‘You hear how couples in the same band break up, but we don’t feel any need to write our The Winner Takes It All just yet’
July 7, 2021 July 7, 2021 sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment
New Morning Blues
New Morning Blues are husband and wife duo Ian de Sylva and Joanna Backovic.
The pair, who released their debut album, London, this summer, run a recording studio together in Soho, and are independent artists in their own right, but this is the first time they’ve collaborated musically.
“To be honest, we’ve always been pretty busy with our own music projects, and it never really occurred to us to work together,” says de Sylva, in an exclusive interview with Say It With Garage Flowers.
“I had a song called Polestar. It wasn’t something that really suited my voice, so I asked Joanna to sing it. It sounded great, so I just kept writing with two voices in mind rather than one. So far, I’ve written the songs and we’ve arranged the vocal parts together.”
Backovic is a composer and performance artist who creates scores for theatre and film – she also performs under the name ArHai – while de Sylva’s first band, Silver, released a single on Rough Trade Records.
Signed to Medicine/Warner Bros, Silver recorded their debut album with producer Craig Leon (The Ramones, Blondie). They toured with The Cranberries and Elastica, and de Sylva also recorded two solo albums.
London is an impressive and arresting debut, from the ‘take no prisoners’ opener, Fortune Teller Blues – primal, White Stripes-style, blues-rock with mean organ and dirty guitar – to the beautiful and spectral folk ballad The Mirror, with shades of Nick Drake; the twangy, widescreen country-pop of The New Messiah; the cinematic psych soundtrack that is A Face In The Mirror, and the dramatic orchestration of On The Horizon.
There’s a haunting, atmospheric and autumnal quality to most of the record. “It’s pretty much autumn all year round in England, so that may have come through in the songs,” muses de Sylva.
How are things? Have you got ‘new morning blues’?
Ian de Sylva: No – we’re both feeling pretty good today.
How did you find lockdown and are you getting back to some sense of normality?
IDS: We actually enjoyed lockdown up to a point, as it gave us both a lot more time to work on our music, which is what we love to do.
How has it been running a studio in Soho during the past year?
IDS: It’s been fine really, as we’ve been able to use the space for our own music more, so all good.
‘It’s pretty much autumn all year round in England, so that may have come through in the songs’
How did you approach the album musically?
IDS: It developed very naturally, without a definite vision or plan sound-wise. I think it reflects music we both love, from psychedelia to country, folk and blues.
Can we talk about some of the songs? I’ll pick a few, give you some of my thoughts on them, and then can you give me yours.
Fortune Teller Blues: This is a raw, electric blues song – the heaviest track on the record. It has some great dirty guitar and organ on it…
IDS: It was written more as a kind of Dixieland jazz-type thing, but once I had the guitar riff, then it changed into something more bluesy. I wanted to write something upbeat and hopefully danceable.
The Mirror is one of my favourite songs on the record. It’s a haunting, folky ballad, with shades of Nick Drake…
IDS: We’re both fans of Nick Drake and love all his albums. Vashti Bunyan is also a big influence and I think that comes through on this one.
The New Messiah is another highlight for me. It’s jangly country-pop. It has a bit of a Nancy and Lee / mid-’90s Jesus and Mary Chain feel, circa Stoned & Dethroned. I love the twangy guitar solo.
IDS: We were watching a few of Tarantino’s movies and to me it sort of sounds like it could be in one of those films – definitely the guitar solo.
A Face In The Mirror is moody and cinematic, with a dramatic string arrangement…
IDS: This is more of a psychedelic influence. I think maybe it owes a lot to Arthur Lee.
What did you learn most from making a record together, and would you make another one?
IDS: We’re already recording a follow up-album, and working together on music has just been great so far. You hear a lot of stories of how being in the same band breaks couples up, but we don’t feel any need to write our The Winner Takes It All just yet.
What are your plans for the rest of the year?
IDS: More recording over the next few months, then some gigs this autumn.
‘We actually enjoyed lockdown up to a point, as it gave us a lot more time to work on our music, which is what we love to do’
What music – new and old – are you enjoying? Any recommendations?
IDS: We’ve been listening to John Grant, The War on Drugs, a great Spanish band called Carino, Kilimanjaro by The Teardrop Explodes, Scott Walker and Sandy Denny.
Finally, why did you call the record London?
IDS: It just seemed like an apt title. Having both lived in the city for a long time, it’s inevitably had a big influence on us, both as people, and our music.
London by New Morning Blues is out now on Berwick Music.
https://www.facebook.com/newmorningblues
blues, country, folk, New Morning Blues
‘I’m going to drag Americana into the future, kicking and screaming…’
February 28, 2020 April 2, 2020 sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment
Brighton-based singer-songwriter M.Butterfly (aka Martyn Lewis) describes himself as a ‘sadcore Americana artist’, but his latest single, Bughunt – available as a limited edition, lathe-cut 7in on the indie label Eyeless – is a departure from his usual sound. It’s harsh and abrasive – an industrial blues protest song, with distorted, howling vocals and a clanking rhythm. For a singer of sad country music, it’s a very angry record…
To listen to the track, click here.
“It is quite abrasive, but hopefully under all the noise and drum machines, you’ll hear the heart of an angry country-blues song,” he says.
“It was written on guitar, but I found playing it that way was restricting me. The song is more rhythmic than melodic – when I perform it live, I sing it a cappella, with handclaps and foot stomps.
“When I came to record it, I started with the drum machine beat and fed it through some effects pedals to dirty it up. I knew I’d have to treat the rest of it the same and it came out like a Nine Inch Nails song! It was a lot of fun to do.”
The song has a political message – he describes it as: “a warning to the world on the dangers of fascism.”
Elaborating on this, he says: “I guess it’s a reaction to our times, as all protest songs are. I think extreme views are creeping back into the spotlight, and people only need to look the other way for it to become centre stage. We must stay vigilant and challenge this sort of thing when we see it.”
He adds: “The title of the song comes from something Private Hudson says in James Cameron’s film Aliens: “Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?”
“He delivers the line with such disdain and malaise – almost annoyance. It’s exactly how I feel about seeing far-right groups rising up in the UK. How is this happening? What the f*** is going on? Don’t we have better things to do than to deal with these idiots?”
Do you play and record everything yourself? What’s your set-up like?
M.Butterfly: I usually play everything myself and record to a four-track tape recorder. When I started making music in the early Noughties, you could buy a brand new Tascam for about 50 quid, since digital was the new thing – that made it the cheapest option for recording at home.
What sound are you aiming for with your records? They’re lo-fi, stripped-down, intimate and raw…
M.B: I went to college and became enthralled with digital production, but over time I felt lost in the endless possibilities of digital. I had no idea when a song was finished, because you could always add more or take it away.
I went back to tape because I found I really thrived in the limitations of it. Everything has to be considered – sounds have to be found and captured, performances have to be complete, and that really works for me. That raw and lo-fi sound just comes with my preference for minimalism and restraint.
Your first album – 2017’s M.Butterfly I – had synths on it, as well as guitars, but your second album, M.Butterfly II, from last year, was largely more guitar-based, with slide and banjo, too. Is the sound of Bughunt representative of the musical direction you’re heading in next?
M.B: Bughunt is actually one song from a little family of harsher, more industrial songs. I also have another family of songs that sound great just on the acoustic guitar, with no other accompaniment.
I’m hoping I’ll settle on something in the middle – noisy and droney, but also acoustic and vulnerable. I’m writing about masculinity a lot at the moment, men’s mental health and the problems with machismo.
I have a song called The Sacred Art of the Wedding DJ, and another called Last English Elephant – they are both about masculinity.
Picture by Bryony Bird
You describe yourself as a singer of slow and very sad Americana, with outsider influences. Can you elaborate on that?
M.B: I like just about every genre of music. I’m convinced that every genre has at least one album you’ll like in it. I find myself drawn to country and Americana because of the emphasis on lyrical content and the simplicity of the music, but in that simplicity I think there is space to push it a bit, and bring in sounds and influences that you wouldn’t expect to hear.
I like music that is distorted and messy and I like music that is sparse and tiny. I like hip-hop beats and I like theatrical post-rock. I want to bring all of that into the space that country songwriting provides.
You don’t really fit into the country / Americana scene, do you? Are you happy about that?
M.B: It’s an odd thing really. I both love and hate being a bit of a sore thumb in the country scene. I’d love to be accepted into it and be a part of such a loving community – one that can have an audience as quiet as death one moment, and then laughing with rapture the next.
I’d love to be in a community where you know your lyrics are going to be listened to and loved. On the other side of that, I don’t want to have to follow the rules and well-worn paths to get there. I kind of want to bring whatever I like with me and have it be accepted.
I’ve had differing results so far. At times I’m told I’m too moody, or don’t have enough fiddle, etc. Other times I’m just told I’m too country sounding, and in the wrong place.
What is for certain though is that I’m not going to give up, and I’m going to drag Americana into the future, kicking and screaming. I’m going to play the AMA (Americana Music Association) UK showcase with a synthesiser and drum machine, I promise you!
I’d love to be signed to a label like Loose, I think they’d know what to do with me and they’d also take a chance on someone who doesn’t want to just regurgitate the country music canon.
‘I’m going to play the Americana Music Association (AMA) UK showcase with a synthesiser and drum machine, I promise you!’
Who or what are your main influences – musical or otherwise…
M.B: That’s so hard… trying to find the main threads of what I am. I love Townes Van Zandt – I think he was the greatest songwriter who ever lived. I love Low – what they are able to do with minimalism is unmatched, and they are also the most beautiful sounding band in the world.
PJ Harvey is a huge influence, with her disregard for trends and her artistic endeavour – she’s always done her own thing. Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, John Prine, King Crimson, Gillian Welch, Earl Sweatshirt, Sparklehorse, Vic Chesnutt, Jason Molina… I’m going to try and avoid just reeling off a list of my favourite artists, as we’d be here forever.
I love hip-hop. I like the rhythms and how it’s complex and simple at the same time – a beat and a vocal, but both are difficult to get right.
Outside of music I love Hideo Kojima – the video game developer. I think he’s an artist before anything else and he’s used video games like an artist uses a canvas – it’s something you live rather than play.
I love the films of modern directors like Ari Aster and Yorgos Lanthimos – they are like moving poetry. It’s unbelievable. I love authors and poets like Sylvia Plath, JG Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut, William Burroughs, Alan Moore and Yukio Mishima.
Lyrics are the part of songwriting I take the most seriously. I write every song about something, I don’t really buy in to the idea of vague lyrics that people attach their own meaning to, I want everything to have a story to it, even if it seems unclear at first.
My favourite lyricists are Richey Edwards [Manic Street Preachers], Townes Van Zandt, Leonard Cohen and David Berman of the Silver Jews. Emmylou Harris is a f***ing poet and never seems to get enough credit for it. Nina Simone is an astounding lyricist and she had the voice to match the ugliness she was singing about – just listen to Four Women or Mississippi Goddamn.
I have a lot of love for pop music, I love what Billie Eilish is doing – it’s so minimal and sparse and her voice is otherworldly. I love Beyoncé – her last record, Lemonade, was just phenomenal. I think pop artists get a lot of flack for not contributing enough to the music, but you need to think of someone like Beyoncé or Rihanna as film directors. They may not actually be behind the camera, or writing the script, but they’re choosing the people who are, and they’re making it all work together. They are in charge of every decision and I think the end result speaks for itself and can be seen alongside any record by Bob Dylan.
