February 1, 2026 • 26 mins
Liz Stokes is an Auckland-based songwriter and frontwoman of acclaimed indie rock band The Beths, known for her sharp lyrics, emotional honesty, and irresistibly punchy melodies.
Across the band’s internationally celebrated albums — including Future Me Hates Me, Jump Rope Gazers, Expert in a Dying Field, and the recent Straight Line Was A Lie — Stokes has built a reputation for writing candidly about mental health, uncertainty, and resilience, often pairing heavy themes with bright, energetic hooks.
After navigating several years of mental and physical health challenges, her recent work reflects a deeper acceptance of life’s cyclical nature and a desire to offer comfort to others going through ongoing struggles. With a devoted global fanbase and a growing presence on the world stage, Liz Stokes continues to be one of Aotearoa’s most compelling and relatable songwriting voices.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk SEDB. Follow
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Real Conversation, Real Connection, It's Real life with John Cowan
on News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Gooday, welcome to real life. I'm John Cown and I'm
feeling very privileged to talk with Liz Stokes. So she's
the lead singer of the Beths, which could be currently
New Zealand's most successful band with a huge following here
and around the world. And in full confession, my musical
tastes performed decades before Liz was even born, and then
(00:53):
my playlists are mostly fossilized artifacts from the last century.
But on Piha Beach this summer, I saw someone wearing
a very cool T shirt with the Beths written on it,
and I thought, quite truthfully, I'm going to listen to
some of that, and I have to say I'm very
glad I did, because it's fantastic music. So Liz considered
be a newly converted fan. And thanks for some great music.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Oh, very welcome. I'm glad the T shirts are doing
their job. That's the first I heard of someone listening
to us.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It's worth talking that merch out there. People notice it
and think, ah, yes, I might listen to that, But hey,
I'm I'm fairly late to the party as regards becoming
a fan. I mean, you've been around for quite a
long time, and you have a huge range of fans,
including Barack Obama. And so let's just play a little
bit of one of the things from one of his playlists.
(01:46):
He's listed the best a couple of times in his
Choices of music. So let's listen to watching the credits.
So Obama loves you, I.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Mean, if it's if it's if it's him making those playlists, yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
So it's.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Other, such another universe that it's kind of hard to imagine.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I mean, you've you've earned your place there because you've
been going for now, what when did you start as the.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Beths twenty fourteen, right, and that.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
That sort of had grown out of some other bands
and things. I think was it the Teacups or something.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
And yeah, yeah, we'd all been but by that time
we were, you know, grizzled veterans of the Auckland music scene,
you know, in our mid twenties, having played in you know,
lots of different high school bands and studied music and yeah,
just getting really getting amongst the music scene in Auckland
and different genres and everything.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, I mean you've known some of the band members
right right from the high school.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yeah, yeah, went high school with Jonathan, and I've known
Ben since I was sixteen, and just through through music,
like through bands and kind of all age shows. And
Auckland's a small town in some ways if you're if
you're involved in that kind of stuff. And we've we've
all stuck around as the thing, so we're still here.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
So that must be quite nice being able to know
a lot of people in a particular scene that does
it feel like a community?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
It does. It does to us, and we've it's something
that we must we must well wear away. And you know,
it's it's always changing, and like music communities, it always
feels like it's kind of on the verge of collapse
or something, you know, with music venues, and it's always
kind of a bit of a battle, and but it's
(03:46):
so resilient, and it's there's this thing that like you know,
you grow up with something, you take it for granted
and then you you know, we've we've gone out and
we've seen a lot of the world and playing a
lot of venues and stuff, and you start you realize
how special the thing that you have is back home,
and we've realized.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
That right now. You do tour a lot. I mean,
how many gigs did you do, say last year.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Last year, I'm going to get the number on and
it's around seventy. But most of that was after August.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
I think that was there was August about seventy. Yeah, countries, it.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Was mainly the We did the UK and Europe, and
then we did a big long run in the United States,
but that was there was for five weeks in UK
and Europe, six weeks in the States and that's barely
and like we're going back to the States this year
for two big five week runs again because it's just
that's a big place.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
You're not going to run out of, not going to
run out of venues too soon. But I was just thinking,
you say you miss yours, the people in your community
when you're traveling overseas. I guess it must be nice
to be able to take with you people that you've
know and now for a long time. And you say
you've known Jonathan high school and easier partner as well,
(05:11):
So that must be comforting be able to take with
you a lot of your world when you go touring.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, it's super comforting. It's like it's one of the
joys of being in a band, right that it's just
experiencing something together. And it's nice to just have context
for the things that you're experiencing because you can kind
of like you're not just seeing it through your own age.
You seeing it through the eyes of people that you
know and trust and have known for a long time.
