Nicole Laurenne – The Love Me Nots – Interview Exclusive 

Written by Dom Daley
Sunday, 12 February 2012 05:30

Hailing from the good ol’ US of A the Love Me Nots are four albums into a growing career that has seen the band play Europe as well as North America and, with a new album that impressed me greatly, I thought it was about time I caught up with the voice of the band and asked her what’s going down. Nicole Laurenne obliged and here before your very eyes is the chatter that mattered: sit comfortably and digest the words of a wise woman, ladies and gentlemen – Nicole from the Love Me Nots…..

 

Could you give us a brief introduction to the band?

 

Michael and Jay used to play in a great garage band called The Sonic Thrills. I was playing in a kind of new wave band at the time, Blue Fur. Michael started up LMN in 2006 as a side project and asked me to sing on it. Michael and I wrote the first record together, brought on local bassist Christina Nunez, uploaded some rehearsal tracks onto the web, and headed to Detroit to record our first album shortly after our first live show.

 

What is your musical background? Who influenced you and turned you onto garage rock?

 

I was trained as a classical pianist growing up in Chicago. The only rock I really ever got to know was what was whatever was on the radio at the time. The first pop song I ever loved was ‘Rich Girl’ by Hall and Oates. I’d ride around the neighborhood on my bike and blast it from my little handlebar AM radio. When I met Michael, he had this huge record collection and we just sat and listened to records for days on end – The Animals, The Seeds, Iggy Pop, The Makers. I think we gravitated toward garage rock because both love that fuzz-and-farfisa sound. Like some kind of a sick, loud circus.

 

How did you hook up with Jim Diamond and did you record all the albums in Detroit? It seems fitting that they were recorded there. What’s the vibe like in Phoenix for the Love Me Nots and your style of music in general?

 

That’s more than one question, just for the record. Michael and I loved the sound of the early White Stripes records, so we literally looked on the back of those jackets and emailed the guy whose name was on them. It just happened to be Jim Diamond. We never thought we’d hear back from him. But he wrote back and told us to come to Detroit for four days and make a record with him. Now he’s like part of our family.

 

Phoenix is getting really interesting, musically speaking. A lot of venues closed and bands broke up in the last decade here, but it seems like just in this past year there is a big surge of activity again. All it takes is a couple of good mid-size venues that bring in good indie kinds of acts from all over, and the musicians around town get inspired, great bands start forming, everyone heads out to hear music again. So this is a really good time here right now.

 

I notice from the EPK that you guys get a lot of coverage in France! Why France do you think? It seems strange for a band from Phoenix to gravitate to such a specific country?

 

We have great distribution and tour support in France, thanks to our sister label there, Bad Reputation Records. French audiences really seem to crave great musicianship, no matter the genre. The bills are often pretty eclectic by American standards, but every act is really stellar. Fans in France don’t seem quite as concerned about what the media tells them, it seems more word-of-mouth. We absolutely love touring there. We’ve done a little touring around the rest of Europe and we’re looking forward to doing a lot more.

 

The latest album, ‘The Demon And The Devotee’, was my introduction to the band and I must admit that I was really impressed with the strength of the album. Do you guys have any particular way of putting the music together as you guys seem comfortable to go from the full-on garage rock of ‘I’m Gonna Be Your Girl’ to the smouldering horn-led sounds of ‘Trouble’ or the ’60s pop influenced ‘The Girl Lights Up’, yet they all fit perfectly within the band and must give you plenty of scope when writing.

 

Thank you, that’s really nice of you to say. Usually our song-writing starts with a guitar or organ riff. I have notebooks full of lyrics all the time and sometimes just a sentence or a phrase will jump out at me and I’ll work it up into a verse and a chorus that fits in with the riff. Michael and I usually have drum and bass ideas in our heads at that point, but when the band comes over we hammer out the details together as much as we can. Jay lives in New York, so there’s a fair amount of emailing back and forth, sharing song clips and lyrics, so that when he’s in Arizona we’re all ready to get to work.

 

I would imagine the new material has gone down well at live shows – any plans to come visit the UK for some dates?

 

We have been itching to get to the UK for so long now. For whatever reason, we haven’t had much luck getting the logistics to work out so far. But the UK is one of my top three places to tour in the future, along with Japan and Scandanavia.

 

It seems a lot of US bands visit Europe but miss out the UK. Have you not had any offers to come visit?

 

We’ve had a lot of good musicians from the UK ask us to come and perform there, which is really the highest form of praise in my opinion. But we haven’t had the right tour offers yet that would make the trip possible. There are also a fair amount of regulations associated with touring in the UK (and with Canada  and several other countries) that require you to have a tour planned with some precision before you head over there. So you can’t just wing it and hope all the logistics work out when you get there. But nothing worthwhile is easy, right? We never run from a good challenge.

