we keep the beat

Emma Marx-Hall (reading from the lyrics to "My Little Army" by Knave of Hearts): We are the pulse, we keep the beat. The numbers signaled our defeat. We aren't the army – we just keep the beat.

Tom Thorogood: I just really like music. I always have.

Molly Webster (pianist): Oh, it's absolutely a family tradition. Thomas's father was a musician too, for a short while. He was a tenor actually. I met him because I was his accompanist for a recording. It's almost cliché, that story. Though he manages a factory now. That's a bit less romantic but it pays the bills!

Tom was originally training to be a guitarist, which I hear is quite interesting because Emma from the band started out as a classical guitarist as well. I like to think perhaps his switch to drums was some sort of teenage rebellion, since he had just turned eleven, although he'll give you the much more pragmatic answer that 'everyone plays guitar, but everyone needs a drummer'.

Either way, the sound of his drumming was so awful coming through the floor above our heads that we gave Tom an ultimatum: he was either to find somewhere else to practice, or stop practicing drums entirely.

David Thorogood (factory manager): And so he and his older brother Dave...

Dave Thorogood (information technology): ...went to the library and looked up how to soundproof a room, and we covered Tom's walls with pillows and acoustic foam. At that point, we were all certain that Tom was very, very serious about playing the drums.

Tom Thorogood: When I was twelve I went to Germany to visit an aunt who teaches English in a school there. I guess because my uncle played traditional accordion he wanted to teach me a bit, and it became my favorite thing, alongside drums.

Molly Webster: He was incredible actually. We stayed in Germany for two weeks, and at the end my sister got together a bit of a barn dance, and Tom was up there the whole time, playing on the accordion.

Tom Thorogood: So of course Mum got all excited, because I was doing another thing that didn't make a lot of loud banging noises, and I did three music A-Levels when I was fourteen. But we had a massive fight over it and I refused to go to music conservatory in Germany because I really didn't feel that being a performance musician was worth the trouble. However, I did start doing recordings with a local traditional group, so that was sort of our compromise.

Emma Marx-Hall: We were all really amused when we found out that Tom plays traditional accordion. It was a bit like—it's one of those things that a lot of the time, you don't tell people about because it makes you a bit nerdy. Like that Katie and I once made the Star Ship Enterprise out of Lego. Er, don't judge! (laugh)

Interviewer: Does he play on any of your recordings?

Emma Marx-Hall: One. He busts it out live and plays soloes, especially when we're in Scotland because he does a dead good version of "Scotland the Brave". Er, he used to. Right. Anyhow, yes, on—this is so obscure, but it was on one of the Japanese B-sides to "My Little Army". Because it's about drumming, yeah? In a way anyhow. So we decided to feature Tom on the single, in that respect. The song has a really strong beat itself, and then we thought Tom should record some of his traditional stuff for the B-sides, which our record company told us was probably not going to fly in the UK, but they could put it on one of the larger Japanese singles, which have like six or eight tracks on each of them.

Tom Thorogood: So I ended up going to sixth form college instead, and playing drums and accordion on people's recordings, which I kept doing and I still do now, especially drums. And I met the kids at uni because they practically begged me to a, let me into the studio and b, play drums on their records. I mean, I would never do that for free normally, but I let them into the studio and once I'd actually heard them play, and talked to them a bit, I realized that I wanted to be in the band. 'Cause I've never done that before, you know. It's always just been me, and bands that borrowed my drumming, gave me music and said do it like this, but Knave gave me the chance to be part of the music myself, and more importantly to be part of a group. I like to think it's worked out just fine.

Stephanie Lear (violinist): Tom and I met at university, because we both used the practice rooms all the time. We saw each other and we would always say hello, but neither of us talked to each other at all. This was our first year of university. And it was the last day of the year, and both of us nearly at the same time started asking each other to dinner. That was basically how it started.

Tom Thorogood: Steph and I were already living together when the band got together, and I don't really know if that was a good or bad thing. For us or for the band. I guess Steph never wanted to get too involved, didn't want to be Yoko Ono. So my Steph-life and my band life were always totally separate.

Stephanie Lear: Music is Tom's first love. But after all, it's mine too.