Anya Ganesh
Hi! I’m Anya from Glasgow, Scotland and I’m so excited to be writing for Clunk! Gigs are my happy place and my desert-island band is James. I’m also a trained pianist and play a little bit of drums, and I have two golden retrievers that I love to bits.
We catch up with Spanish folk duo Jack and Daisy about their new EP, produced by Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart and out now
I sat down for a chat with Spanish indie folk duo Jack and Daisy ahead of the release of their stunning new EP ‘Barcelona (In the Rear View)’. Read their thoughts on songwriting, being discovered by and working with Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) and everything in between.
How did you meet? How did it all begin?
Daisy: So we met about seven years ago in this little town that we live in in Spain called Jávea, which is near Valencia. And we met basically because we were both starting out in the music scene, just in local bands trying to gig around. We ended up doing a few songs together at some local little jam sessions and stuff. We started getting asked to be booked as a duo, and we kind of just said yes, and then winged it, I guess. But yes, it worked out for the best!
Since you started working as a duo, what’s your creative process been like?
Jack: It’s a real mixture, because most of the time I’ll do music, or I’ll come up with something on guitar or whatever I’ve got, and then I’ll send it to Daisy, and she’ll do lyrics. That’s probably like 60, 70% of the songs we do. But then sometimes Daisy will just text me and say, “I finished the song”, and then she’ll send me the whole complete track, or the other way around.
Daisy: That’s more rare, but it’s nice that it’s always quite a 50/50 collaboration.
You’ve been compared to Simon and Garfunkel quite a lot by your audiences and your listeners. Who would you say are your personal influences when it comes to songwriting and performing?
Jack: My favorite singer and performer is Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam, and then my favorite songwriter is Damien Rice.
Daisy: And for me, it would be Bob Dylan as a songwriter. My dad was a big Dylan fan. But I also take a lot of inspiration from females, Carly Simon, Stevie Nicks, just, you know, all the classics.
Out of all the venues and festivals you’ve played so far, what would you say has been your favorite so far?
Jack: I think my favorite venue is The Bedford in Balham.
Daisy: We’ve played that twice now, and every time it’s just…
Jack: Yeah, the team there, the sound engineer is always amazing. He’s so lovely. He makes us sound very professional, which is an accomplishment…
Daisy: It’s always nice as a musician when you just feel very confident that the sound is good, plus you can hear it well on stage.
Jack: And it’s a lovely venue. It’s got really high ceilings. It’s kind of shaped like a circus tent. The inside kind of goes up higher and you have people surrounding you looking down as well as people on the floor.
Daisy: And then we did festivals all over the UK. We did London, Manchester and Brighton, and they were great for us. You know, it was like the first festivals we did. And what an experience, because it’s just completely different to playing at venues and stuff. So they were good for us. And, yeah, excited to do more festivals.
Lovely! And am I right in saying you were ‘discovered’ by Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) in 2024?
Yes.
How did that happen? How did that feel?
Daisy: Yeah. Well, we released a song through his company, SongBits, (he’s the co-founder of Songbits) last year, and it went really well. It was really well received. That was just our single called ‘The Love I Know’. And since then, we’ve been in contact.
He offered to have a zoom call with us, you know, chat. And we ended up writing a song within an hour that then turned into a whole EP. But what started as… what was just going to be a nice meeting, a really special kind of opportunity to talk to Dave, turned into, “Oh, we’ll write a song”, and then “we’ll write three songs”.
So what was the song that you first wrote together?
Daisy: It’s called ‘Life Go Easier on Me’, and it’s on the EP that we’re releasing. It was funny, he sent us a guitar idea about 10 minutes before our zoom call, and he kind of said, “Oh, this is an idea I had. Let’s work on this during the call”. Yeah, so it was literally 10 to 15 minutes before we started the Zoom meeting, but we managed to listen to it quickly, kind of learn it a bit on guitar, and then I had an idea already for a hook.
So we managed to write the first verse and hook before we even got on this call. So I think as soon as we jumped on this call with him, we chatted, and then played him a little idea, and then it just flowed. And the rest of the song just kind of fell into place. So we wrote that really quickly. And we were like, ‘Oh, this is amazing that we’re going to be able to have a song out with Dave Stewart’. And then next week, he sent us another idea. We’re like, “oh, okay, yeah, we’ll do that as well”.
So it just kind of snowballed into the EP from there?
Jack: Yeah, yeah, we tried very hard to make that first meeting seamless, in a way, we just wanted to have a good relationship with him and make it as nice as possible. And it worked really well, because he’s such a lovely man. He’s so… he’s obviously intimidating, not in a scary way, in who he is. You know, you’re talking to a legend, kind of thing.
