We Talk To Kimberley Rew (Soft Boys, Katrina & The Waves) And Lee Cave-Berry About Their Smashing New Album Purple Kittens, Song By Song!

One recurring complaint that I see on social media, from [aging] friends and strangers alike, is that no one makes good music anymore. Today's music is often referred to as soulless, too technology driven, vacuous garbage, disposable and just plain annoying. The fact is, though, that there are gobs of people out there, making fantastic music, that thrills, touches, and takes you back to our youthful days of discovery. This music is no longer served up to us by deejays like Jim Ladd and Bob Coburn in the US, and Tony Blackburn and John Peel in the UK, we have to go looking for it.

Two people that are still making sensational music are Kimberley Rew, formerly the founder of and principle songwriter for Katrina and the Waves, as well as lead guitarist for the seminal post punk, neo-psychedelic band The Soft Boys, and his wife, bassist, nonpareil, and singer Lee Cave-Berry.

After taking a pause last year to look back on twenty plus years of wonderful music with Sunshine Walkers: The Best of Kimberley Rew and Lee Cave-Berry, Kim and Lee are ready to unleash the first of two new albums of original material, Purple Kittens.

Purple Kittens is an analog  tour de force of songwriting and expert musicianship, delivered in  numerous styles encompassing 50s, 60s and 70s rock and roll, folk and even jazz.  Every song is an infectious ear worm that will compete for space in your cranium. When you get to the end, you'll play it again.

I recently spoke with Kim and Lee about each delightful song on the album and here its is, with links to some of the songs so you can sample for yourself how well these charming folks are clicking. We also manage to digress into Dylan at the end, so read on!

All photos courtesy of Lee Cave-Berry

Purple Kittens, Song By Song with Kimberley Rew and Lee Cave-Berry

Gear Note: On all tracks, Lee Cave-Berry plays the 1972 sunburst Fender Precision bass that Vince de la Cruz used on the Katrina and the Waves evergreen "Walking On Sunshine."

Gearheads, anoraks and trainspotters: a complete rundown of Kim & Lee's gear — guitars, amps, knob positions, pedals and studio craft, detailed by Kimberley Rew himself, follows this article, or you can link directly to it here.

1. Penny The Ragman (Rew)
Guitar used: 1985 Black Squier Telecaster fit with Texas Special pickups

Eric Sandberg: This song has a strong Kinks, Village Green vibe and the guitar solo at the end would make Dave Davies look up from his Twitter account.

Kimberley Rew: "It's interesting you mention that because Village Green is an album about characters and Penny is a real character. Penny The Ragman is my late my cousin. She lived in a village and was a ragman. A ragman is a person who looks after the uniforms for a team of Morris dancers, actually called a side of Morris dancers, a traditional dance we have here in England. There is no female equivalent for the term ragman that I've been able to find."

Lee Cave-Berry: "I had never heard of one before we went to her funeral, and I found it interesting to learn a little bit about our history."

KR: "It's kind of poignant. Sometimes you don't take much notice of people although they've been there all your life — she's about my age — and then they die and you go to their wake and talk to their friends and you realize how much they've done with their lives."

2. You Can Rely On Me (Rew, Cave-Berry)
Guitar used: Gibson 1968 Les Paul Gold Top

ES: This song just choogles and chugs and gets your blood going and your foot tapping.

KR: "In our old house in Cambridge I would kind of bash away on the top floor and the noise would filter down through the house — BeROW BAT BAT BeROW BAT BAT BeROW BAT BAT-BAT — for a long time, and this would be inflicted on Lee. Later, I'd come down the stairs and she'd say "All over the attic, there's a brand new rhythm!" [Lee, laughing in the background) so, there you go!"

LC: "I don't even remember that!"

KR: "I changed it to "All over the twenties it's a brand new rhythm because I wrote it in 2020." I thought it would be a good time for a new start for humanity."

LC: "Kim will give me a credit on a song when I throw a line at him, like the song "She's Still Got It."

KR: That was more of an even split. I was driving the car and shouted "She's still got it!" and Lee would sing..."

LC: "...and he still gets it!" [laughter]

ES: Like Paul would sing "It's getting better all the time," and John would chip in "It couldn't get much worse."

3. I Can Be Any Woman (Cave-Berry)
Guitars used: Kimberley — Guild acoustic F50   Ranjan Vesudevan — Gibson SG Custom

ES: This siren song has a sinewy, phrygian mode acoustic guitar groove and some extra sultry, 'come hither' singing by Lee.

LC: "The funny thing about this track is, I wrote it a long time ago, about twenty years, when we first got together, actually, and it just languished away there. I didn't think I could take it any further than the original demo I recorded. A couple of years ago I was sorting out my old demos and thought 'actually, that doesn't sound too bad.' I played it for Kimberley  and he said " I like that one, let's put it on the next album."