One of my favourite songs of yours is Flowers from Hell, which is from your second album, M.Butterfly II. It’s a simple, dark country song. What can you tell me about it? The title resonates with me, as my blog is called Say It With Garage Flowers, which takes its name from a country song I wrote with a friend…
MB: Flowers from Hell is about the late bisexual porn star Jon Vincent. I found him to be a fascinating man – his life seemed to be a series of wonderful moments ruined by something awful. He battled relentless drug addiction and originally wanted to be a baseball player, but his dreams were shattered when he was arrested for carrying drugs and was kicked off the team. It’s like the dream was always just out of reach for him – sure you can have some flowers, but they’re from Hell…
Bury The Living, also from your last album, is a beautiful, sad and haunting song. Where did that come from?
The main inspiration for the song was seeing a photo of a child refugee, who who washed up on a beach. The song is about the despair I feel for the human race. Everyone alive today could become a refugee, the chances may be low, but it could happen to absolutely anyone.
Looking at the lengths people go to escape a situation, what would you do? Would you cram yourself into a fuel tank on a boat to save a loved one? Would you cling to the underside of a lorry just for a taste of freedom? Everyone has a line that they would cross, and they don’t often have any say in it. Ultimately the song comes from my love of the world, and my frustration at the way we treat each other.
Can we expect a third album from you soon? M.Butterfly III?
M.B: I’m actually working on an album with a band – The Glass Saint Country Apparition Band. It’s a semi-improvised country noise outfit. The songs are long and noisy and the lyrics are dark. It’s an awful lot of fun to make a racket with some like-minded musicians.
Sam Collins, who played the slide guitar on Bury the Living, is one of the members. The album is being recorded slowly, on digital, would you believe. We just finished off the drums the other day. All of the songs swing in and out of time. It sounds like a beautiful mess.
As for M. Butterfly, I have so many songs and so many ideas, so there will absolutely be M.Butterfly III, but I have no idea when.
Tom House, who produced my first two albums, no longer lives in Brighton, so I’d need to find a new producer who gets my sound and what I’m trying to do. I’ve done some bits on my own, but I can get quite lost. I’d much rather have another person to play stuff to and have them say:”This is great, you are the best songwriter in the world,” or: “Get the f*** away from me!”
‘I’m working on an album with The Glass Saint Country Apparition Band. It’s a semi-improvised country noise outfit. The songs are long and noisy and the lyrics are dark’
You’re based in Brighton. How is it living and playing there? Do you get involved in the local scene?
M.B: I often gig in Brighton and I absolutely love the scene here. I’ve managed to get involved with the underground, more experimental part of the scene. I’m always surprised that my music goes down so well when I’m sandwiched between two post-rock bands.
I’ve learned the obvious truth that people are never what you perceive them to be, people are open-minded and just because they look like a goth or indie kid or whatever doesn’t mean they don’t like hip-hop, or country.
Brighton is expensive as hell to live in, and there are a lot of sayers and not many doers, but I love it and I expect I’ll spend the rest of my life here. The sea is the ultimate healer and we could all do with some healing.
What are your plans for the rest of this year?
M.B: I’d really like to finish the album with The Glass Saint Country Apparition Band, and I’d really like to have another M. Butterfly release ready too. One thing I am determined to do is release a small ‘zine of the lyrics from my first two albums. I’ve had so many people ask for them and I think it would be a nice little project to do. I’m proud of those lyrics and I’d love to see them in a physical format.
Finally, what music – new and old – are you enjoying at the moment?
M.B: I love Earthen Sea, who is a sort of ambient electronic guy. The album An Act of Love is great. I’ve just broken through with Tangerine Dream, I’m loving a live album they have called Logos. It has a section of music that they wrote for a film called The Keep, which is how I got into them. I revisited Bobby Womack’s The Bravest Man in the Universe recently – it’s a hell of a comeback, with such wonderful textures.
Dr. Octagon, otherwise known as Kool Keith, has been a more recent obsession. The album Dr. Octagonecologyst is like nothing else. It’s hip-hop, but it’s messy and weird and the lyrics are like some bizarre theatre performance. My partner hates it and won’t be in the room with me when I listen to it.
Bughunt by M.Butterfly will be available soon as a limited edition, lathe-cut 7in single on the indie label Eyeless.
For more information, visit:
https://eyelessrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://mbutterfly.bandcamp.com/
americana, blues, Brighton, country, M.Butterfly
‘I’ve been having these really vivid dreams about a post-apocalyptic town…’
February 8, 2020 February 9, 2020 sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment
Three years ago, West Country singer-songwriter Alex Lipinski released his second album, Alex.
One of our favourite records of 2017, it was a collection of stripped-down, raw and bluesy, autobiographical songs, recorded in Berlin with Anton Newcombe from The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and it reminded us of Bob Dylan singing The La’s.
Now he’s back with not one, but three new singles! Jigsaw is a haunting ballad – imagine Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game crossed with classic ’70s Neil Young; Everyday is a cover version of a Buddy Holly song – Alex has slowed it down and added some gorgeous, Richard Hawley-style, twangy guitar – and Hurricane is a re-recorded, full-band version of one of the standout tracks from his last album, with a jangly 12-string sound, organ and a wailing, Springsteen-esque sax solo.
In an exclusive interview, we sat down with Alex for a chat to get the lowdown on his new songs, and find out how his next album, which is being recorded this year, is shaping up. He also found time to tell us about his crazy dreams and a scary mushroom trip he once had…
Hi Alex. How are you doing? The last time we spoke was in 2017, after the release of your last album, Alex. What have you been up to since then?
Alex Lipinski: I’m good, thanks. I’ve pretty much been playing all over the UK and writing songs since we last spoke. I’ve played a bunch of festivals, which were great. More recently, I’ve been playing some shows with Matt Owens (Noah and the Whale), which have been fun.
Late last year, you released a new single – Jigsaw. It reminds us of Chris Isaak and vintage Neil Young…
AL:I wrote most of Jigsaw one morning at my friend’s house, in Washington D.C, where she was living at the time. I picked up a guitar that was lying around and the chords and melody instantly came out – it’s always nice when it happens that way. I actually heard Neil Young’s Harvest-era drums in my head when I was picturing how I wanted it to sound.
The song is accompanied by a mysterious video, in which you walk around a deserted coastal town, bury a briefcase on the beach, get picked up in a car and bump into a strange masked character. What does it all mean and where did you film it?
AL: The idea for the video stemmed from a mushroom trip I had at some point over the past couple of years – Hawaiian cubensis mushrooms, to be precise. I was in the middle of the trip and going through a bit of an ordeal. I can laugh now, but it wasn’t so funny at the time.
The scenario I was in kept repeating itself – I was stuck inside this loop and couldn’t work out how to break out of it. With the video, I wanted to make something weird.
Around the same time I had the idea for the story, I had watched The Wickerman, so that may have had some influence. The video was filmed around Sand Bay Beach in Weston-super-Mare. We had quite a few confused and concerned stares from dog walkers and nosy neighbours when myself and my nephew, who was wearing a rubber rabbit mask, were digging and burying a suitcase! I don’t think anyone called the police. The large white building is a psychiatric hospital. The video was shot completely on an iPhone 11 Pro.
Your new single is a cover of Buddy Holly’s Everyday – you’ve slowed it down and the guitars have a Richard Hawley feel…
AL: Everyday came about from a jam at a soundcheck. I had been playing around with the song previously, slowing it right down – almost crooner-style.
Graham Nicholls, the lead guitarist, was setting up and he had this Richard Hawley- style tremolo sound he was trying out, so I started singing and playing the song and he joined in. Adam, my brother, sings the other main vocal on the recording, so it gives it that Everly Brothers feel. It was the anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death on February 3, so we thought it would be a fitting tribute to release the song as close as we could to that date, to mark the occasion.
There’s another new single on the way soon – a re-recorded, full-band version of Hurricane, from your last album. It has a much bigger sound than the original, with jangly guitar, Springsteen-like sax and some organ….
AL: The new version of Hurricane is how I actually heard the song when I first wrote it. I had this upbeat, 12-string Byrds/Big Star sound in my head. It wasn’t until I slowed it down and lowered the key at a gig, almost by accident, that I decided to record that version on my last album. I wanted this big Clarence Clemons/Bobby Keys-style tenor sax solo during the instrumental.
‘The new version of Hurricane is how I heard the song when I first wrote it. I had this upbeat, 12-string Byrds/Big Star sound in my head’
We recorded the new songs at Canyon Sound Studios, in Bristol. Nic Dover, who runs the studio and engineered the sessions, is also a great sax player, so he stepped up and nailed it in two takes. The latest recordings act as a kind of bridge between the last album, which is completely stripped-down, and the next album, which will be recorded with the full band.
Let’s talk about your next album. Is it written? If so, when do you plan to record it and release it?
AL: The next album is written, but there’s always new songs that are being added to it, so it’s a case of working out which direction I want to take it. I’ll be recording it this year and, hopefully, it will be out by the end of 2020, however it may be an early 2021 release. Making a body of work to be proud of is more important to me than trying to rush it out.
You made the last album with Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, at his studio in Berlin. Any ideas about how you’re going to record the new one? Who are you going to work with?
AL: Working with Anton in Berlin was a great experience. He’s a ridiculously talented guy and also a great person. The album was completely stripped-down – the songs were presented in their raw, skeletal form and recorded live.
Myself and Adam [on guitar] were set-up facing each other, almost in a circle, with a bunch of mics around us and a giant RCA ribbon mic in the middle – the same microphone they used to use on the old Frank Sinatra recordings.
‘The next album will be heading in a different direction. There are elements of blues, soul, Americana, power-pop, ’60s psych and country’
Adam was kind of learning the songs as we went along – I’m left-handed and he’s right-handed, so it was easy for him to see which chords I was playing. In eight hours we had the main nucleus of the record done.
The next album will be heading in a different direction, as I’ll be recording it with my band. The singles that are coming out were recorded at Canyon Sound in Bristol, with Nic Dover, and he’s also great and easy to work with. He has a great ear and the studio has great gear. So we’ll see what’s possible and figure it out.
What’s going to influence the sound of the new album?
AI: Recording with the full band immediately gives the music a new direction and approach. There are elements of blues, soul, Americana, power-pop, ’60s psych and country – all these small glimpses of influences that seep out and merge together. That’s down to each individual player who brings something to the band.
Jon Whitfield (drummer) is a top jazz player, so he has his style, which allows us to take a song dynamically wherever we want it to go. Paul Quinn (keys/organ) and Graham Nicholls (lead guitar/lap steel) are both great players that sprinkle their magic dust, giving each song what it needs and, more importantly, knowing when to allow the song space where it needs it. And myself and Adam have been singing and playing together since we were teenagers, so we have this weird brotherly connection and understanding. So everything gels nicely.
Lyrically, the next record is going to be slightly less autobiographical than that last album, which was quite a personal record. I’ve tried to make things slightly more ambiguous, leaving it up to the listener to think for themselves, and not spelling it out.
Some of the songs could mean various things for different people and I guess that’s the beauty of creating something.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, it’s highly unlikely to not have been affected by what’s been going on politically in the UK, and if what’s been going on doesn’t make you angry, then you haven’t been paying attention. So I guess parts of that anger and frustration have slipped into some of the lyrical content.