And it's yeah, it's tough sometimes, but you know, it's
(05:40):
relationships and.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Right, you've been doing this now since your teenage years
and you're in your early thirties now. If you didn't
like it, if you didn't love it, you would have
found something else to do. What is it that you
especially love about performing and playing and touring?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Just the applause? That's all I do it for. I'm
just kidding. I don't know. You start off and I
love There's so many aspects to it, right, Like there's
a cyclical nature to what we do. It's kind of
different phases. There's kind of writing and then there's the
building of the album, like the studio construction of building
(06:21):
this thing that like the recorded song, and then there's
the playing, right, and there's all the planning and stuff,
which I find hard, and the kind of logistics and
the visual stuff I find a bit more difficult.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Okay, so you do really link it to the production
of your albums, and you've done four albums now, so
huge birth pains to get that thing out. And then
after it's launched, your tour.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, yeah, and the touring is like this, it's this
love hate relationship. It's just it's such an extreme lifestyle
I guess of yeah, being in a different city every day,
and it's just the travel of evolved in that and
the kind of the git and the lack of sleep.
But then you do this thing every night where people
come and sing your songs with you, and like that,
(07:06):
no matter how much energy it took to it through
the day, or whatever problems came up that you had
to solve, it's like your cup kind of gets filled
back up.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
So it doesn't train you. It actually tops you up.
Being in front of an audience.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
The show's good. It tops you up, and that's why
it's so important. That's why the show becomes so important
because if something goes really badly and you get into
a bad headspace during it, you're kind of running at
a deficit then for the next for the next period
of time or something.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
And Okay, hopefully that doesn't happen too often. What have
you been your best gigs so far?
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Best gigs? What would be the biggest We had biggest,
biggest for a minute was we played at the Roundhouse
in London, which is about three thousand people. And that's
what we're talking headline shows. This is so like selling
hard tickets versus like, you know, opening for a bigger band,
so that but that was really special and it just
(07:54):
we'd rehearsed really hard, and it was quite early in
the cycle. This was only in August or September or
something like that, and it was, Yeah, that felt like
we we just so often these big shows you get
so nervous that like it's hard, it's hard to just
be present and you kind of like you start to
get on your head and spiral if you're make any
mistakes and stuff. But it felt like we were well
(08:15):
prepared and it went well. But our biggest stress this
then was Chicago, which was also a really special show.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Okay, and Coachella, did that go well because that it
must be a huge audience too.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, that was it was, it was good. I was
really it's two weekends, so you do you kind of
get a duo over, which is nice. But the first
weekend was the one that was filmed for us, which
is interesting dynamic because it's like there's more people watching
at home then are actually even in the at the stage. Yeah,
and so yeah, And I was like at the time,
I was dealing with like some health stuff that I've had.
(08:47):
I've got diagnosed with Graves disease and so like I
had this thing where my eyes were kind of bulging
out of my head at Coachella, which is like quite
a visual kind of experience with the with the filming
and then people shaking photos. So I was I was like,
not just like having a chill, great time. I was
quite nervous and then like a little bit anxious up
(09:08):
that kind of stuff, but like it went with.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Great, Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Yeah, that that that that idea that yeah, it's great
when it's all going great, but you have to still
front up on stage even when you're feeling rubbish and
feeling hot and feeling sick. That must be really really hard. Yeah,
you mean you don't have a backup. You can't say
I'm going to have the night off tonight. You go
on and the head and do it for me. You
(09:35):
just have to do it.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yeah. Yeah, it's you kind of call and sick when
it's uh, you get the one opportunity. You just gonna
have to tell that. Yeah, that's that's another aspect of
of of playing right and it's it's not okay, great,
but you have to do it.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah. Now you mentioned this thing graves disease. That's a
thyroid or something, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:04):
Yeah, so just you know, fire thing you know, and
how to how does.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
It impact you? You say it made you? Was that
the thing that was making you anxious?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
A bit of it? I think I think it wasn't it.
I think I'm already predisposed a little to anxiety and
depression and stuff, but I had it kind of the
last few years, a big kind of like journey of
a So what it does is it makes your thyroid
produce much more thyroid homone, so you yea, which makes
(10:35):
your heart beat really fast and stuff like that, makes
you sweat, It makes you really hot, and it's not
good for your body. It's like your body's over an
engine that's overheating. It's running much too hard and that
can be hard on, especially in your heart. And so like,
I didn't know what was going on until I were
at the Newport Folk Festival and the States and I
was like, yeah, I had been. It was a really
(10:55):
hot day and I just like nearly passed out on
stage and I went to the medical tent, which is
I was pretty lucky that I got to have some
free health care in the United States of America. But
they had a cardio person there and she encouraged me
to win a got home to get some tests done
in because my hurtate was something like one hundred and
eighty and then it was just like at resting was
(11:17):
like one hundred and thirty hundred and forty so and
she was like, that's not normal, and I was like, God, okay.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Gosh, that sort of elevated adrenalized state. That must have
been very uncomfortable. And you mentioned that unfortunately this is
on top of a predisposition to a bit of depression
and anxiety. Anyway, so I feel very sorry for you
because the beaths have gone fantastically well, and you could
(11:43):
just sit back and look at yourself and look how
the band's gone and go, wow, isn't this fantastic? And
in the middle of it, the lead singer, it's not
feeling that great? Am I am?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
I am?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
I am? I phrasing that right? Is that how it's been?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Sometimes? Yeah, but I suppose it's that's true so much
in life, right, Like it was everyone you know and
you interact with it. It's like there's that level of
performance of normality, but you don't you don't necessarily know
what's going on behind the scenes. And it doesn't mean
that it's like a lie, you know, like you playing
on stage is really I really enjoy it, you know,
and it does make me feel better, but you know,
