King Creosote - Painting the Fence

Since we spoke with him last summer, The Skinny has whiled away many an hour trying to rendezvous with Kenny Anderson. For one reason or another, things just haven't worked out. Anderson (more familiar to the masses as King Creosote, convenor-in-chief of the uber-creative Fence Collective) has been far too busy writing, gigging and generally displaying the kind of prolific intent that should make many of the rest of us mere mortals weep with envy and shame.

True to form, when we do finally track him down, he's preparing for his set at the Green Man festival in Brecon. So, does he ever pause for breath? "I don't quite see it like that to be honest" is his frank assessment. In fact, the entire conversation with the man is a frank assessment on the highs, twists and dips of riding the gruelling industry rollercoaster, and indeed life in general.

"The fact that my musical career didn't kick off until I was a lot older meant that I've had a long history of my parents being disappointed and the mother of my child being disappointed and lots of people around me just looking at me in that kind of 'when are you going to get this together and when are you going to realise that this is a dream?' way. This isn't meant to be a sob story but, my peers of this university I went to, I've met them on numerous occasions in the last 20 years and they're all doing really well. They're all doctors, dentists and astronauts and all sorts of things and I think I've kind of, either by design or trick, picked a career path that's fraught with worry, depression and real paranoia.

"Being 18 and naive I launched into music thinking this was a harmless way to go about your life. The choice for me was to go into electronic engineering and design missiles and bombs for Motorola and I picked the musical option but I didn't realise it would be 20 years of real ups and downs, the joys have been amazing but the heartaches have been pretty bad. There's been so many occasions where I've thought I need to give up on this, even though my heart and soul is in it, it's not paying a wage so I'm going to have to give up and do something second best. I think that's part of the reason that I feel the need to prove myself all the time."

Anderson uses this logic to perfectly justify corporate involvement in his latest album (set for release on Warners' division 679 this month), Bombshell, despite going it alone over ten years ago and setting up the Fence collective record label when there was no deal in sight. "I've been doing the same thing as I've always done. I don't really see a change in my songwriting and I don't see a change in my approach to music. But, the theme behind this particular record is that I'm keen to make a little chink in the mainstream market which I'm all for, if it works, but I've never tried to do anything in music except write songs I like and get them recorded as best I can."

"Before I set up the Fence thing I did try and get signed, don't get me wrong - ten years ago I had a band and I got myself into a real fix trying to do all the things you do to get you signed. So I briefly gave up on all that, decided I'd just do it on my own, on my own terms and 12 years later it seems like people have kind of accepted me for that. It's still very daunting but at the same time I have run a label, or at least tried to run an organisation that puts out records, but now that I'm signed to a label that actually does that, I've started taking it really seriously and I want to do my best; I know how much money gets spent on trying to put out records, having done it myself for ten years.

"Ten years ago I had a real chip on my shoulder about record labels, now I probably still have a chip about some aspects of the industry but now I understand how much effort and how much money goes into the whole process. I'm actually quite humbled by it in a weird way! I feel like I've got a musical job now. Personal circumstances have changed in those ten years. I've got a daughter now and I've got a mortgage and I've got lots of things...the chance came along and I thought 'Why not? I'm nearly 40 years of age; I've worked really hard for 20 years and should try this at least once'."

In taking that step, does he see himself as being at risk of alienating those who have long admired this independent approach? "I made sure my record deal allows for my back catalogue and the work that I do for Fence to remain the way it always was. I don't want to sound smug, I'm in the best of both worlds in that I signed a small major deal and at the same time, safeguarded all the work I've done 'til this point. The two things aren't mutually exclusive, they're very much part of the same thing. I'd hate it if the fans I've built up over the last decade suddenly left because my records have a little bit of a shine to them now. I think the songs I've picked are good songs. I think they're quite indicative of the couple of years I've had and they're very much me at this age, me at the age of 40 so it's not like 'oh here's a guy who is 40 singing songs he wrote when he was 25'."

Anderson's Fence Collective famously bases itself in the fishing village of Anstruther in Fife. The notion conjures up imagery of an ethereal musical Eden, a fact aided by the odd nomenclature of the members, who presently include Pictish Trail, Gummi Bako, Lone Pigeon, HMS Ginafore, Things In Herds, Down the Tiny Steps and Barbarossa along with the more conventionally monikered James Yorkston and Pip Dylan. KT Tunstall and The Beta Band have also been involved. So what's with the alter egos? "Even when I was signed to a small Scottish label, I wanted to do my own thing on the Fence label, I just loved the duality of it: the fence for a ring of stolen goods, the fence that you can sit on, and the clearly marked boundary. First I had the Fence, then I realised I needed something to go on the fence so that was going to be? Creosote! and from there it became King Creosote so it's not really a huge mystery. I think there's a huge power if you have a synonym, it means you can act out a different life and King Creosote is a very different animal to Kenny Anderson. Sometimes I think a lot of people want to meet King Creosote and want to know about him and when they actually meet Kenny Anderson, it's a bit of a disappointment."

King Creosote doesn't have the same neuroses, I'm quite a shy person and I'm not as confident, optimistic or as smart as King Creosote. King is just a channel for me to be just a little bit better than I am, or a little bit more evil than I am, or just an exaggeration of who I am. The KC lyrics are me on a good day, they're sharp, witty. My average day isn't like that; I'm a little bit blurry, a little bit dull and a little bit bad tempered. I don't get to be him very often, maybe 45 minutes on stage but even sometimes in those 45 minutes there's still a bit of Kenny Anderson in there - I'd really like to get shot of him. I don't have a great self image and I think most people who do, who play and write songs, find it to be their way of communicating. But if you can only communicate best through songs, there's something a bit sad about that. It's like 'Why can't you tell your friends and family how you actually feel or why can't you go into the world as a balanced individual?' The more and more songwriters I meet I realise we're all slight rejects. I don't think that's a bad thing, just kinda weird."