on the road with...

Davina Thewsley: Evelyn and I kept close watch on the Knave Myspace page. The moment we saw they were having a tour, we decided we'd try and catch them at as many stops as possible. Somehow I managed to convince my parents to let me miss a week of school to chase a band around the United Kingdom. Maybe they were just happy I had finally found something that meant something in my life. We took the train to London, crashed with some friends of Evelyn's who we'd met in Edinburgh, and saw them play at a tiny club called the Midway.

Vanessa RK: At the time we didn't have a lot of live acts at Wire, which is the club night I run with Evin Prasanna. But mainly the way we got to know about what acts were out there was through our record company giving us tracks to remix. And one of them was the Knave of Hearts single, "Madam Molly", because Fury and our record company at the time, R&G, did a lot of exchange in that way. R&G's label exec and Spencer Harris from Fury have known each other for ages, so we've also known Spencer in that way, and it was hilarious to see him all giddy and bouncy about this new band. Well, hilarious, and it also meant that we should probably start paying attention. So we decided to book them at Wire, especially because everyone who attended Wire regularly had probably heard our remix from the single and the remixes from a few other DJs we knew.

Emma Marx-Hall: Wire was at this club where mostly DJs played rather than live acts, so it was set up so that the DJ would be playing in the corner and people would be dancing on the entire floor. Well obviously that wouldn't work for us, so what they did was to put some platforms up and there were people squeezed into every inch of space in the club, dancing on either side of us. It was madness.

Alan Léonin: Oh, Wire London.

Yes.

That's where it all started, isn't it?

Let me say, we were very surprised. People had done homemade T-shirts up. We had no merchandise or anything, it was all just people who had seen us on television or heard one of the remixes, and bought the single—we hadn't pressed the album yet. It was almost as if we had been transported back in time to a Placebo or Manics show in the mid-nineties. I think part of it was because we had that DIY aesthetic, and we'd discussed it in the interview, and to me it was incredible that people were already picking that up.

ºAlan Léonin (recorded in interview, September 2007): We are the architects of our own revolution. The only way to create change is from the bottom up.

ºEmma Marx-Hall (recorded in interview, September 2007): It's not about politics. It's about free thinking. If you contain your mind you might as well be being watched by the thought police. You have to be willing to believe in what your gut tells you.

Davina Thewsley: We were in the front, right up against the stage in our Knave of Hearts T-shirts that we made with transfers. Right side, of course. Stage Alan. That's how we Knave fans used to refer to it, you remember—Stage Alan, Stage Lane; Stage Emma was center stage. He really did look like something special that night. He was wearing a white suit jacket with black trousers and a black shirt, and thick dark eyeliner. It was at that time when he was really beginning to find his image, I would say. He would toss his hair and stomp and look really angry, even though he would break character with a smile from time to time and remind us he was all right.

At one point Evelyn, who was crying again, held out her arm to brush her fingers against Alan's trouser leg, and he bent down and took her hand and kissed it. She looked at me with the widest, wildest eyes and at that point it seemed that I didn't understand or know her anymore. I think I know now why I felt that but at the time I thought it was because she had a connection with Alan, but I could only look back at the stage. At least the music was something familiar and known to me.

Spencer Harris: Ooh, there was a bit of misbehaving that evening.

Emma Marx-Hall: That night people weren't sharing drinks with us, but Vanessa was. She was at the mixing table the entire time, pausing only to pass water and alcohol to us from the bar. The crowd seemed like they could dance forever, I think partially because they were used to DJ sets that would go on three hours back to back until the early morning. We played everything from the album and some of the old songs too, and people sang along when we played "Madam Molly", sang along to our music! At the time it was the most exciting thing any of us could imagine.

This crowd was more licentious than some of our previous ones, I should say. I think again it's because of the nature of the usual acts and the usual crowd at the club. A lot of people made passes at us from the crowd, and Alan and I were quite responsive although Lane was a bit less so. I sang to some people in the front row, directly in their faces, and when one particularly hysterical girl reached for Alan he bent down and kissed her hand.

Alan Léonin: I believe it was the Four Seasons who said, "Oh, what a night."

Emily Alexander: They finished with a cover of Led Zep's "Rock and Roll", and it utterly brought the house down. I don't know what I expected, because it's always a little risky playing a venue that usually houses very different acts to what you're doing, but whatever I expected it couldn't have been as good as that. The marketing tactics we'd pulled had worked. Knave were...well, I don't want to say the f-word, but I'd say they were getting to be pretty well-known...

Tom Thorogood: When Steph came and met me afterwards, she said a gay boy had asked her if she knew me and if I was taken. Apparently he found me quite good looking. Being not particularly tempted by that offer, I made my way home, as did Ms. Kennedy. When Emily and Spencer showed up and there was no sign of Emma, we weren't really surprised, but the lack of Alan was a bit worrying.

