Danny Wilson and his band The Champions of The World are streaming their new record What Kind Of Love on Best Fit ahead of its release next week.
The album was partly forged on the road during the band's extensive tours last year, and follows last year's Live Champs! album. It's the first studio record since 2013's Stay True.
To help get to grips with the creation and weight of the record, Wilson has provided an in-depth Track by Track guide that delves into newfound maturity, an avoidance of computer programming, and rediscoving collaborations.
This one had been around for a little while… there’s always stray songs hanging around, waiting to be paid some attention. Another one that I worked with Lushy on… reminds me of something that Ben E. King could have done in the '70s… on this album we got our friend Romeo Stodart from The Magic Numbers to ‘arrange’ the backing vocals... it’s always interesting to see what other people who haven’t been so close to the process bring to it… what they hear in it that you hadn’t noticed or considered. I absolutely love what they did on this… the counter point stuff… wouldn’t have crossed my mind but I love it… I guess that’s the beauty of collaboration… as long as you can allow it to happen naturally… I guess this album is defined by collaboration.
Again the backing vocals really add something special to this one. I was saying to the guys that I wanted it to sound like Gladys Knight & The Pips covering a Dylan song… and I think it kind of does! I love the irreverence that naturally comes with cover versions… I’m done with being precious about recording… I like momentum, stuff happening quick… not labouring over stuff… it doesn’t sound good and it’s boring. We recorded most of all this live in the studio in very few takes and it just keeps things alive… It’s very easy these days to make perfect music… you can tune anything, make anything in time… but it just doesn’t move me… I want to hear the human-ness not what a computer program is capable of… Me, Chris Clarke and Lushy wrote this one at Henry’s folks’ place in Stroud… Chris doesn’t write much stuff generally but this one is a cracker.
Speaking of cover versions this is the first cover version that I’ve ever included on an album. It was a hit for Tyrone Davis in the US '68/'69... it was a track that we played in the van a lot and a total pleasure to record. The guitar riff is just so attractive… joyful... it really makes me happy and that’s important. We all use music as part of our uniform… something that tells the world who we are and what we stand for… that we’re cooler or cleverer or crazier. I’m old enough now to know that if a song or piece of music moves you in any way then it’s a keeper… it’s a bullseye, wherever it comes from. I’m not a big fan of the ‘Guilty Pleasure’ thing… if you like something how can it be a guilty pleasure? I’m more that happy to stand up and say that I probably prefer Hall & Oates or The Bee Gees to Nick Drake or Bowie or something…Gallagher & Lyle, now there’s a band.
I grew up in Sutton. I wrote this with my friend Joe Kinsey from the band Billy Vincent. He’s from Sutton too… my Mum was his nursery school teacher. He’s a lovely fella and I really love his band too. Me and Chris, our bass player, were at Chris’s studio recording with them and we’d had a few drinks and Joe started to sing what was the skeleton of this tune… I was totally blown away by it… me and Lushy added a few bits and jigged it about a bit and it turned out great… I love the pedal steel on this track… you don’t hear it much… this blend of country and soul music… I guess without the steel guitar this album would be a pretty straight ahead soul record.
Another one where the backing vocals really blow me away… and another example of how someone will come in and see and hear things in a completely different way than you had ever considered… I love this song… there’s a few lyrics in there that I’m really proud of: “Don’t get caught up in a game that nobody wins.” I was going for a Rod Stewart type of feel on this… with a healthy dash of Van the Man. It’s funny, we’re often labelled ‘Americana’ or considered to be a band with a strictly American set of influences but in terms of singers, my biggest influences are probably largely British… Rod Stewart, Terry Reid, Paul Rodgers, Reg King, Frankie Miller, Steve Ellis, Van Morrison, Joe Cocker, Chris Farlowe, Eric Burdon… we we’re probably the best exponents of that R&B rock crossover sound at a time… we just forgot about it!
What Kind Of Love is out 1 June on Loose. You can stream it ahead of that below, and check out their upcoming shows after.