RAMzine 27 | Avatar, Festival Flashbacks, Sister Shotgun

With Chloe Ozwell | Collated by Neale McGeever
In this new feature, RAMzine invites
a friend of the ‘zine to talk us through
something different, and something
they have experience in. In this edition
we speak with frontwoman of rockers
Sister Shotgun - Chloe Ozwell. You may
have seen Chloe absolutely smashing
covers of classic rock songs on social
media, so here is her guide to musicians
keeping busy in lockdown.
It’s been an idea thats been batted
around for years …
The boys in the band have always
said: “Why don’t you do covers?” I’ve
never had the time or the resources…
then this all happened and I was
struggling to find something to keep
myself occupied. So I looked up how
much everything would cost, and how
I could set it up and I thought it was
feasible and I had the time to do it. So
just do it, have fun with, and see if people
want to hear it. If not, at least I’ve
tried and kept myself entertained.
We’re in the starting process of doing
things [for new material]…
Because most of the boys are still at
work – it’s me and our bassist [Tim
Chambers] who is at home. So it’s
working around their schedules. I feel
if we were all in lockdown together, we
would have had tome to sit down and
write. We have already talked about
what we want to do and how we want
things to sound, what we are aiming
for. We are going to start the writing
process in the next few weeks.
If anything [recording covers] it’s kind
of confused me, a little bit...
These are really fun in a karaoke-style
where I’m singing songs that I wouldn’t
usually sing, and sharing them with
people who haven’t necessarily heard
me do that style. My heart is still in
rock and metal style so I know where I
want to go with it. I have a vague idea
in my head where I wanted to take the
new material. That hasn’t really influenced
what covers I’m doing.
The big problem with myself is I
don’t play any instruments…
It’s a totally separate venture at the
moment so I have to find backing
tracks and then doing something on
the spot is really going to be difficult.
[Matt Heafy] plays guitar, really well,
so it’s easy for him to pick up a few
chords and we’ll do the next song
live on Twitch, and then another. I
would probably need a playlist of
backing tracks to be able to do that.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the means
to record my piano into the computer
without it sounding a bit weird. Which
is a bummer because I could be doing
some live stuff. People have asked me
if I could do live stuff. For the moment
I’m enjoying recording these covers.
It will be 100% harder. It’s people
from this year being moved to next
year, but also adding more to the
lineup…
There will be a massive, massive
overlap. I like what Bloodstock has
done by adding an extra day because
that helps in this respect. Festivals like
Download would benefit from that
too I feel. Add an extra day, add extra
bands. We are supposed to be doing
a festival in September, not sure it’s
going to happen still. We make plans
for later in the year but we still don’t
know what the guidelines are going
to be, which is very scary, which is
horrible.
It’s massively unsettling. We booked
things for the end of the year, but we
don’t know if its going to happen...
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