The Kooks guitarist Hugh Harris

The Kooks are somewhat ubiquitous these days, thank god: their music has great lyrics, it's got a good beat and you can dance to it. The Brits across the pond have had them all to themselves for a while, but they have been spending more time in America... in fact, the Kooks are currently on a United States tour, and a couple of weeks ago I had the chance to talk with guitarist Hugh Harris about the music and the tour and how he "fucking loves" New York. Enjoy!

Okay, here we go! So the tour’s going well?
Yeah, the tour’s going very well. Now we’re in Washington and—what part of America are you in?

I’m in New York.
Wicked. I fucking love New York.

I’m glad to hear it! Have you been often?
Yeah. Definitely every once in a while.

Good. I’ve got city pride.
Well, you should do!

So is this tour the first with this material?
Well, no, we’ve been to America before we made this record. And we’ve been playing these songs for a while now—the album came out in April…

Wait, I’m sorry, could you speak up?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, we’ve toured America a couple times. And I guess this is our second time touring the new material.

D’you think your performance of your material progresses during a tour?
During a tour? Well, not really, no. [laughs] Sometimes I guess you can change the way you play something. The way you record it you can’t always recreate, so you get to change how you play it and that can be quite fun sometimes. But not majorly does the music change when you’re on a tour, but apart from that reason I’ve never been a fan of going to see a band play their album exactly note-for-note and word-for-word; for me when I go see a band I like something different. Actually we’re a lot more punky, a lot more rock-and-roll, than on the record.

So about the album Konk—well, what led up to its development? How is it different from your past music?
Well, I would probably say that’s up for people to judge when they listen to it. It’s not for me to explain. But for us, we changed a lot. We became better players, we… it’s not easily explained in a sentence.

Well, new influences?
Yes, yeah. A couple we picked up a long the way. Quite a lot, yeah, definitely.

Okay, I wanted to ask about something that you did—well, it might have been a while back at this point—at one point the band participated in the Black Cab Sessions.
Yeah, that was a favor for one of my girlfriend’s mates. But yeah, absolutely, it’s not the sort of thing we do a lot but we absolutely quite liked doing it.

Well, it was fun, it’s really nice to see the musicians they feature playing their music that way.
I think stripping everything back just sort of—we do quite a lot of that with our songs, strip them back. If they sound good on one guitar, if they sound catchy or interesting on just one guitar, then you can do a lot more with it. That’s what makes it good, and you can take them anywhere. So I think that’s what the Black Cab sessions do, they strip the songs back to where they came from, which is mainly…

Is that how you write your music?
Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. That’s exactly how we write music: with one guitar. Or sometimes someone will come in with a bit of a riff or whatever and we’ll work on it. Or else it’s just a song idea or melody, and then we all sort of jump on it.

So how do all collaborate?
Well, like I said, one of us will have an idea and bring it in to the band and we’ll all sort of work on the out with it. There’s no real one dictatorship—it’s quite democratic. Like a pack of wolves on a zebra, we all jump aboard.

[laughs] So do you have any particular influences outside of music—you know like literature or conversations you hear?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you always draw on what you’re reading, or you’ll write a story about what happened to one of your friends. I don’t think you can help being influenced by things like that; I don’t think you have a choice! [laughs]

Yeah, absolutely.
When you’ve got ideas in mind then you can come into them completely. You can talk about it or write about it.

So what is—I like to thinks that songs fall into two camps, one in which they’re based on personal experience and one in which they tell stories about completely other characters.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. That’s a fantastic observation. I think the best songs are in the first person, from the heart. One of the strongest emotions is either love or hate from the first person so you start singing it because you can’t talk.

Well, I know you write about personal experiences but have you guys ever done the bit where you create entirely different third party characters?
I don’t think we really think about that sort of process, really. I think when you’re writing songs you come out with whatever. I know Luke [Pritchard, guitarist and lead singer] has done it with “Mister Maker”. That was sort of a story that he was inspired by that he read in the paper and he tried to build this whole tune around it. So, yes, that can be fun sometimes but we normally just speak from the heart. We don’t really overly complicate things. That’s the biggest connection you can give to anyone, is if you just speak honestly and from one place. I think that’s the easiest way to get people into the sentiment.

So is it different to play your music for American audiences than for English audiences?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. There’s a huge different. I mean, in America it’s fucking great because you’re starting all over again—you’re playing the small club shows. It’s great. I fucking love it, because you go back to basics and you’re just starting all over again. And that’s exciting for us. I love it. And I love you!

[laughs] Okay, say how much you love New York one more time, just appease me.
Yeah, it’s mega! It’s absolutely darling, darling.

All right, thanks so much for doing this interview!
Anytime. Look after yourself!

Yeah, you too. It was great talking to you.
Lots of love. See you later.

This concludes our interview with the Kooks. For more check our their website or MySpace.