Interview: Orla Gartland Talks Scrabble, Buc-ee’s, and Her Setlist

Before her electric performance at Paradise Rock Club on April 22, our staff writer Ahni Brown Harbin got the chance to sit down with Orla Gartland and chat about performing, Buc-ee’s, and everything in between!

 

Hi, Orla, it's so nice to meet you! 

Thank you so much for having me! 

So this is the second night of your North American tour. 

Yes, we were in Toronto the night before last. So we had a little reset day yesterday, and now we're here in Boston! 

So exciting! It's great to have you here! 

Great to be here!

Do you have a favorite moment in your show or favorite thing about performing? 

You know, I usually have my guitar on me, but I'm trying on this tour for the first time to do a song where I lose the guitar, have a little pop girly moment. And that was quite new for me! I began the whole tour not really knowing what to do with my arms. And legs, actually. All limbs. But I feel I'm getting more comfortable at it now. It's really the longest headline run I've ever done, and when you run a similar set, night after night, you get to hone in on the details a little bit, and I'm really enjoying focusing on a different thing every night. Like, “OK, today I really want to get the chat really good,” ‘cause there's an art to that! Or like, “I really wanna get the movement really good,” I wanna think about how I'm holding my body, what shapes I'm making, and how intentional it all is.

I'm getting to think about different things every night and just trying to get better and more rounded as a performer. That's not necessarily a specific moment, but I'm quite a perfectionist, so I'm enjoying trying to get better at the mini side quests that performing involves. 

Have you had any fun side quests on this tour? Like, have you done anything random that's been fun? 

I think we will in the next couple of weeks, we're gonna have a day off in New Orleans. I’m excited about that because Scarlet, who plays with us, is a big jazz head, so she's gonna lose her mind. I wanna go to a Buc-ee’s in the South. We went to a Walmart the night that we landed. We were all really sleep deprived and had to stay up to correct our sleep pattern, and we went to a Walmart to get snacks and stuff for the bus. One of the most overwhelming experiences of my life, it was crazy in there! To someone not American, Walmart is like the most overstimulating thing in the world. 

To someone who is American it’s the most overstimulating thing. 

It's wild in there! 

And Buc-ee’s is like Walmart with a gas pump. 

Yeah, with merch, loads of merch for this gas business. like, I don't really get it, but I'm so in. I’m embracing all things American, because you can't not. When you're here, you gotta just go for it. 

Is there a song you are really enjoying playing? 

There's a couple! So, we toured in November, so not long ago, and a lot of the cities were the same, so I try to make an effort to make the set different from November. The classics that I always play are in there, but I wanted to make sure that there was more of album two on this particular tour. So the title track of the album, Everybody Needs a Hero, we play towards the end, and I'm really enjoying that. It's quite a moody shoegaze-y song compared to some of my others, and it's just really fun to play. It’s a quite different energy at that point, because we do what I always call this sort of party sequence of songs toward the end.

We do “Backseat Driver,” “Late To The Party,” and they're all really upbeat and fun and the chords are really major. And they're really really fun, but they're quite light. So I'm really enjoying the switch-up when it gets to “Everybody Needs a Hero.” I play a song called “Mine” in the middle of the set, which is an acoustic, solo moment, and that's really nice as well because the crowd have been so attentive. It's a lot to ask a room of hundreds of people to listen. If I was playing a support slot or a festival, I probably wouldn't play that one, because it really requires, like, pin drop silence. But when you get it, it's so special. It kind of feels like everyone's unified. So I really enjoy that as well. 

Do you have any pre or post show rituals or things that you like to do to get yourself ready? 

I do a couple of very boring vocal warm ups before I get on. I'm quite boring with it really. Like a half hour before stage, I'm usually on my own for a little bit because the girls I play with, Sara and Scarlet, are line checking and checking that everything on stage is making sound. I'm sort of left on my own doing little warm ups and just being a bit weird.

