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Busy times for Dutch composer, producer, vocalist, and songwriter Charlotte Wessels. Not only has she recently released her second full-length eclectic collection of songs recorded in her home basement – ‘Tales From Six Feet Under Vol II’ (‘Vol I’ was released last year), but there is also the small matter of her debut solo live show this weekend in Utrecht where alongside fellow ex-Delain bandmembers Timo Somers (guitar), Otto Schimmelpenninck van der Oije (bass), and Joey Marin de Boer (drums), as well as Sophia Vernikov on keyboards, Charlotte will present ‘Tales From Six Feet Under Live In Concert’. Plenty to talk to this on-the-rise solo artist about then…
With it being so close to the debut solo live show – how are you feeling?
I feel that it’s really all coming together, it’s been great to play music again with actual human beings as I feel like I’ve been locked away in this basement by myself for a while now! It’s great to make music again, and it’s also great to make it with Timo, Otto, Joey, and the new guy Sophia! It’s lovely. It’s coming together well, and we’ve already had a production day on the stage, mostly for sound purposes, and we’ll have another stage rehearsal coming up before the concert itself, we are ready!
Performing as a solo artist is a bit of a double-edged sword, on one hand with it just being your name up there then you get all the plaudits and all the praise, but the flipside of that is that you also get all the pressure…
And you also get all the bills! [laughs] But yes, it is exactly as you said. It is fantastic that there is this sense of freedom with it being a solo project, and when things get celebrated it is more personal because it is just you, but also when things go wrong, that also feels more personal. So, yes, it is a double-edged sword. But I’m happy, and I remember having the first rehearsal here and I remember that I was nervous going into it because these songs were made by me here in the basement. For example, I had made all the drum parts – and I’m not a drummer – so I was nervous that I hadn’t written something for someone with four hands! And I was really happy that once we started rehearsing then everyone was like “well, what if we played it like this…” and it really felt as if a lot fell off of my shoulders. Everyone wants to make this a really cool show, and everyone is super-invested, and also, everyone is down for more gigs in the future. It really feels good to do this in a group context, and I’m really proud to have them all involved and to have them onstage with me.
It must be a comfort knowing that your ex-Delain bandmates Timo, Otto, and Joey, along with Sophia, have your back.
Yes, absolutely. Especially now with us rehearsing for a while I really feel that everything is coming together, and the songs are coming to life. We are past the stage of “can we play these songs?” and have gotten to the stage of “wouldn’t it be cool if we did this…”, and it’s going to be even cooler to have actual people in front of us listening to it!
It will also be a bit of a double-header for many fans since another ex-Delain bandmate Merel Bechtold is playing the night before in Dordrecht with her new band Dear Mother…
Yes! And Joey will have an intense weekend because he is of course also playing drums with Dear Mother, so it will be an intense few days for him! But if anyone can do it, then it is Joey!
Exactly! Now, it must be an amazing feeling watching these songs that you created by yourself in your basement coming to life, and one in particular, ‘Soft Revolution’, seems to have made an incredible impact on many. You performed it with Timo for an online gig recorded at Tim Tronckoe’s art studio, and his extended guitar outro was, to say the least, jaw-dropping, were you aware of what he was going to do on the outro?
We had rehearsed it, yes, but I’m not going to lie…I cried a little when I heard him play it! [laughs]
I did notice on the recording that once Timo went into his solo, you did leave the stage…
Yes, that was my idea! I had this idea to lay down the electronic loop, and then do a mic drop and just walk away…because I had so much trust in whatever Timo was going to create I just wanted to give him that space. And there was nothing that I could add to it so I just walked off! And I kind of liked that.
How do you know when you have created something as special as that moment? Do you feel it there and then or is it a case of when you see other people’s reactions?
With that one, it wasn’t in a large hall, and we didn’t have a huge space. The sound was pretty weird so everything was recorded, and then when we heard the mix back and actually heard what we put out there – that was the moment. Because you have a weird mix in the room you don’t get caught up in the music as much, but I remember when Timo was playing that solo everyone in the room was just concentrated and focused on him, and then all of a sudden you could have heard a pin drop. But you are right, sometimes it does take a bit of distance to see that something is special.
Have any of the songs proved to be stubborn in changing into a band song? Any in particular giving you headaches?
