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VL: Yeah, well, she's done a few things, but being a bass player, I guess she doesn't really get the
champion that she should get from people because she's played with some really cool people. Just
last week, she was up in London playing with members of Dire Straits and the guy from the
Pretenders was playing there with her as well. She's well-connected. She knows Norman Watt-Roy.
Do you know Norman from Wilko’s band, and from Ian Dury? He’s really good friends with Sophie.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say he's like a father
to her.

BiTS: Is she a local Plymouth lady?

VL: Yeah, yeah, I knew Sophie way back,
like going back about 12 years ago, I
suppose. Twelve, 13 years ago, and she was
much younger then obviously, and was on
a sort of journey to deciding what she was
going to do. She used to come and see my
band and I think it influenced her quite a lot
to go off and to study music. She was already
into playing bass and she was in a few local
bands, and off she went. She went up and
lived in London for something like 12 years.
She’s travelled around quite a lot, but she
was based in London, and she had several
bands that she was working in as well as
function bands and stuff like that. So she can
play pretty much anything you throw at her.
She's played in so many function bands, she
would look at a set list and just go, yeah, I
know all those.

BiTS: I gather she swapped from electric
bass to the stand-up recently.

VL: That's right. Well, yes, I've always been
trying to edge her that way, but she was living in a really tiny spot up in London, like a little tiny
room, and she didn't have room for it. Then right near the end, before she moved back to Plymouth,
she said I've found the solution and she had gone on marketplace, and someone was selling, we call
it the Franken-bass. It’s like a metal frame that somebody's attached to an old double bass neck and
made this crazy electric double bass out of it. It was not so big that she could actually get it in her
room and play it. So she was up there learning how to play on this thing.

BiTS: Presumably that's how you managed to get out into the country to do the recording for this
new album?

VL: Well, no because when we do these things in the recordings, we’ve got a van. We stick the double
bass in the van and drive off and find some nice spots out in the countryside. We make videos for
them.

BiTS: Now the new album is called “Out In The Sticks”? (On Bandcamp, Ed)

VL: “Out In The Sticks”, yeah. Because most of the songs are recorded out in the open.

BiTS: Well, tell me where you went to make the recordings then. Are you able to do that?