Bristol brothers Adam and Lawrence Purnell visited Jersey for the first time to play the annual Wild West themed Halkett Hoedown, and they had positive reviews;
This is your first time in Jersey. What do you think of it so far?
Lawrence: It’s beautiful. We’ve literally been here about three hours. We’ve napped for about an hour of it, so we haven’t seen that much of it yet but the weathers amazing. It looks good and we’re looking forward to the show.
Adam: We had a late one last night so we came from Cambridge down to Bristol and then we didn’t sleep so we got straight on the ferry to Jersey. We had a quick nap and now we are ready to go, I think we’re on at 6:30pm. We’re just dazed at the moment.
Do you have any plans while you’re here?
L: The beach. I’ve recently learnt how to surf last week so maybe we might do some surfing.
A: I’ll probably just stick to the cafe.
How old were the both of you when you first got into country music?
A: I started playing guitar when I was about five, I studied classical guitar but I went to Nashville when I was 18 and it was after that really. I did university music stuff and then we started this about four years ago.
Do you remember the first country song you learnt?
L: I think the person our dad played us the most was probably either Rodney Crowell or Will Kimbrough. I’m not sure really, it’s difficult to pin point but it was usually something off the Houston Kid album.
What is it exactly about country music that makes you love it?
L: For me it’s the honesty and the story telling. That’s why we lean so much towards people like Rodney Crowell and the Texan song writing because there’s a very candid honesty to the story telling that they have, especially with his songs there’s a lot of honesty to them. That’s what we draw from, which is amazing.
A: And the musicality of the musicians is just unreal.
When writing your own music where do you get influence from?
L: The way that we usually structure it is that Adam will play a part in the musical construction of the song, and then I will write lyrics and a melody. Lyrics wise it comes from storytelling and I take inspiration from people who do it in their music like Rodney Crowell who story tells from not their perspective. They’ll create a character and they story tell from that perspective. A lot of his albums come from creating this character that necessarily is not him but he just makes a whole world out of it. It means that there’s so many options.
So sort of like a book in music form?
L: Yeah! I’ll tell you what, I tried to write a first chapter of a book and it was just absolutely horrible. I couldn’t get through it and I think it’s because I haven’t got the concentration span to write a book, whereas songs they’re three minutes so I find it easier.
What are your favourite songs to play live?
A: We’ve just written a song that’s just called ‘Name On It,’ and it’s got quite a lot of grit to it. How would you describe it?
L: The song ‘Name On It’ was written in a split; the first half of the song is written from the narrative of a guy and the second half of the song is the girls version. Wait, sorry it’s vice versa. The first half of the song is about a girl talking about a guy who I loosely based on myself and the second half of the song is me – ish talking about this girl. It’s kind of got this bite to it and I love playing it live because it’s got some real mean kick to it.
Who are you looking forward to seeing most perform here at The Halkett Hoedown?
L: Luckily we thought we were going to be on later on but because we’re on earlier now we can watch pretty much a lot of people. I’m not really sure.
A: You’ll have to come back to us on that one. That’s a difficult one.
Is this band something you’re aiming to do professionally for the rest of your lives?
A: Yeah the goal has always been that. We are at the moment, it’s been a great time for us and we’d like to have it span out into the future and to create a real long lasting affect with our music. To have people listen to it from all parts of the world, to be able to tour and make our music until we get old.
L: Longevity.
You’ve toured a lot up and down the country. Do certain areas have different reactions to your music?
L: I don’t know about you but I found that when we toured with Frankie Ballard we played quite a few shows up North and they have a fantastic reaction. We’d never played in Manchester before, we’d never played in Leeds before and the reaction in those cities was absolutely incredible. And I put it down to the fact that Manchester has such a strong cultural music association with it anyway.
A: We also play a lot of little tangs and villages where if you were on a tour you wouldn’t usually hear of. But then again they’ve often got some of the best fan bases who are really loyal to music.
L: We played a place in North Cumbria called Ireby.
What advice would you have for any upcoming country artists?
L: For me this sounds very cheesy but you have to just keep going, you have to work so hard and however hard you think you’re working you’re probably not working hard enough. You can work a little bit harder and that’s what we’ve found. After a while it does start to pay off.
D: You’ve got to have really thick skin because there’s going to be a lot of knock backs but you have to keep going and the most important thing, I know so many people say it, but it’s the quality of the music in the first place. The rest of it, the business side, comes with it and that’s why you’ve got to be strong.
You can check out their music and tour dates here.