Yes, the thing is, on ‘Vol I’ there were only a couple of songs that had “rock” vibes, on ‘Vol II’ there are a few that are a little bit more in the realm of the sort of things that we used to do with Delain…more of a symphonic metal vibe. Those are all very easy to bring to a band situation because they are all in a style that we have been doing for a very long time. It’s more the electronic songs, the songs where the drums are very obviously not acoustic drums, they are drum machines, or even just drum sounds and weird percussive noises. These are the things that are hard to change into a “live” context because you are always wondering “…is this something cool that we should just put on a backing track…and then do we reinforce that by putting actual drums under that…or do we just change it into acoustic drums” and we’ve had to make that choice for a lot of elements because I used twenty synthesizers for every song! So the electronic songs are not necessarily the hardest to play, but the hardest to decide how you are going to translate into a live situation.
Both volumes are made up of a selection of tracks that you released as ‘Songs of The Month’ on your Patreon page, and although they are not albums in the traditional sense they both have a great flow to them, for instance on ‘Vol II’ ‘The Phantom Touch’ fades out almost seamlessly into the gorgeous intro of ‘Against All Odds’, was it a headache putting the perfect running order together?
To get the songs together as an album ‘Vol II’ took a little bit longer than ‘Vol I’. As ‘Songs Of The Month’ they really are standalone tracks and I want the tracks to be an experience, so, I made a lot of long intros for tracks to get you into the vibe, but when I put them together for the album it was too much and very intro-heavy. So I cut some intros, and selected which songs were going to be featured as not all of the songs are, I like the fact that there is a certain exclusivity in that if I put a song on Patreon then it might only appear on Patreon. What I usually do is make a private playlist and switch the songs around until I feel that I have found the flow, and even though they were written not to be on an album together there is a way that they sound best together, and the trick is to find that way!
We are only a few months away from a new year, and a song such as ‘Toxic’ is still relevant as we approach 2023, it’s quite scary that not only have we not progressed as a race but in some ways – especially in America – we have in fact regressed. As a songwriter, it’s great that you have all this subject matter to write about, but at the same time, it would probably be good if you didn’t have it to write about…
I’d rather not have these to talk about! Actually, when I wrote ‘Toxic’, [1973 US Supreme Court decision to make abortion legal in states where it previously was illegal] Roe V Wade had not been overturned yet, and the spark for the song started on a day when I saw a news blog and two items one after the other was of a notorious alleged rapist being set free, and of the Britney Spears trial where she was trying to regain her own autonomy. There were so many things in those two little items – the culture of blaming – that I thought that I had to do a nod to Britney’s ‘Toxic’. And then when I was talking about a woman’s fight for her autonomy, I didn’t know that only a little bit later that was going to become more relevant because of Roe V. Wade being overturned…and that’s why I made it a single…I felt that it was urgent. But like you said, I’d rather not have these topics as inspiration!
After such a long period of uncertainty over the last few years living with the pandemic, it must mean a lot to you that not only are you out there playing live again, but also giving work to so many other artists such as video creators, costume designers, photographers, etc. For example, one look at the video for ‘Afkicken’ shows how many people you were giving work to, and if you like, putting food on their tables.
Yes, that is always a good feeling…but also kind of a weird feeling! You might have a mixer working on a track, and an illustrator working on a design…and I’m really happy about that, and through Patreon, I have been able to continue to do that over the pandemic. And now that the live side of things has returned there are also all the technicians that I have worked with in the past who are going to get added to that list. So yes, it’s definitely a good feeling!
Another thing to come out of the pandemic is the number of collaborations that artists are doing with each other and you’ve not only just appeared onstage with Epica, but you are also appearing on their new mini-album ‘The Alchemy Project’, that must have been a blast?
Definitely! I am very excited about the mini-album and it was really cool to be onstage again…even if it was only for one song! It was great to do it before the headline gig! It was great to dip my feet back in again…and they are wonderful people. But yes there are a lot of collaborations, and there are even more coming up again that have not been announced yet. It’s kept me busy, and it’s always interesting to work with other people and learn from others…to see how they do things.
Lastly, ‘House of Dragons’, or ‘Rings of Power’?
‘Sandman’!
Charlotte Wessels performs ‘Tales From Six Feet Under Live In Concert’ on October 23 at Tivoli Vredenburg – Ronda, in Utrecht, NL, tickets are available here. Joining Charlotte on the night are three special guests: Elianne Anemaat (Celestial Season) and Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), and Marcela Bovia (MaYaN) provides support. Charlotte and Alissa will perform co-single ‘Lizzie’ together for the first time, check out the video for ‘Lizzie’ here.
Interview – Dave
CHARLOTTE WESSELS online:
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