Ralph Pelleymounter is the singer, songwriter and guitarist behind Leeds six-piece Kid iD. The band make use of unusual instruments like trombone, cello and djembe, and have a music video, a TV ad and several festival appearances to their name.
Hi Ralph. How long have you been making music?
The band’s been going for three years now, but I was writing solo songs before that. I started playing guitar when I was 16, but I was never tutored or anything; the F chord was a big achievement for me.
What got you interested in music? Who’s your inspiration for writing songs?
Well my dad is a folk singer, so when I was really young I was going to folk nights a lot. At about 13 I had my teenage rebellion phase and started listening to Rage Against The Machine and stuff, which I still love now, but I got back into folk later. I started listening to all these old records – Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby Stills Nash and Young – and suddenly realised, you know, this stuff was actually really great!
What do you write your songs about?
It can be anything really… as much as I try and avoid it, a lot of our songs are about love and relationships. We try to avoid being too clichéd but I don’t know whether I’m kidding myself there. We’ve got a lot of songs about other things as well, like being broke students and having shit jobs, or the first track on our album, ‘Am I Me?’, is about all the elements of a person – what it is that makes you up.
So how do you go about writing a song? Have you got a method?
There’s no particular science to it – I’m not a very technical writer so I usually start with just a song skeleton; it doesn’t really matter whether lyrics or melody come first. Then we get together and try jamming in different styles and go from there. Everyone has input, and nobody ever takes offence if we think something’s not right.
What are your favourite places to play in Leeds? Do you think things would be different if you were from a different town?
There are a lot of good places to play here, but it’s tough to dominate the scene somewhere like Leeds. In a smaller town, like Huddersfield, the scene is much tighter, it doesn’t break into smaller groups, but I think it would have been more difficult for us to get where we are. And I think it’s still true that even though there are so many great things going on in Leeds, in the end, you have to go to London to really get noticed.
Overall, Brudenell Social Club is my favourite venue, but it can kind of swallow people up. Whereas in places like the Pack Horse you can create an amazing atmosphere even if there’s only about twenty people there.
You filmed your video for ‘Rat Race’ at the Brudenell, didn’t you?
Yeah, that was made during a really bizarre time for us when we were with quite a dodgy management company. The video is made to look like an audition, and we wanted it to be quirky. It was meant to be a bit League of Gentlemen, but it came out more Peter Kay.
You had a song on a TV advert as well. Did it ever feel like selling out?
Last year ‘The Waiter Song’ was featured on a TV ad for sat-nav. It was a bit cringeworthy – there was a woman giving birth in an ambulance and screaming – but it was nice to be watching TV and suddenly hear your music and feel a bit smug. That was while we were with this management company as well. They messed up the royalties so we came up short of a lot of money, but then the management people went bust, so maybe that’s karma or something. It was good exposure, and if someone offers you a lot of money to do something like that it’s very hard to say no, but I’m not sure it’s something I’d do again.
What are the best and worst things a reviewer has said about you?
We’ve had a lot of really encouraging reviews, but probably the best was when No TiTLE called our album “the most underrated of the year”. Plus they concentrated on my lyrics more than anything else, which was nice. To be honest we’ve never had a really bad review. The NME mentioned us once, but it only concentrated on our trombonist having a big nose.
And who’s the best band you’ve played with?
Even though I’m not really an indie fan, I Was a Cub Scout were really good. I loved playing with Middleman, they’re definitely my kind of band. And we shared a stage with Pendulum at Bloom festival, which was bizarre, but in a good way. Playing the smaller festivals this summer was great – you can have just as much fun as somewhere like Leeds, and you’re much less likely to get beaten up.
Thanks very much Ralph. What’s next for Kid iD?
Well we’re selling our album, which was a hell of a lot of effort to make, and we’re recording a couple of new songs, and planning to make a live album soon because we think that’s how we come across best. Other than that we’re just going to be playing as many gigs as we can, and we’ll see what happens.
Kid iD are playing at Carpe Diem on December 15 and Brudenell Social Club on February 2
The album That Dreaded Monster What If is available online
www.kidid.co.uk
