HEAVE HO
LET'S GO 

It must be something in the name. Dynamic duo The Courettes are often labelled as the hardest working band in the world. But, there is a band closer to home along the Clyde Coast that are certainly giving them a run for their money, and another band built around a hard-working, forever gigging duo, this time friends Lauren and Lynette, aka The Laurettes. 

The Laurettes are a band who, despite being on the go for some time, I only came across for the first time when they supported The Hedrons at their comeback gig in Glasgow’s SWG3 in October of last year. Despite the best laid plans, it’s taken me from then until now to finally catch up with the band, such is their demand, their vociferous appetite for playing live, and the fact that they are genuinely living their best lives..

Finally reaching the end of festival season at the weekend, Lauren and Lynette were taking some time out, probably no more than a day or two, or even an hour or two, I should wager, to stop and breathe after a summer that saw them playing across every inch of these shores.

Lynette: “Yeah, we got to the end of the festival season last night. We were so tired, we just wanted to go to bed”.

Don’t for a second think that playing these festivals was a chore though, not for one second. Just take a look at the band’s socials. They live and breathe their music. I think at one point in the interview they said, “playing live is work too.” If everyone in the world enjoyed their work as much as this pair, the world would be a much brighter place.

So, who are The Laurettes?

Lynette: “I feel like I’ve told this story loads recently. It’s been nice to revisit it. But we were both just doing our own thing with music, I had been playing in a few bands locally and it was right about the same time that Lauren had started doing her first gigs. I was looking for somebody that was more my age that would be interested in doing the same music as me. We actually went to the same school. It was one of my friends who said, Lauren O’Donoghue’s out gigging in the pubs, why don’t you get in touch with her? So I did. And the rest is history.”

Lauren: “Yeah, we were in different years, so we didn’t really know each other throughout school. We used to get picked up, both our mums knew each other in the car park, but we never ever really spoke. I’d done a few gigs and when Lynette got in touch. We went up and sat in my bedroom going over some covers. Christine Perri, Jar of Hearts, that was the first one we ever did.”

Things began to really go from strength to strength in 2021 after winning BT Murrayfield’s Scottish Playlist 2021 and playing to over 60,000 rugby fans. As I already mentioned, I came across the band for the first time in October 2022, already with a dedicated and vocal following, playing with The Hedrons in SWG3.

Since then, I’ve followed the band’s progress with interest on social media. They have not stopped, taking on every opportunity to play live.

Lauren: “We were quite busy with festivals last year and we just absolutely loved it, so we’d hoped to get to the same again this year. And we did, it’s been every weekend since about May, we’ve been at festivals, hanging about in tents and caravans”.

Lynette: “Last year when we did just start getting introduced to the festivals because we’d been successful after Murrayfield, the gig that we took on that changed things for us was Tiree. Things were going really well. We were asked to go and play in the Scaranish Hotel, I said to Lauren, I think there’s a festival on, let’s try and go even if it’s just to get to the festival and be there if we’re going all that way anyway…so we got in contact with them and they had the tiniest gig slots, two 15-minute slots. They said they didn’t have much but they would love to have us along. Of course, we were like “No problem.” The next thing was, because the weather was so bad, Nati Dread’s slot got cancelled and they asked us to fill in for her. Any opportunity we get given we don’t want to turn down because you never know what it’s gonna turn into. That totally was a pivotal moment for us entering into that scene.“

Lauren: “That’s one of the biggest gigs we had. Tiree. It was incredible. As you’ve said, the video of the whole Techno Viking thing, everybody down on the ground, doin’ the Heave Ho. That’s from that weekend, and we didn’t think we were going to get anything like that. It was amazing to be doin’ that.”

After The Hedrons gig, I wrote something along the lines of, if you want a party started, invite The Laurettes. The Heave Ho everyone does to Techno Viking is something to behold…

Lauren: “We used to go over to Dunoon. It was just after a lockdown actually, my dad’s got a boat, so we sailed over and went to a wee pub called the Old Bank. There was a big tall Viking-looking chap that we ended up becoming pals with. When we first saw him, we were like, we need to get to know him. It ended up that we’re still really good pals with him. Me and Lynette, after a couple of drinks, got the guitar out, the sun was out on this deck, and we started writing a song about the techno Viking and it blew up from there to now, playing it on every stage we can up and down Scotland. It’s hilarious”.

