Verum Magazine, February 2012

Kate Cooper and Damon Cox of An Horse

Verum had a chance to catch up with An Horse’s Kate Cooper. who with Damon Cox make up the band An Horse, while she was in the studio working on new material. The duo sets out on tour March 9 and visits the Blue Moose March 11. An abbreviated version of this article ran in the VMix section of the current issue of Verum.

Verum: Is this a typical tour for you?

Kate: This one is the perfect size. For me, it all feels kind of overwhelming, I have a month of dates and five dates in Australia which is totally manageable. In the past we’ve done two months in the states and a few weeks in Europe so it is just much easier to manage. It’s also one of our last tours on this record which is cool.

Verum: Are you currently working on new material?

Kate: That’s what I’m supposed to be doing instead of Googling coffee shops (laughs).  I’m actually set up in front of my computer and watching it open and it’s all set up and instead of doing what I’m meant to be doing I’m reading about coffee.

Verum: Is there a direction with the new album?

Kate:  We’re still in the early stages so I’m just writing, writing, writing. I have an albums worth of material but I think that we want to have, before we can contemplate recording, we need four or five albums worth of material. I’ve got some work to do, which I’m currently not doing. (laughs)

Verum: What can we expect from an An Horse show?

Kate: Serious rock and roll. It’ll be a bit longer, a few covers maybe thrown in. We’re not playing anything new just yet, can’t do that but we expect to have a lot of fun.

Verum: How did An Horse come to be?

Kate: Damon and I are from Brisbane, Australia originally and we worked in a record store there . He worked there a couple of years before me and I got the job there later. I didn’t know Damon well, I knew of him but we hadn’t met officially. I worked at the store for a couple of years and we’d go out after work and drink and talk about music and then we’d go to work and drink coffee and talk about music so we had this simple and amazing friendship. We understood each other and joked about starting this band. He used to get off work and tell me to pretend that we were on tour in America which at the time seemed to be the furthest thing from reality for us. We started jamming together and liked it and kept doing it. It’s the most unintentional band that ever came into being. We didn’t intentionally do anything.

Verum: Are you surprised at all by your success?

Kate: Well I mean success is an interesting term and there’s lots of levels to it. On one hand what we’re doing is crazy and amazing and very successful and on the other hand other bands are far more successful so I mean I’m still amazed I get to do this and we get to play with all these amazing people and bands, yeah I’m blown away. It’s just about time and hard work.

Verum: What’s the writing process like?

Kate: I don’t really try to achieve anything. It just happens so I guess a lot of that record was just about a lot of the things that were going on in my life which is basically the way I approach it. I don’t really try to do anything because I think if I think about it too much it would freak me out. I do what I do. I would prefer to just be a poet but you can’t make any money as a poet (laughs).

Verum: What’s next for An Horse

Kate: I think mainly the focus is to knuckle down and write but I could be wrong. I’m a bit out of the loop because I ask to be kept out of the loop, don’t worry too much or freak myself out about travel schedules and whatnot. But I actually have no idea at this point which makes me think that we’ll just have to wait and see. We’ll wrap this tour up, go to Australia and do that and then get down to writing, try to make a new record at some point. I’d like to have a new album done this year.