(12:26):
I guess you never really know what what people are
kind of dealing with. And it's yeah, being having some
lovel exuccess doesn't magically make you happy forever something.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
M hmm. What's helped you? Have people helped you is
have you found anything that's been particularly useful for you
as you because lots of us have, you know, dip
into this and sometimes we find that it's episodic. Sometimes
we find that there's things that lift us up. Have
you found that something works particularly well for you.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, it's just it's this kind of ongoing thing, suppose
like it's and that's part of the story of the
The most recent record is this kind of then, particularly
the song straight Line was a liars, this kind of
realization that it's it's not a journey to the top
and then you get to the top or something. It's
(13:24):
like this life and dealing with anything that you have
to deal with. It's it's kind of ongoing and it's
it's maintenance and that's very like unromantic, but it's meaningful
to take care of yourself in the ways that you
have to do so, even though you have to do
it every day forever. So and for me that's meant
(13:45):
you know, the boring stuff like exercise and like therapy
and like trying to talking to people and like trying
to take care of myself in the small ways that
and then yeah, I was on medication for a while
and that was very helpful when I was like very
low to help me kind of like build some of
(14:07):
these patterns that won't established before, and that is harder
to establish when our routine is not like we don't
really have a routine necessarily with our life.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
So right, and so that, on top of not feeling great,
very hard to keep things going, especially creatively. I'm talking
with Liz Stokes, the lead singer of The Bets, and
after the break we're going to listen to a bit
more of her music, but also some of the some
of the meanings, some of the stories, some of the
things she's been thinking about that spill over into the
(14:41):
lyrics of the songs, especially in her latest album. This
is real life on Newstalks. It'd be I'm John Cown
talking with Liz Stokes, back with you in just a minute.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on news talks.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
It'd be.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Welcome back to real life. I'm John Cown talking to
Liz Stokes, lead singer of The Bets, and that some
of the music straight line was a lie. And that's
the title track of their latest album, Liz, fantastic song.
Sounds so upbeat and fun and everything like this. But
when I'm listening to your music, I have Shazam going
telling you what the lyrics are, and man, there's some
(15:29):
deep stuff in these lyrics.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Thank you I spend a lot of time. I spend
a lot of time on them, and then with this
album in particular, it was they did a lot of rating,
like free rating on top of you well before writing
the songs.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Actually, that's an interesting thing. I'll sidetrack onto that because
I read that we were talking before the break about
I don't know, finding your groove getting over depression and
sometimes that leaves you of a bit of a writer's block,
and that you sit down with an old typewriter.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That's what we did for this one. Yeah, I got
a typewriter for my birthday years ago. I was from
ben actually, and I was like, I'm ever going to
use this? And then yeah, I was. I was just
struggling to write songs, and so I thought, well, if
I can't write songs, maybe I'll just I'll just write.
And I read Stephen King's book on writing and he
said and that he talks about his method and that
he writes ten pages a day, every single day. And
(16:23):
so I was like, okay, well I do that, not forever,
but I'll do it for a couple of months. And
so I sat there and it would take me anyway
from two hours to five hours to kind of like
crank out ten sheets of paper on the typewriter.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
So and it's an old fashioned whack whack, whack, whack
whack typewriter.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yeah, I think it's from the fifties or sixties, and man,
it's it feels great and it sounds great. It's just
when you get a rhythm going, it really feels like
it pays you back in just like a great sonic experience.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
That sounds fantastic. When I read about you doing this,
I was thinking, that sounds wonderful because I used to
love pounding away on a little portable. But you've got
to even get a bigger one than that. That makes
one of those electric typewriter type wax and ten pages
a day every day you must have a stack of
paper that would fill a filing candor.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, it was. It was a decent couple of inches.
And they took that with me when I then started
writing songs in earnest and like, I was just trying
to write as many songs as I could, and it
was just very useful being able to do having like
processed a lot of stuff and ask myself some kind
of hard questions and things.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
And Okay, here's a warning about listening to some of
Lizz's music. You'll sit there and think this is so
much fun, and you're sort of you'll be beguiled by
how much fun it's sounding. But then you look at
the lyrics and you think, oh, and there's sometimes a
bit of a punch in the guts. Now, I'm I'm
a baby boomer, and I'm told that baby boomers have
(18:00):
this general mindset that says, work the system and it
will work for you. Study, you'll get a job, save
you get a house, be a good person and a
good citizen. Everything will work are good for you. But
listening to your music, I realize that you're discovering, even
at your young age, at life's a bit more complex
than that I am. I picking up the right vibe
from your music that life is. You end up back
(18:20):
in the complex stuff, the stuff that's not working properly,
the stuff that just needs constant work.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Yeah, I suppose it's kind of the journey is kind
of a winding road, right, Like I think with a
lot of things, I feel like I'm quite a pragmatic person,
and whenever there's a problem, you know, my instinct is
to kind of map out the way to solve it,
you know, and the path to move through it and
pasted it, you know. But this, yeah, I guess I've
(18:50):
been now alive for long enough time I'm in my
mid thirties that I don't know. Yeah, just I've now
I'm now starting to notice the patterns in my own
life where I'm you know, things have happened to me
multiple times, or I feel like, yeah, the progress life
isn't just progress in moving forward. It's kind of and
(19:13):
it's not it's not broken when like you're not doing
life wrong. When stuff, you know, things happen and you
are maybe facing a different direction than you thought that
you would be, or you're kind of have to move
what feels like backwards. It's like even when you're moving backwards,
you're still moving forwards through through life.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I guess, yeah, you have to back up and have
a run at things again. And some of those things
that you think, oh, yeah, that should be the most reliable, simple, predictable,
dependable thing in our life, like for instance, the love
we have for our mother. You even refer to that
in this in that beautiful song Mother Pray for Me,
(19:54):
which is again it's a beautiful song quite different, I
think from other stuff you do. And I just thought, wow,
that's so true of so many people's relationships with their mother.