Lynette: “He actually is our best friend, he’s a real guy, Stuart his name is. We like to make our songs as interactive as we can. So, what was at first just a bit of fun over in Dunoon, was then “how can we do this to actually get everyone involved”.

Lauren: “My mum, she loves to see that Oops Upside Your Head, everybody sitting down for that, so she said, why don’t you do something like that. So, we’re like, Ok! A Viking Ship.”

A lot of The Laurettes songs involve a story of a drink… so I wanted to know what a typical Laurettes night out was like.

Lynette: “Well, it starts off when we say we’re not drinking and we’re gonna be dead well-behaved, and we’re gonna go home early. But I think we’re just very much of the thought that life is for living. And when we’re out gigging, we are all friends in the band and our families all like to come along as well. We’re just up for a good time, and that’s what it’s all about. So yeah, it always turns into a party.”

The whole festival vibe must be great, not just playing but getting involved

Lauren: “Absolutely, yeah. It’s the people that you meet along the way. It just makes it so much better for us interacting with the crowds and meeting the bands behind the scenes, and just having a great old weekend, every weekend”.

Lynette: “It’s amazing when you do go to all the different festivals, and you catch up with either the same bands or the same people that you met. We were down in Lindisfarne recently; we last went to Lindisfarne two years ago. We’d won tickets through Colonel Mustard and the Dijon 5, and we weren’t even playing the festival scene at that point, but we made a massive group of friends, and they were all there again this year. We’ve kept in touch and gone camping and stuff. It’s just been brilliant to meet like-minded people and have some fun as well”.

Talking about some of the bands that you’ve played with and you’ve got to meet, if I go back to when I was young, which wasn’t yesterday, traditional Celtic, Scottish folk music took a bit of pasting because it was something that was linked to all the old cheesy Hogmanay shows, where it was old guys in Aran sweaters, singing old songs, that was what folk music was seen as. But obviously in recent years it’s totally blowing up and you’ve got bands like yourselves, Tidelines, Peat & Diesel, Skerryvore, Nite Works and the like bringing in all the young music fans. So, tell me, is folk music the new rock’n’roll.

Lynette: “I think so. It definitely is. I think everybody’s worked really hard over the years, all the bands you’ve just mentioned there to bring that Scottish heritage back into music but make it more mainstream and accessible. Bands like Talisk & Nite Works like you’ve said and Elephant Sessions. It’s like going to a dance night. It’s like a rave and it’s amazing.”

Lauren: “They’re experimenting with new sounds and seeing what’s working. And it’s got a whole new younger audience, it’s s a big rave night out, with the lasers and all they do. It’s good to bring that back, and get everybody involved”.

Lynette: “It just makes you so proud to be Scottish. To have that wee element running through it as well.”
It’s in the cities as well. It’s not just the Highlands and Islands, like Queens Park this year, selling out nights in the Big Top and Barrowland.“

Lynette: “Absolutely, the following that everybody’s got now is massive and that’s been amazing for us because we’ve been working with all those different bands. Their fan bases have learned about us through the opportunities that we’ve had. They’re all so loyal and they love going to gigs. Obviously it’s quite hard nowadays, unless you are in the mainstream Top 40 or whatever, to pack out venues, but the trad scene, they are so loyal and they will come to your gig and they will travel, because it is a massive community. It’s friends, family and that’s what we’ve loved so much about being part of that, learning about it ourselves and getting those doors opened. It’s just been great.”

Lauren: “It’s all the same faces at the gigs, it’s nice to see that”.

Talking about the music scene in general, so not just the trad or the folk music scene, being an all-female band, you must hear phrases like female fronted bands, which I personally hate, no one ever feels the need to say male fronted bands. So as two strong women in the music scene, what is it like to be part of that in the 21st century? There’s still a lot of machismo and male dominance, from your perspective do you see that changing? Is it getting better.

