HERE IS OUR ARTICLE FROM THE GUARDIAN ON THE 8/06/07
'We blossom in sunshine'


They live on a boat, fear cows and dig ultra-obscure hippie albums. Just the band for my label, says Will Hodgkinson in his ongoing series about setting up Big Bertha Records

Friday June 8, 2007
The Guardian

One of the big sells of pop music is buying into the lifestyle of the artist. Who hasn't fantasised about hanging out at Keith Richards' villa in the south of France in 1971, listening to the Rolling Stones record Exile on Main Street, while watching Anita Pallenberg pass out on the sofa? It's my hope that one day the world will feel the same away about Thistletown, a band made up of two beautiful young women and their hairy boyfriends, who were a dead cert to be signed to my label, Big Bertha Records, from the moment I saw them.

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Thistletown live together on a boat in the small fishing town of Penryn, Cornwall. Lydia and Tiffany write poetic lyrics to accompany acoustic folk songs about the life they have down there; a life of walking five miles every day along hedgerow-lined lanes and travelling by rowing boat to the nearest pub (they don't own a car); of growing their own vegetables and cooking on an ancient wood-burning stove. Lydia's boyfriend is Ben, whose extensive knowledge of obscure psychedelic and folk bands from the early 1970s is second only to his masterful finger-picking guitar skills. Tiffany got together with the multi-instrumentalist Jarvis after he drunkenly walked off the edge of his boat and landed face down in the mud, reappearing to ask Tiffany if she would look after him. "At first I was quite scared to see this mud monster coming towards me," she says, "but then he was so sweet that all my fear went away."
The two couples met over a shared love of trees. "I love trees," confirms Tiffany, referring not only to the tall, woody perennial plants but also a short-lived folk rock-band from the early 70s. "It was the Trees' version of the traditional tune Sally Free and Easy that made us decide to form a band in the first place."

A visit to Thistletown's boat, moored at the end of a very muddy towpath, cements my resolve to record an album with this foursome, even though my brown suede boots have never been the same since. As in all the best bands, each member of Thistletown has a defined role. Ben is the leader; Lydia is the caring, sensible one; Tiffany is the wide-eyed innocent with an endless supply of maxi-dresses; Jarvis is the crazy kid. All that's missing is a van called the Mystery Machine and a dog called Scooby-Doo.

My only fear is that their lives are too nice - so nice that they won't want to ripple them by getting into the studio and breaking into a sweat to lay down some tight pre-Raphaelite folk-rock grooves. It turns out they want to record the album at Jarvis's dad's house in Cornwall - or rather, outside it. "One of my favourite albums is by [totally obscure English hippie group] Heron, and they recorded that outside a cottage in Devon," says Ben. "You can hear the birds and the wind."

"All our songs take inspiration from things we do together, like going on walks and so on," adds Lydia. "That's why they tend to be happy songs, and that's why the lakeside location of Jarvis's dad's house will be a perfect place to record an album."

I have my reservations about this. Believing that artists must suffer to produce great work, I suggest they make the album at the bottom of a urine-soaked nuclear bunker located in the middle of a dung-strewn field in a particularly deprived part of Cornwall. As long as they don't catch their hair on the barbed wire surrounding the manhole entrance or snag their dresses on the rusting iron ladder leading down to this pitch-black chasm, the bunker could prove an excellent recording location, with its good acoustics and bad vibes, and really give an edge to their music. They don't look too enamoured of the idea.

"But we blossom in daylight and sunshine," protests Tiffany. "We need a pastoral setting," adds Lydia, glumly. "Not a hole in the ground."

Some of my other suggestions go down better. The band is happy to reinterpret La Pernette, a 16th-century French ballad, as a story about a Cornish love affair, and they are enthusiastic when I suggest that Michael Tyack of the medieval psychedelic band Circulus be their producer. But this is a potentially risky move. Tyack has a deep musical understanding and a lot of recording experience, but some of his more wayward ideas can lead to unfortunate results. A recent daytime concert by Circulus ended in disaster after Tyack coerced another member of the band into donning a hideous mask and thrusting a cucumber into the faces of the children in the audience, shouting, "Bite my cucumber!" I wouldn't want that sort of thing to happen to Thistletown.

I also need to start building up Thistletown's live audience, which has so far chiefly consisted of the regulars in their local pub. They're excited to be playing at Llama, a free festival in the Devon town of Lynton, on June 10 (llama.org) and at the Green Man festival in Wales on August 17 (thegreenmanfestival.co.uk). But they are concerned at my insistence that they play a showcase Big Bertha Records concert in London. "I went to Peckham a few weeks ago," says Ben, still shaken by the experience. "Never again."

The one who seems the most scared of London is Tiffany. I don't take this too seriously at first because Tiffany is scared of everything, even cows ("you may laugh, but they squash four people every year in the UK alone"). Then I discover that she's worried about her father coming to the concert. Many people in bands balk at the thought of their parents turning up at gigs, but Tiffany's fears are more grounded than most: her father is an enormous skinhead with "Skins forever" tattooed on the back of his neck. The sight of all those gently swaying hippies in the audience might just set him off.

It's clear that I need to tread carefully with Thistletown. So I turn to Andrew Loog Oldham - former manager of the Stones and founder of the 60s record label Immediate - for advice. Oldham has just produced a country version of the Beatles' Please Please Me by the Canadian singer Wyckham Porteous, so he is up to date with the music industry, and happy to help.

"What do they drink on that boat?" he asks. "Camomile tea? Buy them an espresso machine. Tell them to write as many songs as they can, because once they get attention, that's not going to happen. In terms of image, your model for this band should be the Mamas and the Papas. Are they prepared to be whores?"

"I'm not sure they are," I reply.

"OK, put it this way. Do they want a bigger boat?"

I tell Oldham my main concern is that Thistledown knuckle down to it, which is why I've asked Tyack to be their producer. "I don't like producers. They come with an agenda," he replies. "When I had the Small Faces, they wanted to prove they could make a miracle, so I gave them six weeks in a house with excellent recording equipment, the best hash ever made, and the engineer Glyn Johns. And they came back with Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake."

As it turns out, Ben's father is Nick Tweddell, the artist who painted the cover of Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake, with the help of his flatmate Pete Brown. There is some kind of serendipity here, especially since he has agreed to paint the cover of Thistletown's album. If I can ensure that they're not too scared to make it happen, Thistletown might just come back with an all-time classic, too.