They love them, and yet it's they still feel there's
a gap. Am I reading that one right too?
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah? Yeah, certainly, Like there's it's so funny that you
can be so specific, like for me, that song so
specifically about, you know, my experience with my mum, whether
there's a generational gap. There's also like she's Indonesian and
so there's like a cultural gap, there's a literal language,
a bit of a language barrier. There's also this religion.
(20:34):
Is that she's something that like I grew up with
but kind of like lost, and it's you know, with
these two people and like with so much love for
each other, but it also feels like you're looking at
it trying to look at each other from far away
and understand each other from across this divide. And for
us it's a specific kind of one. But I think
(20:56):
everybody has that a bit, maybe not everybody if you're
really lucky.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
So so you write it specifically for you and your
own mother, But are you sort of surprised that other
people can resonate with that as well.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
As yeah, well do you feel it that way? You
know that it's I think not even even not just mothers,
but like parents, you know, it's you. There's always this
this kind of like gap that you that I feel
like you're trying to close and like, you know, you
kind of want to really see them and for them
(21:29):
to really see you. But I feel like it's I
don't know. Sometimes I wonder if it's if it's fraught
and it's better to just accept the part of them
that you can see or something, and it's I don't
know's I don't have the answers.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
You know, let's listen to a little bit of it.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I would like to know you, and I want you
to know me. Do we still at time?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Can we try? Mother pray for me? Have you actually
played this to your mother?
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah? I did. I did before it came out because
I was let's see, I was very and I stressed
about it for you know, like I wrote it like
a year and a half before I planted her, and
I was so scared of what she should say and like.
But of course, you know, it was an onn starter
and part of that is that she maybe couldn't process
the lyrics straight away because of the language barrier stuff.
(22:26):
But I think in a weird way, she was just
touched that I had written a song for like about
her or something which is not you know which. Even
that just shows how kind of like the differences of
how I expected that to go, like I can't I
can't see with her eyes about like you know what,
how she thinks.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So it's still a work in progress, like so much
of what life is. And your career is going so
well and in all sorts of ways, and you have
to keep on I suppose keep on producing. And we
(23:08):
do you get your inspiration from? I mean you must
have periods where you get what writer's block? Have you
found a way around that? Yeah, yeah, you've got your typewriter,
But I mean, is the other inputs and things that
you find stimulate to stimulate the flow of songs?
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Totally? I feel like I'm at that point now because
we're for instance, we have the next month we're at home,
so and we don't have to this time last year
we're furiously finishing an album, you know, and so right
now it's we have touring this year. But when we're
not touring, our hands aren't as firmly stuck to the tool.
So it's an exploratory phase. But that exploration also is
(23:47):
like you're like, well, that's my job, and I need
to be finding creative inspiration because it's my job. So
but I think it is part of it is like
trying to be in a good headspace so that I
can absorb, like just be a sponge for a lot
of stuff. Right, It's like watching a lot of movies
and like reading and listening to a lot of music.
And something I've doing lately in lieu of writing ten
(24:10):
pages a day as I've been trying to learn a
song a day on the guitar, which is something that
I haven't done since I first started learning guitar, and
just I've been learning songs and just trying to get
inside them and figure out what they're they're doing, like
songs that I love and just kind of what core
pression are they're using, like actually singing the words and
seeing how they feel and learning, like getting better at
(24:33):
guitar while doing it. You know, it's it's been really good.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Right, So building your craft and out of the craft
comes the art, I guess, do you hope?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
So, yeah, you have your hands on the instrument, playing something,
playing something that you love, it feels like more likely
that something will spring out of something inspiring, spring out
of there then just sorting the guitar and saying write something,
make something out.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Now you know it's something they can.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I just share some good news with the of the audience,
and that is not only is there a stack of
music online that you can download, and a heap of
YouTube videos which are great fun. And as I say,
I watched them ships with Shazam in one hand, so
I can see what the lyrics are and that's adds
to the enjoyment incredibly. But also the Beats are going
(25:22):
to be on tour all around the country in March,
and so if you go online and track them down,
I think that you might have a live show that
you're going to be thinking about and enjoying for a
long long time, not just on the night, but I
think you'll be enjoying thinking aback about it as well.
And so I do track down the latest album, but
and all the albums and go and see them live.