But he’s such a nice guy, and without us even knowing, he was kind of drawing creativity out of us in a way that was just really natural. So it didn’t feel as if you were being tested or anything. It was just a really nice collaboration, that whole zoom call, and we felt really good after it. So, yeah, the relationship has carried on very nicely after that.
What are your plans next, as in for the rest of this year? What’s on the horizon for you guys? What are you most looking forward to?
Daisy: A dream of ours is to get to America. So that’s probably a kind of bucket list thing for 2025 and, yeah, we want to do that. And maybe even sail over and, you know, just find a way to get there somehow. And we want to do gigs in New York, don’t we?
Jack: Yeah, we want to see the states, basically because our music is very rooted in a Bob Dylan folk Americana, kind of thing.
Daisy: We’d love to do a gig at the Cafe Wha, which is where Dylan used to gig a lot, and we mentioned that in one of the songs, but it’s not obvious.
Jack: We do say very obviously in the song, that we’d love to go to the Cafe Wha. *chuckles*
So, I watched your music video for Barcelona (In the Rear View). How did it feel shooting that and being the stars of your own music video?
Daisy: It was difficult. It took a lot of planning, and it felt quite unnatural at moments, you know, having to direct yourself in a way. But we were really lucky in that the camera crew and the videographers are really good friends of ours, and we managed to have a really great collaboration.
Jack: It made it very easy, because we’ve known these people for probably 10, 15, years, and so it’s very, very trusting in what they’re going to do.
Daisy: We just got loads of friends over. We created this sort of party scene, and basically just tried to make everyone have some fun and make it as fun as possible for everyone. It was a good experience, and I think it turned out better than we could have hoped for. So we feel really proud of it.
What’s the strangest place a lyric or a hook has come to you?
Daisy: Oh, I’ve had ideas for lyrics a lot on the train.
Jack: I thought you were gonna say on the toilet.
*chuckles*
Daisy: On the train. You know when you’re like, gazing out the window, watching the world go by.
Jack: I always just get ideas for lyrics if I’ve been like, watching something or like listening to something, yeah. I had an idea for a song while watching Kung Fu Panda 2. Yeah, because it’s a really deep storyline, I know it’s Kung Fu Panda but… I was like, ‘I wonder if we could make this into an idea for a song’.
It wasn’t a song that was released, luckily for everyone else.
If one of your songs were to become a chart hit, as in being played over advertisements and in the gym, which one would you prefer to be?
Daisy: There’s a song on the EP called ‘Another Day.‘ And I think I just have really, really high hopes for that song. I think I would be very, very happy if that one got recognition.
Jack: I think ‘Barcelona (In the Rear View)‘ has the most chance, just because it’s a very easy to listen to soft song, that would work.
Daisy: And I like the meaning behind Barcelona as well, it’s quite hopeful.
You perform and you release songs as Jack and Daisy. Have you ever felt like there was an instance where people pick a side or kind of take away the duo element from you?
Jack: Yeah. On YouTube, I sometimes get a few comments saying, like, “Oh, let her sing more”.
Daisy: It’s quite evenly split. Whereas some people will say, “Oh, I like his voice more”, “Oh, I like her voice more”. “Oh, he needs to do this. She needs to do that”. It’s quite evenly split down the middle. So we don’t really take it personally. We normally just assume that these people haven’t seen the rest of our videos. I guess I harmonize a lot, because that’s just how it works for most of the covers that we do, and it’s just what feels natural.
Jack: Yeah, a lot of the time it actually feels the best because Daisy can naturally harmonise to anything. So she won’t have to practice or try to do it.
What is usually your solution for avoiding or dissolving conflict, based on how much you deal with that working together?
Daisy: Time, sleeping on it, or getting a third party opinion,
Jack: Yeah, we get a lot of input from others, which I choose to ignore.
*laughs*
Daisy: He never admits that he’s stubborn.
Jack: Most of the conflict comes from me.
Daisy: That’s true.
*laughs*
Daisy: Yeah, but no, it’s very rare that we get into conflict, and when we do, it’s resolved within a few hours. It’s good to get into conflict because you know that you’re doing something important.
Jack: Yeah, we’re lucky enough to have, well now obviously we have Dave Stewart and our manager Jamesie, and we can always ask these people for advice, and obviously they’re people whose advice you want to listen to. So that’s normally how we resolve it.
If you were to be born in a different generation, a different decade, which one do you think would be best suited to your music?
Daisy to Jack: The late 60s?
Jack: Definitely. The early 70s was still good for the folky kind of thing…
Daisy: I’d like to be there at the beginning, when it started emerging – the folk scene.
Jack: Yeah, we need a harmonica.
Daisy: Yeah, I’ve banned jack from the harmonica.
*chuckles*
Jack: I’ve tried to add it in so many songs, and she won’t let me.
Listen to the EP here:
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