Some of the themes also stem from dreams I’ve had over the past couple of years. I’ve been having these really vivid dreams, which are centred around a kind of post-apocalyptic town that feels both alien and familiar at the same time. A kind of blend of the future and nostalgia, and the line between reality and fantasy. I have absolutely no idea why I’ve been having these dreams, but I’m keeping a note of them.
‘The next record is going to be slightly less autobiographical than the last album, which was quite personal. I’ve tried to make things slightly more ambiguous’
What music are you listening to at the moment – new and old? Did you have a favourite album of last year?
AL: I’ve been listening to Townes Van Zandt quite a lot recently, especially the Live at the Old Quarter album. It’s a great live recording from 1973. The audience is crammed into this tiny venue. You can hear the cash till and the beer glasses – you can almost smell the sweat and cigarette smoke coming off the record. It reminds me of the 12 Bar Club, on Denmark Street in London, where I used to play a lot. Full of character and characters, and a great jukebox. Sadly developers moved in and the venue is no more, but it used to be a magical place.
I’ve also been listening to Gene Clark’s No Other album, which was re-released at the end of last year, and Andy Shauf’s latest record [Neon Skyline], which I’m enjoying.
There were some great albums that came out last year. I thought Michael Kiwanuka’s record [Kiwanuka] was a masterpiece. Bruce Springsteen’s Western Stars was great – Moonlight Motel is one of the best songs he’s written over the past few years. I loved Wilco’s Ode To Joy. The Purple Mountains album [Purple Mountains] was amazing and also tragic, due to the circumstances. I loved Devendra Banhart’s Ma and I thought Bill Callahan’s Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest was beautiful.
I played Son Volt’s Union a lot. I also really enjoyed Sharon Van Etten’s last album, Remind Me Tomorrow. I saw her live at the Green Man Festival last August and she blew me away. Her song Seventeen, from the latest album, is a killer.
What are your plans for the year ahead?
AL: The plan for this year is to record the new album. I also want to play live as much as possible. Since the last album was released, I’ve been playing all over the UK and in Europe, and, even now, people are still discovering the record, which is great. So I’ll be playing shows, both solo and with the band.
Last year I helped my sister arrange and put on a series of gigs to raise money for the Save The Children Yemen Crisis Appeal. The first set of gigs were ‘Songs of Dylan’ – we invited a bunch of local, and not so local, artists to perform a couple of Dylan songs each. The first gig was in Hebden Bridge, and we also arranged concerts in Bath and Bristol. We’ve had some great musicians come and play at those shows and the response has been amazing – we’ve managed to raise over £2,000 so far. We’ve also hosted ‘Songs of Simon & Garfunkel’ and ‘Songs of Joni Mitchell’ concerts in Hebden Bridge, too. The situation in Yemen is horrific and we’ll be arranging more Songs For Yemen gigs this year, with a big one in London being planned in the coming months.
‘If you’re in Bristol, you should make a visit to Friendly Records – it’s a great independent record shop and it’s got its own bar. What more do you want?’
I’ve also started a night in Bristol with my friend James Maclucas. It’s called Wolfmoon. It’s an evening doused in the spirit of the New York coffee houses of the 1960s, set in the intimate setting of Friendly Records Bar, on North Street. Three artists play a 30-minute set, completely unplugged. There are guest DJs and plenty of ale on tap. The next one is on Thursday February 27.
If you’re in Bristol, you should make a visit to Friendly Records – it’s a great independent record shop and it’s got its own bar. What more do you want? I haven’t been paid to say that by the way…
Jigsaw and Everyday by Alex Lipinksi are out now on A Recordings. Hurricane will be released on March 20.
Alex plays The Water Rats, London, on February 12, with Matt Owens (Noah and the Whale) and Sadie Jemmett. Tickets are available here.
http://alexlipinski.co.uk/
Twitter: @alexlipinski1
Instagram: @alexlipinskli1
Alex Lipinski, americana, Anton Newcome, blues, Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly, country, Richard Hawley, singer-songwriter
‘I’ve become more aware of what a crazy life I’m living…’
April 28, 2019 April 28, 2019 sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment
Picture by Laura Proctor: @lpphotographs https://www.lpphotographs.ca/Info
It’s been a year since Canadian singer-songwriter Jerry Leger first came to the UK and Europe to promote his brilliant double album Nonsense and Heartache – a mix of raw, primal, bluesy rock ‘n’ roll and stripped-down, alt-country ballads.
Now he’s back on tour, has released a new retrospective compilation album called Too Broke To Die, and is gearing up for the release of his next studio album,Time Out For Tomorrow, later this year.
In an exclusive interview he gave Say It With Garage Flowers while he was on the road, he tells us about revisiting his back catalogue, the challenges he faces as a Canadian artist, why he loves coming to the UK and Europe, and how the sound of his forthcoming album was inspired by Nick Lowe and Lou Reed…
Things are changing round here. That’s the title of a song on Jerry Leger’s 2018 album Nonsense and Heartache – one of Say It With Garage Flowers’ favourite records of last year – but it could also apply to the Canadian singer-songwriter’s profile in the UK and Europe.
It’s been over 12 months since Toronto-based Jerry and his band, The Situation, who’ve been together for 12 years, first came to these shores, and now they’re back, to promote a new, limited edition, retrospective compilation album, called Too Broke To Die, which has been put together especially for the European market and is available to buy from his merch stall on tour.
It brings together 21 songs from the nine albums he’s made from 2005-2019 (eight studio albums and a live record), including some previously unreleased outtakes.
Highlights include the Dylan-esque rarity Beating The Storm; the gorgeous country shuffle of Wrong Kind of Girl; the moody and edgy Factory Made, which is an attack on the fake aspects of the music industry; the sad, reflective Nobody’s Angel; the cool, garage-rock strut of The Big Smoke Blues and the alt-country of Another Dead Radio Star, which was inspired by the 1930s radio show The Shadow, which was voiced by Orson Welles.
Off the back of last year’s successful tour, which introduced Jerry to a new audience outside of his native Canada, this return visit, coupled with Too Broke To Die, which serves as a handy introduction to his career, means 2019 could be the year that he breaks through in the UK and Europe.
One thing’s for sure – it’s certainly not for want of trying…. When Say It With Garage Flowers catches up with Jerry over a pint in a East London pub, in Leytonstone, ahead of a headline show at What’s Cookin’, it’s the fifth night of a gruelling, seven-week tour of almost 30 dates, including stints in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden.
Jerry Leger & The Situation at this year’s Ramblin’ Roots Revue: picture by Sean Hannam
The tour kicked off with a storming UK festival slot at the Ramblin’ Roots Revue in High Wycombe and two appearances on Record Store Day, at Music’s Not Dead in Bexhill-on-Sea and Union Music Store in Lewes. I ask Jerry if he thinks his profile over here is getting bigger.
“I’m glad I did Ramblin’ Roots – it was great to see a whole bunch of people, some of whom I hadn’t met before. I hope my profile is building – it’s what I want, but it’s hard for me to gauge because some things happen very quickly and other things happen very slowly – every day is the same for me, so I’m not very aware of how everything is going,” he says, sipping his beer.
I want to reassure him that things are changing round here… With a brand new studio album on the way later this year and hopefully more UK dates planned in the autumn/winter, by the end of 2019, you’ll definitely be hearing a lot more of Jerry Leger…
Your new album, Too Broke To Die, is a retrospective compilation album of songs from 2005-2019. How did it come about and how did you choose which songs made the cut?
Jerry Leger: There are a lot of albums I’ve made that people are unaware of, so I put together a compilation with a few songs from each album and a couple of previously unreleased songs.
Initially, I thought about having some covers on it. We recorded a bunch of covers with Michael Timmins [producer – Cowboy Junkies] for a project that never came to fruition. We did Time by Tom Waits, Like A Hurricane by Neil Young and a medley of John Lennon songs – Well Well Well and his version of (Well) Baby Please Don’t Go from Some Time In New York City. It was a wide range of covers, but then I decided I didn’t want to have to deal with all the licensing issues – I had eight of my albums to dig from and a lot of outtakes, so there was already enough there… Each album had about five or six songs that didn’t make it onto the record.
You’re like Prince…
JL: [laughs]: Without the money and some other stuff that we won’t go into – and I’m still here…
Too Broke To Die is essentially a ‘Greatest Hits’ set but without any hits on it…
JL: Greatest Miss Hits!
Was it hard to choose which songs ended up on Too Broke To Die? How was it going through your back catalogue?
JL: It was a bit tricky and very strange – a lot of the albums I hadn’t heard for a long time, apart from revisiting them so I could bring some of the songs back into my live set and refresh my memory. Some of the songs I recorded when I was 20 or 21 – I’ve just turned 34. I remember being there and making the albums, but it’s strange…
The record takes the listener on a journey – from some of your earlier raw and folky stuff to more soulful sounds, and bluesy country and Americana from your last record, Nonsense and Heartache…
JL: It’s always however I was feeling at the time – and whatever record I wanted to make. I’m still like that.
Let’s talk about some of the songs on the record. One of my favourites is Beating The Storm, which has a Dylan feel…
JL: Yeah – definitely.
Can you remember writing that song? What was the inspiration?
JL: I don’t remember the inspiration – I can remember writing it. I was living in a basement apartment and I wrote a few songs there, like Round Walls, for the album You, Me & The Horse. I’ve always loved Beating The Storm – I tried doing it for that album, but, for whatever reason, it didn’t make it. We tried it a few years later, for the album Some Folks Know, but it still didn’t make it. It stuck in my mind. When I was putting the new record together, it seemed like an obvious choice. It had never found a home…
What can you remember about Wrong Kind of Girl?
JL: That falls into that category of those songs that are a bit like magic – I don’t know where it came from or how it came here, but I happened to write it and I’m glad that I did, because I really like that song.
Is He Treating You Good? is a great song – it’s about a relationship gone wrong and it reminds me of something Elvis Costello could’ve written…
JL: I’m glad that you said that because I’m a big fan and he’s a big influence on me, but I never get that comparison. It’s one of my favourite songs I’ve written – it’s up there. It’s in my top three. The song speaks for itself.
Factory Made, from your album Early Riser, is one of my favourite songs on Too Broke To Die…
JL: I can remember writing that one. When Michael Timmins mixed it, it sounded like it came from a different world. We recorded it live and then he mixed it – his choices of which instruments came it and out, and his reverb and echo ideas… I wrote that song at home at 3 in the morning. I was really drunk and I was frustrated with everything – with how the music industry had gone and with some of the people around me who were full of shit. It was an attack on the real trend for making you think that things are legitimate when they’re not – I was frustrated by people getting sucked in by that. It’s a song about being a frustrated artist, but also a frustrated listener. Fortunately – and unfortunately – I think that song will be relevant for years to come.
‘Over a beer, I can talk all night about music I love. I can talk about Blood On The Tracks if you want me to…’
Jerry Leger talks to Sean Hannam – picture by Laura Proctor: @lpphotographs https://www.lpphotographs.ca/Info
Nobody’s Angel feels like it’s one of your anthems…
JL: That was written when I’d started working in a hardware store in Toronto that my brother managed – I was a teenager in high school and I worked there for many years. You don’t want me to fix anything…
It was in an area where there were a lot of people who were suffering from different forms of abuse. I would see men and women – young people who’d had the life sucked out of them within a few years.
