Denise Roughan, formerly of The 3D's is playing throughout Flying Nun's 30th anniversary month as Ghost Club with David Mitchell. UTR caught up with Denise to find out how it feels to be playing Ghost Club for the first time in over three years, why Ghost Club over The 3D's, and what excites her about Flying Nun being back.
To start with tell me a little bit about forming Ghost Club - what differentiated it (musically or otherwise) from The 3D’s?
At the beginning it was just Dave and me and we sort of made up things at home and then we played a couple of times, just the two of us. We weren’t trying to be different to anything it was just what we did next really. The seed of it was already there and it was just a case of doing something else.
Was it liberating being in a two piece as opposed to being in a full band?
We didn't really think about it like that; it was just us kind of mucking around really. It was convenient for it to just be the two of us. We weren’t determined to do anything in any particular way it just segwayed into a new band.
Are you guys going to write any new material?
Probably not because Dave still lives in London and we haven’t played anything in a while. We’ve been separated for a long time now – three and a half years - so this will be the first time we’ve come together and done anything. We'll probably play a lot of the stuff from the two records we made that we were playing in London before we left and I don’t think there will be any time to work on anything new or different.
Are you looking forward to playing live for the first time in so long?
Yeah it’ll be really fun to play with Dave again. I’ve played with Dave for a long time now and I miss playing with him so I’m looking forward to that. I'm a bit trepidatious though and we’ve got a very short amount of time to practice all the songs together, but hopefully we pull it off OK.
Are you looking forward to connecting with all the Flying Nun bands again throughout November?
Yeah I think so, I’m trying not to anticipate anything too much but it will be great to hook up with lots of people and see some people play that we haven’t seen for ages, although I’m not sure how much I’m going to get to see other bands because they’re all happening independently of each other; when one bands in one town another band will be in another town. I’m not sure how much I will get to see but there certainly seems to be a great atmosphere bubbling up around it which is great.
What do you think about the new acts currently being signed by Flying Nun?
I don’t really know that much about them. I’ve seen Grayson Gilmour but I’m quite keen to go to this showcase thing in Wellington where a bunch of those new acts are going to play, and that will be my first real taste of that. I’m looking forward to seeing how much variety there may be and what people are listening to these days and being influenced by.
What are you most excited about the fact Flying Nun has returned?
I think it’s great that Roger has brought it back because it was pretty moribund and it’s pretty great that’s he’s breathing new life into it by getting a lot of back catalogue out there again, but also taking it forward into a different realm with different acts. There's a whole new generation of acts quite literally and it's also being taken into the digital age which I’m sure is quite a challenge. It looks good so far and they seem to be on top of it from what I understand so I’m looking forward to them carrying on and flying that flag again.
You spoke of a new generation. It must be quite amazing to think that the music you were making a couple of decades ago has been so influential. Did you have any idea it was going to be so significant to the musical landscape?
No not at all. You know I think a lot of us just lived in the moment at that time and we were all sort of young and poor and we made our own entertainment, which was a lot of what it had to do with. It was fun to make this community of people who all played in bands and who were all friends with each other. That was it at the time and I didn’t think outside of that sphere and didn’t give much though to how the music or the label would stand the test of time. We all knew we were doing something pretty special.