(25:43):
And Liz will come out on a song which even
though it's completely unseasonable, even though Christmas is behind us
and We're sort of glad that some of the mauls
of playing something different than Christmas music. I'm going to
play Wish you a Very Merry Christmas, which is such
a fun video and online as well. But I just
love the music. So Liz, thank you for all the
(26:05):
music that you've given us, and thank you for your time.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Thanks John, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
I'll save that till next the next descender. This has
been news. This is real life on News Talks d B.
I'm John carn been talking with Liz Stokes from the
Beths and I'll be back with you again next Sunday night.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
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Real Conversation, Real Connection, It's Real life with John Cowan
on News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Gooday, welcome to real life. I'm John Cown and I'm
feeling very privileged to talk with Liz Stokes. So she's
the lead singer of the Beths, which could be currently
New Zealand's most successful band with a huge following here
and around the world. And in full confession, my musical
tastes performed decades before Liz was even born, and then
(00:53):
my playlists are mostly fossilized artifacts from the last century.
But on Piha Beach this summer, I saw someone wearing
a very cool T shirt with the Beths written on it,
and I thought, quite truthfully, I'm going to listen to
some of that, and I have to say I'm very
glad I did, because it's fantastic music. So Liz considered
be a newly converted fan. And thanks for some great music.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Oh, very welcome. I'm glad the T shirts are doing
their job. That's the first I heard of someone listening
to us.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It's worth talking that merch out there. People notice it
and think, ah, yes, I might listen to that, But hey,
I'm I'm fairly late to the party as regards becoming
a fan. I mean, you've been around for quite a
long time, and you have a huge range of fans,
including Barack Obama. And so let's just play a little
bit of one of the things from one of his playlists.
(01:46):
He's listed the best a couple of times in his
Choices of music. So let's listen to watching the credits.
So Obama loves you, I.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Mean, if it's if it's if it's him making those playlists, yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
So it's.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Other, such another universe that it's kind of hard to imagine.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I mean, you've you've earned your place there because you've
been going for now, what when did you start as the.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Beths twenty fourteen, right, and that.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
That sort of had grown out of some other bands
and things. I think was it the Teacups or something.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
And yeah, yeah, we'd all been but by that time
we were, you know, grizzled veterans of the Auckland music scene,
you know, in our mid twenties, having played in you know,
lots of different high school bands and studied music and yeah,
just getting really getting amongst the music scene in Auckland
and different genres and everything.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, I mean you've known some of the band members
right right from the high school.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yeah, yeah, went high school with Jonathan, and I've known
Ben since I was sixteen, and just through through music,
like through bands and kind of all age shows. And
Auckland's a small town in some ways if you're if
you're involved in that kind of stuff. And we've we've
all stuck around as the thing, so we're still here.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
So that must be quite nice being able to know
a lot of people in a particular scene that does
it feel like a community?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
It does. It does to us, and we've it's something
that we must we must well wear away. And you know,
it's it's always changing, and like music communities, it always
feels like it's kind of on the verge of collapse
or something, you know, with music venues, and it's always
kind of a bit of a battle, and but it's
(03:46):
so resilient, and it's there's this thing that like you know,
you grow up with something, you take it for granted
and then you you know, we've we've gone out and
we've seen a lot of the world and playing a
lot of venues and stuff, and you start you realize
how special the thing that you have is back home,
and we've realized.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
That right now. You do tour a lot. I mean,
how many gigs did you do, say last year.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Last year, I'm going to get the number on and
it's around seventy. But most of that was after August.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
I think that was there was August about seventy. Yeah, countries, it.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Was mainly the We did the UK and Europe, and
then we did a big long run in the United States,
but that was there was for five weeks in UK
and Europe, six weeks in the States and that's barely
and like we're going back to the States this year
for two big five week runs again because it's just
that's a big place.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
You're not going to run out of, not going to
run out of venues too soon. But I was just thinking,
you say you miss yours, the people in your community
when you're traveling overseas. I guess it must be nice
to be able to take with you people that you've
know and now for a long time. And you say
you've known Jonathan high school and easier partner as well,
(05:11):
So that must be comforting be able to take with
you a lot of your world when you go touring.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, it's super comforting. It's like it's one of the
joys of being in a band, right that it's just
experiencing something together. And it's nice to just have context
for the things that you're experiencing because you can kind
of like you're not just seeing it through your own age.
You seeing it through the eyes of people that you
know and trust and have known for a long time.
And it's yeah, it's tough sometimes, but you know, it's
(05:40):
relationships and.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Right, you've been doing this now since your teenage years
and you're in your early thirties now. If you didn't
like it, if you didn't love it, you would have
found something else to do. What is it that you
especially love about performing and playing and touring?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Just the applause? That's all I do it for. I'm
just kidding. I don't know. You start off and I
love There's so many aspects to it, right, Like there's
a cyclical nature to what we do. It's kind of
different phases. There's kind of writing and then there's the
building of the album, like the studio construction of building
(06:21):
this thing that like the recorded song, and then there's
the playing, right, and there's all the planning and stuff,
which I find hard, and the kind of logistics and
the visual stuff I find a bit more difficult.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Okay, so you do really link it to the production
of your albums, and you've done four albums now, so
huge birth pains to get that thing out. And then
after it's launched, your tour.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, yeah, and the touring is like this, it's this
love hate relationship. It's just it's such an extreme lifestyle
I guess of yeah, being in a different city every day,
and it's just the travel of evolved in that and
the kind of the git and the lack of sleep.