I've always got nervous energy in my hands, and so I’m always just being quite weird in that half hour. And then after, we usually try and watch something on the bus. You always have quite a lot of adrenaline after a show. So it's actually really a challenge to try and tail that off. You almost either have to stay up, have a drink, ride the high for a bit, or you have to immediately get off stage, makeup off, pajamas on, movie on, or something. You kind of have to keep it up or really intentionally tailor it down. Anyway, that's all very boring. Basically, I'm really boring. 

No, not at all! 

Can't be partying every night, but every now and then we we treat ourselves if we have an off day or a day after, like we'll we'll stay up and watch some movie together on the bus or just stay listening to music for a while or get really into board games and stuff as well. We're trying to get a magnetic chessboard for the bus, ‘cause I feel like it needs to not move around. 

I'm a board game person, so yeah, I really feel that. 

What's your favorite game? 

Scrabble. I'm an English major so I have to love Scrabble. 

My friends play a game they made up called Babble. It's on a Scrabble board with Scrabble tiles. You have to make a convincing fake word, and you need to be able to say it, but as soon as you put it down, you have to give it a definition. Just confidently say, “oh, this is whatever,” and then as you go through the game you have to remember the definitions of everyone's fake words and you can kind of test people. So, you know, if standard Scrabble ever gets a little boring, you can try that. 

Besides Babble, how have you been passing your time? 

Trying to be on my phone less. I’ve been reading, I just started reading this book called Three Women [by Lisa Taddeo] that [FIGHTMASTER], our support, recommended, which is interesting. It's a nonfiction author who follows the stories of three different women over a couple of years. They all just live these very different normal but exciting lives, and she kind of documented them, which is really cool. So, early days, but I’m really enjoying that. A lot of just chatting. It's really nice how close you get to people on tours. It's a bit like a summer camp or something where you just have this very accelerated rate of friendship.

I think me and the girls in the band in particular have reached a really nice level of comfortable silence with people where you can really chill out, you don't always have to be “on.” I'll go swimming, go to the gym, go for a run. All those things, or just like making an event out of the food of the day. I like trying to find somewhere nice for dinner. I just love food, and it's such a privilege to travel to different cities just getting to try something new. We'll be in New York tomorrow, and my friend is taking me for tacos. I love tacos, that's something the UK doesn't all do really at all and doesn't do well. 

Is there a city you’re most excited to see? 

I'm excited for New York tomorrow. I mean, I've been there a few times, which I feel very lucky about, but it’s just so magic there. I feel very comfortable in cities where you can walk around, cities where you can make your own way around on public transport. So I’m excited about that. Excited about Austin, that one is sold out so that should be good. Going to Denver, we’re playing in a really, really crazy looking venue called Meow Wolf, which is this immersive space. It looks absolutely mad, it's a really, really cool looking venue. I can't believe there's even a venue in there, but that's gonna be great.

I feel like I've been on the coasts quite a lot, but those bits in the middle or the South I'm interested by. We're doing Kilby Block Party in Salt Lake, at the end of the tour, that's gonna be really fun. That will be my first American festival as well, so I'm excited to see that. I've always been really intrigued by that festival, always such a cool lineup. So, that'll be a really fun thing to look forward to. I think doing festivals is kind of a different beast. Headline tours, everyone's here to see you, you don't need to necessarily win them over, you just need to give everyone a good night, play the songs they like. But festivals and support are a bit different. You've got to work for it a bit more and think about how you're coming across and trying to catch the passing traffic a bit more. So, yeah! I'm excited to give that a go and see how we do. 

OK, I have a bit of a selfish question. 

Go ahead. 

I'm a huge music nerd, and I'm always looking to beef up my playlist. So what have you been listening to? What's your favorite stuff lately? 

I love that new Djo album, The Crux. That album is incredible, like, no skips. I’m obsessed with it. There's a British singer-songwriter called Billie Marten, who's really good. She's about to drop a new album, I think, so she's kind of releasing singles and they're all really good. There's a girl called Annie DiRusso who I really love. I think she's from New York, lived in Nashville for a couple of years. I think she's back in New York. She's just released an album called Super Pedestrian,  which is funny, cause she doesn't drive. I know her a little bit, she very much is a pedestrian but that album is also really amazing. So they would be a little trio for you. 

Thank you so much for your time! 

Of course!