Interview with The Organ's Katie Sketch: 'By the end, I feel like everyone was mentally ill'

by Rebecca Nicholson (thelipster.com) 16 OCT. 2008

Here's a cautionary tale for young bands. When The Organ split up in 2006, it came as a big surprise - they had waves of good press, a growing audience and seemed on the verge of breaking the UK. But by that point, as singer Katie Sketch explains in this candid and frank interview, everything was wrong. Here's the full story behind the band's break-up, and the real reason that they're releasing that posthumous EP.

How did you come to release Thieves? I don't think anyone was expecting to hear anything else from The Organ.
I had heard a rumour that my record label was going to release songs that we hadn't released, from some demo recording we had done earlier. I was not happy with that. At all. Threatening isn't the right word, but I heard they were thinking about releasing it. So I freaked out, and during that freak-out period I realised that I really like the songs. People have been writing us, fans, asking about the songs, so I thought we should record them while we still remember them.

Is it a way of finishing thing off?
Totally.

That's it for the band?
Yep.

No plans for anything else?
None whatsoever.

What does that mean for you? Are you going to continue with music?
When the band ended, I was really burnt out. I thought if I took a few months off then I wouldn't be burnt out, but now, when I think about it, I wouldn't have the energy to do touring right now. I just feel absolutely exhausted with it, and band politics, and all that stuff. I am still writing music, but it's not my first priority any more.

What's your first priority now?
Getting my life back together. We'd been touring for so long and working so hard that I didn't know how to function on a daily basis. So just little things, like, I'm going to have breakfast today, or I'm going to the gym, or I'm going to get a job. I didn't really have any concept of how to do it any more.

Is that just from touring, or is it the whole lifestyle?
It's just the whole thing. I spent the majority of my twenties wanting to be in a band and it's all I ever thought about. And by the time the band ended I was in really bad health. Like drinking was a problem, and not knowing how to deal with personal crises. I was in bad shape.

People either thrive on that lifestyle or it starts to destroy them.
That probably has a lot to do with band dynamics as well. If a band is really supportive of one another and can help each other through things, it works really well, but at the end we were completely unable to communicate. We'd all become self-deprecating, we were fighting all the time... we were basically just drunk all the time. We had no time to separate, so it was like being in a bad domestic situation, all the time.

From that point, how do you go back into the studio to record these songs for Thieves?
The Organ Thieves EPI can only speak for myself, but I found that doing it was extremely emotionally draining. I made sure we did it under our own terms. I had a friend who engineered it and we did it at my mum's house in DC. She lives on this island, so it was really relaxed. And we did it in stages so the band was never there at the same time, so we couldn't fall back into the band dynamic because "the band" was never there. I gave my friend strict instructions, like, sit in the back seat and don't offer any opinion. We need it to be the easiest session ever, because people are really sensitive, and if one person says, "Fuck this, I'm leaving," then it won't work. So we did it like that.

Presumably when you started, you were friends, so it must be difficult.
Oh yeah, absolutely. When you're five girls touring in really terrible circumstances, where you're all in the same van and all sleep in the same hotel room every night, and you're drinking a lot, you have a lot of really fun times, but there's always fighting, there's always something going on. Towards the end, where things were becoming irreparable, it got to the point where we should have been in therapy as a group [laughs]. And we should have taken breaks. And I knew that, and I was pushing for that. But the way our career had gone, we released the record in Canada, then somewhere else, then somewhere else, touring the same record. It was staggered, so we were always touring where the fanbase was hearing it for the first time. We built it like that, which is how a lot of bands do it, but it was gruelling.


I saw you play a few times in London, and the last time, it was quite obvious that you weren't enjoying it.
By the end, I feel like everybody in the band was mentally ill. Honestly. We really needed a break and the record label, everybody, was pushing, pushing, pushing. And there's always the feeling that you're in financial debt too. The more you do it, the more money you make, and we felt like we owed it to people. And that's how management and the record company played it - "you kind of owe it to us to do another tour right now."

It sounds like you've been burnt by the whole thing.
Uhhh... I don't know... It became really hard in the end, but obviously we had tons of amazing experiences. It's just that things got so bad in the end that it's hard to think about them like that. I live with Jenny now, the organ player, and for whatever reason, it's constantly like, "Remember the time when we..." and we'll laugh and it's hilarious. So the whole thing wasn't horrible. It's not like I'm saying "don't start a band". I'm just saying, you've got to set your personal boundaries, as far as touring goes. As far as the grind. It's really important to take a break and we never got one.

In a way, it seems like it was quite brave of you to step back at that point. I was surprised you broke up, because it came so soon after you were picking up momentum, here at least. You'd had the NME piece...
We were at that point where everyone in a band wants to get, right where the financial stuff isn't going to be such a big deal, where we'd be able to tour and take personal space, but our relationships had deteriorated so much by that point. And quite frankly, I was not mentally well. Straight up. And I needed to get away from it, or something really bad was going to happen.

Did the lifestyle exacerbate that?
The Organ liveAbsolutely. It's like, you're doing everything that you dreamed of your whole life, and yet you've never been more miserable. You can't get away from these people. It's like you're married to them, basically. And we had other problems as well. What I consider to be a major part of our break-up is that this whole entire time that we were touring and doing all the stuff, we were never signed in the States. And to not have a record label in the States is to not have a career. We live in Canada so it's right there, but whenever we'd play in the States it would be to nobody. So we worked really, really hard to get a label in the States and when we finally had label interest there, and a label we wanted to sign to, our Canadian record label, who own our record, wouldn't let us go with what we wanted to do. It felt like we'd been busting our asses for however long, and we felt like we had no control. So what was going to happen? We'd finally sign in the States when I was 35, and we'd do gruelling tours then? You know what I mean? That was a major knock-down for us.

How does it feel now, then, to have to release the EP on the same record label?
It's fine. I've really separated myself from the situation. But that sort of thing, being bound by a contract, straight up, that's a major obstacle in my desire to do music any more. I feel like, OK, so I'm going to write a solo record and pour every part of myself into it, and I won't have control over where it's released in the United States again?

Could you not do it independently?
I'm arguably bound by contract.

Even as a solo artist?
It's seriously debatable and is being debated and has been for the last two years. I like to think that I'm not, and they like to think that I am. And that stress alone, honestly, keeps me from sitting down and working on music. I have no control over my own career.

It must be strange to feel like your creativity doesn't belong to you.
Yeah. And I'm sure thousands of artists have this problem, and it keeps people from hearing potentially great music, or music they would like, because they're caught in a ridiculous situation.

So does that mean you can't play live, or is that OK?
I can play live, but when it comes to releasing a record, they've straight up said to me, if you release any music you will be sued. And that kind of pressure, after all the work that I've done, really isn't like anything I need in my life right now.

What are you doing now? Are you working?
What I did, I moved to Toronto, had a mental breakdown, then I just got a job working for a doctor, actually. I interview people with drug problems, and alcoholics. And then Jenny the organ player just moved to Toronto and she and I bought a restaurant bar about two months ago. We're renovating it and we live above it in a teeny weeny apartment together.

What kind of bar is it going to be?
It'll be a brunch place in the day, and we have a liquor license so it will be a bar at night.

Will you have bands play there?
No. It's too small and the sound would be awful. I wouldn't want to play there, so...