But then you do this thing every night where people
come and sing your songs with you, and like that,
(07:06):
no matter how much energy it took to it through
the day, or whatever problems came up that you had
to solve, it's like your cup kind of gets filled
back up.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
So it doesn't train you. It actually tops you up.
Being in front of an audience.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
The show's good. It tops you up, and that's why
it's so important. That's why the show becomes so important
because if something goes really badly and you get into
a bad headspace during it, you're kind of running at
a deficit then for the next for the next period
of time or something.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
And Okay, hopefully that doesn't happen too often. What have
you been your best gigs so far?
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Best gigs? What would be the biggest We had biggest,
biggest for a minute was we played at the Roundhouse
in London, which is about three thousand people. And that's
what we're talking headline shows. This is so like selling
hard tickets versus like, you know, opening for a bigger band,
so that but that was really special and it just
(07:54):
we'd rehearsed really hard, and it was quite early in
the cycle. This was only in August or September or
something like that, and it was, Yeah, that felt like
we we just so often these big shows you get
so nervous that like it's hard, it's hard to just
be present and you kind of like you start to
get on your head and spiral if you're make any
mistakes and stuff. But it felt like we were well
(08:15):
prepared and it went well. But our biggest stress this
then was Chicago, which was also a really special show.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Okay, and Coachella, did that go well because that it
must be a huge audience too.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, that was it was, it was good. I was
really it's two weekends, so you do you kind of
get a duo over, which is nice. But the first
weekend was the one that was filmed for us, which
is interesting dynamic because it's like there's more people watching
at home then are actually even in the at the stage. Yeah,
and so yeah, And I was like at the time,
I was dealing with like some health stuff that I've had.
(08:47):
I've got diagnosed with Graves disease and so like I
had this thing where my eyes were kind of bulging
out of my head at Coachella, which is like quite
a visual kind of experience with the with the filming
and then people shaking photos. So I was I was like,
not just like having a chill, great time. I was
quite nervous and then like a little bit anxious up
(09:08):
that kind of stuff, but like it went with.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Great, Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Yeah, that that that that idea that yeah, it's great
when it's all going great, but you have to still
front up on stage even when you're feeling rubbish and
feeling hot and feeling sick. That must be really really hard. Yeah,
you mean you don't have a backup. You can't say
I'm going to have the night off tonight. You go
on and the head and do it for me. You
(09:35):
just have to do it.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yeah. Yeah, it's you kind of call and sick when
it's uh, you get the one opportunity. You just gonna
have to tell that. Yeah, that's that's another aspect of
of of playing right and it's it's not okay, great,
but you have to do it.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah. Now you mentioned this thing graves disease. That's a
thyroid or something, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:04):
Yeah, so just you know, fire thing you know, and
how to how does.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
It impact you? You say it made you? Was that
the thing that was making you anxious?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
A bit of it? I think I think it wasn't it.
I think I'm already predisposed a little to anxiety and
depression and stuff, but I had it kind of the
last few years, a big kind of like journey of
a So what it does is it makes your thyroid
produce much more thyroid homone, so you yea, which makes
(10:35):
your heart beat really fast and stuff like that, makes
you sweat, It makes you really hot, and it's not
good for your body. It's like your body's over an
engine that's overheating. It's running much too hard and that
can be hard on, especially in your heart. And so like,
I didn't know what was going on until I were
at the Newport Folk Festival and the States and I
was like, yeah, I had been. It was a really
(10:55):
hot day and I just like nearly passed out on
stage and I went to the medical tent, which is
I was pretty lucky that I got to have some
free health care in the United States of America. But
they had a cardio person there and she encouraged me
to win a got home to get some tests done
in because my hurtate was something like one hundred and
eighty and then it was just like at resting was
(11:17):
like one hundred and thirty hundred and forty so and
she was like, that's not normal, and I was like, God, okay.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Gosh, that sort of elevated adrenalized state. That must have
been very uncomfortable. And you mentioned that unfortunately this is
on top of a predisposition to a bit of depression
and anxiety. Anyway, so I feel very sorry for you
because the beaths have gone fantastically well, and you could
(11:43):
just sit back and look at yourself and look how
the band's gone and go, wow, isn't this fantastic? And
in the middle of it, the lead singer, it's not
feeling that great? Am I am?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
I am?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
I am? I phrasing that right? Is that how it's been?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Sometimes? Yeah, but I suppose it's that's true so much
in life, right, Like it was everyone you know and
you interact with it. It's like there's that level of
performance of normality, but you don't you don't necessarily know
what's going on behind the scenes. And it doesn't mean
that it's like a lie, you know, like you playing
on stage is really I really enjoy it, you know,
and it does make me feel better, but you know,
(12:26):
I guess you never really know what what people are
kind of dealing with. And it's yeah, being having some
lovel exuccess doesn't magically make you happy forever something.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
M hmm. What's helped you? Have people helped you is
have you found anything that's been particularly useful for you
as you because lots of us have, you know, dip
into this and sometimes we find that it's episodic. Sometimes
we find that there's things that lift us up. Have
you found that something works particularly well for you.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, it's just it's this kind of ongoing thing, suppose
like it's and that's part of the story of the
The most recent record is this kind of then, particularly
the song straight Line was a liars, this kind of
realization that it's it's not a journey to the top
and then you get to the top or something. It's
(13:24):
like this life and dealing with anything that you have
to deal with. It's it's kind of ongoing and it's
it's maintenance and that's very like unromantic, but it's meaningful
to take care of yourself in the ways that you
have to do so, even though you have to do
it every day forever. So and for me that's meant
(13:45):
you know, the boring stuff like exercise and like therapy
and like trying to talking to people and like trying
to take care of myself in the small ways that
and then yeah, I was on medication for a while
and that was very helpful when I was like very
low to help me kind of like build some of
(14:07):
these patterns that won't established before, and that is harder
to establish when our routine is not like we don't
really have a routine necessarily with our life.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
So right, and so that, on top of not feeling great,
very hard to keep things going, especially creatively. I'm talking
with Liz Stokes, the lead singer of The Bets, and
after the break we're going to listen to a bit
more of her music, but also some of the some
of the meanings, some of the stories, some of the
things she's been thinking about that spill over into the
(14:41):
lyrics of the songs, especially in her latest album. This
is real life on Newstalks. It'd be I'm John Cown
talking with Liz Stokes, back with you in just a minute.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on news talks.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
It'd be.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Welcome back to real life. I'm John Cown talking to
Liz Stokes, lead singer of The Bets, and that some
of the music straight line was a lie. And that's
the title track of their latest album, Liz, fantastic song.
