Pete McKee is taking his biggest exhibition The Boy with a Leg Named Brian on the road. After the exhibition closes each day, McKee will be back on stage with The Everly Pregnant Brothers, the ukulele parody band he started on a drunken dare. McKee is characteristically matter-of-fact about what he does. He describes himself as a storyteller rather than an artist, more interested in talking about the mechanical horse from Castle Market that he rode as a kid. Jason Barnard spoke to McKee to talk about nostalgia, working-class art, and what happens when you take Sheffield’s stories to venues that we need to secure for the future.
The Boy with a Leg Named Brian began as something personal. As someone whose work draws on personal memory, how do you decide what belongs in public and what remains private?
There’s very little filter with my biographical work, I revile in self deprecation and embarrassment but also find the rawness of heartbreak cathartic for both myself and the viewer and you can’t ignore celebrating life’s minutiae either.
We’re losing grassroots venues at an alarming rate and you’re known for painting working-class life. Do you see a connection between the spaces we’re losing and the communities your work depicts?
The world around is is constantly evolving and things become extinct. Its a part of the circle of life, take New York’s CBGB’s for example, you would think a venue with cultural relevance would still be going today but it’s now a clothes shop. It’s heartbreaking when a treasured venue closes but invariably it’s because people stop going, I guess in todays climate it’s different as the financial commitment is massive, higher rents, higher utility costs and running costs in general add to that ticket prices and everything becomes unmanageable and something has to give. If you are lucky a city or town will have a flagship independent venue that creates its own history, we as punters have to be aware that we are living in that moment and go to as many gigs as possible, I work in the genre of nostalgia so the memory of the glory days of a certain venue like the Limit in Sheffield is always a great subject to revisit and remind ourselves that we were once played a part in musical history.
Your work is rooted in Sheffield but travels much more widely. What is it about those specific streets, bedrooms and bus stops that seems to translate outside the region?
I think it’s the universal story of the working class that resonates no matter where you come from. We all grew up skint, listened to great music and wore stunning clobber. My upbringing wasn’t unique and I’ve managed to find a way of telling my story that resonates with so many people
Your art and the Everly Pregnant Brothers both trade in humour. What does comedy let you say in song that you would not attempt in a drawing, and vice versa?
I think they are very closely meshed together, maybe I can be a bit dafter and cruder with the brothers but they both try to achieve the same objective of being relatable, entertaining and genuine.
A song like ‘No Oven No Pie’ takes a reggae classic and turns it into something silly. Is part of the joy in that a way of bringing disparate musical traditions into Sheffield’s vernacular?
Jarvis Cocker, Richard Hawley and Alex Turner were the trail blazers for not shying away from using the Sheffield vernacular in their songs and we are merely walking in their slippers. It helps ground you using your own dialect and strangely makes you more accessible.
Your latest album’s got everything from ‘Dodgy Box’ to ‘Breadcake Not a Roll.’ How do you choose which song to parody next? Do you look for tunes that contrast sharply with your chosen subject or ones that people will recognise instantly?
It’s a two way thing, sometimes the original song has a title that can be parodied easily. Like ‘Stuck in the Lidl with you’ which is originally ‘Stuck in the middle with you.’ If you instantly laugh at the punchline then half the battle is one, alternatively you are looking for cultural zeitgeists that resonate with our audience like ‘Dodgy box,’ a song about getting a hacked dongle for your TV but is set to ‘Just the two of us’ which bares no parody line to the original song.
When the group is rewriting lyrics, do you start with the original song’s mood and melody, or do you start with the subject you want to talk about and find the song that best fits?
We go through many song ideas and some don’t work because the original song just doesn’t translate rhythmically so even if it’s a strong idea we ditch it if we haven’t cracked it by the second rehearsal. The magic is when you nail it just after a few runs round. Ideally we look for songs that have an anthemic singalong element because we love our gigs to be a cathartic experience where for and hour and a half we all can forget about the world outside and have a good laugh a sing a long and a bit of a swear.
Some of your material playfully insults neighbouring towns and cities, Leeds included. When you perform outside Yorkshire does that rivalry play differently?
The song in question works pretty much everywhere but on occasion we change the destinations to that particular town or cities rivals.
Once the tour finishes and the exhibition comes down, what feels unresolved or newly opened up for you creatively? Where do you sense your attention wanting to go next?
My brain rarely rests, and I more often than not act on spontaneous moments of inspiration so it hard to plan any longer than six months in advance, though I do have a show booked in for 2028. But who knows what will come before then.
Further information
‘The Boy with the Leg Named Brian’ + The Everly Pregnant Brothers Live
Day time exhibition is free with no booking required* and opens each day between 12pm – 5pm. Evening band performance is ticketed with doors opening at 7:00pm.
- 25 April – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
- 26 April – Manchester, Night & Day
- 02 May – Brighton, Green Door Store
- 03 May – Bristol, The Exchange
- 09 May – Southampton, The Joiners
- 10 May – Birmingham, Hare & Hounds
- 16 May – Liverpool, District
- 17 May – Newcastle, Cluny
- 23 May – Nottingham, Metronome
- 24 May – London, 100 Club
(*booking for London exhibition required, free tickets from petemckee.com)
