in Suffolk. Mike taught me to play guitar there, because we were both military brats.
So, Phil is my neighbour and we were walking down the street and passed each other and he said: ‘I'm working on this song with Natalie Imbruglia, you know, that girl from Neighbours, she's gone back to Australia but I need some backup vocals done on it’. And I said: ‘yeah OK, I'll come round and do it’. Who knew Torn was going to be so huge ?
The other song I sang on was a duet with Eric Burden on 'We got to get out of this place'.
I also did a track with Rick Wakeman called 'Ride Of Your Life".
AR: Yes, I remember that now. 1999's 'Return To The Centre Of The Earth', that was a sequel to his hit 1974 live concept album 'Jouney To The Centre Of The Earth’. It's a real wacky album that one
KL: Oh my god, and so is that song, it's all over the place. It's about eight and a half minutes long - you could make a casserole in that time.
AR: Yes, there's volcanoes, capes, dinosaurs, everything ... and your vocals.
KL: He did the album launch at the Natural History Museum, as you do. Bonnie Tyler was also there, as she was a featured artist on the album as well. We looked at each other and said: ‘what the hell are we doing here’? as we stood beneath that massive skeleton of a dinosaur.
AR: Congratulations on the album, it's a proper, modern, pop-rock album, great songs, great mix of tracks, the band are great on it as well, but from a live performance point of view I guess we have to wait some time to hear it played live, now that Rewind has been postponed until 2021.
KL: Yes, you'll have to wait. I also plan to tour the album. We've already been playing a couple of these songs live anyway, like 'Drive' and 'Holiday'. They go down really well, people kind of act like they've heard them before, which means you've got some good hooks there.
NEW ALBUM: ‘Hearts, Loves & Babys’ (via Katrina’s Web from 28th August 2020)
CD version: CD: www.katrinasweb.com (ref: KATSWEB-013) & Amazon
Digital versions: https://fuga.ffm.to/heartslovesbabys.
SINGLES:
Drive: https://fuga.ffm.to/drive (24Jul20)
I want to love again: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/i-want-to-love-again-single/1524465627?l=da (28Aug20)
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Facebook: @katrinasweb
Twitter: @KatrinasWeb
