The Fence Collective
Words by Chris Harding
Anstruther seems an unlikely incubator for a global phenomenon. The sleepy little town is home to 3,500 people, an award winning fish and chip shop and the man who was once the world’s oldest learner driver (he finally passed his test in 2004 - aged 84). It is also home to the Fence Collective, a record label set up and run by local musicians Johnny Lynch, aka The Pictish Trail, and Kenny Anderson, or King Creosote.
The Fence Collective was born out of necessity. In 1997, Kenny Anderson was working in a record shop in St Andrews, the ancient university town 9 miles to the north east of Anstruther, when it went bust because, according to Anderson “Prince William announced his plans to attend the university and the number of female applicants for his course from the United States alone numbered 400. Flat rents took a hike up of 30% such was the increased demand for accommodation, likewise rates went up putting an end to our local record shop lease”. He bought the lease on the shop, but it inevitably went bust again with the rise of the MP3. Whilst his time at the shop might not have been the most profitable financially, Anderson did discover unplumbed depths of talent in St Andrews and the East Neuk of Fife as a whole.
There was, in fact, a whole record label’s worth of talented but introverted and frustrated musicians that hadn’t been uncovered and let loose on the world. With typical business acumen, Anderson began recording their music onto CDs and selling them for £10 - which would be fine if recordable CDs hadn’t cost £12 a pop at the time. Money, however, isn’t the goal. In fact, if anything, the Fence collective seems to want to avoid money as much as possible - a lesson learnt from Fence collaborator Steve Mason, former lead singer of the Beta Band. Beta Band had found themselves in huge debts to their record label - finally breaking up in 2004 owing £1m to the label - despite selling thousands of records. The Fence collective avoid major labels as much as possible, recording their own music and managing their own gigs and sales. The only alumni of Fence to have truly gone mainstream is KT Tunstall with her mum-friendly acousti-pop, although King Creosote’s brother Gordon, recording under the name Lone Pigeon, was courted by Domino – home to Franz Ferdinand and the Arctic Monkeys – but preferred to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
And so Fence Records, and with it the collective, stumbled and blinked its way into life. The record label is basically based out of the Ship Tavern, a fisherman’s pub on the coast at Anstruther. Each year they celebrate Fence’s success at Homegame Festival, when hundreds of people from all over the world descend on the town and its outlying villages to bask in the collective’s music.
From Anstruther and the Ship, though, it has spread to the world - an unlikely occurrence that Anderson puts down to St Andrews’ international student population carrying word of Fence’s exploits home, like some kind of lovely disease. Now, their biggest name is James Yorkston, a singer-songwriter who has become a pin-up of the nu-folk phenomenon and can tour the world to make a good living out of his music - something Fence’s artists could only dream of when Kenny Anderson made a £2 loss on every CD ten years ago.
KING CREOSOTE + THE PICTISH TRAIL
Woodend Barn, BANCHORY
6th November 2009
Posted Thu, March 19, 2009
Comments on The Fence Collective
oh, i LOVE king creosote. bootprints is one of the best songs around.
Posted by: katie | 19/10/2009 at 19:03