I was in Germany minding my own business, photographing the iconic 80s synth pop band “Orchestral Maneuvers in The Dark” or just “OMD”, when out of nowhere comes this incredibly weird and wonderful queer band from Scotland “Walt Disco” taking Europe by storm, soon to play in the US.
I got to interview Finlay the guitarist (He/Him) and the trans vocalist Jocelyn Si, (They/Them) to talk about the new single just released “Jocelyn” and all the great stuff around their music.
JH: So, Jocelyn, and Fin, thanks for your time.
Joc: Happy to be here. Thank you for having us.
JH: So I was in Germany photographing OMD in Offenbach and writing the story about that performance, and OMD are not a band to be upstaged, but they’re always good at grabbing good people to work with when they’re on the road, and I’m sure you know that. I was so taken by your performance. And then I thought, Hey, I’ll be getting in touch with Walt Disco when I get back to the United States, and before even get back to the United States, your publicist sends me an email going, hey? I got this gnarly band “Walt Disco”, and I was already a big fan before I even heard from your publicist about this, and she said, she got to see you live somewhere in one of the shows there in Los Angeles. And if I’m just giving the story away, you guys are taking the road with OMD in the States later this year. Is that correct?
Joc: Yeah, Seattle is the first stop.
JH: So I’ll be. I’ll be seeing you guys again and photographing you guys again. And hopefully, I’ll get to meet you in Salt Lake City. So to friends, I described you guys as if David Bowie sang for Sparks, in The Great Gatsby.
Fin: Love, love, that.
Joc: The set opener is very much that high song called “Gnomes”, sort of David Bowie Sparks, Great Gatsby, all feel very relevant to that.
JH: Oh, yeah, you guys had this flamboyance. I thought these guys were glammy, I honestly did not know what to think of you or how to take it. So I was just gonna enjoy this, and just got more and more enjoyable as the night went on. But it also got really dark, and Sparks are not a dark band, Sparks are fun, happy, you know, whatever. But still, there is so much in there, and I was just blown away. How are you guys being accepted on the bill with OMD? Everyone’s there, all the punters making a big big deal for them. But and then you guys. Kinda just you just show up. “Hi, we’re the new kids, and this is what we’re giving you.”
Joc: We played a few shows, and after a few shows we realized that it could have gone badly because our music isn’t like pure sense. Pop, like OMD is, or pure, like electronic. And it started going well. And then we were hearing more and more stories that like, their fans haven’t always loved support bands, but they’re loving you. So it was nice, seeing it in those faces.
Fin: And audiences were really really great.
JH: Which is unusual there, the Germans are very reserved, so they don’t break out of that very often. So when they were going crazy with you guys…
Fin: Yeah being the support band for a crowd that size like you don’t have the intimacy of a small venue. So it is about kind of making people feel comfortable like that. They can kind of open up and start moving, because, you know, when a venue is that big, it’s quite easy to just kind of tune out and sit back, especially if you’re up the back.
JH: It’s like the first time I saw Fishbone. I was thinking “What the hell is this? Who are these guys? This is so cool” because it was so different and bizarre, and you guys were having fun with the theatrics even though what you were wearing was a Great Gatsby-like glam band with David Bowie singing for Sparks. I hope that when you hit the States, you that you get that should light up the fan base here, too. So the new single “Jocelyn” actually just came right.
Fin: Yesterday, yeah.
JH: I guess if we can just dive into that, Jocelyn, because that’s a personal thing we’re gonna go pick on the lead singer for a minute, lyrically, you’re just talking about the cold, the inadequate clothing, just the sheet for covering right in this. “How life must start and end. What waits beyond the bend? Night times. My only friend, I’ll talk, I talk. I walk with her again. Her name was Jocelyn. She had a worried grin, a mole upon her chin. It’s funny what you find when you look inside”. Those are very heavy lyrics, but I’m looking at this as like and make like you’re. Are you doing this mirrored thing here? Who is she?
Joc: It’s like it’s very much like a narrative changes between lines. “She” and how changes between an unknown being myself and my mom at the same time, and throughout the song that that it kind of jumps between who like more feminine than masculine, that’s part of my trans identity.
