Last weekend Yin, his younger cousin, Yang and I enjoyed chats, tea and croissants at the Albion cafe in Shoreditch with Tom Barber and Tracey Duodu, who together make up an incredible musical collaboration called 14th. We discussed Valentine’s Day, jollof rice, a dream collab with Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes and Stevie Wonder and their dreams of performing in an abandoned Cathedral. We also had the pleasure of attending the 14th’s show at the Jazz Cafe in Camden where they performed for HMV’s Next Big Thing. Hit the jump for the interview, event pictures and a video of their performance.
On one of the coldest days of the year I was joined by Yin&Yang in Shoreditch to interview a new musical sensation, and definitely one of our fave picks for 2012, 14th. For a relatively new, independant duo there’s been a huge amount of press on the pair including video premieres on Dazed & Confused and an excellent review from Guardian Music team on their debut ep…Tom and Tracey are receiving more media attention than some musicians with 5 year label deals. And after meeting with the charismatic duo and experiencing one of their live shows I know exactly why these two are tipped to be “The Next Big Thing”.
So I read about the meaning behind the name, The 14th, and it’s something to do with Outkast? Could you tell us a bit more…
Tom: Well we both really liked the album, The Love Below and there’s a song on there called ‘Valentines Day’.
Tracey: We wanted like, a one word name. We didn’t want to be “The something”, we wanted it to be solid.
Tom: And then there weren’t any bands with numbers, so we thought it would be different.
Okay, well how did the 14th come about, how did you both meet?
Tom: We met at Sussex Uni. At a party
Were you both studying music?
Tom: No. I was studying American Studies
Tracey: And I was studying Philosophy.
Were you both musicians at the time?
Tracey: Well yeah. We were both separately involved in music. I had been doing lots of music theatre when I was younger right through to University and so I was always doing lots of performances and was a member of drama society and stuff like that. When I was younger, everyone would say they wanted to sing but everyone had these pure R&B voices, and mine just kept crackling and I didn’t feel like I fitted in. So it took a while before I really wanted to sing, and then Erykah turned up and it was like “oh wow, people with crazy, crackling voices are amazing”. Erykah is one of my big inspirers, soulfully and musically. I was singing a bit, but I took a break after university before I got into the 14th – I even had a phase when I wanted to be a street dancer. It wasn’t until I met up with Tom and we started working on the 14th that I had real great direction and I could start doing something with this voice. But before you’ve got something to do with it, something to inject it into – it’s just kind of there, I guess I was just singing in the bath (laughs)
Tom: And I was just like being a geek in my bedroom, trying to make some beats. I’d kind of been into it since I was in school, around 2001-2 it was Pharrell, Dr Dre and Timbaland that were all like the new big thing. They would have been more behind the scenes before, but all the focus was on them. So me and my friends saw them as our heroes. I started learning the piano and then after that we had really basic Cubase at school, and I just started teaching myself.
When I think about your style, it’s kind of like a haunted, soulful Old School Garage, a genre that everyone loves but noone has successfully resurrected. And you guys have kind of done that, but adding fusions of soul and making it your own. Did you guys decide that you wanted a Garage sound, or did it just fall together?
Tracey: It was never a conscious decision.
Tom: It just started happening and leading that way and we really liked it.
Tracey: I guess we just go with the sounds we like and we put in what we want and what we like to hear and then it happened to just have that influence in it. But we’re not trying to recreate garage again, or recreate 90′s dance. We’re just trying to create something that sounds like what we want to hear…and that’s what we’ve got.
Do you guys write the 14th’s material together? How does it work?
Both: Yeah!
Tracey: Sometimes we write separately, but I wouldn’t say there’s ever any songs where it’s one of us completely all the way. We sometimes write separately and then come together and have a conversation of what goes where.
Tom: A lot of the time, I might write one verse and then Tracey might write another verse and then we’ll fit it all together.
The Outkast song, ‘Valentine’s Day’ is saying that everyday is the 14th and it’s all about love, would you say that as the 14th, most of your songs are, and will be about love?
Tom: Dunno if it always will.
Tracey: Not always. A lot of our songs are relationship based, and maybe not fantastically optimistic everytime but relationships are one of the most predominant things that happen in your life so it’s like, what else there that’s worth writing about almost?