When we took it into the studio, that's actually when it came along. You get three people playing it together and, suddenly, it's something else.After we recorded it, I realized that it must have come from that Star Trek episode "The Menagerie," with the green woman who kept changing herself into different types of women to find one that would please Captain Pike."

KR: "Ranjan Vasudevan played those swooping single string runs in the Carnatic scale."

4: Kingdom Of Love (Hitchcock)
Guitar used: 1985 Black Squier Telecaster fit with Texas Special pickups

ES: An excellent, pulsing, cover of the Soft Boys classic. Correct me if I'm wrong but, where Matthew Seligman [late Soft Boys bassist] seemed to bounce just slightly behind the beat on the original, it feels like Lee is slightly pushing the proceedings, lending a new sense of urgency to the song.

LC: "Matthew and I both had Andy Fraser as our hero [Free bassist]  and I have, on occasion, been accused of being slightly behind the beat. It is, actually very unusual for me to be a pushy bass player. I have quite a lot of difficulty pushing. It is possible because we did that one with Liam [Liam Gray, the drummer on Purple Kittens]. Liam and I are completely on the same wavelength. I've not had another drummer that I am so completely at one with. I work very well with other drummers like Tony Hill and my mate Christine Kitching but, with Liam, it's like we share the same soul, and when we play together we just lock in.

"I Can Be Any Woman" came alive with Liam. He's just got that feel. You don't have to explain anything to him. If I'm pushing the beat slightly on "Kingdom Of Love" it's because I'm locked in with Liam."

KR: "This is the song we would do if it was Robyn's birthday or someone in the crowd was shouting for a Soft Boys song."

5. Too Much Love (Rew)
Guitar used: Guild acoustic F50   

ES: This is a gorgeous, gentle, pop ballad with a simple and hopeful message.

LC: "I love that. We were on holiday in the Isle of Wight when he wrote that. He just had the chorus and I thought  what a fantastic idea that is. The very first time he played that chorus, I melted. So beautiful...love it! It's very sweet...very loving...kind."

6. The Wrong Song (Rew)
Guitar used: 1985 Black Squier Telecaster fit with Texas Special pickups

ES: This track is the centerpiece of the album for me. It's funky, loaded with attitude, and features some old school jazz flute from Myke Clifford.

KR: "We are big fans of Myke Clifford. You know those Venn diagrams, with the intersecting circles? Kim and Lee are in one circle and Myke is in the other one. We don't have a big intersection but we like to intersect when we can. It was time for some jazzy flute, just to kind of float across that song. One of the big positive points about the Wednesday Session [A weekly live show/internet broadcast hosted by Johnny Wright] is we get the chance to  rotate a few good people and we get to see what they can contribute to the right song."

LC: That's the great thing about the Wednesday Session. If you're a working musician, you don't get to see other musicians very often because you're too busy working yourself. We met Liam at a Wednesday Session, we met Ranjan at a Wednesday Session. The first time I saw Myke Clifford I thought 'what a useful bloke to have in a band!' He plays saxophone, flute, percussion, and he's a really great singer and front man."

ES: Lee, I particularly love your harmony vocals on this song. They've got this sneery twang to them that suits the attitude of the song perfectly.

LC: "It's such a feel thing, I probably didn't even know I was doing it. The song is quite jazzy for us, we don't usually play in that style, so you just go with it, don't you."

ES: In fact, this album features lot more of the two of you blending your voices together with a quite satisfying result.

KR: "That is what we're aiming for. We think we've got a sound and we haven't made the most of it. We like to do that when it's right for the song, you get those two voices fairly close together."

LC: "A couple of times, when we're in the studio, we've actually sung into the same microphone. When we sing together live, it is more obvious that our voices blend  — the sound waves blend together. When you record vocals on a record, those sound waves aren't interacting in quite the same way as when we sing it live."

KR: "A lot of the records I like have more than one person singing into the same microphone. Any photos  you see of the Beatles recording vocals, they're nearly always all around one microphone, or two on one and one on another. The Everly Brothers were always on one microphone. You've got to be pretty good to make that work. What we did on Purple Kittens is to have two microphones and sang together live, facing each other. That way we kind of got the best of both worlds because we could see each other and interact."

7. Unsatisfactory Cats (Cave-Berry)
Guitar used: 1985 Black Squier Telecaster fit with Texas Special pickups

ES: This charming bit of English whimsy is perfect change of gear after "The Wrong Song" has gotten everyone hot and bothered. The track sequencing is quite perfect really.

LC: "We've actually recorded enough tracks for two different albums. They were recorded at different times and two different places. We left it to our PR guy Joe Cushley to sort out what tracks would be on Purple Kittens and sequence them as well. He did a great job.

It was my grandma that used to complain about her cats being "unsatisfactory" because they didn't do the things that cats should do. We  took two cats in that were behaving unsatisfactorily which led me to write the song. We ended up splitting the cats up and the one we still have has been quite satisfactory ever since."

