In 1995 Kenny Anderson, then lead singer/songwriter for the scottish bands skuobhie dubh orchestra and khartoum heroes, launched his own label fence with his own solo project king creosote. With a healthy cynicism of all things music industry related, kc set out to make home recorded music in as stress-free an environment as possible, and hunkered down in n.e. fife for the long haul.
With a few cdr titles released thru’ local shops, and with brothers een (pip dylan) and gordon (lone pigeon) forming the beginnings of a fence collective, by summer 2000 fence had taken over the running of a st.andrews cd shop, had an extensive website up and running, and were packing out the local pubs once a fortnight. collective member james yorkston made sure that the fence music came to the attention of labels like bad jazz and domino, and the legendary fence gatherings were soon on the move.
independent stores such as rough trade in london, avalanche in edinburgh, monorail in glasgow, and norman records in leeds were all pushing the fence collective cdr titles when in 2003 domino helped launch king creosote’s first album proper “kenny and beth’s musakal boatrides”, which made no. 5 in rough trade’s top 100 albums of that year. in the spring of 2005 kc put out a second album for domino, the self-produced “rocket d.i.y.”, and then went off to collaborate with the earlies from burnley, lancashire, supposedly to record an ep for names/679. it all gets a bit confusing from here. the resulting album “kc rules ok” released in 2005 caught everyone by surprise, but didn’t contain enough singles, and so certain tracks were re-recorded using the all-new kc band, and “kc rules ok” was re-released in summer 2006 with an invisible companion album “chorlton and the wh’earlies” (the original album working title, as it happens) which contained the original non-single recordings as well as some of the failed single edits and remixes, and all this sort of re-packaged with new sleeve notes, thus giving “kc rules ok” a further lifespan of 3 years? the most singley single recorded in january 2006, “you’ve no clue do you”, was considered too something or other, but on listening again it became the obvious lead single for the hastily recorded “bombshell” in 2007, as produced by jon hopkins.
things were much simpler when in 2008 kc recorded “flick the Vs” on the sly and handed it over to domino. one year on, and “flick the Vs” remains remarkably unaltered. in 2009 king creosote has recorded with the burns unit, reporter, jon hopkins and animal magic tricks.
Was at Celtic Connections on Saturday night, and thought it was fantastic. Could you pass on to Kenny please (whom I’m afraid I’d never heard sing before, but will certainly look out for now) that I thought his version of The Associate’s Party Fears Two was the absolute highlight of the evening – it nearly made me greet!
Many thanks
Karen Campbell
Hi Karen, noticed your post and thought you’d be interested in this:
http://peenko.blogspot.com/2010/01/scottish-songbook-glasgow-royal-concert.html
KC Rules!
Here in Argentina, The country of meat, beautiful women, maradona, Messi and a lot of things, you have a big fan… love your music kenny… we dance with my child Violeta (2 years) some of your songs…
The best for you and I hope in some moment of my life I have the chance to watch you playing live,
KC rules r OK!!!!
Miguel!
Hi Tony from Sweden here! I heard you guys play on P3 LIVE a couple of years ago, it was an amazing consert and thats how my eyes opened up for you guys! (im glad i turned on the radio that night (-: )
Your final tune was a interpretation of Sinead O`Connors – Nothing Compares to You, and it was just breath taking i remember. It landed easely on my top 10 list of interpretations ever!!!
So what im wondering about is, can i find that tune somewhere? I just want to hear it again, it was too long ago…
Thanks in advance, yours sincerely // Tony from Sweden..
Hi KC, Im a 61 yr old youngster from Michigan. Found you thru the internet a few months ago. George Starotsin (Russian music reviewer) had good reviews of the Aliens – I purchased both cd’s – then bought Concubine Rice. Googling the Lone Pigeon I found your interviews and became interested. I listened to several songs on youtube and then bought Flick the Vs and KC Rules Ok from Amazon.
I sure hope you get your cut from them!
Next came Rocket D.I.Y. from Domino and then tonight I just ordered Psalm Clerk and Vintage Quays from Fence.
Man, I have to say that I think your music is AWESOME. I listen to music12 hrs a day and am thrilled to discover someone NEW that I love. Right now my favorite songs of my entire lifetime are by KC, Aliens, LP and Brian Eno. Favorite songs?
Rims, Jump at the Cats, Not One Bit Ashamed, Leslie, Fly by Seat, Camels Swapped, Curtain Craft, PH6.5, King Bubbles, are my favorites. Hell, they all are favorites – haven’t found a dub one yet!
My wife and I have been saving for ten years for a trip to Europe next April. maybe we’ll have to make a detour to Fife on the way to italy from London!
Thanks you making beautiful sounds and thought inspiring lyrics. The world is a much better place because of you and your music. thanks again!
Bob
Hi
Thanks for giving us the time last Saturday at the Big Tent- was a great gig on Friday! Footage will be up on Big Tent website in due course. You were talking about the bane of 2nd home owners- here’s what they are doing in Cornwall to provide affordable homes (ignore the cheesy graphic at the begining)
http://vimeo.com/channels/communitylandtrusts (click on St Minver)
Would love to see something like this take off in Fife! Do you know any wealthy farmers that want to ‘give’ some land over?!!!
Anyhow all the best with the Haarfest
Kirsty
For all of you here who love Kenny I can heartily recommend ‘Sideshow’ the new release from The Burns Unit. The opening track ‘Since We’ve Fallen Out’ is just beautiful.
Jackie x
Hi
Saw you guys at Belladrum at the weekend and i must say it was easily the best performance of the festival, keep up the good work.
All the best,Dunc