Lauren: “In some ways it, but in a lot of ways it’s not, just the other day in Tarbert. We were just getting set up to go up on stage and there was an old boy came up and he went, are ye’s all girls….Ye’s all girls goin’ up? I replied, yes, we’re all girls. We always find that whenever somebody makes a comment like that, it makes us even more bonkers on stage because we’re like, grrrr, we are women, and we’re up here and we’ll show you! And you can see it on their faces, they are regretting what they said.”.

Lynette: “I don’t think it’s like that when you’re in amongst it though, and you’re working with the bands. It’s irrelevant. It’s not at all like that, we’re treated equally, the same as everyone else is. There is still a stigma though, a massive stigma attached to it. But it doesn’t bother us because, we’ll just show them! That’s it.”

Lauren: “And we do!”

Talking of the band all being girls, apart from yourselves, who else is in the band? I saw a picture of you recently with Soup (Lesley McLaren) from The Hedrons (among others!) does she play with you on occasion?

Lynette: “Yeah. So, it’s myself and Lauren who are obviously the core of the band and then Ari Loughlin on bass.. She’s a childhood friend I’ve played in orchestras and string quartets with my whole life. It’s generally the three of us that is a dead cert. Then on the drums we’ve had a few different people, with everybody having different commitments and different things going on in their life. We’ve got, obviously Lesley McLaren, then we’ve also got Linzi Miller from The Ronains and Amanda Ballingall as well, another local player. And we’ve had Emily Irving who’s playing on our album as well. It’s been good to have a mixture, and that it’s all girls. Everybody’s getting different opportunities when they’re not busy with their own bands. So, it’s quite nice to have a wee mixture as well”.

You just mentioned the album there, and you’ve mentioned Peat and Diesel as well. You had some time recording recently in Stornoway with Peat and Diesel what are the highlights or memorable moments from recording your album?

Lauren: “Boydie being in the studio. He came, he recorded a few songs with us, and he put the guitar down on like some of our bigger songs that we’re going to release as singles. But just to have him floating about the studio most days, it was just some great craic”.

Lynette: “It was unbelievable, it really was. The whole experience was just incredible. Like working with Keith (Morrison – Heron Valley/Face of the West and the owner of Wee Studio Records). He’s an absolute genius, a wizard, and such a personable person as well, so I just felt like I was at home, because we immersed ourselves in it for a full week up in Stornoway. It was just the best way to do it. But every day was just fantastic, just hearing all our work come to life.”

“We really did work so hard. We went straight to bed every night and had a good rest, I think we were enjoying it so much, we didn’t want to ruin any moment. It was work, you know, obviously gigging is work as well, but we were just like, no, this is one shot to make this perfect. So, we really did batten down the hatches and just get stuck.”

Lauren: “We only had the week to do it, so we were like, cramming in as much as we possibly could, we just had a mission and we achieved it”.

Lynette: “And we were the first band, the first full band in the Wee Studio, the new one, so that was a really nice thing.”

You said you had Boydie in the studio all week. Did you come up with any new songs while you were in the studio or did you them all practised and ready to go for recording?

Lynette: “We had the bones of them all, some of them were ready to just put down and then we had newer ones that maybe we’ve been working on, and we brought them together towards the end. But yeah, we knew what we were putting down when we were there basically. We were quite organised, which was good.”

Lauren: “We gave a wee bit of time at the end of the week just to kind of play about with some ideas.. You should have seen us on the last day. We were all running about, us and Boydie, whistling in one room, clapping in another room, cowbell out, smacking the cowbell…”

Lynette: “I remember towards the end of the week, I felt I was getting tired and worried about my voice… was it going to make the last day? I was standing in the booth and Boydie came up, he slid the door open, he had a Bud in his hand, and he just went, “drink that and you’ll sing like fuck”. And I did it. The placebo effect. I just went, aye you’re right. It was amazing. We had so much fun.”

When can we expect the album?

Lauren: “Well, first, the single’s coming out on Friday (Witches) and then we’ll have another single coming out, not too long after that and the album hopefully before the end of the year.”

