The Staves - Interview

“It’s quite a weird thing, when you think about it, being in a band with your family members. You shouldn’t really be spending this much time together by rights”. Camilla Staveley-Taylor is under no illusions as to the challenges of her particular situation, and yet it is far from unique: Haim, First Aid Kit and Tegan and Sara, to name but a few, all consist of sisterly unions and have proven to be far more than a sibling novelty. But while the family connection may not be unique, there is an element of purity in the song-writing and harmonies that Jessica, Emily and Camilla Staveley-Taylor, better known as The Staves, create that is not found elsewhere. Their debut album ‘Dead & Born & Grown’ garnered international acclaim and, happily, their follow-up, ‘If I Was’ builds on the strengths of that album and adds a bit of oomph.

It’s hard to imagine The Staves being angry, but the song-writing on their new album was a bit like a family therapy session, Camilla explains. “There was some personal excavation going on and all of us experienced everything that being on the road entails, becoming some kind of weird nomad. Relationships suffer. We had a lot that we wanted to get off our chests”. That’s not to say that they don’t enjoy touring, quite the opposite: “Touring is always the thing that I look forward to the most. It’s where we feel most at home. It feels a bit more comfortable for us. It’s like a school trip”. So it sounds like they’re a long way off Gallagher territory yet.

Much has been made of the fact that the Staves have worked with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver on their sophomore album. If you were at Bon Iver’s last Irish gig in the O2 in 2012 you would have seen The Staves, looking somewhat small on that massive stage, take the whole thing in their stride, chatting away as if they were playing in their local pub. You would have also seen them accompany Bon Iver in a stirring rendition of Skinny Love. We wondered if that was when the seed was planted to have Vernon produce the next album. “We just got on really well with Justin and all the lads. We’d all hang out and sing songs and drink beer. He is someone who understands what it’s like to tour a lot and you don’t really have time to do anything else. So he said, when you have some free time, come round the house and we can see what comes out. It wasn’t with a view to doing anything in particular. You don’t get much time to write or create on the road and he was able to create an atmosphere to facilitate that”. The “house” in question is Vernon’s Wisconsin bolthole studio. The album cover reflects the “cold Wisconsin” that they were ensconced in.

But surely they must have approached him in some official capacity at some stage and asked him to do it? “At the end of our second trip out there broached the subject and were like, ‘so are we kind of making an album now?’. I guess that made it official, but it was nice that it happened in such an organic way, rather than a manager or label deciding for us”.

After a lifetime of playing and singing together there was no shortage of material for the sisters to record for the debut album ‘Dead & Born & Grown’. Between the archive of songs they had to choose from and the big mark the album made, there must have been some jitters about the second album. “I suppose when you think about it too much it can make you a bit panicky, but we actually found it quite difficult to make the first album. It felt like everything was riding on it, like we had to make a statement that said ‘this is us’. For the second one it was the perfect environment for it to not feel pressured and we were so hungry to write and make some new music that the songs just came flowing out”.

As the youngest sister you would assume that Camille needs to shout a bit louder to get her ideas out there. “I think in the early days it was a bit like that. You fall into your natural roles as youngest, middle and oldest. I suppose that would make me the f***ed up one”. Was she at least spoiled to make up for that? “There definitely is some truth to the fact that with the first kid parents really give it their best shot and with the others you can’t possibly give the same amount of attention. They definitely loosened up a bit when I came along”.

It seem hard to believe that this sibling harmony could really exist among the stresses of the road. But Camilla assures us that they are more than just sisters. “Even if we weren’t working together we’d still hang out. It’s nice to be touring with your best friends”.

The Staves play the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival in Belfast on the 4th May; the Olympia Theatre in Dublin on the 6th May; and the Everyman Palace in Cork on the 7th May.