 

What are the plans for the rest of 2012?

 

Make a new record. If we’re not working on a record, we sit around moping. We definitely want to do more international touring, probably timed with a new release in the fall. We were so busy in 2011. It’s nice to kind of take a breath and see what opportunities come to us for a little while.

 

What sort of reaction do two good looking girls get when you roll up at some venue and rock the roof off?

 

All this time I thought they were yelling for Jay. I think most people who haven’t heard us don’t expect much when we roll up. The best way to gauge the reaction is at the merch booth after the set. We always try to get over there and meet people in person, talk about the show with them, get to know them a little. They’re all just as sweaty as we are and have a ton of questions and want us to take pictures with their kids, it’s like a big party. Getting to hang out with people who love music, from all over the world and all walks of life, is the main reason we fly across oceans and lug tons of gear up little staircases and work so hard.

 

A lot of the reviews I’ve read describe you as a “Warhol Muse”, “garage icon”, “sexy Alto that will drive the boys wild” and use adjectives that they wouldn’t use if the band were all male; does this bother you? Do you see it as a distraction or is it all part of the strategy of if you have it flaunt it?!

 

It’s flattering as a side note, as long as the reviewers pay attention to the music itself. We work really hard on writing, arranging, producing, re-writing, re-recording, etc, etc, until we’ve got a song that we ourselves would want to hear on the radio. But we also know that a picture is still worth a thousand words (or in this era, a thousand hits is worth a hundred record sales, if you’re lucky). And since we’re still a DIY kind of operation, we still need to pay the bills and keep this thing afloat. So if the look and the artwork and the live show helps draw people to the music, we’re not going to complain.

 

Having recently re-watched Spinal Tap I’m interested to get bands’ best real life Tap moments, you must have a few you can share with our readers?

 

We had a drummer. Then he was gone. We got another drummer. Then he was gone. Then we got another drummer. Then he was gone too.  And then our first drummer magically came back. Spinal Tap’s drummer history was strikingly accurate. We go from playing giant festivals with rose-petal-strewn dressing rooms and celebrities in the wings (true story) to playing near-empty bars in our own hometown, lugging speakers around in alleys at three am and arguing with each other. We had a manager for about ten minutes. We can’t seem to line up the right record deal to save our lives. Oh, and all of Michael’s amps go to 12. So pretty much
every day in this band is like actually being in Spinal Tap. Sad but true.

 

What advantage do you think there is from doing all this DIY rather than get the backing of a major label. Is it important to the band to keep the control over everything about the business? It seems like you’re doing things old school by growing a career as being able to grow as a unit over four albums isn’t something big labels would afford bands these days.

 

The main advantage for us at the beginning was that we were all busy with other bands and day jobs and we wanted to get this off the ground without waiting around for someone else to do it for us. We’ve had some really nice offers from cool labels over the years but none has been exactly the right fit yet. If the right deal came around, we’d like nothing more than to take it. DIY is great for the control factor, and the creativity factor, and the impatience factor, but it’s tough on the pocketbook and there are never enough hours in the day when you are doing everything yourself. We haven’t taken a vacation since this band started, for example. Not even when we got married; our honeymoon was exactly one day long. But we have four records, a band we love, and a little tour support overseas. And we have each other, every day. So there’s the balance.

 

If you were to put your iPod on random what would be the next 5 songs – no cheating!

 

Sleigh Bells, Blood Red Shoes, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Far East Movement, Motorhead, and Chet Baker. There’s a little peek into my psychosis. But most of all, lots and lots of LMN rehearsals and partial song ideas.

 

If you could do a duet who would it be with and on what song?

 

Frank Sinatra, ‘Come Fly With Me’. Or Ke$ha, on the next song I write. The band is going to hate this answer.

 

What? I thought you’d have checked out Über Röck and gone for a duet with Saxon or W.A.S.P. just to get our metal readers interested! I had to google Ke$ha (how underground and alt am I?) to find out who she was! I’m soooo disappointed, ha ha!

 

Yeah I know, my secret love of dance music is both a blessing and a curse. Believe me, I know. Can I have a third choice? I would LOVE to do ‘Chick Habit’ with April March.

 

It was there we called it a day. Not often do you read Ke$ha on Über Röck but, hey ho, it’s what makes this place the best….but I still think a duet with Blackie Lawless would be a better move.

 

Many thanks to Nicole for her time and words and thanks to Gerald Stansbury for hooking us up. Check out the Love Me Nots here and let ’em know the Ubers sent you!

 

 

http://thelovemenots.webege.com/

http://www.facebook.com/TheLoveMeNotsOfficial

 

[Photo kudos to Clint Kirk and Yves]

 

Here’s The Love Me Nots back catalogue – available on Amazon.co.uk