Lynette: “We’re trying not to rush that, we want to get the marketing and everything right for it. We’ve got some good songs, well I would say all of them are good, but there’s loads of them that’ve got potential to do things and be part of something bigger. Sometimes you can release an album and maybe four or five tracks might get lost in the middle of it, because they’re not singles. We don’t really want that to happen, we’re just gonna take our time and make sure it’s all right before it comes out.”

Lauren: “We’ve got big plans for doing the whole album launch as well, so we want to take our time and think it all through and make sure it’s going to be an experience as well, just get it right instead of rushing it.”

Are you planning a physical release on vinyl? And do you really consider the order of the songs, the whole “this is an end to side one” and “this is a good song to start side two” and what have you?

Lynette: “We’re hoping to do that. We’ve had a few different mixes through now and we’re just really refining the last wee bits. Keith’s out touring America just now with Heron Valley. Once he gets back, the idea is to get into it. But yeah, we would like to do that, and we were talking about the order of what we’re thinking while we were up in the studio. We’ll definitely put a lot of thought into that for sure.”

Lauren: “All of our songs tell a story of where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing and the places that we’ve seen. If it goes in order like that, we’re kind of telling the story of us. Yeah, the mental-ness of The Laurettes”

And talking of stories, you have got single Witches coming out on Friday and it’s obviously got a back story to it as well. I know you’re paying tribute, a bit like what I said before about women in music and how women have been persecuted, taken advantage of. You’re paying tribute to all the women that were executed as witches in the past. What inspired you to write a song about that?

Lynette: “We wanted to write a song with that kind of theme, but it started off in a different guise, but we are so interested in the stories of the witches. Lauren’s auntie knows a lot all about that as well.”

Lauren: “She’s written a book about it. It’s all really fascinating, interesting tales of all the women that were really wrongly treated. So, we morphed a bit of that into it, because when you hear stories like that, you’re like “I can’t believe that happened”. We’ve got a voice now and it’s just great to be able to make some noise about it.”

Lynette: “Those kinds of things are still happening, maybe in a different context, or in a different setting, not quite witches being burned at the stake, but like you say, there are still issues with equality in the music industry and just life in general, with a lot in the news and negative things going on so, that’s where it all came from.” (A subject pertinent right now with the allegations against Russell Brand and sexual coercion)

You said you’ve other singles planned, as well as plans for the album launch, I was gonna ask a stupid question as you never stop playing gigs, but will you be playing gigs and touring the album?

Lynette: “Yeah, we would really like to do a wee tour, so we’re just thinking about what way to take that, it will obviously all really depend on when it’s coming out. We want to try and do that before festival season, or after also. It’s just dependent on when it can land. But yeah, we definitely do have plans for it and we’re excited. That’s something that’s new, very new, for us, it will be totally new ball game and a different style of organising. But we’re up for it. I think it’ll be good.”

What’s on the cards now that that festival season is over, a wee bit of a rest, or are you getting straight back into it again?

Lynette: “We’ve quite a few corporate gigs coming up. We’re playing the Ayr Races and we’ve linked in with a few different companies that get us to play dinner events and things like that, which is really good. That’s leading to other contacts abroad as well. We’ve been contacted by the British Consulate in Saudi Arabia. They’re looking to get us out there.”

Lauren: “We’re supposed to go back to New York as well for Tartan Week.”

Lynette: “And we’re back up in Fort William with Skerryvore and Trail West in January for the annual party, so, looking obviously we’re forward to that.”

So, do you get any time off then?

Lynette: “We don’t do time off!”

There you have it, a band that never stops, living in the moment, for the moment and loving life. What’s not to love?

https://fb.watch/naV8pXcAha/

What about that single Witches then?

The Laurettes certainly have a fire in their bellies, a flame ignited by indignant rage at the outrageously cruel and unjust trials that resulted in the lubricious death of countless innocent women. As The Laurettes said in their interview, they have a voice, and they’re damned well going to use it. Their incensed frustration is portrayed in the vigorously spirited performance of Witches. “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned” they sing as they curse the accusers “set fire to the jury, we witches never burn”. The drums bring the musical thunder as the divine harmonies, fiddle and acoustic guitar blended with subtle electric riffs channel Fleetwood Mac taking on The Devil Went Down to Georgia. If this is an indication of what we can expect from the album, then we’re in for a treat.