I was a bit odd as a kid, because there were so little outlets for me. There was no theatre except for the odd community theatre and school shows. The only movie theatre was at the Canadian Forces Base nearby in Comox, so it either showed kiddie flicks for the families and restricted stuff for the men.
"Poetry" refers to the quite challenging and quite resistant sets of words put together to be admired and interpreted by people who are already into that sort of thing, somewhat analogous to free jazz or academic classical music. Which is stuff that I really like, but is late modernist and is going to have a limited audience.
I was an odd mixture of quite theatrical and shy.
I remember being really young - being 13 or 14 - when I first was really excited about punk rock as an idea, and I was like, 'Don't ever not be punk. Don't ever not be punk.' Telling that to myself, I guess it was like self-defense against the scary world around me.
Then I started listenin' a lot to classical composers. Piano works. Just to see what they were doin'. That sort of put me in a different groove to try to blend all that in.
I used to be really nervous when I sang. Like, when I was a kid starting young, 18 and 19, and my dad really had to sort of push me to start singing in front of people. Ever since I got out there and really started doing it, the only thing I've ever tried to do is just sort of is be myself, you know, never put on a voice. Sing naturally.
I'm not sure I would have ever started to draw, let alone write, if my childhood hadn't been so happy. It was a mixture of comfort and adventure. An excellent mixture!
I started off doing stuff in theatre in Letterkenny from quite a young age. It was just a hobby, something I enjoyed. Some kids like tennis or guitar. I just enjoyed musical theatre so my parents got me into classes.
When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands.
I don't know if anyone knows if they're ever any good, but I went to drama school in Scotland, in a classical acting course, and my first year, I remember one of my tutors telling me that I couldn't act, and I should give up and all this sort of thing, and then, they cast me as Romeo in 'Romeo and Juliet.'
I think that's one of the things that has always put me in kind of an odd niche. It's that all of my understanding of orchestral music is via film, not via classical music like it's supposed to be. To me it's the same, it doesn't make any difference.
Having started in theatre, for a long time I wanted to be a classical actress. But I've always loved making people laugh - at school, I was quite mischievous, and bit by bit, I found myself working more and more in comedy.
I used to have a little Geordie accent when I was younger; they called me Little Geordie Fran.
Ain't nobody ever had a jumpshot like mine, ain't nobody ever power moves like mine, ain't nobody ever tough defense like mine and ain't nobody ever had the courage to be a winner like me.
Before I worked on film, I studied the theatre, and I expected that I would spend my whole career in theatre. Gradually, I started writing for the cinema. However, I feel grateful towards the theatre. I love working with spectators, and I love this experience with the theatre, and I like theatre culture.
On the first album, we were trying to do a pop-punk album with a classical influence. We'd say 'pop-punk,' and people would say, 'No, you're like burlesque-cabaret-punk,' or, 'It's baroque-pop,' and we were like, 'That sounds way cooler.'