King Creosote revisits KC Rules OK

Ahead of King Creosote's conversation with Michael Pedersen and Nicola Meighan to kick off Summerhall's The Dissection series, we're publishing this archive Q&A with KC. It's taken from our Albums of the Decade coverage from back in 2009 – read the rest of our Albums of the Decade archive here.

The licensing of both Rocket DIY and Kenny And Beth's Musakal Boat Rides to Domino had already managed to showcase the homespun brilliance of Kenny Anderson (aka King Creosote) beyond his bedroom in Crail. But it was KC Rules OK that really began making waves. Recorded over just ten days in 2005 with labelmates The Earlies on backing duties, KC Rules OK added considerably more layers to the King's subtle tones. Consisting largely of reworkings of older tracks, this collaboration offered a heady mix of lush orchestration and harmony as well as a renewed focus, bolstered by the extra hands. Tracks such as Not One Bit Ashamed, Bootprints and the sombre beauty of I'll Fly By The Seat Of My Pants all benefited greatly from these splashes of colour, allowing KC Rules OK to transcend the obvious folk label and stand alone as a startlingly honest and utterly beguiling piece of work.

Can you tell us a bit about how KC Rules OK came together?

The guy that asked me to do this is somebody that had been working in the Rough Trade record shop in London, and he had done a power of work pushing Fence CD-Rs onto the London population. So, he'd done a huge job for us as somebody working in a record shop, and now here he was going, "How do you fancy doing a record with The Earlies?" He approached me in 2004 around the time of the Green Man festival, but I didn't see much of The Earlies that day because a wasp got into the tent, and I have phobia of wasps! But I met three of the guys in London at a Christmas party and again, I was bowled over that they were fans of what I'd done, fans of my CD-R stuff, and they had really good ideas of what to do, so I just thought "oh well, yeah, let's try it!".

It was done really quickly. It was done in about ten days, and Christian Madden (of The Earlies)... every idea he chucked at my songs, I was like "wow, what a great idea!". It was just dead easy. That was the thing, it was so simple to do at the time, and there were no expectations for it. I've since found out from the label, after we handed in 16 tracks to be pushed into some kind of album, that they were all expecting me to deliver a four-track EP! There had been some crossed wires! In the end it was hard to whittle the tracks down to just 11, as The Earlies had made such a blinding job of it.

Looking back on KC Rules... now, how do you feel about it?

Well, for me that was basically the first chance I got to do a proper album as King Creosote. I'm very proud of the titles I've put out through Fence but anyone can put their own music out on their own label. Yes, there are a few things you need to do to get there, but you're kind of like your own yardstick for quality, so really, you don't have to convince anybody other than yourself to put out your own music on your own label.

At the time it felt like a bit of daunting step. It was basically me going into a studio with my chords and my words and saying to somebody else "what would you do with that?", because I know what I would do with this. But The Earlies were great. Their first attitude was like "why are are we getting involved with this, we love your stuff already!" and I said, "Yeah, I know, but apparently no one else does!" They weren't precious about it either though. They didn't tiptoe around me. Madden would go (imitating a Lancashire accent) "Raaaght Kenny, we're gonna chook a vibraphone on this" and I was like "What's a vibraphone?" and then they hauled in this thing that looked like a plumber's mistake. And then, lo and behold, I was like, "Wow! Does that thing really make that noise?".

It's the happy accidents that I really try to channel into my music.

Would you agree it was somewhat of a breakthrough for you?

I think it was the album that made my songs shine. I also think it made people listen to songs that I had put out on my own label in a different light. It was almost like they went "God, yeah, I think there's actually gonna be good songs on these records" and lo and behold, there are! For a lot of folk hearing a KC record before, it didn't really make a lot of sense, but I think that's just my taste though. I think I had to give away a lot with KC Rules OK, which at the time I was really kind of skeptical about. I thought "I can't give the baby to somebody else!", but I did, and it didn't backfire. In fact, it did the opposite, it just shot off. I then found, as well, that I did have a local Scottish following and after KC Rules, they came out of the woodwork. Then they started going back in time, and started picking up Rocket DIY and Kenny and Beth's... and I don't think, without KC Rules, that would've ever happened, certainly not in the numbers that it has.

Yeah.. it was like a huge short cut for me!

I just think it had this timeless quality to it. It wasn't trendy at the time at all to come out with something like that but it was still the right time to do it. I mean, Bootprints is an ancient song in the KC songbook, it's from like 1987/88 – I wrote that when I was still at uni – and to hear it in 2005 and hear people talk about as if it's this new thing when it's nearly 20 years old already I just thought, "y'know what? It must be an alright song. it's gone 20 years and somebody still thinks it's a good idea!".

But yeah, I could talk for weeks about KC Rules OK... it's a good 'un!