Former Purson Founder Rosalie Cunningham Answers Fan Questions Via Facebook.

Former Purson singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist particpated in a fan chat on the Purson People Facebook and took some time to answer some fan questions.  It was really cool to see what Rosie had to say.  Read a transcription of the chat below.

Here is the question; will you perform Purson songs in future live performances as a soloist or new band?

I will definitely be performing a handful of Purson songs. I’ll probably rotate the set list so you get to hear lots of them and i’d like to try ones that we never did live too.

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Is your new material already recorded or is the new band you are assembling going to record everything together? Glad I got to see Purson live 3 times and meet you all!

I’ve only roughly demoed it mostly, some songs are still on paper/in my head even. I usually go WAY overboard with the demoing process, to the point where it’s a fully releasable recording, and paint myself into a corner creatively. The way i’m feeling at the moment, I want to make the bare bones of the song as powerful as possible – if it can come across with just chords, lyrics and a melody then it’s there. I want to find musicians who can breathe life into them and let them develop organically. If I can do that successfully, I would like to record as a band.

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Are there any books/authors that have influenced your life/musical direction?

Aldous Huxley and Herman Hesse are 2 favourites that have influenced my ideas for sure. More recently Leonora Carrington and Shirley Jackson. Surreal and haunting. I love books on ancient history, mythology, the occult… the cosmic serpent was a fascinating read and a cool 70’s book I found called Arachne Rising. Both find links and meanings in all kinds of mysteries from all time and space.

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I saw your reply about performing Purson songs. This is so a good news! Do you have personal favourites that you want do play live?

I plan to tour with the new project, of course. Hopefully we’ll get out this year. I’d like to play songs we never got to do live like The Bitter Suite. I think we could extend it and make it more theatrical. Tempest and the Tide too. I think i’ll be shot if we don’t pull out Spiderwood Farm though.

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I was shattered to hear about Purson’s demise.  Can we expect à posthumous release (live) ?

That’s a good idea! Something for us to think about if we can find the right live recording/get rights etc

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.I was wondering if you would elaborate a bit on Purson’s breakup…when it happened, you had just finished your first(?) tour of USA and it seemed like you were really gaining momentum, then it was all of a sudden, over.

Hi Mark. It was our 2nd US tour actually. We were perpetually gaining momentum and then losing it due to bad planning. The biggest reason was that I couldn’t see a way out of certain business relationships without ending it all and starting again. It was getting very messy and getting us all down. There were, of course, other reasons – musical and personal. It wasn’t just me, there were others in the band who were not happy. Keeping a band together under near perfect circumstances is fucking hard enough but throw in all the industry shit and it’s not surprising that bands split.

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