Emily Alexander: Outside the venue, we met a young Scottish girl who seemed to be really upset, and immediately ran to us to tell us that her friend had done something really bloody stupid, and that we had to find Alan and convince him to turn her away. Spencer turned to her and said, "chin up, love, Alan's no innocent and it's better we let everyone do what pleases them." She sighed, apologized, and introduced herself as Davina. She said she'd been at the Edinburgh show, at Club Inversion, and that she was a huge fan. I think we were a bit stunned, but the four of us all said hello and she seemed to brighten up a little.

Spencer Harris: Davina Thewsley was a gorgeous girl. Rosy cheeks, freckles, brown curls...that night I just didn't want to see her upset. I have always been a bit sympathetic like that, and if I have a weakness for pretty girls that makes me much the same as any other man. So I started talking to her to calm her down. I suppose I could understand why she was frightened for her friend and perhaps for Alan as well, but that's how it is—we're all grown-ups, we all get to make our own decisions.

Davina Thewsley: He said we're all grown-ups and we all get to make our own decisions, and I knew I didn't want to go back alone, to someone's flat that I'd never even met. (lights a cigarette) So I went back with Spencer instead.

Spencer Harris: We talked all night under the blankets. She was so devoted to the music. We were kindred souls in that way, I think. And she told me how she'd come from Scotland, and that she and her currently absent friend were following the band on tour as best they could. She said they didn't know exactly where they'd stay on each stop, but they'd find youth hostels and friends of friends with floors to crash on. And I—I just felt a sudden generosity, and I said she could stay with us.

She looked like she was about to faint, hearing that, but she kissed me instead. I remember she had a very peculiar way of kissing, like she was afraid every time she wouldn't get to do it again, and she had to get it just right.

Emily Alexander: While Spencer was having a grand old time with his new lady friend, and Lane uncharacteristically fucked off to bed without even asking after Alan, I waited up with Tom. We couldn't sleep. We were excited that our tour had gotten off to such a good start, and we were also worried about Alan to a certain extent. I don't know what had gotten into Lane.

Lane Kennedy: I wasn't worried about Alan. Maybe I should have been, based on what Emily tells me. But I was just glad he was actually talking to people, and I was exhausted and drunk, so I went to bed.

Emily Alexander: At one-thirty, Alan called my cell phone and asked me where the other girl was, meaning Davina. He sounded really...off. I don't know. I told her she was keeping Spencer Harris's pillow warm, and Alan got very curt with me and asked if he could come to mine for a bit and I said all right. He showed up about twenty minutes later with Evelyn Porter, and both of them just looked really bad.

Tom Thorogood: Evelyn and I ended up sleeping in Emily's flat, since getting back to East London wasn't really an option for me at that point, bit too dodgy out in the streets.

Alan Léonin: I couldn't sleep. Too many things in my head.

Emily Alexander: I sat by the window with Alan and we drank coffee and watched cars pass below. We said nothing for a while, and then he turned to me and said, "It's really disgusting, isn't it?"

"What?" I said.

"The sexual act," he said. "It's the ultimate objectification. It's so analyzed and sanitized by the media that there's nothing left of it anymore. It's just meat." He shook. It was the most horrifying thing. His body went all jerky for a moment. Like a frightened animal.

So I guess that was the first time Alan had...well...ugh. I mean, we talked about it. He started talking about it right after that. He'd been with men before, but he said it had only been for a short period of time that he was meeting with men to mess around, and then he lost interest. He said that Evelyn was the first person to see him naked since he was a child. He said he felt "like a shit" because he "hadn't given her anything good".

So I started talking to him. It's something my brother Chris used to do for me, when I was younger and he knew I was fretting about something. He would just talk, about whatever was on his mind, in hopes that it would distract me. So I told Alan about my own story.

I told him how when I was really young, it was just me and my mom, Marilyn, and sometimes we'd spend time with my Grandmom and Grandpop, but that was it, just our little family. I told him how I felt the first time I went to see a band, which was Bon Jovi of course, 'cause I'm a Jersey girl. I told him how after that I just had this awe of music. I told him how when I got older, and Marilyn started drinking more, I would play guitar because it was the only thing that mattered. I told him how the one summer when Marilyn went to rehab, my Aunt Margaret and my Cousin Chris from England came to visit. I told him that I knew that they weren't really my aunt and my cousin, that really Aunt Margaret had been married to my father, and that Chris was his son, and he was really my brother. Brother from a different mother (laugh)—literally—whatever. And Chris brought his fiancée Lindsey, and Chris would spend time with me all the time and we'd talk, and sometimes I felt like he was trying to get too close, and I was confused, but then I realized that what it was all adding up to was that my family was talking about me going to England to live with Chris and Lindsey, because my grandparents were getting old and it would be really hard to take care of me and Marilyn. And that's what happened, and I went to school in England after that and I've been living here ever since. And I told Alan how Chris introduced me to all the music I love now, to Britpop and to the Beatles and David Bowie.

