Founded and fronted by identical twins Gemma and Violet Hunt-Humphries, with Ruben Kingman, Matthew Lee, Stefan Dale and Bryn Morris backing them up, Nookee were an obvious choice when it came to nailing down Buzz’s 2024 Ones To Watch list, having graced the stages of Green Man, Kendal Calling and Sŵn in the past year.
Incredibly busy, with creative and community-focused people at its centre – Gemma and Violet were in Colombia at the time of this interview! – Emma Way caught the rest of the band at home in full admin mode, applying for festivals for the months to follow.
What are your favourite aspects of playing live in Nookee?
Ruben Kingman [guitar]: I think creative freedom – that we’re all very accepting of anything.
Bryn Morris [drums]: I’d say the same, the freedom to explore all the styles and genres that we appreciate and enjoy playing, while maintaining a Nookee sort of feeling.
Stefan Dale [bass]: Gemma and Violet would want me to say that dressing up is my favourite bit.
How was it recording your first release, You’ve Got Your Story (An’ I Got Mine), at Rockfield Studios?
Matthew Lee [guitar]: It was a year ago now. Obviously, being Rockfield Studios, there’s the heritage and all the bands that have recorded there. Stef was giving us a bit of a whirl on the Bohemian Rhapsody piano.
Stefan: I did find that if you’re not in there for more than a few days, it’s hard to get past the “shit, I’m in Rockfield!” kind of feeling, because you’re not really in the music at that point. Then, by the time you’ve really settled in, it’s too late, and you’ve spent all your cash on a little interactive museum trip if you’re not careful.
Being a large band, how do you go about making decisions?
Bryn: It can be quite difficult because we’re all quite creative minds. We want to keep it open to the point where we all have a say in things. When it comes to the music, it’s fairly smooth writing together and developing things because we’re all open to changing things or adding things. When it comes to anything else, it’s a little bit harder, but that’s natural when it comes to a big group.
Can you talk about being commissioned by the Wales Millennium Centre’s annual Llais festival in 2023: how was that experience for you, and why was it important to you to make it a collaborative performance?
Stef: They came to us with the idea. It came from Gemma and Violet, and the [Welsh musicians’ funding scheme] Horizons video we did for our song Smile. The Horizons video kind of inspired the collaboration aspect of Llais – we continued on with the 11 people we were collaborating with for that video, and Wales Millennium Centre or Horizons moved forward with the idea of doing more collaborations because of it.
With Violet and Gemma being 50% of the Foxy Roxies, would you say that aids a lot of your collaborative stuff?
Ruben: It comes from them as people in a sense. The reason the Foxy Roxies started is because of what they wanted to get out of music, and it’s bringing people together. We all know that they talk about that all the time. They want to do whatever they can to promote that, Nookee included.
Have there been any Nookee songs that haven’t made the cut that you’d like to go back to?
Bryn: I always suggest that we should play Back And Rub, Ruben’s tune. I think that’s just because I love playing difficult things. It’s nice playing quite stabby stuff.
Matthew: When we get 16 more members, we’ll do it.
Is that something you’d like to do, have an even larger band?
Bryn: Maybe not the mainstay of the band, but it’d be great to have a horn section and a string section, and a choir. We have talked about it before.
Stef: We’d have to ask our percussionist Bailey Love to split himself into eight pieces. That guy can literally do all of it.
Can we expect any more releases from you in the near future?
Roccoco Sessions do live sessions in Cardiff. They’ve released one so far, with The Family Battenberg, but in November we recorded one with them that’s going to be coming out later this year. The date is TBC, but there’ll be a live session film, and there will also be an album to go with it as well, which may or may not be on vinyl.
Stef: It’s a concept album. We all decided together that there’s kind of a running theme of the ocean and hitting rock bottom going through the album, and when we originally rehearsed it and got all the music together, it was one flowing performance.
Why did you decide on the live album as your first album release, with most people going for the studio release option?
Stef: It’s taking advantage of that live sound. We kind of like that live sound, that speaks to – this is what I feel, anyway – the kind of 1970s style that we naturally emit. A lot of 70s bands back in the day released a lot of live stuff. I’d like to personally run on that a little bit, and capture how we sound in a real live performance.
Nookee, Le Public Space, Newport, Sat 3 Feb; Pontardawe Arts Centre, Thurs 7 Mar.
Tickets: £6/£12.
Info: Newport / Pontardawe / nookeeband.com
words EMMA WAY
