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BiTS INTERVIEW: Half Deaf Clatch

Half Deaf Clatch AKA, Andrew McClatchie is a solo musician from the north of England who in the
last few years has won a significant number of accolades for his substantial body of work. One of
the most prolific musicians anywhere in the world, Clatch produces dozens of songs and tunes in
his own recording space, invoking the days of pre-war blues and the ghosts of musicians of the
past. Clatch lives in a world of ghosts, zombies, and murderers, with (creepy) clowns to the left
and (homicidal) jokers to the right; a world of Poe and Lovecraft and Algernon Blackwood, with

a few added cowboys. Ian McKenzie spoke to him on the telephone.

BiTS: The last couple of years have been horrendous for everybody in the music business. How have
you managed to keep your head above water, if you have?

HDC: Yes, it’s been tough, but I’ve basically been writing
monthly little projects and releasing them on Bandcamp,
just to keep myself sane since the start of the pandemic.
It started as a one-off, but Bandcamp introduced a
Friday initiative where they waived their revenue share -
their little bit for selling stuff, their percentage for selling
stuff and they kept doing it. Every month I kept just

doing little projects and putting them on Bandcamp
for people to either download for free - name your
price or to buy a CD version of it with little bits and
pieces and thankfully, that sort of kept me sane and
kept me financially solvent for the past year which

has been excellent really.

BiTS: It must be a lot of pressure to keep on coming
up with stuff. How do you manage to keep yourself
active? What’s the process?

HDC: I’m always thinking - literally. I can’t turn my brain off,
so I’ve got this backlog of ideas that range from fully formed
ideas to just throwaway bits and pieces, so I literally am

working on a couple of different things all at the same time
and when something is ready then I go forward with it. As an
example, last month and the month before, I released a sort
of banjo zombie apocalypse voodoo thing that I’ve been
working on for about a year, or the idea for it came about a

year ago. I’m always three steps ahead in what I’m doing,
thankfully, and I can’t turn my brain off like I said. I’ve got a
wealth of ideas in the back of my head that I sort of call upon
and develop, and then when the time is right, I release it into
the world. It’s not too bad. It’s not too stressful.

BiTS: Is the one that you’re talking about ‘Severine The Voodoo

Queen’?

HDC: That’s the one, yes.