There was a coffee shop on the corner where there were drug dealers and pimps who were there all night… There wasn’t a lot of understanding – people’s lives got screwed up very easily for a variety of reasons, but they shouldn’t be looked down upon. The neighbourhood has now been gentrified – at the time, there was a lot of crack cocaine there.
Toronto features in quite a few of your songs, like Things Are Changing Round Here and The Big Smoke Blues – both of which are from Nonsense and Heartache and are also on the new compilation album…
JL: Yeah – I write about what’s around me. Obviously parts of me are in the songs, but there are also little conversations… Songs just come from anywhere – I don’t have a filter. Whatever I retain, I think could be a song…
Let’s talk about your next studio album, which is coming out later this year. What’s inspired some of your new songs?
JL: One song was written about a ghost town in Northern Ontario and the opening song is called Canvas of Gold – the first verse is: ‘Everything was almost decided when we were young. You stay poor like your family before and I’ll keep on hustling…’ I think I’ve become more aware recently of what a crazy life I’m living – it’s hard to survive as an artist in a big city, but it’s what I signed up for – it’s a hustle.
Is it hard trying to make it in the UK and Europe, outside of Canada?
JL: Hustling outside of Canada is more rewarding – Canada takes its own artists for granted – it’s always been that way. I want to keep working, so I have to build a profile here [in the UK and Europe]. I just want to keep reaching more people and I want to keep coming back here. We’ve had some of the most enthusiastic appreciation here – there’s more people here who are deeper music lovers than in North America. It’s been easier to get music listeners here. It became tiring in Canada – doing the same routes and travelling across the country. It didn’t feel like people were getting into it.
Canada’s really big and there’s not a huge population, so unless you’re playing the game according to somebody else, it’s very difficult to get anywhere. There’s a whole other world out there. I have my fans and supporters back home, but it’s really nice to be in a new market and have people dig what I’m doing. It’s a different appreciation – I’ve met way more people on the tours in the UK and Europe that listen to music in the way that I listen to it. When I get into a record, I dissect it – I listen very closely to it and it means something to me. Over a beer, I can talk all night about music I love. I can talk about Blood On The Tracks all night if you want me to…
‘It’s hard to survive as an artist in a big city, but it’s what I signed up for – it’s a hustle’
Picture by Laura Proctor: @lpphotographs
Earlier today, you told me that Canadian radio thought that your last album was too gritty…
JL: I thought that was great – it’s the best compliment they’ve ever given me.
Let’s talk more about your new studio album, which is out later this year. Like your two previous albums, you worked with producer Michael Timmins (Cowboy Junkies) on it…
JL: What was different this time around was that we rehearsed a lot before going into the studio, trying out different arrangements, but there’s still spontaneity on this record… A lot of it was played live in the studio, but I had more of a clear idea about how it was going to be executed. I already had in my mind what the arrangements were going to be. It took about a week to make.
JL: It’s a nice, short and sweet, lean and mean record. Two records I really dug the sound of that I wanted to capture on this record were Nick Lowe’s The Impossible Bird and one of my favourite Lou Reed albums, Coney Island Baby – I love that dry drum sound and the real directness of it. Some of the songs just coast along. I also like a lot of Nick Lowe’s older records with Rockpile, where he doubled the electric guitar solos. I doubled my vocals on some songs.
‘My next album is a nice, short and sweet, lean and mean record. I wanted to capture the sound of Nick Lowe’s The Impossible Bird and Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby’
Do you have a title for the new album?
JL: Time Out For Tomorrow, which I think really captures the whole album – I don’t know why, but the title feels right. I’m really excited about the new record – I’m very proud of it. I really think it’s the best record I’ve made so far. It’s a cross between Early Riser and Nonsense and Heartache sound-wise and it’s very concise – songwriting-wise, performance-wise, arrangement-wise and sequence-wise. We went in with 18 songs, focused on about 15, then cut it down to 12 and 10 made it. Some of the songs that didn’t make it are some of the best, but they didn’t fit. It was like putting together a puzzle. I like records that are rough around the edges, but with this one I took a little more care putting those puzzle pieces together.
I can’t wait to hear the new album and I’m looking forward to you coming back to the UK.
JL: I’ve got to keep coming here and that’s what I plan to do. I’m sure we’ll be back before the end of the year.
Jerry Leger & The Situation are currently touring Europe. For more information, please visit https://jerryleger.com/ .
The compilation album Too Broke To Die – a limited edition retrospective (2005-2019) is available to purchase at the gigs. It’s on Golden Rocket Records.
Thanks to Laura Proctor at https://www.lpphotographs.ca/ for the photography. You can follow her on Instagram here.
altcountry, americana, blues, Canadian, country, Jerry Leger
Murder ballads, magic and Morricone
August 13, 2018 December 7, 2020 sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment
Amerikana Arkana, the debut album by The Magic City Trio, is a haunting record, in more ways than one…
Its wonderful orchestral arrangements recall the dramatic ’60s pop of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, (Black Dog Following Me), the moody Spaghetti Western soundtracks of Ennio Morricone (Cousins’ War) and Mexican Mariachi music (Trav’ler), but these story songs are also steeped in the dark traditions of murder ballads, old country and folk laments, outlaw tales and hillbilly blues.
This band of London renegades comprises Frank Sweeney (guitar, vocals and fiddle), Annie Holder (guitar,vocals and autoharp), Adi Staempfli (bass and vocals) and Charlotte Burke (drums and percussion). Guesting on the album are Johnny Butten (banjo) and Eddy Dunlap (pedal steel).
In an exclusive interview, I spoke to Frank, who was a member of ’80s indie pop outfit The June Brides, and played on records by Primal Scream (Imperial) and Felt (Space Blues), to find out the full story behind this magnificent and, er, magical album…
Amerikana Arkana is one of my favourite albums of the year. It’s a big-sounding record – I love the orchestrations…Musically, it often harks back to the lush ’60s pop of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, and the Spaghetti Western soundtracks of Ennio Morricone. There’s also folk, country, hillbilly and murder ballads.
When I first heard it, it was like someone was going through my record collection and referencing some of my favourite artists… I guess that, like me, you’re big fans of Nancy & Lee and Morricone? Why do you love them so much?
Frank Sweeney: I think Lee Hazlewood was a genre all to himself. He ploughed his own particular furrow and didn’t really care if it was fashionable. He was a great songwriter and producer, but he never felt the need to be in step with current trends or the mainstream. And he still managed to make a lot of classic hit records. Although he always maintained that his main motivation was to make money, he still managed to make great art sometimes.
Ennio Morricone uses a very ‘pop’ sound in his orchestration with unusual instruments. A whistle and a twangy guitar and you immediately evoke his western soundtracks. And loads of his soundtracks have at least one great catchy and evocative tune. I also love Nino Rota, who, in my view, is the other great Italian soundtrack composer. His stuff with Fellini is just as evocative, but on a less epic scale.
‘The amount of inter-band romances were comparable to Fleetwood Mac, and led to us going our separate ways’
How did The Magic City Trio first come together?
FS: During the tail end of indie-dance and the dawn of Britpop, I was playing viola in a band which played Eastern European music, when there were only two bands doing it in London. Adi Staempfli played bass, and Annie joined after I had left. The amount of inter-band romances were comparable to Fleetwood Mac, and led to us going our separate ways. I met Annie a few years later, and we eventually married in Las Vegas.
We hadn’t done any music together for a good few years. I was (trying to) learn Blind Blake [blues and ragtime guitarist and singer] stuff to up my game on the guitar, and from there we got interested in other pre-war music, what became known as ‘the old weird America’. From there we did a set of pre-war music (Carter Family, Hawaiian, Emmett Miller) at the Easy Come, which is a well-established open mic night in South East London. But we didn’t take it any further than that. We began including our own songs – Oliver Curtis Perry Part 1 was an early one. It was mainly so we could do stuff that other people did not have in their set. Adi returned from Switzerland and joined us in 2013.
We had a gig in Berlin – that was our first as The Magic City Trio. The name originated from a pre-war fiddle band called Dyke’s Magic City Trio. I had one of their records on a 78 rpm.
We thought that we would only use the name for the Berlin gig, as people were more likely to go and see a band, rather than just Frank and Annie. We didn’t intend to keep the name, since Dyke’s Magic City Trio are relatively famous, it would be like calling yourself The Kinks or The Who in about 2045, but the name stuck…
Let’s talk about your album in more depth. I admire your grand ambition and the fact that you’ve gone all out with the orchestral arrangements. How did you approach this album when you came to record it? What did you want it to sound like?
FS: Black Dog Following Me was completed before our 2015 EP [A Funnel Cloud In Albuquerque], but I didn’t like the orchestral sounds, so I scrapped it all, apart from the singing. Once it was redone, we decided to follow suit with the rest of it, instead of making it just an acoustic LP. The orchestral sounds are a mix of samples, live instruments and recordings of actual notes that are stitched together. Oliver Curtis Perry had the least amount of strings and things, as Johnny Butten playing banjo was an orchestra in itself.
‘I was looking for the Chet Atkins ‘Nashville sound’, which is stylistically unfashionable now’
The arrangements all began with a basic piano track with chords, and then we added everything else. I‘m a huge fan of baroque ‘60s pop, so a harpsichord nearly always got in there. Once all the orchestral stuff was done, we put on the live instruments, which is the opposite way it would be done with a live orchestra.
The other sound I was looking for was the Chet Atkins ‘Nashville sound’, which is kind of stylistically unfashionable now – the song 22 was my attempt at that.
Now you mention it, the album does have a lot of different styles of orchestration on there. Trav’ler is like the stuff David Angel did on Love’s Forever Changes, Down In The Willow Garden was looking for a Pearls Before Swine-type of sound, and Billy Strange and Jimmy Webb all are referenced on there somewhere.
With The June Brides and the other stuff I did for Creation Records, I was trying to do large string parts, but limited by budgets and my lack of skill on the viola. But on those records you can hear me trying to do something that I just can’t quite pull off. I nearly got there with This Town (June Brides), Space Blues (Felt) and So Out of Touch (Joe Foster).
The dramatic opening track, Black Dog Following Me, is pure Nancy & Lee. I’m guessing it’s about depression? ‘Black dog’ is a term that Winston Churchill used to describe his dark moods. What can you tell me about that song?
FS: Yes that’s it, more or less – a dialogue where one person can’t see a way through, but the other won’t let it get on top of them. The arrangement is pure Billy Strange with Nancy & Lee. I didn’t think they did enough stuff like Some Velvet Morning, so this was my addition. In the same way that Jeff Lynne didn’t think The Beatles did enough stuff like I Am The Walrus.
Cousins’ War has a definite Ennio Morricone feel, but with a country edge…
FS: Annie started that song, after reading a book about the Wars of the Roses Originally it sounded a lot more folky. I thought of it more like the Hatfield-McCoy type of scenario. I did the last verse after seeing a Twilight Zone episode where all the American Civil War dead are walking on a road. That’s why in the LP booklet, there is a picture from a Civil War bubblegum card called Painful Death. The line about the sowing the hydra’s teeth is from Jason and the Argonauts, which explains the fighting skeleton picture in the booklet.
The chorus is adapted from [folk song] Darlin’ Cory. The instrumental sections do give it that Morricone sound – it’s the low male vocals that do it I think, which are reminiscent of Story of a Soldier [from the soundtrack of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly].
