The Cocktail Slippers are a high-energy and enduring all-female Rock band from Norway whose albums are released by Stevie Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records. Last summer, they released the EP Talkin’ About Love, and recently, they shared the double single, “Live at Blaker Festival Norway” which included their cover of “Gloria” and their original track, “You Do Run.” Lately, they’ve been in the studio recording their sixth album, with a projected autumn release.
But before then, The Cocktail Slippers are setting out on their first Underground Garage Cruise this May playing Rock music alongside labelmates and others like Social Distortion, The Hellacopters, L7, Rocket From The Crypt, X, Supersuckers, and more. Right now, it’s all about live performances for them, since in June, they’ll also be playing Norway’s biggest festival, Tons of Rock, at Ekebergsletta in Oslo. I caught up with two of the five ladies of Cocktail Slippers, Rocket and Sugar, and chatted about all of these different endeavors, as well as what they are looking for in a good song and in a good live set.
Your lives seem to be about a lot of live performances right now, with your new live double single out, the cruise with the Underground Garage coming up, and a big festival appearance announced.
Rocket: Yes. It’s been many years since we haven’t played for a four-month period, like we’ve just had. It seems like forever. It’s just that we’ve been in the studio, recording and finishing up our sixth album. We’re almost done with the minor details, so hopefully it’ll be out in October or November of this year, which is also something that we’re very much looking forward to.
I noticed that you were on the studio via your Instagram account! Was the writing process for that album something that goes a long way back, or is it a more recent era of songwriting for you?
Rocket: Yeah, it goes back! We always seem to have so many. We have how many hundreds of songs laying around?
Sugar: We have a lot of things!
Rocket: You start writing something, and there’s always some part of it that’s really catchy and cool, but you can’t really seem to make it work, so you put it away. A lot of the songs on this upcoming album is stuff that we started years ago. But there was some newer stuff as well, and that’s very typical of our albums. Some parts are always older, some parts are new, and they are mixed together. When we listen to old stuff that we haven’t used yet, we often hear it with new ears and think, “Wow! That sounds cool!”
I recall for your last album that was the case, featuring a couple of songs that had never found a home. When you were picking the songs for the new album coming up, did certain ideas stand out to you, or certain stylistic elements?
Rocket: I think, for us, it’s more that we don’t have a specific framework, and don’t say to ourselves, “We can’t do this. We can’t do that.” To other people, it may seem more like we do. We always try new stuff, and it’s the same with this album. We tried new stuff, and all of the sudden we found something cool, and then we tried something that we’d noticed a few years ago. We’re never very specific about these things.
Sugar: It’s great, because we also pick up older inspiration from the 1970s, and then something brand new, too. It’s so good that no one feels like they have to do things a certain way. All of us are open-minded to just do what we love. If it works, it works!
I imagine that it’s important to feel that way, especially once you get playing, especially with such energetic music.
Sugar: Absolutely. It’s best that everybody feels the same that way. When you get playing, everybody has to have that feeling. If you don’t, it’s hard to hide that. If you love things, you are sparkling on stage.
Rocket: Even if a song is written by one or two people, it would never come to life without all five of us doing it together. We never just write a song and then go into the studio and record it. We spend a lot of time in the rehearsal room playing it, to get the feeling of it, to ask: Is it really working or does it just sound cool!
It can’t just be “good enough”, it has to be good for you. I feel like part of your Cocktail Slippers identity and presentation is “We love Rock ‘n Roll!” The energy of that is very positive. I can see how the songs have to hit all of you in that way, or it would be very hard to try to present that energy every night.
Rocket: I feel that way, too.
Sugar: Absolutely, especially when you’re playing Rock that’s full of energy, that is hard. You can’t hide behind a heavier song. [Laughter]
The festival you’re playing coming up is a really big deal, with a lot of major acts. Are you excited by that?
Rocket: We’ve played a lot of big festivals in Norway, but Tons of Rock is on the top of the list. It is the number one Rock ‘n Roll festival in Norway, so it’s pretty cool!
I saw that Green Day and Megadeth will be there, and I knew it was a big deal.
Rocket: Yes, and Weezer, and Muse, and The Damned. They are awesome.
No pressure or anything like that.
Rocket: Actually, I don’t think we really feel the pressure. That’s not ever been an issue for us, playing with bigger bands, because we can never be anything other than what we are anyway. If that’s not good enough for some people, then whatever. But it is really cool to play with those bands! We know we’ll be playing on Saturday, but we don’t have the times yet. I just hope that we aren’t playing at the same time as The Damned, because we really want to see them!
You have to make time for yourselves to be a fan and enjoy the event.
Sugar: It’s important.
What sort of things do you think you’ll play at that show? I know that you had a new EP last summer. Will you be keeping the new album under wraps, even then?
Rocket: We’re going to do a combination, because there are still some very old songs that we like to play. We always try to bring some of the new stuff in, but it’s hard when you have so many good songs!
