Grace Petrie is a rare treasure amongst not just the Leicester music scene, but on a national scale. She writes love songs alongside protest songs and demands attention with a confidence that belays her slight stature. Having just spent ten days in a minibus playing improvised venues the length and breadth of the country with comedian Josie Long, The Monograph caught up with her for a chat about Glastonbury, politics, protests and trying to give voice to a generation…

It’s been a good few years since we first came across Grace Petrie, when she was playing glorious folk love songs and covers of Basement Jaxx in venues around the city whilst working behind the bar at Firebug, but she fell in to music from a young age: “Growing up in my house there was always music on. I started playing the piano, and then in my teens I kind of drifted into the guitar without really planning to. I stated writing songs and when I was about 15 I realised that it was the only thing I could ever imagine doing for a living.”

Having departed our fair city for university in Sheffield, she’s now back in the city she calls home, full of the same hope and passion for music, but brandishing a political energy and a fist full of protest songs.

“I will say this, unashamedly and unreservedly, that I love Leicester. I’ve lived in a few other places and they’ve all had their own charm but I can’t imagine ever really feeling like anywhere else will be home. The further I go the more I realise that I love the culture of Leicester, and I think it’s one that should be celebrated and defended. I love living somewhere where the Diwali lights and celebrations are as widespread as the Christmas ones. I love living in a place where LGBT people have a community centre, something which is very rare in the UK. These are things that you take for granted when you’ve grown up with them.”

She’s quietly released three full length albums in her musical career, the most of recent of which ‘Tell Me A Story’ emerged in December 2010, having been written over the course of three years. “I had this crazy period when I couldn’t write anything, and then something just clicked and I wrote pretty much the whole thing in about nine months.”

The record spans a sea change in her writing, from the quirky love songs of old to the more socially and politically aware material that now fills her set lists: “The two political songs on the record were the last ones I wrote. I’ve gotten a lot more political and a lot more involved with the activism side of things, and with that has come a lot of new material. I sometimes feel like the album has aged quite quickly in that it doesn’t necessarily reflect me as a whole, but then I’ll always, I hope, write love songs too.”

Over the last year her writing has been directed at the government, covering a broad spectrum from the deplorable personal views of Therasa May, then home secretary, to the protests and cuts. We asked her whether that change of focus was directly related to the inbound coalition? “Yes and No. Obviously I am massively opposed to Conservatism and I think the cuts are quite simply going to ruin an entire generation, but I’ve been involved personally in politics for a long time and been heavily influenced by protest singers. There’s so much to criticize with the the system, and it’s so ingrained, so impenetrable that even trying to challenge it as a song writer seems intimidating.”

“I guess for me the big turning point was Nick Clegg. I was living in Sheffield when the phenomenon they called ‘Cleaggmania’ happened. I was there when he greeted crowds of students outside the city hall. I watched the TV debates and thought “he’s different, he really wants to do positive things that matter to people, that will make a difference”. Then he went on to not just break those promises, but to actually facilitate the opposite things happening. But the really amazing thing, the thing that inspired me, was the complete reaction to that from so many people, and how resigned people were to the idea of being lied to. I had arguments with people and they would say “Yeah, he lied, but it’s your fault for believing him” and that was such a revelation to me. I realised how big the problem is, That our political system is THAT broken, that people had come to expect, and even worse accept the idea that politicians will just lie to you. That once they have your vote they’ll do whatever the hell they want, because they don’t have to worry about getting another one for five years. That was the first big light bulb in my head, was that we have to start again, with politicians attitude to voters and definitely vice-versa, and that the first step on that ladder is getting people to realistically expect better. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.”

Since the end of Thatcher’s term in office, through New Labour and the global financial crisis, It’s increasingly common to be criticised for daring to express a political opinion, especially when it’s through your music. Protest songs seem to have fallen from grace with the public as much as the music industry, becoming a cliché that few dare to approach. Grace is part of a new generation that are putting the message back in to music; “I think it is important for music to have a message of some sort, whether that’s about society or about love or whatever, so long as its something that was important enough to somebody to write. I suppose the protest song isn’t an easy sell, but at the same time I like to think that I’m writing lyrics that people can identify with in their everyday lives. Political singers have been trying for decades to write songs that the masses can enjoy, and not just the politicised few. I think the key to that is finding a way to express the dissatisfaction people are experiencing, and writing something which helps to link that to the wider context. That’s the way to engage non-politicised people in politics, to give voice to the feelings of disenfranchised people. I just wish I could do it as well as Paul Weller!”

The broken music industry and pop culture itself doesn’t escape her either: “I can’t stand how the music industry has been utterly savaged by consumerism and a lot of the music in the chart isn’t just solely there to make money, but often that’s what they’re singing about. The fame and money elements of being a musician have completely overridden the desire to make something important, to write a song that won’t just get you a lot of money in the short-term but that will still stand in 20 years as a powerful piece of art.”

Her songs and incredible passion have earned her the respect and admiration not just of listeners but of her peers and her influences too. Having emailed him in a moment of desperation Grace was invited to play Glastonbury by Billy Bragg, and has been back again since; “The whole thing was a blur, and it was very surreal. I was sitting on this stage with Billy, Frank Turner, The Agitator and Beans on Toast, and the tent was full to the brim and I had this moment where I was like ‘I’m the only unsigned person here – these are professionals, what the hell am I doing here?’ but then I managed to put that out of my head and just close my eyes and play. By the time I got there this year, I think I felt a bit more comfortable. I’d done a lot more festivals, I’d toured with Emmy the Great – I was starting to feel like I deserved my place just a little bit more.”

It’s interesting that when we ask Grace whether she finds it difficult to get her opinions across to audiences – whether she gets challenged on them, she feels pressure from the Left as well as the Right; “I think a lot of hardcore protesters and activists on the left find me too naive and idealistic, and that’s fine. I’m fairly new at all this, I’ll concede that – but I’m also part of a generation that’s waking up to political activism. Some of them are taking part in demonstrations for the first time in their lives. I guess I’d rather be idealistic and naive if that means trying to affect positive change than I would want to be resigned to failure, and think there’s no point in trying”.

As we conducting this interview, Grace feels she has to apologise for the length of her answers “Sorry for the delay, once I got started I found I liked the sound of my own voice, apparently.”

Grace’s new album ‘Marm My Words’ is out now and available here. For more inforation on Grace visit her official website at www.gracepetrie.com

Words by John Helps
John Helps plays in hit Leicester band Maybeshewill, runs the Leicester Music Collective and helps to run Firebug. This basically means if there is something musical going on in Leicester, Helps either knows about it or is running it.
Read all articles by John Helps