I love the descending twangy riff that kicks off Dust of Mars – it sounds like a nod to Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots… and The Kinks’ Sunny Afternoon…
FS: At the time, I didn’t think that sequence of notes was particularly unique to Sunny Afternoon – it must have been used in loads of other places. So I didn’t think I was taking anything from that song that hadn’t been used somewhere before. But as time has gone on, I have to conclude that the sequence is not particularly common in pop music, and is more or less unique to Sunny Afternoon. I’m glad I made it so obvious, but it’s a bit like using the opening riff from Day Tripper on a song…
Oliver Curtis Perry Part 1 has a hillbilly vibe. Where did this outlaw song come from? What was the inspiration?
FS: Oliver Curtis Perry was the first person to rob a train single-handed, in New York in the 1890s. The song tells his story, with a little bit of artistic license. The words are on our website. I first read about him when I was 11 years old, in a book by James D Horan, a noted Western writer. There wasn’t much detail given. The – wonderfully named – writer Tamsin Spargo read the same book as a child, and years later published Wanted Man, which tells the whole story.
The song 22, which sounds like a Johnny Cash and June Carter country duet, also reminds me of Kirsty MacColl…
FS: I didn’t think of that – I’m only familiar with her hits. It’s probably the vocal harmony that gives it that. She was a great singer and writer, with a unique voice. This was our attempt at getting the Chet Atkins Nashville sound. The demo we did sounds like the Carter Family – we recorded it on a four-track cassette using pre-war Gibsons to sound as old as possible. The demos are interesting as they show how the song developed – each version is different. The plot is from a short story by Daniel Woodrell about someone who suspects his neighbours of murdering his child.
Talking of murders… Down In The Willow Garden is a classic, traditional murder ballad. I know it from The Everly Brothers album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. Why did you decide to cover the song for your record?
FS: My grandmother’s name was Salley – I was looking for the origins. I came across a poem by Yeats called In the Salley Garden, which is adapted from Willow Garden, and I found the various versions. Most of which sounded a bit too jolly melodically.
The Everly Brothers recording sounded suitably bleak. So we worked on a minor key version. We had to change the harmonies as we were still smokers and couldn’t reach the notes – since we have now quit we can get there!
I wanted to do a Pearls Before Swine-type arrangement. Songs Our Daddy Taught Us is a brilliant album. They recorded it to get out of their contract without giving away any hits, and they ended up with a masterpiece.
Where did the title of the album, Amerikana Arkana, come from?
FS: I always loved the album cover of Agents of Fortune by Blue Oyster Cult, with a man holding Tarot cards. Though the real agents of fortune are the 52 standard pack of cards, the Tarot decks are called the lesser and greater arcana. The greater arcana features all the well-known picture cards. The songs were going to be very loosely based on the Tarot cards – death, confusion, fortune, justice, the sun, change etc, but they all didn’t quite fit with that… I like a rhyming title like Nilsson Schmilsson. The presence of the K always implies a slightly twisted ‘bizarro superman’ type version of the actual thing. The LP booklet also has all sorts of clues and images that link in some way with the songs.
Can you talk me through the songwriting process and the arranging and recording of the album?
FS: We had not got together as a band to do our own songs – we were doing pre-war country and other songs from the ‘20s and ‘30s. We didn’t want to write songs in that style, lest they sounded like a pastiche.
In 2011 I read a biography on Blind Willie McTell and in the book he revealed his method for writing and I followed it.
Cousins’ War was started by Annie, but discarded, as we couldn’t figure out a proper narrative, but we brought it back and worked on the chords.
Trav’ler was originally called Chinese Traveller – it had also been discarded, due to the lack of a decent tune, but Annie pushed on with that because it had a good story. But it’s usually one of us kicking off an idea and then discarding it. And if it’s halfway good, Annie will resurrect it and suggest improvements. We’re not the most prolific of writers, but work in fits and starts.
I write out the orchestrations on a music score writing [software] package, which plays samples of string and brass, and we put the real instruments on top of that.
Recording at home is cheap, but it gets slow – there is no clock ticking and no budget being eaten up. So you can spend all day recording a track and edit 10 versions of a guitar part into the best one. Dust of Mars ended up with 40 tracks, which produced its own set of problems trying to mix it. Recording is the easy part…
Frank Sweeney and Annie Holder
You recorded and mixed the album in London and Hove. What was that like?
FS: It was a long process. With a few exceptions, all the recording was done at home over a two-year period, which began after completing our first EP. But some recordings were started a lot earlier – Black Dog… and Oliver Curtis Perry were first demoed in 2012, with no plans to release them other than on Soundcloud.
The 2012 version of Black Dog... was stripped back to the vocals and all the other tracks replaced, and with Oliver Curtis Perry all we kept was the drums. The banjo, trumpet, pedal steel and washboard were recorded remotely and the tracks sent to me. The orchestral sounds are a mix of real players and sampled instruments, but the whole thing was written out on a score rather than played on a keyboard. Nearly all the recording was completed by the end of 2016.
I started mixing it early 2017, and gave up due to the complexity of the task. In Easter 2017, I took it to Bark Studios, in London (where Primal Scream’s Screamadelica was done), with Brian O’Shaugnessy mixing it.
So, it was mixed once, with a full set of backing tracks. Then most of it was mixed again. The mixes were much better than mine, but I wasn’t happy with the balance of some of the sounds. I thought if I went back to Bark Studios again we would end up playing whack-a-mole with the mix,
In-between that time we put the steel drum on Sun Comes Shining Through, and stuck the slow intro on Cousins’ War, so it could join up with the end of Black Dog...
So I started mixing it again myself, Having learned a thing or two from Brian, my mixes were OK, but lacked oomph. In summer 2017, I approached Paul Pascoe in Hove, for whom I had done some strings for, and asked him to master some of my mixes and the Bark mixes. Paul liked it enough to offer to mix and master it. This time I stayed away from the studio, which was a much better idea. We used the Bark version of Oliver Curtis Perry, but, other than that they are all Paul Pascoe’s mixes. Sonically there isn’t much difference. So, excluding my mixes, there are a couple of alternate mixes of the LP, plus the backing tracks and also Paul’s mix of Oliver Curtis Perry.
I admire your effort and dedication. The album is full of ambition and drama – it sounds great and it soars. Would you agree that so many modern pop records lack ambition? They just sound so bland and unadventurous when you compare them with some of the pop music of the ’60s…
FS: I think people are always going to write great songs, Pharrell Williams’ Happy is a great song, and the Curtis Mayfield sound makes it even better. But production-wise, most of the envelopes have been pushed, so commercial productions are going to end up sounding very homogenised.
It’s like the thing that Frank Zappa said, that in the ’60s, the record companies were still being run by cigar-chomping execs who were hoping to find the next Frank Sinatra. They signed bands and released music that they didn’t understand, in the hope that they would sell some records. The profit motive was still the driving force, but you had more of a chance of producing art.
Nowadays companies are releasing music that is similar to stuff that was recently successful, so it can all start sounding the same. Particularly when you have producers, accountants, advertisers and product placers having a financial interest in the music sounding attractive and familiar to the masses. It’s the same sort of thing in the film industry, where films that can be turned into a brand seems to be where the money goes.
‘Record companies in the ’60s were being run by cigar-chomping execs who were hoping to find the next Frank Sinatra. They signed bands and released music that they didn’t understand’
The common factor is that cinema audiences and music buyers have decreased dramatically over the years, so the studios are less prepared to take any risks.
In the golden age of cinema, you could release a film like The Best Years of Our Lives and it would be a blockbuster in terms of the people who saw it. Nowadays, a big studio would not put the money into a three-hour film about war veterans returning home. Cinema audiences were much bigger then, and were loyal to the stars in the film. Under the studio system everyone was on salary, so you could churn out loads of films, and sometimes they would produce art, And although the films were censored and bowdlerised, they showed a lot less but told a lot more. Look at films like Sunset Boulevard and In A Lonely Place – they were churned out under the studio system but are really dark and deep films.
American TV seems the place where you are seeing really original stuff, most of it does at least one season which is still around 13 hours of drama. If you pitched a 13-hour film called Freaks and Geeks (a much loved show that only did one season) you would not get very far. British mini-series seem to all be stuck trying to remake Prime Suspect. I digress…
So what are the band’s plans for the rest of 2018? Any thoughts on a follow-up album?
FS: We need to get more gigs, as a lot of our record sales are done in person. But a third of them have gone in a few months already, and they are still selling, so that’s encouraging. Our first EP has nearly sold out, I have to be careful to make sure I don’t sell my own copy!
As far as another LP is concerned, there were quite a few stage favourites left unrecorded. The original plan was to have a double LP, but it would have taken too long to record and we wouldn’t have a hope in selling it at gigs. We have another LP’s worth of songs, but it might be worth waiting to see if we come up with something better. Ive got to write a score without repeating myself, or other people. Ha ha ha.
Finally, what music – new and old – are you currently enjoying?
FS: Old music: Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, by The Small Faces, which I have recently discovered, after not being that interested in it up until now. The Everly Brothers’ Songs Our Daddy Taught Us – the Bear Family Records reissue – and Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night: Live at the Roxy.
New music: Boarding House Reach by Jack White and Fake Sugar by Beth Ditto.
Amerikana Arkana by The Magic City Trio is currently available on Kailua Recordings. For more information, go to http://themagiccitytrio.com/
blues, country, Ennio Morricone, Lee Hazlewood, soundtracks
‘The first thing I do when I wake up is put a record on – I don’t love silence…’
March 30, 2018 March 31, 2018 sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment
Canadian singer-songwriter Jerry Leger’s brilliant Nonsense and Heartache – out now on Latent Recordings and produced by Michael Timmins of Cowboy Junkies – is a double album, but, essentially it’s two distinct collections of songs.
The first half – Nonsense – is a raw, primal, bluesy, electric rock ‘n’ roll record, while the second instalment – Heartache – is a stripped-down, alt-country affair, with intimate ballads, lap steel, piano and fiddle.
Put them together and you have an album that reminds me of those classic early Ryan Adams long-players Heartbreaker and Gold – yep, it’s that good.
I spoke to Jerry, who with his band, The Situation, is on a tour of Europe and the UK, to find out why he decided to release a double album and to gauge if his current mood is nonsense, or heartache…
Jerry Leger: photo credit – LPPhotographs
Q &A
Nonsense and Heartache is a double album of 18 tracks, which is quite a brave move, isn’t it? You don’t hear of many double albums being released these days…
Jerry Leger: Yeah, it’s usually the artist who fights for a double LP, not the label, but, in this case, it was Mike Timmins and Latent who suggested it.
I dug that and I had more than enough songs and we had a bit of a concept behind it. I think it was a cool move, I mean why not? It seems these days a lot of people are gonna listen to it, or they’re not, whether there’s two or 200 songs. A lot gets lost – I just wanna make albums I like while I’m here.
How were the recording sessions for the album? Was it an easy or a difficult album to make? Did you have a lot of songs written before you went into the studio?
JL: They were easy – we all knew what we were there to do. Heartache was recorded first – that took about four or five days. Nonsense was recorded four or five months later – I think that took two days. I can’t quite remember how many songs I had lying around, but we recorded about 29 and chose 18.
‘I just wanna make albums I like while I’m here’
The album has a raw, live sound – Michael Timmins , who produced, recorded and mixed it, also worked on my favourite album of last year – John Murry’s A Short History of Decay, which is another raw, live-sounding record. How do Michael and you and your band manage to get that feel and sound in the studio? What’s your working relationship with Michael like?