I was going to tell Alan about the other band I was in, but I looked at him and I was still seeing too much of Tristan in him and I couldn't. But Alan just said, "Thanks. I needed that."

We stared at the street until our coffee went cold, and then we stared some more until the sun came up; we watched the light crawl up over the factory pipes and the traffic, and then Alan went to the kitchen and I fell asleep.

Davina Thewsley: Alan felt that he had done Evelyn and me some manner of injustice, so he decided that it would be a good compromise to let us continue to stay with them on the tour.

Emily Alexander: I've never met a band with such a loose definition of personal space. Our party was now two people larger, and so to save money the band decided they could cram themselves into smaller amounts of space. We had booked two rooms at every stop, when it was just the band plus me and Spencer, so we would each have a single bed and they would pull in a foldout bed for each room. The new layout was: Alan and Emma in a bed, Lane and Tom in a bed, Davina and Spencer in a double bed and me and Evelyn on the foldouts. Sometimes people would switch around, based on what they felt like that evening or when people arrived in the room, if at all. But that wasn't the most ridiculous it got. On one stop in Wales we could only get one room, and we offered to let three young fans stay with us because they miscounted their cash and couldn't afford a cab back home, and buses were a bit sketchy at night. That was eleven people in one hotel room, and two of those eleven whose names started with "D" and ended with "avina and Spencer" were constantly all over each other, so it was a little uncomfortable, but what can you do?

Alan and Lane both hated it to a certain extent, because they both liked their space. In fact I believe that night Lane grabbed a pillow and one of Tom's big hoodies and curled up in the shower. She was rudely awakened the next morning by Tom being sick in the toilet. Alan's response was just not to sleep. He would stay up writing songs instead. When we were in transit from one stop to the next, the band would gather in the back of the van, with Tom and Emma on acoustic guitar, and write.

Davina Thewsley: It was an incredibly productive period of time for the band, and for all of us. Evelyn and I decided to do some creative writing ourselves, and we started a collection of 'letters from on the road' that we eventually gathered together into the first issue of our zine, ANTI EVERYTHING, much later, but which at the time we were posting on the Internet.

Evelyn wasn't bitter at all about her awkward experience with Alan. Rather, she was 'honored', as she would write, to be made a part of the entourage. We became in an unofficial sense the promoters for the band. It was partially because I was dating Spencer, and because he was in charge of promotion on the label side, and he encouraged us. We would we the first ones to explore every city the band played in, and we would meet up with people from Myspace with stacks of photocopied flyers that we'd post all over the city. The fans would have already done some street team work, but it was really effective to post things the day of, so that they wouldn't get torn down and so that people would notice them immediately and not forget about the concerts.

Alan Léonin: The fans were incredible. They did all the work for us. Every venue we played at would be more packed than the last. People knew all of our songs, even some of the album tracks, because fans had got hold of the demo CDs and put the tracks up on file sharing networks, which didn't particularly bother us because they were all old shitty versions. They would bring us presents—it was so strange to me, but I did feel a lot of gratitude. One fan sent me a necklace with a pair of wings on it that I've worn every day since. It's those little things that really amazed me.

Emma Marx-Hall: It was thrilling. We were having a real rock and roll experience for the first time in our lives. We traveled in a shitty van, we had two fans along with us, there was free love and people giving us gifts and singing our songs. After we passed a second time through Edinburgh and dropped off the Scottish girls, they spread the word about sharing drinks with us and soon we didn't even have to pay for drinks because people in the audience would bring them for us.

Tom Thorogood: The day of our last stop, back in London again, we released our second single, this time with only one remix and with most of the B-sides being songs that we had recorded during the album sessions. All the copies we had brought with us sold, and "Center of the Universe" shot up to Number 40. We had charted.

Lane Kennedy: We returned to the studio to put the finishing touches on the album. There was no conflict this time, just the excitement of being on the verge of something really...big.

Spencer Harris: I was nervous. I knew I had some real talent on my hands, and a really devoted network of fans, and I knew that one of two things was going to happen. The first possibility was that the album would tank, and the British tour would be the last great stand of Knave of Hearts. And the other possibility was that the album would do just as well as the single, or better, and some other record company would come in and sweep them up with generous offers.

So we were in limbo. Davina would take the train down from Edinburgh and we'd go to dinner with the band. Everyone felt that sort of terrified excitement, like static electricity making our hair stand up.

The album dropped in mid-December and shot straight to number 27 on the album charts. We couldn't handle the distribution. After a lot of intense conversation, and meetings with several companies all of whom had already expressed interest, we sold the distribution rights to Marque Records and it finished at number 16. And that was it for Knave and Fury. They were too determined to get a number one.

Alan Léonin: What better way to get your message out to the world than to plaster it across billboards and television screens? What better way than to divert the eyes of the masses from McDonalds adverts and turn them towards new ideas?

Selling out?

I believe the phrase is selling up.