8. Black Ribbon (Jonah Smith and Reuben Smith)
Guitar used: 1985 Black Squier Telecaster fit with Texas Special pickups

ES: This 50s style slab of rock and roll was not written by either of you but I can't seem to find out anything about the song or the writers on the internet. Where does it come from?

LC: "For about sixteen years Kim and I played in a band called Jack. It was a local covers band and we would play all around the Cambridge area with this lovely chap called Roger Smith. Roger ran the band and got all the gigs. He was genial and a good singer. He was just a lovely chap and I could talk to him for hours. Unfortunately, at the beginning of Covid, he got it and died from it. Covid changed my whole life because Roger died. Nothing will ever be the same.

"Black Ribbon" was actually written by Roger's six and eight year old grandsons. Roger's daughter-in-law recorded them singing it and I heard it and thought 'wow, what a great song!" It captures Roger completely — that is Roger. So we worked up a nice backing track for it and recorded it!"  We're actually meeting with some people next week to get Jonah and Reuben set up with the PRS [Performing Rights Society].

KR: "We took the "Oh baby!" bit from "Chantilly Lace" which we used to perform with Jack."

9. Raspberry Ripple Ice Cream (Rew)
Guitar used: Gibson 1968 Les Paul Gold Top

ES: This track just seems to be using the idea of raspberry ripple ice cream as an excuse to blow the roof off with an instrumental.

KR: "That was the objective."

LC: [To Kimberley] "I think it was Tequila you were thinking of?"

KR: "Tequila" by the Champs and also "Mashed Potatoes" by James Brown and "Salt Peanuts" by Charlie Parker,  where the lyrics are just occasionally someone yelling out the punchline of the song, which is something to eat...or drink — that was the pretext."

10. Growing Up Song (Rew)
Guitar used: Guild acoustic F50   

ES: This lovely message to the next generation was written by Kim for Lee to sing. As the lead single and video for Purple Kittens it appears to be getting a lot airplay on various radio shows and has hit your highest position on the Heritage Chart to date.

LC: "It's been amazing to get onto the Heritage chart. When we did the last album [Sunshine Walkers: The Best of Kimberley Rew & Lee Cave-Berry] we got some promotion people in to help us.  Lisa Davies, from our first promo team,  led us to Mike Read who was quite interested in Kimberley. We asked him what song on the album would he pick for a single and he chose that one and he's been playing it three times a week on his program and it's got to thirteen on the chart.

It's been great for me as well, as a singer, because I'm a bass player who can sing rather than a singer. To see a song that I've sung on the chart next to people I grew up with like Suzi Quatro, The Sweet and Gary Numan — these are all people I really admired when I was younger —  has been exciting for me."

11. Voyager (Rew)
Guitar used: 1985 Black Squier Telecaster fit with Texas Special pickups

ES: Voyager seems to be about the different ways we communicate as well as relishing the idea that Chuck Berry has made it to the rim of space and time.

KR: "I like the idea that Voyager has been traveling now for forty-four years and it's now the furthest man-made object from Earth and has reached beyond the edge of our galaxy, I think. It just shows how far away that is because it's taken this long to get there. I think there is a picture of the Sun from Voyager 1 that shows our sun as a tiny dot. It's kind of shocking."

12. Daytime Night Time (Rew)
Guitar used: Gibson 1968 Les Paul Gold Top

ES: This song sound like it's about being caught up in the daily grind, going from one day/night to the next, and you don't know what you're doing or why you're doing it.

KR: "Yeah!"

LC: "It might just be about how fast life goes, particularly when you're older."

Note: After wrapping up our discussion of Purple Kittens, our conversation turned to our mutual friend Emma Swift's pending tour of Australia supporting her acclaimed Dylan covers album Blonde On The Tracks, and the fact that Bob is turning eighty this month.

LC: "I know it's sacrilege, but I'm not that much of a Bob Dylan fan. I mean, I love his songs but not when he's singing them." We saw him in London and he would only talk to his band, not the audience."

KR: "I think he does that defensively to avoid requests and people shouting rude things like Judas! at him. "It's quite sad, actually, Bob Dylan has had to act defensively for fifty-five years.  He went electric when he was twenty-four. He was on an upward trajectory for twenty-four years and he's had to fight a sort of rear guard action against his own fans for fifty-five years. I thinks that's maybe a criticism of the audience."

LC: "I still feel a bit sorry for him coming to England with an electric guitar and getting booed."

KR: It's not one our prouder moments."

Purple Kittens is released worldwide on June 18 and can be ordered at the link below, or click on the purple kitty at the top of this article.

kimandlee.co.uk/

Kim & Lee perform live most Wednesdays at the Plough in Shepreth with Johnny Wright on the Wednesday Session aired live on Facebook starting at 8:30 PM (UK) 3:30 PM (EDT) and 12:30 PM (PDT)

www.facebook.com/search/top?q=the%20wednesday%20session

Check out Kim & Lee's YouTube channel Crunching The Catalog, where they answer questions and play a different request from their deep catalog.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLt47esKCEc