JL: We just play live together in the studio. I also try to keep all the live vocals, but sometimes it’s not possible. There may be technical issues, or, if the band were cookin’ and I flubbed something that I really wanted to fix instead of leave in. Sometimes we just leave it in, though. Mike and I have a great working relationship – we like making the same kind of albums and we also like a lot of the same albums. He doesn’t get in my way creatively and when he makes a suggestion in the studio, it’s usually the right one. I respect what he does and what he has to say
One of my favourite songs on the Nonsense side of the album is Baby’s Got A Rare Gun – I think it channels ’65/’66 Dylan. Do you agree? It’s heavy, electric blues. What can you tell me about that track?
JL: Well, I love Chess Records – stuff like Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf. I think it came from that sort of place, but, of course, I love Dylan, too, and that period is ingrained. When we recorded it, I wanted to get that over-driven vocal and band sound that’s on those records and early Bobby Bland.
The Big Smoke Blues – another of my favourite tracks on Nonsense – has a bit of a New Wave feel to it. It reminds me of Ryan Adams fronting The Strokes. Is that a fair comment?
JL: That’s fair, but I’d say it’s more Lou Reed and The Velvets rock ‘n’ roll, just ‘cos I listen to and love those records. I did really like the first Strokes album when it came out. I was 14 or 15 and thought they were here to save the day! I never really followed their career after, though. The Big Smoke Blues is a reference to Toronto, but it could be a lot of different places for the listener. It’s a tune for outsiders.
‘I really liked the first Strokes album when it came out. I was 14 or 15 and thought they were here to save the day!’
Let’s flip the record over and talk about the Heartache side. It kicks off with the first single, Things Are Changing Round Here, which sounds like a classic country-rock song. What inspired that track?
JL: The East End of Toronto, where I grew up, was the initial inspiration. I’m only 32 and the area I grew up in is a strange land to me now. A lot of the personality is being sucked out of it – they’re knocking down blocks of old homes to build up to the sky. The unique shops and bars that can’t make the inflated rent are being replaced by boring chains.
Another Dead Radio Star – I love that title – is one of my favourite songs on the album. What’s the story behind it? I’ve heard that it was inspired by the 1930s radio show The Shadow, which was voiced by Orson Welles…
JL: I was listening to a compilation of radio stars from the ‘30s. The song I’d Give A Million Tomorrows (For Just One Yesterday) was playing and it sparked the idea – it’s referenced in the song. I also had another record of old radio shows by The Coon-Sanders Nighthawks of Kansas City, so they got a plug.
Things come and go, but their shadows remain in one way or another, and I’m the kind of person that looks for them. My dad used to listen to The Shadow, The Creaking Door and others as a boy and that has always stayed with him. It’s theatre of the mind.
The last song on the album, Pawn Shop Piano, is a great way to close the record – a gorgeous piano ballad. Was it written and played on a pawn shop piano?
JL: Some of the lines and ideas I’d written down before, or had floating in my head just waiting to be used. The first time we toured in the States we stayed at a dingy motel called the Travel Lite Inn, or something like that… I just liked the way it sounded and we survived.
We played Johnson City in Tennessee a couple of times and I remember this pawn shop called Diamonds and Guns and it had this great hand-painted sign, too. I jotted that title down in a notebook and figured I’d use it for something some day. It’s one of my favourites on the record and it just has a lot of truth in it for me.
Who are your main musical influences?
JL: There’s a lot, but Hank Williams I’ve heard for as long as I can remember and I just don’t think it gets better than that. Bob Dylan changed the way I wanted to write, Lennon and The Beatles made me wanna start playing, and Lightnin’ Hopkins was the coolest. When I was 13, my grandparents’ neighbour was giving away blues records. I just thought Lightnin’ looked cool – I hadn’t heard of him. When I listened to it, it was just wild – so natural, no bullshit. Leonard Cohen was also an early influence – my dad came home one day and gave me the first Cohen album and a book of poetry called Death of a Ladies’ Man.
‘My dad came home one day and gave me the first Leonard Cohen album and a book of poetry called Death of a Ladies’ Man’
Jerry Leger & The Situation: photo credit – LPPhotographs
You’re heading out on a European and UK tour. What can we expect?
JL: I’m really looking forward to it – it’ll be my first time overseas in general. They’re all full-band shows and this line-up has been together for over 11 years, so it’s nice to do this together for the first time. What can you expect? I don’t know – I’ll just be singing my songs. I’m not ready to do anything flashy yet.
What music – new and old – are you currently digging?
JL: Lucinda Williams – Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone; Ronnie Lane – See Me; Graham Nicholas – Dial Tones And Pretty Notes, and Ann Peebles – I Can’t Stand The Rain.
If I’m home I listen to a lot of music – the first thing I do when I wake up is put a record on. I don’t love silence.
So, what next? Can we expect a triple album?
JL: Why stop there?
Finally, what kind of mood are you currently in: Nonsense or Heartache?
JL: I’m in a Nonsense and Heartache selling mood.
Nonsense and Heartache by Jerry Leger is out now on Latent Recordings. For a full list of European and UK tour dates, go to https://jerryleger.com/
altcountry, americana, blues, Canadian, country, Jerry Leger, singer/songwriter
‘Any singer-songwriter who says they’re not influenced by Bob Dylan is lying through their teeth’
I first heard West Country singer-songwriter Alex Lipinski in November this year – he kindly invited me to the launch of his new album, Alex, at the Pretty Green clothes store in London’s Carnaby Street.
With his brother Adam on guitar, he played acoustic versions of several tracks from the record and I was really impressed – so much so that I bought a copy of the album on vinyl. Since then, it’s been on heavy rotation on my turntable and is one of my favourite albums of 2017.
Recorded and produced by Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre at his studio in Berlin, it’s a raw and bluesy album and it sounds like Bob Dylan meets The La’s.
Dealing with the darker side of life, the songs are stripped-down and lived-in – the moody Dandylion Blues has a cool organ and electric guitar groove over which Alex warns of ‘dark skies on the rise’ and tells us that he’s ‘got to keep on keeping on’.
The folky strumming of Carolyn lightens the mood, but those dark skies soon return with Hurricane – one of my favourite songs on the album. Recalling Heartbreaker-era Ryan Adams and Dylan circa Blood On The Tracks, it’s a stunning country ballad (acoustic guitar and harmonica) that’s a vicious put-down of an ex-lover: “You had it all worked out. All you do now is scream and shout, spilling worthless words from your mouth.”
I spoke to Alex to find out how the album came together, what it was like working with Anton Newcombe, and to see what his plans are for 2018…
Hi Alex. It was great to meet you a few weeks ago, when I saw you play at Pretty Green, in Carnaby Street. Thanks for inviting me. I really enjoyed the gig.
Alex Lipinski: It was good to meet you, Sean – we had a really cool night at Pretty Green. It was a nice, intimate space to showcase the new songs and the guys there looked after us.
How does it feel to have the new album out there? It’s your second album – your debut, Lonesome Train, came out seven years ago. Why the big gap between albums?
AL: It’s a good feeling to finally have this album out. After Lonesome Train was released, I was working on the follow-up album, then I started a project with Bonehead [Oasis] called Phoneys & The Freaks, so that kind of took over for a year or so, then by the time I was ready to start the second album, I was working on a new bunch of songs that I felt were stronger. That was when Anton Newcombe contacted me…
How did you come to work with Anton?
AL: He saw a live video of one of my songs and contacted me saying he wanted to produce me and put my next record out.
We met a couple of times after Brian Jonestown Massacre gigs and discussed the direction. He had in mind these old ‘60s folk recordings, in essence, capturing the songs as stripped-back as possible – the bare bones – letting the voice, the songs and the performance come through.
We recorded the album in about eight hours in Anton’s studio in Berlin. My brother Adam [guitarist] joined me in Berlin and we set-up in Anton’s studio one night, sitting facing each other, with a giant RCA mic in the middle – the same one they used on the old Frank Sinatra recordings.
“We set-up in Anton Newcombe’s studio in Berlin one night, sitting facing each other, with a giant RCA mic in the middle – the same one they used on the old Frank Sinatra recordings”
We bought some beers from the local shop, went back to the studio and recorded a couple of takes of each song, all live with no click track. We added some minimal overdubs later, but the nucleus of the record stemmed from that one night in Berlin.
Anton’s a pleasure to work with. He would give us enough space to let us do our thing, but he’d also suggest things that I would never have thought of, and taught me how to accept perfect mistakes. He’s also arguably the funniest person I’ve ever met.
AL: Yeah – I’m really pleased with it. Going into the recordings, this was the kind of album we wanted to make – the collection of songs work well together.
Some of the songs had been hanging around for a while, whereas a few others were a lot more recent. I think Carolyn may be the oldest song on the album. The lyrics on some of the older songs evolved over time to the point when we recorded them.
When I first heard the album, I described it as ‘Bob Dylan meets The La’s’. How do you feel about that description?
AL: It’s funny you say that because quite a lot of people have come up to me and said a similar thing. I guess it’s the kind of juxtaposition of both British and American influences you can hear in the songs.
Let’s talk about some of the songs on your album. Hurricane is a highlight and it’s one of the darker songs on the record. What can you tell me about it? It’s a heartbreaker and it doesn’t pull any punches…
AL: From what I remember, Hurricane was written very quickly. It’s one of those songs where you pick up a guitar and everything – the lyrics, melody and chords – all seamlessly fall together in about 30 minutes. It is really lucky when that happens. I guess you can say it’s pretty autobiographical. Everything I felt I needed to say about that particular situation is in the song.
Dandylion Blues is one of my favourite songs on the album. What’s the story behind it? It’s another dark song, isn’t it? I like all the depressing songs on the album. I’m not sure what that says about me…
AL: Dandylion Blues stemmed from the groove and the lyrics followed to suit the moodiness of the track. Again it deals with the darker side of things. The lyrics in the verse especially are quite seductive and almost manipulative. It could be interpreted as two people having a conversation, or it could be seen as the voices within someone’s head.
The album is quite a dark record and it’s raw and bluesy – a lot of the songs deal with the darker side of relationships and life, don’t they?
AL: Throughout the album, I think there’s an underlying theme of exploring the darker side of relationships and life in general, which completely works with the nature of these recordings. Capturing these songs in their rawest form gives them a greater power because the song and the performance are laid bare.
Like me, you’re a huge Dylan fan, aren’t you? He’s a huge influence on you, isn’t he? What do you like about him? Do you have a favourite Dylan album – and why?
AL: I think any singer-songwriter out there who says they’re not influenced by Bob Dylan in some way is lying through their teeth. His work is embedded in popular music in so many ways it’s difficult not to be influenced by him in some shape or form.
My brother gave me copies of Blonde On Blonde and Blood On The Tracks when I was 14 and it sparked a fuse and changed the way I listened to music – it opened my mind to a mystical world. I couldn’t pick a favourite record; it changes on a daily basis. The trio of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde are pretty hard to beat. The lyrical content on Freewheelin’, Another Side of Bob Dylan and The Times They Are A-Changin’ is untouchable.
“Throughout the album, I think there’s an underlying theme of exploring the darker side of relationships and life in general”
Can you tell me some of your other musical influences?
AL: I’m the youngest of four and I grew up in a house where music always seemed to be playing. My parents grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, so it was generally always rock ‘n’ roll – mainly The Beatles and Elvis Presley. Those early rock ‘n’ and roll records and ‘60s British bands had a huge influence on me from the start.
