Summer Camp are a London-based duo, consisting of multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Warmsley and Elizabeth Sankey. Conor Giles had a chat with the guys before their show at The Rainbow in Birmingham.
Are you pleased with how everything to do with Summer Camp has come along so far?
Jeremy: Yeah, it’s great. It’s really exciting.
Elizabeth: I mean, we never planned it, so every day it’s like, wow, this is awesome. And even though were not the biggest band in, well, anywhere, it’s still amazing, its where we want to be, and it feels as though its building at a pace that’s sustainable and it’s really nice.
When you started, there was this whole air of anonymity surrounding you, with you posting a song on Myspace pretending to be six Swedish teenagers. Did you ever intend to be discovered as a duo?
Jeremy: Really, it was just, we recorded a song one afternoon for a laugh, and we made the fake Myspace, and then when transparent blog picked up on it, it was really exciting, but we didn’t plan for anyone to hear it. I mean, I thought I’d put it on my iPod and forget about it, and then play it again in a years’ time and be like ‘hey, do you remember this?’ I never imagined it would come to anything.
Elizabeth: We didn’t really think ‘yeah, let’s be an anonymous band’ but stuff just happened to us, which is really good, it was the best way for it to happen. There was no forethought whatsoever.
Jeremy, you were a fairly successful solo artist beforehand. Did it ever cross your mind that Summer Camp would become known as a Jeremy Warmsley side project?
Jeremy: No, I mean, I guess occasionally I’d be like ‘I hope no one thinks that’ but to be honest it’s not like my solo work ever took over the world or anything. Summer Camp is already doing better in terms of any kind of commercial achievement. But if someone does think that then, who are we to stop them.
Elizabeth: I’m proud to be a part of the Jeremy Warmsley side project.
Jeremy: The thing is, I’d always wanted to be in a band, and the solo project was again, a bit of an accident. I was in a band at the time and I just made this demo of songs done on my own, and that is what got picked up by a label. But with Summer Camp we have a really good working relationship, and she is an amazing songwriter and it’s good to have someone to work with like that.
Why do you think it is that Summer Camp has already achieved more commercial recognition that your solo work?
Jeremy: Because it’s better? That’s the short answer. The long answer is that the biggest difference between Summer Camp and my solo stuff is that Summer Camp is in a whole package with all the imagery and the aesthetic stuff, and it all kind of fits together. Whereas in my solo stuff, even the lyrics and the music rarely had any kind of relationship apart from the fact they were happening at the same time.
Elizabeth: We wouldn’t be able to do half the stuff that we were able to do if Jeremy hadn’t had his solo career, because it was the most perfect training in terms of getting his production skills honed, and in a way, it was the perfect experimental training ground for you, and you did do really well out of it. I definitely benefited from it, because he’s a genius.
Why did you choose to write your album about a fictional place? Was there any thought behind that?
Jeremy: There’s rarely any thought behind anything.
Elizabeth: That’s true. Personally, it helped me a lot, because I’d never written music before, and it helped me to have a purpose and a focus to write about. So I said to Jeremy ‘We should make a world’ and we did, and we talked about it and what characters are in it. But it was very much just a tool really for our writing. But we’d made a little book about it, so we thought we could have that as bonus material to the CD.
Jeremy: It’s like bonus material on a DVD. You don’t need to read the zine or know that Condale is a fictional town to be able to enjoy the music, they work just as songs on their own.
Elizabeth: We didn’t really want to put loads of our own personal, deep experiences that we’ve had in our lives in to the album. We wanted it to be about something that we were a bit distant from. And also, we’re both massive geeks, so we like being able to have something where we can be like ‘Oh that character is in this song, and then he’s talking about that, and she’s with him etc…’
Are there any plans for album two yet?
Elizabeth: Yeah, we’re kind of getting ready to do our next release. Are we allowed to say what it is?
Jeremy: I don’t know.
Elizabeth: We’re doing something in May, and then we’re going to do our album for probably, beginning of next year. We’re writing all the time.
Jeremy: We need to write more.
Elizabeth: Is that what that face was? You just looked really concerned. We need to write more. It’s been really nice being able to write without having the pressure to get the songs all ready, and also, it’s quite reassuring to know that we still have some songs left in us, because you get to the end of an album and you think ‘I don’t think I could ever write another song in my life’ and then it’s really relieving when you can.
Jeremy: It’s nice knowing Moshi are going to be there to put it out as well, because when we made the first album, we weren’t even sure anyone would release it, whether anyone would ever hear these songs. We did consider just putting them all up for free on the internet at one point. That was going to be our genius marketing strategy. Actually, a new band, David’s Liar has just done that, and they seem to be doing alright.
Elizabeth: That’s good. I think that it’s a really good idea.
Jeremy: Instead of going to labels to make the album, we actually make the album ourselves and found a label to put it out afterwards. And we did this through Pledge Music, which is where you offer up the chance to pre-order the album, buy t-shirts, and other stuff like us coming to play a gig at your house.
New Single ‘Losing my mind’ is out now on Moshi Moshi records. Summer Camp are currently in the middle of a UK tour.
Discover Summer Camp: Official Website // Facebook // Myspace
