Grabbing Coffee with Daisy Casemore: Edinburgh through the eyes of an up-and-coming musician
- Molly Barrow
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
From the outside, the Edinburgh music scene appears a close-knit and impenetrable community. I was unsure about how to get my foot in the door and this column off the ground. However, through mutual friends, I was recently and happily introduced to Daisy Casemore. I first met Daisy at an intimate evening of music and poetry she organised in her living room, to fundraise for Medical Aid for Palestinians, but I had heard her name many times before that. Daisy, of the online music journalism platform D to Z Presents (“zee”, not “zed”, she points out). Daisy, who in Washington DC founded the six-piece band Wonk. Daisy, the English Literature student, by reputation a sweet and inquisitive person, and obsessed with the poetry of Mina Loy. On a late October morning, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Daisy to chat all things music: from toeing the line between self-promotion and selling out, songwriting, and why wearing skirts over jeans is the perfect, stylish solution to winter chills. In a café just off campus, Daisy arrived on bike and cracked open the window to the capital’s music scene as a young artist trying to navigate it (and succeeding in doing so). She is wonderfully articulate and driven, and this intrinsic self-assuredness, so rare and refreshing in someone my age, is certainly well-founded. I had an oat milk latte; Daisy had a flat white. What follows is an account of and my reflections upon our discussion.
When I first heard Daisy perform, I was struck by the forceful but delicate storytelling of this self-taught talent. She cites Joni Mitchell, Carol King, and Leonard Cohen, among others, as forming her earliest memories of music. You can certainly hear their folkish and soulful sounds lingering within her impressive catalogue, but Daisy is clear: her music taste is indefinable. It is eclectic and ever-changing, influenced more now by her musical peers and postcodes than just by the small CD collection of her childhood home. In fact, Daisy smiles most brightly when she talks about sharing the stage with her friends. In 2023, Daisy enjoyed brief success as a member of the band Springhouse, who took on the Scottish music scene at iconic venues like King Tuts and Voodoo Rooms. She recalls this period of her life as the first time in which she was playing music and writing seriously. It was in her year abroad at Georgetown that she found her voice, founding Wonk and being thrown headfirst into a musical counterculture wildly unlike Edinburgh’s cosy pub-basements. The home of hardcore, the Georgetown curriculum and music venues vibrated with distorted sounds and electronic revelry. It was in this creative environment that Wonk, with a mere two hours of studio time, recorded and produced their debut album My Tiny Escalator Goes to Heaven. My personal favourites on here are “Media Mogul Superstar”, “Money, Mother”, and “I So Liked Spring (Live)”.
Her time in the US, however, was marked by political turbulence as the Trump administration assumed its second term. In January, Trump signed an executive order pledging to deport international students linked with pro-Palestinian organisations. Daisy had relaunched D to Z while abroad, turning it from a radio show into a dedicated promotion platform, using it as a vehicle for putting on concert fundraisers for Palestine. This was of course an anxious time for Daisy, forced to reconcile her beliefs with the precarity of her student visa. Mostly, though, she recalls her time in Washington with evident fondness and her fundraiser for Palestine did go ahead successfully. Wonk, Daisy says, solidified her confidence as an artist. Their final show in New York, she recalls, was a truly beautiful evening. On their album, you can even hear an entranced audience singing along to their fabulously funky songs. Now back in Edinburgh, Daisy has gone solo. This “removes the cushioning”, she remarks, a cheeky glint in her eye as she begins to tell me about her upcoming projects. It is this new era I am most interested in hearing about. (I would strongly encourage you to check out my fellow Broad writer Summer’s review of an evening at Home Bar where Daisy, among others, swept the audience away.)
