From more or less a standing start, singer-songwriter Lewis McTighe (also known phonetically as Lewis McTie) has found himself in a handful of significant Phnom Penh acts in a relatively short time. His journey from Little Thieves to Japan Guitar Shop and now somewhat sideways into Skin and String is about to revive, after a bit of time off to return to study. Ahead of a Back Street Bar show this Sunday evening he sat down with LengPleng to talk about bands, writing, and the alchemy of it all.
Little Thieves was something of a COVID phenomenon, their first shows coming in the middle of 2020, and The Last Heist, their farewell show, was in February 2022. “The more and more I reflect on the band the more special I realise it was,” says Lewis. “From dabbling with other projects and playing with other people, I realised, oh my God, the four of us, it was really unique. We all really loved each other, like brothers. It was such a passion project. We started off without goals or intentions, no mission, but it became quite evident that there was a space for the band in the local landscape, and we were really happy to fill that space.”
There was, however, always a time limit. “Rodrigo [Garzon, the drummer] was threatening to leave Cambodia from day one, so we always knew the days would be numbered. Once Rodrigo and David [Bell, the bass player] left, Gary [Custance, the other guitarist and songwriter] and I decided early on that we would not continue Little Thieves, to try to recreate the same thing with different people. Primarily because Rodrigo was such an unusual drummer, it would have changed the sound too much. We were gigging for only about 19 months, and in that time we did about 16 shows. From the acoustic shows at the very beginning when we were much more folky – we slowly morphed over the time.”
It’s not all lost in the aether – we may hear from Little Thieves again, eventually. “We have – technically – recorded an album, at Jesse Ricketson’s wooden house, taking our sweet time about it. We made sure that all the bass and drum parts were done, all Dave and Rodrigo’s backing vocals were done – it’s been left for Gary and I to finish it. Summer holidays came around, I started studying, things got in the way. Part of me doesn’t ever want it to be finished – we kind of use discussions about the album as an excuse to keep in touch.”
Hair band? Little Thieves at Oscar’s in November 2021
In the wake of the dissolution of Little Thieves, Lewis found himself joining Japan Guitar Shop. “We helped them out when they were starting, gave them some support slots, the friendships developed. I used to hang out at their rehearsals and jam along sometimes, and they invited me to join the band. Gary and I took a break from writing together, I wanted to find something different – I was enjoying playing the more traditional blues guitar styles, and I wasn’t out in front, so that was quite fun. I really like the songs, and I respect the ambition of the band.”
And then times changed, and it was time to change direction. “I bowed out, giving them plenty of notice – we did some recordings at 60 Road in Siem Reap over the summer, final shows at Nestival on Koh Rong and Kampot, and that was me done. They got Arone [Silverman] in on guitar, and I think it works really well – he’s one of the guitarists in the city I look up to.”
Not at the front: during the Japan Guitar Shop tenure at Sunset Boulevard, February 2022
Alongside the Japan Guitar Shop tenure, Skin and String developed as a vehicle for the more acoustic side of Lewis as a songwriter. “Skin and String is my pet project for the songs that don’t fit a full band setting. Performing on your own is very draining, and it’s always nice to have a cello next to you, some congas. It adds a certain cinematic experience for the audience. Michelle [Neukirchen, cellist] is classically trained, and she’s learning how to improvise, to work in four bar intervals: this is the verse which is the same as the intro, and then there’s a chorus, and then you go back to the verse again, to her that’s all new. And feeling the rhythm instead of relying on a conductor.
The trio is triangled by Hubert Sakaue, a Hawaiian Japanese conga player. “He’s a very traditional percussionist, he puts rhythms on top of mine that have names that I don’t know. It makes my simplistic music sound a little bit more complex, and I appreciate that.
Trio: Skin and String at Sunset Boulevard, April 2022
“The trio repertoire is my songs essentially, and while it can take a little bit of mental gymnastics, I am determined not to be over-directive in arrangement of the songs. If Hubert wants to play a rhythm that I don’t understand, or Michelle wants to play a blue note because it feels right and captures the mood – I’m trying not to take too much control. The vision is that it will become a proper trio, fully collaborating.”
