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THE BiTS INTERVIEW: SOPHIE LORD
Sophie Danielle Lord started gigging at 16 and has by her account been in
countless bands in a wide range of genres in various corners of the UK.
She has played with a Manchester PJ-Harvey/Nirvana-esque girl grunge group
by the name of Mr. Heart. More recently she has been working with Plymouth,
Devon bluesman Vince Lee and with drummer Lucy Piper both in the Lucy
Piper Trio and with ‘Stompin’ Dave Allen.
Ian McKenzie spoke to her on the telephone.
SL: Hello.
BiTS: Hello, Sophie. It's Ian McKenzie.
BiTS: Okay, let's make a start then, shall we? I gather you
started playing the guitar when you were about 16. What
kind of music were you listening to then?
SL: I started playing electric guitar when I was 13 and then
I switched over to bass when I was like 16/17. I mean, I
was born in 92, so a lot of my musical influences are
perhaps a bit cringe-worthy, looking back now, but I was big
into the pop punk stuff and emo stuff, really, and all that sort
of thing before I got into the blues stuff. So when I started to
learn to play guitar, at the time of that era in early 2000,
things like Green Day and stuff like that, and then it
eventually evolved into the blues stuff as I got a bit older
into my 20s, really. So I've got a very eclectic and weird
music taste, I think, and it's been a bit of a journey to get
to the blues [laughs].
BiTS: I guess at that age you didn't envisage yourself
becoming a musician, did you? What was your career
choice at that stage?
SL: Well, to be honest, I always wanted to do music. I didn't really
have any alternative. I was just very pig-headed and stubborn and
was determined that when I found the bass at 16/17, I was like, yeah,
I want to do this. I was fortunate I had a lot of very good older friends
around me who took me to see bands locally in Devon and Cornwall,
and from watching just local gigs even, I really got a taste for it. I was
like, oh, this looks like fun. I got into my first band when I was 17, and from then I was like, oh,
there's got to be a way to make this as a living. I look back now and think blimey, what was I
thinking? It was always on my mind, but I didn't realistically know how I was going to do it. I
think I was just thinking I would wing it, which is what I’m continuing to do now all these years
later.
BiTS: You say you found the bass. How did you find the bass? What actually happened?