JH: How long have you gone by, Jocelyn? This song is obviously about that transition right?
Joc: About 2 years. I basically wanted to do it, maybe a bit longer than that, but I just couldn’t think of her name and then, it stuck. Part of the motivation started wanting an artist name, because my old artist name, which won’t say was a character from a Harry Potter book. In the queer community, Harry Potter is not very loved anymore. We just want a new name, anyway. But a stage name was a good sort of stepping stone.
Joc: It’s like there’s like a slight satisfaction, and it’s the feeling of being seen because they are calling your chosen name.
JH: Okay, the song was about you becoming Jocelyn.
Joc: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: Please state your pronouns. I missed that part. Go ahead, please, both of you.
Joc: I don’t normally go by they, them.
JH: And wait, Finlay, where are you on the spectrum?
Fin: I don’t know I’m figuring that out.
JH: All right. So, you cats opened for Duran Duran.
Joc: Yeah. That was crazy.
JH: I mean, OMD, you can’t go wrong opening for OMD, But Duran Duran, I covered them last year, I’ve been a fan of them since before you cats were born, Duran Duran has a lot of glam fans.
Fin: The fans were amazingly receptive we’d never played a venue bigger than a thousand capacity or something before the first Duran Duran show It’s just incomprehensibly huge.
Joc: People said “You were with Duran Duran, can’t wait to come see you with OMD”.
JH: I could see you going straight to the heart of their fan base. I’m I’m catching you at the very beginning, but when you hit the USA this year with OMD, I’m excited to see you guys again, and I know the venue you’re playing at. I’ve shot there a lot. OMD loves playing at that venue. You’re gonna kill it that night, I’m already, setting high expectations. So where did the name come from? There are bands that I like. I don’t know if you ever heard of “Ringo DeathStar”.
Fin: Oh, yeah, they’re great.
JH: How did this one come up “Walt Disco”? I thought these guys were so witty.
Joc: Well, when I first moved to Glasgow, I had a hard time understanding everyone, and a friend was suggesting something, I at first struggled to understand it because it was like East Coast, not what I was used to. He said, like, what about something with disco fast? At that point, we didn’t know, it was gonna be a band.
Fin: I had nothing to do with it, so I’m allowed to say it’s a good name.
Joc: I think it’s sometimes hard to have like a silly name when you take yourself somewhat seriously we’re not that serious. You’ve seen us live. But, we take our writing seriously and art seriously. It’s sometimes hard to have a slightly silly name, but I think I like the juxtaposition, songs, and themes with a name like that are quite interesting.
JH: But again you also have a great deal of the “Sparks” presentation which is lighthearted, then holy shit, this is dark material here, then I go and watch your videos. And I’m like, what planet am I on? Like “Weightless” it was a Wagnerian Opera, in a Greek underworld, if that’s what you were going for, mission accomplished. That video is intense.
Joc: Yeah, I love. I love, we love that video I was inspired by all of that.
JH: I love the video, but I had to do several takes to get it. This is beautiful, powerful, scary. This is the Greek underworld we’re in Hades, it was classicism and romanticism.
Fin: Lord of the Rings.
Joc: Yeah, like medieval. You know, a lot of the ring’s medieval things just enhance and highlight the drama of the song.
JH: Who’s your art director for these videos?
Joc: Sometimes we have different people designing the set. Also did the artwork for the first album, but we always have the same director on every video for the last album. And they’re doing every video for this album as well.
JH: So are you the principal songwriter there, Jocelyn? Or do you all kind of muck about with lyrics?
Joc: We all. We all muck in musically, but me and Jack do lyrics together. So we wrote the “Jocelyn” lyrics that we wrote together. Jack wrote the lyrics for “Pearl”, and “You Make Me Feel So Dumb”.
JH: So. “Falling behind sisters of mine. Oh, when is the right time?” What was the reference there? The right time for what?
Joc: I’m not sure it was, like watching other trans people do things to make them feel affirmed and happy, and my feeling that myself wasn’t doing enough, and I need to just think about what I want to do and not just watch other people.
