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Oliver is a versatile singer-songwriter and lead singer with The Grand Urge, recently making a welcome return to solo gigs, including a set at Mojos Music Café Acoustic Sesh and upcoming charity night in aid of Ellie’s Fund Brain Tumour Trust at the Old Vic, Scarborough.
I ask what initially got Oliver interested in writing and playing music, and what his influences are today.
My father (Sjoerd Auke Koppert) is a sound technician. In the early days, when rock and roll got going really, he was behind one of the first stereo P.A.s, and when bands like Herman’s Hermits came over he used to hire it out and tech it at big gigs, he toured with The Who for about 7 years. He used to have speakers hooked up in every room in the house and music would be blaring out all the time, so I didn’t have much choice but to listen! It certainly influenced my tastes, though when I was younger, as much as Black Sabbath and REM, I’d be listening to Kylie and Jason! I’m not into musical snobbery – I have had people come up to me, slating me for doing a Bon Jovi cover because it’s too mainstream, arguing that I just can’t be a good musician because I’ve covered that… I just don’t understand that attitude! Though maybe my actual skill just improved, as a few years later the same person complimented me on playing the same song! The first album I ever bought was Bon Jovi’s Cross Road. My brother, James, used to make me compilation tapes too, so I had a lot of influences.
My favourite band now is Waxwing, I actually have a tattoo of their logo on my arm, and my brother has the same one on his leg! Saves the Day and Coheed & Cambria are brilliant too. I love solo artists – some of my favourite tracks to play are Tinfoil Hats and Suicide Medicine by Rocky Votolato and Ballgame by Kevin Devine. They – and Dylan, of course, can’t forget Dylan – basically first inspired me to pick up a guitar and start playing. Suicide Medicine is one I really love to play, it’s quite challenging vocally, it goes from very quiet to very high, holding a long note, but people request it now and that’s great, it feels especially nice when they’re perhaps more obscure covers but people still want to hear them.
I had a guitar when I was about 12, but my brother broke the strings on it and we just never bothered replacing them! It was when I was about 18 that I went out, with £90 I’d saved up, to buy my first proper guitar, and bought a book of chords and a book of lyrics and started working it out myself. I sung one of James’ songs with his bands, Our Own (*who are performing a reunion gig on 18 May at Sigma, organised by Scene Not Herd). I absolutely loved their songs. We used to go to open mics together and he would sing and I’d play guitar and harmonica.
This area has always been a melting pot for music, I think. I was in a band at school and there’d be band nights at Murray’s, where you could see maybe 4 or 5 bands for £2. The scene was really vibrant, there were loads of bands – it seems like it died off a bit for a few years but then has come back lately, party through the various open mics I guess. Though I don’t know if we’ll ever see it as crazy as it seemed back then, for the amount of gigs or rock bands. Maybe tastes have changed. My band was called Eleventh Hour – we were really mucky punk!
How did you come to join The Grand Urge?
The Grand Urge had been going for about 6 years and I used to go to their regular gigs all the time. One night, I’d just come back from America, hadn’t got a job since returning, and told my mates I was skint and couldn’t come out, but they convinced me to come out anyway because it was Grand Urge’s last gig, the singer, Mark was leaving. A friend suggested I had a word with the band because they wanted to keep going, and I needed the money! I sent them my Soundcloud link to have a listen and they liked what they heard – but wanted to be gigging again in about 3 weeks, so I had about 60 songs to try and learn very quickly! That was nerve-wracking, but it worked out and I’ve been with them just over a year now.
The Dead White Doves is their other incarnation – they are doing well, had some big gigs in London, Liverpool, etc, but that’s just the original three members! They are great – really good rock and roll.
Why were you in America?
Helping out my Dad, he’s setting up a recording studio but I was helping with anything and everything, literally from building work onwards! I would love to be out there and learn everything he’s learned about the music industry, he was one of the best sound engineers of the time and it would be amazing to learn so much more from him.
Tell us more about your own writing.
I’ll try! I wrote my first song aged about 8! Iceberg to Iceberg (a long-running 3-album project) is a bit of a sore point at the moment. I started it as a project for a band but then got into it on my own, really. Each album is a story in itself, not as epic as Coheed & Cambria but I liked that idea – when they talk about their story it’s so vast and epic I get tingles! – mine is quite simple, not storytelling in its most flamboyant form but following a relationship between two people. I began writing them with an acoustic guitar about 10 years ago and have been playing them at gigs ever since. I want to work it out into a band project still, but I might be stuck in the way they are now, it’s hard to start deconstructing and reshaping after so long. Maybe I just want to go it along and be overly proud of what I produce! I’m honestly not sure if I should just keep them as they are and finish it, put it to bed, and do something fresh with a band. My friend Kai and I are quite creative together so maybe that’s the route to go, I do miss being creative with a band. I love playing acoustic music but there’s definitely something different about thrashing it out with a band – vibe-ing off everyone else. I miss that.
As to the process of writing, sometimes stuff just gets in your head and you have to write it down. Always at the most annoying moment, like when I’m singing in the shower! That’s when I switch off, I guess, and then you just think about something, a line pops in your head and you have nowhere safe to write it down…! You try to keep repeating it but once you put soap on your sponge, that’s it, it’s gone!
If I start struggling while writing, I just put it down. I like it to be quite raw so if it’s not flowing I leave it and try and come back to it, I don’t generally ever write a song like – ‘Bang! Finished!’
I write fiction too. I have an idea for two parallel novels, one very fantasy-like and one more modern / realist; semi-autobiographical but with a bit of a sci-fi twist… Religion, or the idea of God, questions about life, it’s around those sort of themes. I also had a spooky moment during 5 months in Australia, I had lots of free evenings to plot and jot ideas down, and drew this symbol that I planned to be part of the story on the front of my notebook. Not long after I went to this marketplace in Cairns, where this guy carved talismans for jewellery and it was there, the same symbol – I had to buy it, I still wear it to this day. It had the element of two things blending into one. It could be quite an epic story if I get going with it again… all very ambitious!
So what can people expect at your upcoming gigs?
I like to give a mix – covers, some known, some lesser known, and maybe newer interpretations of the Iceberg stuff…maybe.
I read that one of your favourite quotes is from the lyrics to ‘The River’ by Manchester Orchestra: ‘I think I talk to you best when I sing. I sing about almost everything’. Why does that have such resonance for you?
I can be quite introvert on stage, I don’t talk much! But I think I come to life when I actually sing. Whilst I have no claim to be the world’s best guitarist by a long shot, I often think I come to life with a guitar in my hands, I sort of express myself through the song and my emotions and in the way I strum – I didn’t even notice it until someone pointed it out and I listened back to myself later, but I think they were right.
Information
To book Oliver for a gig, get in touch via Facebook – ‘Oliver Waxwing Koppert’ or Twitter – @OKoppert.
The Grand Urge will be playing Staxtonbury Festival, www.staxtonbury.com 5/6/7 July
https://soundcloud.com/talonair
Keep an eye on Yorkshire Coast Gigs for upcoming dates of Oliver’s solo performances and appearances with The Grand Urge.