Sounds so upbeat and fun and everything like this. But
when I'm listening to your music, I have Shazam going
telling you what the lyrics are, and man, there's some
(15:29):
deep stuff in these lyrics.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Thank you I spend a lot of time. I spend
a lot of time on them, and then with this
album in particular, it was they did a lot of rating,
like free rating on top of you well before writing
the songs.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Actually, that's an interesting thing. I'll sidetrack onto that because
I read that we were talking before the break about
I don't know, finding your groove getting over depression and
sometimes that leaves you of a bit of a writer's block,
and that you sit down with an old typewriter.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That's what we did for this one. Yeah, I got
a typewriter for my birthday years ago. I was from
ben actually, and I was like, I'm ever going to
use this? And then yeah, I was. I was just
struggling to write songs, and so I thought, well, if
I can't write songs, maybe I'll just I'll just write.
And I read Stephen King's book on writing and he
said and that he talks about his method and that
he writes ten pages a day, every single day. And
(16:23):
so I was like, okay, well I do that, not forever,
but I'll do it for a couple of months. And
so I sat there and it would take me anyway
from two hours to five hours to kind of like
crank out ten sheets of paper on the typewriter.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
So and it's an old fashioned whack whack, whack, whack
whack typewriter.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yeah, I think it's from the fifties or sixties, and man,
it's it feels great and it sounds great. It's just
when you get a rhythm going, it really feels like
it pays you back in just like a great sonic experience.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
That sounds fantastic. When I read about you doing this,
I was thinking, that sounds wonderful because I used to
love pounding away on a little portable. But you've got
to even get a bigger one than that. That makes
one of those electric typewriter type wax and ten pages
a day every day you must have a stack of
paper that would fill a filing candor.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, it was. It was a decent couple of inches.
And they took that with me when I then started
writing songs in earnest and like, I was just trying
to write as many songs as I could, and it
was just very useful being able to do having like
processed a lot of stuff and ask myself some kind
of hard questions and things.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
And Okay, here's a warning about listening to some of
Lizz's music. You'll sit there and think this is so
much fun, and you're sort of you'll be beguiled by
how much fun it's sounding. But then you look at
the lyrics and you think, oh, and there's sometimes a
bit of a punch in the guts. Now, I'm I'm
a baby boomer, and I'm told that baby boomers have
(18:00):
this general mindset that says, work the system and it
will work for you. Study, you'll get a job, save
you get a house, be a good person and a
good citizen. Everything will work are good for you. But
listening to your music, I realize that you're discovering, even
at your young age, at life's a bit more complex
than that I am. I picking up the right vibe
from your music that life is. You end up back
(18:20):
in the complex stuff, the stuff that's not working properly,
the stuff that just needs constant work.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Yeah, I suppose it's kind of the journey is kind
of a winding road, right, Like I think with a
lot of things, I feel like I'm quite a pragmatic person,
and whenever there's a problem, you know, my instinct is
to kind of map out the way to solve it,
you know, and the path to move through it and
pasted it, you know. But this, yeah, I guess I've
(18:50):
been now alive for long enough time I'm in my
mid thirties that I don't know. Yeah, just I've now
I'm now starting to notice the patterns in my own
life where I'm you know, things have happened to me
multiple times, or I feel like, yeah, the progress life
isn't just progress in moving forward. It's kind of and
(19:13):
it's not it's not broken when like you're not doing
life wrong. When stuff, you know, things happen and you
are maybe facing a different direction than you thought that
you would be, or you're kind of have to move
what feels like backwards. It's like even when you're moving backwards,
you're still moving forwards through through life.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I guess, yeah, you have to back up and have
a run at things again. And some of those things
that you think, oh, yeah, that should be the most reliable, simple, predictable,
dependable thing in our life, like for instance, the love
we have for our mother. You even refer to that
in this in that beautiful song Mother Pray for Me,
(19:54):
which is again it's a beautiful song quite different, I
think from other stuff you do. And I just thought, wow,
that's so true of so many people's relationships with their mother.
