The Organ Live in Bierkeller, Manchester.

Sitting backstage
Deborah Cohen: guitar
Ashley Webber: bass
Jenny Smyth: Hammond
coming in and out:
Shelby Stocks: drums
Katie Sketch: vocals
The friend from Liverpool

OvaryAction: So what part of The Organ are we talking to?
The Organ: I am Ashley, I play bass in The Organ....

Interruption, Jenny comes in: "Me and Katie and the rest of the girls, well, my girls, are going
to Canal Street now, to gay bar it"
Ashley: Katie... is coming?
X:Yeah, Katie suddenly...
Ashley: What happened to her fucking like...
X: Oh, I'm sorry, did I just walk in the middle of an interview? I apologize.
Ashley: Well, wait for us for 10 minutes.
X: Wait for 10 minutes, do you fancy coming do you now?
Ashley: Well, I don't know
X: cause we're gonna leaving in a minute...
OvaryAction: Can you wait for nine more?
X: oh yeah, sure, I apologize. (she leaves the room)

Ashley: She's our friend from Liverpool that we met last time we were here. We partied pretty hard with her.

OvaryAction: Was she the one who brought you over to Europe for this Summer tour?
Ashley: No, we had a day off in Liverpool, we met her at this gay bar, the rest is history, I should say. Anyway, she ended up hanging out with us a few times.
Jenny: She's really nice

OvaryAction: OK, did everybody introduce themselves?
Jenny: No, sorry, my name is Jenny and I play keyboard for The Organ
Deborah: I am Deborah and I play guitar in The Organ.

OvaryAction: So how did you all meet? Because we were trying to find information about the band, but we could not find much, are you keeping some kind of mystery around the band?
Ashley: really? It was hard? We have a website.
Jenny: Yeah, but there's no actual bio on it. We get emails from time to time when people ask well, basically, it's a ....
Katie comes in: Has anybody seen my sweater?
Jenny: Probably where you left it
Katie: well, it's not there anymore. If a lesbian stole my sweater I'm gonna lose my mind
Jenny: Yeah, you were just saying that if you lost that sweater...
Ashley: You'd like "pauauause"
Katie: PAUSE!
OvaryAction: You can have my sweater.
Katie: No, no, it's not that... it's A sweater that I HAVE to have. Thank you anyways, though.
She leaves

OvaryAction: So, can we get a short bio, since we cannot get it from the internet? Did you meet through adds in record stores? Did you all know each other before?
Jenny: basically, I used to be in a band with Katie, a long time ago, like 5-6 years ago. When that band broke up, we just decided to start a new band so we just scouted out people and we tried to play with tons and tons of people, well, maybe like 8 or so, and then finally we just forced these girls to join in the band. It started working really well, so that's pretty much how it ended up.

OvaryAction: Did the previous band sound the same? What was it called?
Ashley: Well there were no lyrics in the other band, were they?
Jenny: No. It was called Full Sketch. It was an instrumental but it used the same organ and the guitar was a little bit different, but still, it was the same kind of idea, kind of minimal. It was the same kind of idea, but definitely different from what The Organ became.

OvaryAction: So what were you telling people you were trying out for The Organ? Did you have a set idea of what The Organ should be?
Ashley: Kate had an idea, she wanted it to sound like Sleater-Kinney, she told me, and it never ended up that way. There were ideas in the beginning, but when you start writing, everything starts changing, I think.
Jenny: Yes, it's like a process that you go through and everybody puts in what they want to play and it comes out sounding the way it does, so if it sounds right, you keep going, and if it sounds wrong, you try to change it or you change direction. I think it just ended up being a lot to do with our taste and our abilities at the time, because I certainly did not know how to lay keyboard when I started, really. I wanted t be in a band so much, so I just played at the best of my ability...

OvaryAction: And why/how did you choose to play keyboard?
Jenny: Well, I definitely could not play guitar, keyboard's a lot easier.

OvaryAction: What about you two: were you trained as instrumentalists?
Ashley: I played guitar for a bit when i was like a teenager, or whatever. They had another bass player at the beginning for a few months, but she was a writer and had some other things to do, so she was quitting the band, so they asked me to play bass, but I really didn't know how to play bass. I thought: hey, I don't have anything else to do right now, I have some free time, so I tried, and then I just learnt really quick.

OvaryAction: So was it hours of scales everyday?
Ashley: Well, it was just basically learning the first five songs that they were doing, and they had already written without me. That was pretty much teaching myself how to play at the same time. It took a while, but now I feel pretty good about it.

OvaryAction: What about you Deborah?
Deborah: I had been playing guitar for maybe 4 or five years

OvaryAction: Had you been playing in bands before that?
Deborah: I just played with friends for fun. There was a drummer before who played shows, that was a guy and I was friend with him and he was friend with Katie and it's pretty much through friends that I joined the band...

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