From tentative starts, Lewis feels he has grown a great deal as a songwriter over the last few years, and has come to enjoy collaborative creations. “I was always too intimidated to write with other people. My sense of myself as a writer was very low – my thinking was if I can convince people that I’m all right they’ll never find out that I’m actually rubbish. Working with Gary in particular, but also the wider Little Thieves experience, really boosted my confidence. And now I love writing with other people. You end up with something that you never would on your own.
Lewis belongs to the school of musicians revived by their Cambodian experience. “I was into music pretty wholeheartedly from the age of 15, and studied music, although I dropped out before I got a degree. I was a musician, balancing working and playing for a very long time. I moved from my home town Edinburgh to London when I was about 23 and tried to get involved in the scene there. But I kind of lost my way a bit, too much partying and living the fast lifestyle, and not being very good to myself. By the time I hit 30 I needed to stop, it was affecting my life in negative ways. When you’re dealing with things like addiction, they say that you need to cut out the places, the people and the activities that you associate with whatever it is that you’re trying to stop, and unfortunately music was very much entwined in all of that. So I had to make a decision to stop, and great things happened in my life immediately, but I went maybe two and a half to three years not touching a guitar.
“I moved to Cambodia, and for a year I had no idea there was a music scene here at all, and then I met Gary – this is three and a half years ago – who had also done music and then stopped, and here we were. He happened to have two acoustic guitars, and he said why don’t you borrow one and keep it in your house – which was the beginning of everything that happened next for me in music. I’m now a better musician than I ever was, particularly as a guitar player. My singing has probably got worse. I’m getting over the imposter thing – I write songs that I’m not embarrassed about and quite like actually.”
Solo at The Tin Hat, January 2023
LengPleng asked the perennial songwriter question. “Normally it’s the music before the words. When I first started writing songs at 15, I idolised singer-songwriters, the mystique and the coolness of it all, and I didn’t pay enough attention to lyrics. I liked the feelings, didn’t care so much for the lyrics – to my own detriment. Now I’m finally getting on board, playing with vowel sounds and sibilant sounds and counter-patterns, having a lot of fun with lyrics. But I’m not a poet.
“I’m very influenced by Ray LaMontagne, who writes as if he’s talking to you, it’s very natural. So I’m influenced a little bit by Ray La Montagne, a little bit the whole 90s British – Blur, Oasis, Coldplay, that’s all in there – a touch of Jeff Buckley maybe. And then Gary, he’s a huge influence on me. And Robin Narciso is another influence on me now, and Cove Aaronoff and Colin Hodgkins [both of Japan Guitar Shop] and The Goldilocks Zone – all these people that I work with and revere, they have loads of influence on my music. I feel blessed and lucky to be part of a group of musicians who are very comfortable with playing a chord that isn’t expected, or having a section of a song that has no real right in being there, just doing it anyway.
“Generally I find it quite hard to write – I’m good at coming up with ideas, 40 second ideas, and I find turning them into songs is quite hard. But also it depends on the song. Recently I’ve been working on two songs – one I started writing around June/July, a basic riff and picking pattern that I liked, a progression came from there. I must have written 50 verses, but I couldn’t settle on anything, kept on writing more and more verses, it took five to six months to settle on something, and now I’m really happy with it. Then at new year while I was on an island for nine days I wanted to try to capture a particular experience in song form. I sat down with my guitar and immediately there were the chords and the opening line came to me and suddenly there were 12 stanzas and a chorus. Within two and a half hours I’d recorded a demo on my phone, and the only thing I changed was the order of the verses. It’s called Destination Nowhere.”
While there are ideas for other projects, for the moment the trio is the musical priority. “I want to keep putting my heart into Skin and String and see where it goes, and to let it be whatever it wants to be rather than driving it. And at the same time, Gary and I have now gone full circle and decided that we are now writing together again. It’s so easy.”
Check out Skin and String at Back Street Bar on Sunday evening from 8 pm.
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