As our coffees cooled, Daisy and I talked mostly about songwriting and performance. What was abundantly clear was that Daisy practises intentionality in everything she does. When I ask her what she finds most challenging about songwriting, she succinctly responds, “I don’t want it to be boring. It can’t be lazy”. Her desire to produce well means she never sits down to create without her guitar: music and lyrics must be in conversation. For Daisy, this is what distinguishes a song from scribbles on a page. This desire for cohesion, however, does not take away from the charming authenticity evident in her writing. When I ask her how she manages this so well, she describes how her lyrics don’t come from one place or one time. They are collections of microscopic moments and soundbites deliciously sewn into a single tapestry. Her song “Charlie” is a stellar example of this. Let me be clear, I am in love with this song. There is only one other song in this world that elicited in me the same reaction as “Charlie” did the first time I heard it and that is Phoebe Bridgers’ gut-wrenching and entirely perfect ballad “Waiting Room”. Anyone who knows me will tell you this is the highest form of praise I can give. Walking in New York one day, Daisy overheard an old man on the phone: he yelled down the line, “Charlie, baby, can you hear me?” and, just like that, her song came together. “Charlie” recalls her time in the city that never sleeps, even though Daisy is clear that autobiographical writing, alone, is “boring”.
So why is Daisy so determined to avoid this dreaded six-letter word? I tentatively ask: does this have something to do with being a young woman in music? Daisy provides a considerate response to my question, stating very clearly she doesn’t want to be characterised by her gender. She will work as hard as, even harder than, anyone else to be an excellent musician, not because she is a woman, but because she is an artist like any other, trying to be noticed. “Prodigies come along rarely,” she says, “but I have a lot of friends who work hard”. She is aware, importantly, that music is being viewed less as a recognisable art form, since the advent of streaming services in the early 2000s encouraged the switch from physical to digital media. Even more pressing is the rampant use of AI in production and consumption. I ask her, then, how she as an independent artist reacts to the recent Scottish government legislation that puts small music venues at further risk. Daisy is naturally critical of the proposed changes to the Permitted Development Rights bill. The bill requires venues to invest in sound-proofing to encourage new housing to be built in the area. But the nightlife industry is still recovering from the strains of the pandemic and many fear costly building work will be the final nail in its coffin. Daisy passionately emphasises that live music is not dead; we just aren’t seeking it out nor are we willing to spend money on it these days, seeing as it is readily available on our phones. If we all approached music with the same level of attentiveness as Daisy, Scottish venues would be more empowered, and the music industry at large would be flourishing. Regarding music as an art form, Daisy suggests, also combats this worrying decline. She compares listening to music with exploring a museum or watching theatre: it requires an interaction between artist and viewer, an interaction that is self-conscious and critical. For her then, music pairs naturally with poetry. It is reactive and unruly.
As the midmorning crowd arrived at the café and the table-and-chair shuffling interspersed our conversation, mine and Daisy’s chat concluded with a handful of reflections about the current state of music in Edinburgh, particularly her excitement about its emerging alt-folk scene. Daisy truly has her finger on the pulse of the Scottish capital and, as our conversation came to a natural end, I was grateful for her myriad observations that I, as a non-musician, can only have a surface level understanding of. Edinburgh, I have learnt, hosts a diverse collective unified by complimentary tastes and genuine friendship. Daisy is an essential cog in this well-oiled machine, supporting 3P Slot Machine and performing in a one-woman show with Paradok called Every Brilliant Thing this November. How does she do all this, I asked, alongside a fourth-year student’s study-load? Music comes first, Daisy answered, earnestly and with little need to elaborate. The artists based in this wonderful city, if they are anything like Daisy (and I’m certain they are), are all hardworking creatives, working as best as they can in this quagmire of budget-cuts and disinterest. Daisy, I think it is important to say, is also a remarkable individual and I was touched by her kindness as she abandoned my attempt at a formal interview structure and started asking me questions about who I am, what I like, and where I plan to go next. At the end of the day, we’re all united by being twenty-somethings trying to figure it out: Daisy simply knows what she wants and, by God, she is going to get it.
Want to hear more from Daisy?
Give D to Z Presents a follow:
Daisy will be supporting 3P Slot Machine’s EP release on November 20th. Tickets are available here:
Every Brilliant Thing opens November 25th for two nights only:
Can’t make those? There is always Daisy’s website! Daisy also has demos on SoundCloud and Bandcamp. Wonk’s My Tiny Escalator Goes to Heaven is on all major streaming platforms as well. And finally, she has recently started a Substack featuring excellent essays and poetry:
Huge thanks goes to Daisy for sitting down with me and to Summer’s brilliant review.