Welcome to Week Six of Oh CRUMBS!
I can’t believe it’s been six weeks since I started this Substack. I can’t believe we’ve gone through my whole first EP. I can’t believe I am gearing up to share my second EP of songs with you. But before I do, lots of people ask where the name Peachkit comes from, so I thought I’d share the inspiration behind the name.
As a reminder, for $6 per month you get two extra emails from me and in those I go into more detail about my songwriting and production process, share some behind-the-scenes voice notes and videos from writing sessions. And right now, I’m getting some incredible interviews together with some amazing folks all about their journey following their crumbs. All this and more can be yours with one simple click:
Behind The Name ⚾️🍑🥁
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”
— Juliet, from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Peachkit is an amalgamation of names from the 1992 movie A League of their Own. The movie is a fictionalised account of the real life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) that was set up in 1943 to keep the sport of baseball in the public eye while the men were away at war. The team in the film is called the Rockford Peaches (hence “Peach”) and one of the main character’s is called Kit Keller (hence “Kit”.) And that’s when Peachkit was born.
This film was a staple in my household as a child and was watched and rewatched nearly as many times as Hocus Pocus. I must have been 10 years old when I first saw it and the moment the credits hit the screen I immediately wanted to play baseball (side note: films have this effect on me because when I was 8, after watching Mighty Ducks, I went straight the local ice skating rink, ready to be the next Connie. Please never let me watch The Godfather.) But with baseball not being a thing in the UK in the late 90s, it was much harder to get into. However, my parents persevered and eventually found a small girls’ softball league in London, run by American ex-pat parents.
I got a mitt, called it Kit, and went to play ball. I’ll never forget coming back home after our first game and telling my dad how amazing it was, and that we even had people hanging out of windows, cheering and screaming for us. He was surprised - it was such a small group, who knew to go and watch girls play softball in London on a Saturday morning? With more questions came the rather humorous, yet disturbing answer, right there in our living room. Our “fans” were actually male prison inmates - the only pitch available for us was a bit of wasteland behind Wormwood Scrubs Prison and their windows looked directly over us.
Inmates aside, A League of their Own was like a comfort blanket to me. It would lift my spirits in when I was down, so when 2020 hit, and spirits were so low they had essentially drowned (both metaphorically and literally speaking - the Covid home bar was real) my husband suggest we watch it again, and let Tom Hanks remind us soothingly that there is “no crying in baseball.”
However, watching it in 2020 hit differently. The world had been turned upside down and I was seeing everything in a new light. It was in that re-watch that realised the parallels between the way the women in the league were treated and the way that women in the music industry are treated. In the AAGPBL, women ballplayers had to wear make up when playing games to always make sure they looked pretty, play ball in ridiculous outfits to look sexy, go to charm school to make sure they behaved ‘like a lady’, they had to be chaperoned to every event, have an “extra skill” to just playing ball - in other words, they had to go above and beyond what their male counterparts were expected to do on the pitch. The men could show up, play ball, and go home and the crowds would love them. The women? Not so much. This felt alarmingly familiar in my career as a songwriter.
As a woman in the music industry, I felt I always needed to do more to prove that I was worthy of being in the room. I felt like I couldn’t just be good at one thing - I couldn’t just be a songwriter, lyricist or topliner, I had to be able to produce, play more than one instrument, sing, be the therapist, be the one who made lunch, the one who made everyone feel comfortable, I had to look the part, play the part, be the life and soul of the party yet no matter what I did, it never felt enough.
Watching this film again and seeing those similarities, I realised I had a chance - and a choice - to try and do things differently. That I have the opportunity to show up, do all I can, and go against the grain, just like the Rockford Peaches did. And just like those women in 1943, I wanted to defy the phrase I so often hear in male dominated industries: it’s just the way it’s always been. And that’s when Peachkit entered the chat.
Quote For It 📜
This quote from the movie is on a post-it note on my computer screen. And even though sometimes I rip it off and scrunch it up in anger when things are really tough, I always end up un-scrunching it, smoothing it out and sticking it back up.
Jimmy Dugan - “I'm in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It's what lights you up, you can't deny that.”
Dottie Hinson - “It just got too hard.”
Jimmy Dugan: “It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great.”
Picture This 🎨
For my logo and artwork for my first EP, I worked with the graphic designer Ed Newton. He created so many incredible options it was nearly impossible to pick just one. But the design I went for was the one in which he’d married my fascination with -
Astrology - dots in the P nod to the constellations
Baseball - working the P around the design of the home plate
Triangle - the three people it takes to write a song: artist, songwriter, producer
I thought I’d share some of the initial ideas so you can see where the crumbs led us…
Peach Picks 🍑
This is where I share my Spotify playlist of “Songs My Friends Wrote”. This is turning into such an incredible playlist, I’m really hoping you’re enjoying it! I wanted to know, is there a new artist that you’ve discovered from this playlist? Let me know in the comments below!
The artwork for the playlist is by the incredible Austin Kleon
Thanks so much for following the crumbs with me, can’t wait to share more next week!
Love,