This developed into singer-songwriters, as I grew up and started taking songwriting and lyrics more seriously – specifically people such as Springsteen, Neil Young, Dylan and Ryan Adams. Wilco are one of my favourite bands over recent times. The musicianship in that band is incredible. Richard Hawley is another of my favourites.
You grew up in Weston-super-Mare, in Somerset. How was that? You then moved to London… That must’ve been a big change for you – all that musical heritage to explore…
AL: I had a great time growing up in Weston. It’s a small seaside town and as a kid I enjoyed living by the sea. I was a bit of a daydreamer – I had these great visions and big ideas of getting out and making a footprint in the world.
Growing up, my life was completely absorbed by music, and the music I listened to would take me to a different world and spark my imagination. I think growing up in a small town can give you that hunger and desire for something greater, which is a good thing.
I lived in London for five years, which was great. I knew had to get out and start playing. The 12 Bar Club on Denmark Street was my first point of call and I used to regularly play there. It’s a tragedy that venue no longer exists. And, of course, all the rich history that London had was amazing to an impressionable 19-year-old.
Where are you based now?
AL: I turned 30 last month and I’m currently living back in the West Country. The last year I lived in London I was pretty much out all the time, having too much fun, and I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be. I moved back to Weston, where there’s not a great deal happening, and I’ve been far more productive. It’s a strange mind-set but it works creatively.
Alex Lipinksi and his brother, Adam, at Pretty Green in London
It’s almost the end of 2017. How’s the year been for you? What are your plans for 2018? Can we expect another album and, if so, what’s it going to sound like?
AL: 2017 has been a productive year and I’m glad this album has seen the light of day. We’re in the process of booking dates for next year and the plan is to be on the road for most of it. I’m currently working on demos for the next record, which I’ll be recording with my full band.
Finally, what music – new and old – have you enjoyed this year?
AL: I tend to go back when searching for new music – there’s so much to discover. There’s a great Dion album produced by Phil Spector – Born To Be With You – that I heard recently and it’s amazing. Scott Walker’s Scott 3 and Scott 4 are both late discoveries. I was also late to the Big Star party, but what a band.
To be honest there hasn’t been a great deal this year that’s really excited me. I thought The Shins album was really good and the new War On Drugs record is phenomenal.
Alex by Alex Lipinski is out now on A Recordings.
Alex Lipinski, Anton Newcome, blues, Bob Dylan, country, indie, Pretty Green
‘We didn’t want any fiddles or sailors on this album’
August 24, 2017 September 1, 2017 sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment
Husband and wife folk-rock duo The Rails – James Walbourne and Kami Thompson – are back. Their much-anticipated second album, Other People, is out on September 1.
Recorded in Nashville and produced by Ray Kennedy [Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams], it’s a darker, heavier and more electric record than their critically acclaimed 2014 debut Fair Warning.
Moving away from the band’s traditional folk roots – it has ‘psychedelic’ tinges and groovy ’60s organ – it’s an album of 10 self-penned songs and isn’t afraid to speak its mind and deal with modern social issues.
The title track is a rallying call against those who are out for themselves, while Brick and Mortar is an angry protest song that laments the death of London – it’s part funeral march, part Kinks.
The album feels like a record that’s about people who aren’t at ease with the world in which they live…
I took James [guitars, vocals, keyboards] and Kami [vocals and guitar] down the pub to find out more…
You recorded the new album in Nashville, at Room & Board Studio, with producer Ray Kennedy, who’s worked with acts including Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams. Why did you decide to make the new album in Nashville?
James: It was because Ray was there – I just wanted to work with Ray. Nashville had no bearing or influence on the record in any way.
You haven’t made a ‘Nashville country album,’ have you?
James: It honestly had nothing to do with country – it was cheaper to make the record with Ray in Nashville than to fly him over to the UK. We didn’t see any of Nashville. We got there, we drove to a house where we were staying and then to the studio – and that’s what we did for about a week. It was bloody hard work.
Kami: It was quite stressful – we had a small budget and very little time.
Why did you want to work with Ray Kennedy?
James: We were struggling with whom we were going to get to produce it, as we wanted to do something different, and then he came to mind. One morning, I thought, ‘It would be great if Ray could do it’…
Ray had worked on a 1998 album called Domestic Blues by my friend Bap Kennedy – I spoke to Bap about him – and then Ray Davies also said that I should work with Ray. It all came together. Ray Kennedy is a genius…
And so is Ray Davies…
James: He is! Ray Kennedy had also worked on some of my favourite records, like Steve Earle’s Transcendental Blues, which sounds heavy. We wanted to do a heavier record that was less folky. We wanted this album to be more of a rock band approach – more of a psychedelic thing. Maybe ‘psychedelic’ is too much… we wanted a whittled-down approach, with two electric guitars, bass and keyboards. We didn’t want any fiddles on it…
Kami: Or sailors.
James: If you’re in Nashville, you’ve got to watch the fiddle because it then becomes a country fiddle…
There is a pedal steel guitar on the album…
James: Yes – Eric Heyward played on one track.
‘We wanted to do a heavier record that was less folky – more of a rock band approach’
Can you tell me about the musicians you worked with on the new album? They weren’t Nashville guys, were they?
James: It’s funny – I knew we were going to get asked about the Nashville thing, but everyone that was involved – apart from Ray – wasn’t from Nashville. Cody Dickinson was on our first record – he’s the drummer in the North Mississippi Allstars and he lives in Memphis – he’s an old friend, so it was a no-brainer.
Jim Boquist [on bass] is another old friend of mine and he was in the first incarnation of Son Volt – he’s from Minneapolis. He has a punk-rock edge, ‘cos he used to hang out with The Replacements – he’s a good friend of Paul Westerberg’s. We had a different mix of people – from Memphis to Minneapolis is a huge world away and then there was us with the English folk thing…. we wanted to see what it would sound like.
Your first album was recorded in London with Edwyn Collins as producer. How was it working with Ray on this album? How did it compare?
James: It was as bonkers – they’re both as bonkers as each other.
Kami: It was a whole different substrata of bonkers…
James: They’re both in analogue mode – everything’s old and analogue…. This time [in Nashville], there were compressors that were used at MGM for Hank Williams and there were thousands of guitars – it was amazing.
Kami: You couldn’t let your gaze rest on anything for too long, because Ray would say, ‘Are you looking at that compressor? That’s the compressor that The Beatles used…’
Let’s talk about some of the songs on the new album.
You’ve said that this record is a move away from the more traditional folk sound of your debut, but there’s still a folk feel to some of the tracks, particularly the opening song The Cally and the title track and first single, Other People…
James: Yes – that’s true.
Other People has a pretty, folk-pop melody, but, lyrically it’s quite an angry song, isn’t it?
James: (laughing) I keep hearing that from people – I didn’t mean it to be that angry!
The opening line is, ‘crazy people, money-grabbers, old religions and new regimes, back-stabbers, heart-breakers, psychopaths with evil schemes….’
It sounds to me like a comment on the state of the world – a rallying call against selfish people and those who are just using others to further their own means…
James: It started with me being pissed off about people who should get off their high horse. It’s when you walk down the street…
Kami: It’s that huge lack of social manners.
James: It seems to be everywhere now. It’s about the internet and all the other stuff – it’s this (he points to his mobile phone) all the time…
But the song feels like it’s about bigger issues…
James: It grew into that – it got angrier and angrier as we were writing it. It’s a selfish world… I get the feeling that everyone’s out for themselves – they should care about their fellow man a little more.
Kami: It’s a theme on which you can easily zoom in and out.
It’s got a gorgeous tune, though…
James: You’ve got to be able to whistle it – you can’t give it all away.
‘There’s more of ourselves in this album… It definitely feels darker, but it wasn’t intentional’
It’s lighter than some of the other songs on the album, which I think is a very dark record, lyrically…
James: I guess it is.
It’s darker than the first album…
James: There’s more of ourselves in this album… It definitely feels darker, but it wasn’t intentional.
Kami: I can’t remember the last time either of us wrote a particularly cheerful song.
I think there are recurring themes on the record – the title track, Late Surrender, Leaving The Land and Brick and Mortar all seem to be songs about people who aren’t at ease with the world in which they live…
Kami: That’s a good way of summing it up.
There’s a line in the song Other People that seems to sum up the whole record for me – ‘we’re all strangers in our own time.’ Have the songs been shaped by current political and social issues?
Kami: Yes – absolutely. A lot of the album was written at a time when we were going to have to move out of London because we couldn’t afford to buy somewhere to live, so that was playing on our minds. And also maybe it’s the age we are – I think that plays a part. The song Leaving The Land was written about thinking we would have to leave London.
The album’s opening song, The Cally, is one of the more folky songs on the record. It’s about the characters who lived and worked on Caledonian Road in North London and it also mentions Pentonville Prison.
You like a prison song, don’t you? You had two on your first album – Send Her To Holloway and Borstal…
James: We love a prison song!
What was the inspiration for The Cally?
James: It was all down to my granddad, whose flat we’re now living in. He died a couple of years ago – he was 92. One day, we were in the kitchen and he was talking to me about when he lived and grew up around ‘The Cally’ and Almeida Street in Islington.
He liked to talk about the old days – he was telling me about a woman called ‘Woodbine Nellie’ who used to ‘work’ on the street. She was a lady of the night and I thought, ‘that’s a good name’.
I was walking down Caledonian Road one day and I started humming a song and I wrote it when I got home – I did it really quickly.
After The Cally, the next song on the record is Late Surrender. James – musically, it reminds me of some of the tracks you’ve played on with Pete Bruntnell… [James has been a guitarist for several acts, including UK singer-songwriter Pete Bruntnell, Ray Davies, Son Volt, The Pernice Brothers, The Pogues and The Pretenders – he’s in the current Pretenders line-up]
It has a kind of Americana feel and jangly guitars…
James: Yes – it’s more rock. I can’t stand the term ‘Americana’ – I’ve never liked it.
Kami: I’m fairly allergic to the term ‘Americana’. It’s just English people playing American music – and, most of the time, quite badly.
Drowned In Blue and Hanging On are both melancholy songs – the former has a country feel to it, which is down to the pedal steel guitar.Was that a little bit of Nashville rubbing off on you?
James: It was – we thought we’d better give it a nod and Eric [Heyward] was in town. He’d been up all night, drinking moonshine with Tony Joe White’s drummer and they both rolled in… but he played amazing. He’s one of the best – a pedal steel stylist. No one else sounds like that guy.
Drowned In Blue has some psychedelic moments on it, too…
James: Exactly. We wanted to do what Ray Kennedy had done on those Steve Earle records – suddenly go from country to a Beatles thing. It’s like ‘what the fuck?’ It’s different from the folk thing. I wanted him to do his thing and put his stamp on it.
Kami: With our first album, we set out to make a folk-rock record with a ‘70s vibe, but an updated version of it. The first record was more of a concept – we had an idea and we worked towards making that happen. We wrote a few songs for it that were in that vein and we arranged some traditional songs in that style. With the new album, we wanted to make a heavier record – it felt more natural to us and it’s more of a reflection of the things that we like to listen to. We don’t listen to any folk music.
‘I’m fairly allergic to the term ‘Americana’. It’s just English people playing American music – and, most of the time, quite badly’
So do you feel like you’ve been tarred with the folk brush?
