Don’t let their wholesome, good girl image fool you. Inspired by a twisted cabaret, this trio can sing the sweetest harmonies or embrace the darkness with their Lynchian doo-wop. By David West
Forget sugar and spice and everything nice. The key ingredients in the sound of The Hey Las are the unsettling surrealism of film director David Lynch and classic doo-wop. “We really LOVE The Shangri-Las,” says Louise McCormack, who’s joined in the trio by sisters Natasha Celia and Jessica Newark. “It was a friend of mine, Anna Snowman, who had the idea of forming a doo-wop group,” says Louise. “She went along to a cabaret show called The Double R Club at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. It’s a David Lynch-themed cabaret, absolutely fantastic. He uses a lot of doo-wop in his movies, so she’d gone to the show and thought it would be great if we could form a group doing this. She asked if I’d be interested in joining and we now perform at that cabaret. I’ve become a stage manager of that show, so it’s come full circle.”
Where did The Hey Las make their live public debut?
That was in April 2013 at a little pop-up supper club one of Anna’s friends had arranged. We’ve done some really great venues – we’ve sung at the Troubadour, in the upstairs bar at Ronnie Scott’s – but when The Double R Club saw what we were doing, they asked us if we would be interested in performing there. What we love about that show is we can choose the darker, moodier doo-wop tunes because there are quite a few.
So what are some of your favourite darker doo-wop tunes to sing?
He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss), you don’t get much darker than that. We do Remember (Walking In The Sand), there’s a song called So Blue which is beautiful, and then You Don’t Own Me.
Do you tailor your set for the atmosphere of each event?
Yes, absolutely. We do The Double R Club to backing tracks because we’re part of a variety show and just do three songs. We mix in these dark, Lynchian sounds before and in-between each song, so it creates quite a moody, immersive feel to it. I really like that mixture of different vibes and feels in doo-wop music.
Do you ever use live musicians for any of your performances?
Yes, we do. We have a full band that we occasionally perform with. With our backing tracks, we got the band to record those for us. It was so important that they had to sound authentic, because there are so many bad backing tracks out there that we would never use. Also, you couldn’t find the backing tracks for some of them, like He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss), so we had to create that one. It’s got a beautiful string section in it, so we managed to get a friend of Anna’s to transcribe the music and had a violinist record three or four parts. We layered them up, put them into the backing track and it sounds beautiful.
The line-up has been through some changes since the start hasn’t it?
Originally, it was Anna, myself and Jessica. Jess sang in the school choir and then joined her university gospel choir that won University Gospel Choir of the year in 2011. After uni, Jess interned at MTV and met Anna there, Anna found out about Jess singing and invited her to join her new doo-wop group. Anna left to have children and we had another member called Rossella but she moved back to Italy around a year ago. That’s when Natasha joined. Natasha is the newest member of The Hey Las and the sister of Jessica. She’d never sung before. Jessica suggested we try her out and she’s really good. Natasha picked it up quickly, she’s having to learn a lot, but I find that we work really well together.
What are you looking for in the songs that you choose to perform?
That’s an interesting one. We have a couple of different ways of performing our songs. Some are three vocal harmonies that all match each other, and some are one solo with two backing vocals, and we like to have a mixture of those. When we choose a song, especially one that’s more of a solo vocal, between the three of us we’ll work out whose voice suits that lead best. Jessica has a very soulful voice but can also belt it out, I suppose I have more of a sweet, girly voice, so I do songs like My Boyfriend’s Back. We’re still finding where Natasha fits in. I think she’s got a mixture of the two. She’s soulful but can do the girly voice as well.
Many of your songs have connections with movie soundtracks. Is that something you do intentionally?
No, it’s not deliberate at all. Most of the time when that happens, it could be linked to David Lynch, because that has been quite a key part to our identity. There are a lot of cheesy vocal harmony three-girl groups out there, we really didn’t want to be like that. We wanted to be more authentic and have a different edge to us, and I think that link gives us that. It’s always been important to me that our look was authentic as well, so we pretty much always wear original vintage. I’ve spent hours and hours trying to find three original vintage outfits that go together, whether they’re three of the same colour or three in the same style in different colours. That is a bit of a challenge. I used to be absolutely obsessed with vintage. I’m a little more relaxed about that now, but it was a complete obsession, so I really loved that challenge.
What have been your favourite moments so far with The Hey Las?
I think Ronnie Scott’s would be a highlight even though it wasn’t the main area, it was the upstairs bar. That was really fun and everybody wanted to come to that one. We did that twice. The Isle of Wight Festival was really fun. Every time we do The Double R Club we love that one because we can create an act that’s different and quite atmospheric. At that show, we end the act with blood running down our faces, which is quite fun. We performed at an event called Welcome To The Deadhouse in the underground tunnels of Somerset House where they created a haunted 1950s beauty parlour for us to perform from! We’ve also performed at the Twin Peaks UK Festival three times now and met some of the original cast from the TV show.
Do you plan to write any original music?
It’s something we’ve thought about. Aisha Khan has offered us a couple of songs she’s written that she’d like us to do, it might be nice to perform some original music. We’ve just recorded some backing vocals for one
of the songs on her new album. We went to record at Cowshed Studios and that’s run by James Johnston, who is The Hey Las’ drummer – that was pure coincidence.
Have you made any other recordings?
A few years ago, someone released an album of girl vocal harmony groups called Girls Are Messin’ Up My Mind Volume 2 [Rock CD Records, 2017] and we did a cover of Shake A Tail Feather. We did a recording session as Sugar Ray’s Studio; we made a music video of that with our rendition of Remember (Walking In The Sand).