JH: Is that the line “I was in the dark, was I never might type. Oh, please don’t cry it. It’s not too late to start”? Is there you were, trying to affirm yourself? It that how you wanted to see yourself?
Joc: Yeah, obviously, that the mirror is like a strange thing when you kind of, feel weird about like how you look and how you present yourself, and that second verse is “So it’s quite frantic and back and forth”
JH: I mean. Well, you’re you’re quoting almost literally like that’s a Shakespeare-like line.
Joc: It’s got to be great Scott’s better English than English people.
Fin: Yeah, we have. We have, like, 17 different words for drunk.
JH: And and 17 different uses for the word fuck too.
Fin: Oh yes, we’re creative.
JH: Let’s see “How Cool Are You?”, another masterpiece I loved. It opened up with, like, the circus sounds which anytime you hear circus stuff it immediately goes to torture and horror every time you hear the circus music. Also well choreographed, everybody’s dancing on ice right?
Joc: It was so funny when we started, the video idea came about literally because Fin used to play ice hockey. So Finley said: I’m good at skating let’s do a skating video”. It doesn’t matter that I can’t skate at all.
Fin: I was just like such a weird day, cause like we had to get to the ice rink at like 6 am, and I had the flu.
JH: If that wasn’t weird enough, how about the actual video, rocky horror vibe? There’s not one single point to a Walt Disco song or video, you just open the floodgates, “Hi, here’s a million ideas we’re gonna dump on you”. Now lyrics “How cool are you with your leather clothes? How cool are you with your fringe that kills. Oh, please find a way for me to be your friend. How cool are you? Your clever pose?”
Joc: I think it’s just like, yeah, kind of like, I don’t get anyone who thinks like being cool, such a desire to feel cool and appear cool, but it’s just a bit ridiculous, being nice and having a good time is more important.
Fin: To be truly based is to embrace your cringe.
JH: I was one of you guys in high school. I was one of those weirdos man. I always, you know, and I was the other thing, I was the weird kid. When I was growing up we had a punk club that we’d go to. And all the gay kids, the queer kids were there, we said “you’re welcome here”, we all would have been mates in high school.
Fin: I was doing plenty of cool shit when I was in school, I was in the Pokemon Club. That was great.
JH: Alright “Pearls”, is one of my favorite songs by you guys. It probably is the guitar, and there was some serious Lou read on that piece.
Fin: Thank you. I like that one.
JH: Do you have a lot of queer fans coming out to your shows. Do you have a sizable fan base there?
Joc: our shows are great, because it’s quite often queer, like younger people, and 50-plus men and women because of OMD.
JH: “Never Knew Love Like This Before”, who wrote that one?
Joc: Stephanie Mills.
JH: The video to that kind of had remnants of Monty Python, the Holy Grail. So what were you doing in that video other than putting on just these funky outfits and walking around in a park?
Joc: That’s kind of it, we were given the task of making the kind of visuals for these park covers which we did quickly, with no budget. I know this guy makes these clothes and we could just put them on, and then go places and like, and be together as friends. That zone, just us being friends hanging out and looking weird.
Fin: It was so funny, we must have looked so bizarre just walking about in public. And then that mad shirt that I had with like a cape was getting a bit of a Messiah complex in it.
JH: It looked like some of the costumes out of Monty Python, the Holy Grail, with paint all over. There was no point to be made from the video, and I just wanted to know what was the point.
Joc: We don’t have the budget to make a point.
Fin: They’re just just vibing.
JH: But I guess the final question. I ask everybody, all the queer artists this. What would your message be to the young queer kid who is in the closet, and in that vulnerable state? What would your message be to that Kit? What’s that for Finley? First.
Fin: Take your time. Figure it out.
Joc: Take your time try and speak to people like you, if you can find someone who’s already out or that’d be a good person to start speaking to, how you feel about things, you don’t need to come out. Just one day start to live how you want to live, and then that’s the most important thing.
JH: Alright. Well, thank you for that, both of you.
Joc: Thank you so much.
Tour and music links Spotify instagram X Facebook youtube
The full interview with all the extra fluff can be heard HERE