They love them, and yet it's they still feel there's
a gap. Am I reading that one right too?
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah? Yeah, certainly, Like there's it's so funny that you
can be so specific, like for me, that song so
specifically about, you know, my experience with my mum, whether
there's a generational gap. There's also like she's Indonesian and
so there's like a cultural gap, there's a literal language,
a bit of a language barrier. There's also this religion.
(20:34):
Is that she's something that like I grew up with
but kind of like lost, and it's you know, with
these two people and like with so much love for
each other, but it also feels like you're looking at
it trying to look at each other from far away
and understand each other from across this divide. And for
us it's a specific kind of one. But I think
(20:56):
everybody has that a bit, maybe not everybody if you're
really lucky.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
So so you write it specifically for you and your
own mother, But are you sort of surprised that other
people can resonate with that as well.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
As yeah, well do you feel it that way? You
know that it's I think not even even not just mothers,
but like parents, you know, it's you. There's always this
this kind of like gap that you that I feel
like you're trying to close and like, you know, you
kind of want to really see them and for them
(21:29):
to really see you. But I feel like it's I
don't know. Sometimes I wonder if it's if it's fraught
and it's better to just accept the part of them
that you can see or something, and it's I don't
know's I don't have the answers.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
You know, let's listen to a little bit of it.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I would like to know you, and I want you
to know me. Do we still at time?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Can we try? Mother pray for me? Have you actually
played this to your mother?
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah? I did. I did before it came out because
I was let's see, I was very and I stressed
about it for you know, like I wrote it like
a year and a half before I planted her, and
I was so scared of what she should say and like.
But of course, you know, it was an onn starter
and part of that is that she maybe couldn't process
the lyrics straight away because of the language barrier stuff.
(22:26):
But I think in a weird way, she was just
touched that I had written a song for like about
her or something which is not you know which. Even
that just shows how kind of like the differences of
how I expected that to go, like I can't I
can't see with her eyes about like you know what,
how she thinks.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So it's still a work in progress, like so much
of what life is. And your career is going so
well and in all sorts of ways, and you have
to keep on I suppose keep on producing. And we
(23:08):
do you get your inspiration from? I mean you must
have periods where you get what writer's block? Have you
found a way around that? Yeah, yeah, you've got your typewriter,
But I mean, is the other inputs and things that
you find stimulate to stimulate the flow of songs?
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Totally? I feel like I'm at that point now because
we're for instance, we have the next month we're at home,
so and we don't have to this time last year
we're furiously finishing an album, you know, and so right
now it's we have touring this year. But when we're
not touring, our hands aren't as firmly stuck to the tool.
So it's an exploratory phase. But that exploration also is
(23:47):
like you're like, well, that's my job, and I need
to be finding creative inspiration because it's my job. So
but I think it is part of it is like
trying to be in a good headspace so that I
can absorb, like just be a sponge for a lot
of stuff. Right, It's like watching a lot of movies
and like reading and listening to a lot of music.
And something I've doing lately in lieu of writing ten
(24:10):
pages a day as I've been trying to learn a
song a day on the guitar, which is something that
I haven't done since I first started learning guitar, and
just I've been learning songs and just trying to get
inside them and figure out what they're they're doing, like
songs that I love and just kind of what core
pression are they're using, like actually singing the words and
seeing how they feel and learning, like getting better at
(24:33):
guitar while doing it. You know, it's it's been really good.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Right, So building your craft and out of the craft
comes the art, I guess, do you hope?
Speaker 3 (24:42):
So, yeah, you have your hands on the instrument, playing something,
playing something that you love, it feels like more likely
that something will spring out of something inspiring, spring out
of there then just sorting the guitar and saying write something,
make something out.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Now you know it's something they can.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I just share some good news with the of the audience,
and that is not only is there a stack of
music online that you can download, and a heap of
YouTube videos which are great fun. And as I say,
I watched them ships with Shazam in one hand, so
I can see what the lyrics are and that's adds
to the enjoyment incredibly. But also the Beats are going
(25:22):
to be on tour all around the country in March,
and so if you go online and track them down,
I think that you might have a live show that
you're going to be thinking about and enjoying for a
long long time, not just on the night, but I
think you'll be enjoying thinking aback about it as well.
And so I do track down the latest album, but
and all the albums and go and see them live.
(25:43):
And Liz will come out on a song which even
though it's completely unseasonable, even though Christmas is behind us
and We're sort of glad that some of the mauls
of playing something different than Christmas music. I'm going to
play Wish you a Very Merry Christmas, which is such
a fun video and online as well. But I just
love the music. So Liz, thank you for all the
(26:05):
music that you've given us, and thank you for your time.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Thanks John, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
I'll save that till next the next descender. This has
been news. This is real life on News Talks d B.
I'm John carn been talking with Liz Stokes from the
Beths and I'll be back with you again next Sunday night.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
For more from News Talks at B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.
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