Sugar: Because you can’t play for that long, and you have lots of songs to choose from, everyone wants you to play certain ones. It’s the biggest problem we have! And yet we keep making more songs.
Rocket: It gets worse and worse!
Sugar: [Laughs] Yes, we need to start making crappy songs!
Rocket: [Doing a funny voice] Remember, back in the old days, when we had great songs? Let’s play them now. [Laughs]
Tell me about the show, Blaker Festival in Norway, where you recorded the two live tracks that have come out. I understand there was crazy weather.
Rocket: It was a nice festival, but it was raining so hard that all the people were standing under a tent. If people can stand under a tent, they will. There was a tent far back from the stage. But then, the more we played, quite a large crowd came out and got right in front of the stage. They were soaking wet! They forgot all about it, and just enjoyed it. It was something magical for us. You know that feeling yourself, from being at live shows, and feeling the rain just pouring down, but you just forget about that. In your mind, you know that you’ll be at the festival for hours, and probably get a cold, but you don’t mind. For me, there was something really nice about that experience.
Sugar: Absolutely. It was so funny, because when we went on stage, we couldn’t see very much, and the tent was a few meters away. When we started playing, they just came out immediately. [Laughs]
This reminds me of an Ozzy concert that I went to in the pouring rain. Once he started playing, nothing mattered. Everyone just lost their minds. Was there something about these two tracks that made you the ones to release?
Sugar: “Gloria” was a song that we’d never released, and we picked the other one, “You Do Run”, just because it sounded so good. It has been many years since that song was released, since 2009.
The recording quality is great. They sound so good.
Rocket: It is! You could go into the studio and fix stuff if you wanted to. It’s common if you’re releasing a live show to do a little something to make it sound better, but we didn’t change a thing, nothing. All the tracks were actually really good, but there wasn’t really a choice. It was more that the energy, immediately, in those two songs, felt the most right.
They feel very representative of you guys. It’s a good example of how older tracks are important to your live performance, and fit in, probably very seamlessly, with other ones. It’s also fun that you included “Gloria.” Do you usually have a couple of songs that are covers in your live sets?
Rocket: We don’t always do “Gloria”, but we almost always do a cover of “Hush.”
Sugar: Our song, “Do You Run” is something that we’ve been doing our live sets for years, though.
I think it’s great that you included “Gloria”, because it slows down a little, and it’s more funky, and you can hear the individual players doing their thing. I’m more used to your high-energy songs, so this was a little bit of a different moment in the set.
Sugar: You’re right about the energy in that song, and that’s why we like to have it in the set, because it’s something different. We love to have sets that are not high-energy all the time, otherwise they wouldn’t work. This creates a moment.
Rocket: We were wondering if it was going to be strange to have Hope speaking in Norwegian on the recording. But then we decided it would be cool!
It is cool. It’s who you are and it’s where it happened. This is a live show in Norway. It captures that feeling.
Sugar: It was fun, because we have lots of friends in America who get to hear us speak Norwegian now.
Rocket: Now they know!
Have you ever done a music cruise before? You should definitely record a video on the cruise ship.
Rocket: We should shoot a video, because it’s very different from any other place we’ve been. We’ve never done a Rock cruise before.
Cruises with different musical genres seem to be a real trend lately.
Rocket: We have played on boats before, but this is a whole different dimension of boats. They are so big! I wouldn’t have wished for a cruise, but if you add Rock ‘n Roll, yes!
This situation might mean that audiences are more cheerful, because unlike at festivals, they are not exhausted from standing in long lines, or being in the rain.
Rocket: And every band is playing at least three concerts, which I think is also really cool. Then everybody gets a chance to go out and see everyone. They can talk to their neighbors, and get recommendations, and still go see a band. I think it’s a cool thing.
Are you going to try to do three totally different sets to change it up?
Rocket: Not totally different, but we are going to try to change some things. We aren’t going to do totally different sets because we depend on the energy, and the changes, and the way that one song flows into the other. That short amount of time would be too hard to totally live it if we were distracted by changing what we were doing. But we will make every set a little bit different. We wanted to be able to just be ourselves and enjoy it.
Sugar: It’s also good that people who want to come and see us again, like the next day, will hear a few different songs, though. We’ll make sure to do that, so they are a little different.
I noticed that Underground Garage had been getting bands together for events to spread the gospel of Rock ‘n Roll. Have you ever met any of these other bands before?
Rocket: We’ve played with some of them already. Last year, in March, we went to Austin, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and we played with some of the other bands. Like Soraia, The Chesterfield Kings, and The Flamin’ Groovies. There was a lot of driving long distance. America is so big! It was super-cool in the desert, and driving into Las Vegas, all five of us felt like we were in a movie. It looks exactly like the movies. [Laughs]
Sugar: It was so cool!