Tom: We don’t wanna close ourselves off though, we could write about anything.
What was your inspiration behind your new single, “Take Me There”?
Tom: It’s about escape really.
Tracey: Yeah just trying to get out of something that’s a bit crappy. It’s just about being in a place that’s not what you want but you can recognise that there’s something else, or something better or something more. And then maybe there’s a person that’s like a vehicle to you getting there, or maybe it’s yourself.
Tom: I think that when we wrote it, maybe we were a bit pissed off (laughs). It’s just about being dissatisfied really.
Tracey: Yeah, like discontented.
14th live at HMV’s Next Big Thing gig at Jazz Cafe
Are you going to release your debut album this year, or will we have to wait till 2013?
Tracey: We’re looking to put an album out later this year. That’s the hope, that’s the plan.
So you’re starting your tour this month, are you excited – which city or venue are you most excited about performing at?
Tom: Well we’re doing Romania. It’s a UK tour but then we got booked last minute for Romania.
Tracey: I think that’s gonna be pretty exciting. I’m quite excited to use my passport – it’s been quite redundant (laughs)
Out of all the country’s in the world, which would you most like to perform in?
Tom: Barbados! (both laugh)
Tracey: We wanna go somewhere warm! I think it would be really cool to perform in Ghana actually, I’m from Ghana so I’d really like to perform there. (Ernest and Tracey share a little Ghana moment).
Tom: Anywhere would be good really.
Tracey: It would be great just to go somewhere else and know that people want to hear us. We have a lot of Facebook likes and people that like us in Poland so it would be fun to do a Poland tour.
And what about venues?
Tracey: An abandoned Cathedral would be really cool, the acoustics would be amazing!
Tom: I just came back from Florence in Italy, and they’ve got some sick Cathedral’s there so that’d be cool!
Tracey: Some place really old and rustic, and a bit haunted. We don’t sing anything particularly blasphemous so I think we should be cool.
What are your plans for 2012?
Tracey: We’re doing the Simple Things festival in Bristol, which is our first festival so that’ll be really fun. We’d like to do lots of festivals this year!
What’s been your biggest moment so far?
Tom: This week’s been pretty big!
Tracey: Yeah radio play has been pretty cool. Fearne Cotton, Annie Mac and Mistajam all played us in just one week, that’s been really cool.
What are your views on social media as a promotional tool, has it helped you get where you are today, or is it more of a burden?
Tracey: What’s actually great about social media is that you have a type of connectivity now as musicians, that you probably wouldn’t have had 20 years ago. We wouldn’t know that people from Poland liked us and it’s really nice that people can touch base with you.
Tom: Being independent, you’re so reliant on other people discovering your music and believing in you, and social media helps that happen. I think it’s wicked really.
Tracey: I think the only thing that’s negative about the Internet right now is that everyone is so serious about voicing their own opinions. Like sometimes I’ll watch something on Youtube and I’ll scroll down to look at the comments and I’m like “Gosh! Who has the time for all this negativity?”. I would’ve stopped watching about 20 seconds in, if I hate it that much. That’s something I’ve never fully got. But I think that with the more music you put out over time, you’ve got to learn to not believe the hype or the criticisms, you can’t be dependent solely on what some people think about you.
Is there anyone in the UK that you’ve got your eye on that you’d like to work with?
Tracey: Just went into the studio with Jakwob. But really we’re just trying to focus on building a really strong set of our own music that we’d wanna put out.
What would be your dream collaboration with three fellow musicians?
Tom: This is a really hard one. I don’t want to sound really obvious but I do love Stevie Wonder, it would be amazing if he worked with us.
Tracey: I would love to work with Busta. I think I listen to 1998 Busta weekly. Wouldn’t that be a mad show, if we could get Busta and Stevie on stage.
Tom: And Missy.
Okay so Busta Rhymes, Stevie Wonder and Missy Elliot are all in London tonight, you’ve got a performance tomorrow. Where would you take them?
Tracey: We’re going to my kitchen. We’re having jolloff rice, grilled seabass, assorted meats. My Mum’s the best cook!
Their single ‘Take Me There’ is out now on iTunes – click here to go and buy it now!
About Tara