James: Not now, because we’ve got the new album…
Is folk a dirty word?
Kami: Not at all… I just hate anything that hasn’t got balls – I like things to have a bit of grit.
James: That’s what it’s about. It doesn’t matter whether it’s folk, or rock… we just wanted to make some great songs that had some grit. We wanted to sound heavier and for it to be electrified.
Drowned In Blue and Hanging On both seem to share a common theme – they’re songs about people who are at the end of their tether… maybe even suicidal…
Kami: James is regularly at the end of his tether!
James: That’s how I feel constantly! It’s funny talking about the themes of the songs because I hadn’t given it that much thought – I didn’t think about how dark it was. You’re right.
Kami: James is more the homicidal side of our marriage – I’m more suicidal! We should get some-T shirts made…
We’re talking about how dark the album is – there’s actually a song on it called Dark Times. It’s about an abusive relationship…
James: Yes – it’s another abusive relationship song. It’s meant to be like one of those old ‘60s songs – a Dan Penn-type song. It’s Dann Penn-lite.
And it ends with some groovy ‘60s organ….
James: Organs are hip! It was meant to be like Cream doing a folk song.
Brick and Mortar is my favourite song on the album.
Kami: Mine, too.
It deals with how old London is being torn down by greedy property developers and it laments what’s happened to some of the old pubs, areas like Soho and famous places like Denmark Street – Tin Pan Alley…
Kami: It’s the rich taking over the world…
It’s a song about the death of London and, appropriately, it’s a kind of funeral march…
James: It really is – a very fast one.
And it reminds me of The Kinks….
James: It is a bit Kinks-y, but it started out as slow and acoustic – like something from Oliver.
Brick and Mortar is a protest song – in fact several of the songs on the album could be seen as ‘protest songs’, couldn’t they?
Kami: I think the whole album is a rant!
James: It does feel like more of a rant…
Let’s talk about your songwriting process? Do you write together or separately?
Kami: For the most part, we write separately, but James will finish a middle eight or a chorus for me and I’ll write some lyrics for him – or vice versa. We tend to each have written most of the song before the other person gets involved.
James: The songs are mostly written – it’s just tweaking.
Kami: There’s only one of my songs on the new album – Leaving The Land. James had written loads and by the time I went to put my songs into the ring, they weren’t really in the same vein.
James: I wrote furiously for a long time…
‘I think the whole album is a rant!’
What music are you listening to at the moment?
James: I like the new albums by Jason Isbell and Randy Newman. The Randy Newman album is called Dark Matter and it’s bonkers – I listened to it in the bath last night. It’s pushing the boundaries – it’s mental. I’ve been listening to the Elvis album A Boy From Tupelo – it’s his early recordings re-mastered.
Kami: I’m having a funny couple of weeks. Do you ever get those weeks when you’re allergic to music? Nothing’s right.
The other day I went through every record that I thought I might want to listen to and I ended up listening to Radio 4. Maybe it’s because we’re gearing up to tour and I’m learning songs. I think my brain’s full.
Is there anyone you’d like to collaborate with?
James: That’s an interesting question. A lot of them are dead!
Kami: A palate cleanser for myself would be a non-collaboration – just to quietly do my own thing.
James: I think that’s true for both of us – I think I’m going to do it as well.
What are the pros and cons of being a married couple in a band? Is it hard?
James: Yes – you never want to do any work!
Kami: It’s very difficult to carve out time to work.
James: We have real arguments about it– we’ve got very different views on music and everything….
Kami: Music is all James does, but I go into a non-music mode between records – I sometimes have to switch that mode back on.
James: This year I haven’t stopped working – we’ve done the album, the rest of the year is solid and we’ve got stuff lined up for next year – we’re doing another Rails tour and there’s Pretenders stuff on the go. I’ve written a few songs with Chrissie Hynde and there’s a Pretenders live album coming out in a couple of months.
You’re heading out on a nine-day UK tour in September and then you’re supporting The Pretenders after that. What can we expect?
Kami: It’s stripped down – a four-piece band.
James: It’s two electric guitars, bass and drums.
James – you’ll be playing guitar in The Pretenders, too. How do you feel about supporting yourself on tour?
James: It’s not ideal… It will be a long time, but we needed to do it. Chrissie Hynde loves us – thank God – and she’s very vocal about us.
Kami: It will be like when A Mighty Wind opened up for Spinal Tap!
James: I might have a costume change…
So what’s a typical Rails tour like? Is it rock and roll?
James: Rock and roll? There aren’t many tours that are rock and roll anymore…
Other People – the new album by The Rails – is released on September 1 on Sony / Red Essential.
The Rails are touring the UK in September:
September 11 – Glasgow, King Tuts Wah Wah Hut
Tues 12 – Leicester, The Musician
Tue 13 – Hull, The Adelphi
Thurs 14 – Hedben Bridge, The Trades Club
Fri 15 – Manchester, The Deaf Institute
Mon 18 – Cambridge, Junction 2
Tues 19 – Norwich, Arts Centre
Wed 20 – London, The Borderline
Thurs 21 – Newbury, Arlington Arts Centre
http://www.therailsofficial.com/
americana, blues, country, folk, Kami Thompson, The Pretenders, The Rails
‘I’m not a fan of streaming. As a music fanatic, I would prefer people to buy records and CDs…’
February 7, 2017 May 15, 2021 sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment
Singer-songwriter Daniel Wylie, who was formerly frontman of Glasgow jangle-popsters Cosmic Rough Riders, has recently released a vinyl-only compilation album, Best of The Solo Years (2004-2014), on Spanish label You Are The Cosmos.
As the title suggests, it brings together some of the highlights from his solo career, including the irresistible, Byrds-like Consoling The Girl, the gorgeous, unabashed love song That Was The Day, the folky strummer Brighton Beach, uptempo space-rocker Unwind and the jaunty Car Guitar Star, on which Daniel takes a swipe at those people who steal music rather than pay for it…
It’s a superb collection that is soaked in ’60s California [melodic] sunshine pop and recalls the chiming, 12-string sound of R.E.M, Teenage Fanclub and, of course, Cosmic Rough Riders – some of the tracks were penned for Daniel’s old band, but ended up on his first solo album, 2004’s Ramshackle Beauty.
I spoke to Daniel, who’s off to record his brand new studio album, Scenery For Dreamers, this month, to find out the stories behind some of the songs…
Why did the time feel right to put out a new solo compilation album?
Daniel Wylie: It was the label’s idea [You Are The Cosmos]. They wanted to release a compilation focusing on the albums I released under my own name, rather than my Cosmic Rough Riders releases.
I hadn’t released a compilation album for eight years, so it felt like a good time to remind people that I’m still recording and releasing albums on a regular basis.
This Best Of… is my twelfth album release, counting Cosmic Rough Riders and solo records, since 1999. That’s a lot of music…
How hard was it to choose which songs went on the record?
DW: Pedro Vizcaino, who owns You Are The Cosmos, presented me with a track listing of his choice. I had a look at it and pretty much agreed with the songs he’d chosen…although I did insist on The Cello Player and Everything I Give You being on there.
When I released the last compilation, I got some interesting feedback from fans who were disappointed that I left off one of their personal favourites. I’m getting some similar feedback again with this new compilation, but you can’t please everyone.
The album is available on vinyl only. Why did you choose to release it in that format?
DW: I’m a big fan of vinyl, but because of the dominance of the CD era, much of my music never got a vinyl release. This was a good way for me to get more of my music out on vinyl. The artwork’s bigger and more aesthetically pleasing. I’m getting old and I can’t read the tiny text on CDs now…
The album has been released under license by Spanish label, You Are The Cosmos. Why have you teamed up with them?
DW: I own the rights to all my own music, which means I get to choose whom I do deals with. It’s a good position to be in.
You Are The Cosmos released my last studio album, Chrome Cassettes, and they did a great job, so when they approached me with the compilation idea, I was happy to get involved with them again.
The label is a labour of love and Pedro Vizcaino is passionate about music. His enthusiasm rubs off on you and you want to be a part of what he’s doing. It’s a very cool label with a growing reputation for releasing quality music.
Let’s talk about some of the songs on the album. Opener, Consoling The Girl, is one of my favourite tracks. What’s the story behind it? It’s classic jangle-pop / country-rock and it’s very Byrds-like…
DW: That song is partly about the trials of separation – having to go away on tour and leave behind the ones you love.
Cosmic Rough Riders toured constantly. In fact, one year I was only home for 16 days and I really missed my wife and children.
I wrote Consoling The Girl for what was to be the follow-up to Enjoy The Melodic Sunshine [Cosmic Rough Riders’ third album]. When we were in Japan on tour, I played a bundle of my new songs to the Sony Music execs and they were all saying that Consoling The Girl sounded like a single – that and Unwind.
Car Guitar Star is a message song – it deals with the subject of people stealing music and ripping off musicians. What’s your current view on that issue? You’re not a fan of Spotify, are you?
DW: I would prefer people to buy records and CDs. As a music fanatic, I want the lot – the great music, the beautiful artwork… I want to read who produced, engineered and mixed the album and who wrote the songs. I want to read the lyrics of the songs while I listen – it’s a whole experience that shouldn’t be allowed to die out. A file is nothing and MP3 sounds terrible, too.
I’m not a fan of streaming. I understand that it makes it easier for people to listen to music on the move, but until it pays artists and songwriters a proper royalty rate, then it’s not something I would promote as a good idea.
It might be that one day, streaming services will offer good financial rewards for the music they use, but, at the moment, they’re giving your music away for free in the hope that someone might turn up at your gig, or buy a T-shirt.
Another one of my favourite tracks on your new album is Brighton Beach. Funnily enough, I saw Cosmic Rough Riders play in Brighton – on the beach – at The Concorde 2, back in 2000. If I remember correctly, you played the song Brighton Beach in your set that night. It eventually came out on your 2004 debut solo album, Ramshackle Beauty. What can you tell me about that song?
DW: I wrote Brighton Beach as a B-side for The Pain Inside single [by Cosmic Rough Riders], but decided it deserved better than B-side status.
To be honest, I think the tune is great and the harmonies in the end section are maybe the best I’ve done in any song, but there’s only one line of the lyric that actually says anything… “everybody wants something – that’s the way of the world.” The rest of the lyrics are just rubbish.
That gig you speak of at Brighton Concorde 2…That day I had planned to take a guitar on to the beach and sing the song to the first pretty girl I saw…that was until we stepped out of the tour bus and felt how cold it was outside. There was no one on the beach…
Let’s talk about something happier. That Was The Day, which is on your new album, is a very pretty love song and the lyric mentions ‘that record by January’ – [I Heard Myself In You]. January were label mates of Cosmic Rough Riders when you signed to Alan McGee’s Poptones, weren’t they?
DW: I love that January album. It was my chill-out album on tour. I used to listen to it in the dark in my hotel room every night before going to sleep.
I intentionally wrote a song where I could fit that into the lyrics – that song was That Was The Day. There’s a funny thing about That Was The Day – four different couples have used it as their wedding song, but the song is about meeting my wife. It’s sentimental, I know, but what can I say – the day I met her was the single greatest day of my life.
January made a second album called Motion Sickness. It’s not bad, but it’s not as good as their first…
How do you feel about those days when you were signed to Poptones? Looking back on them now, do you have good or bad memories?
DW: Poptones was a great label and it was amazing to be a part of it. There were some great people involved in that label and of course working with Alan McGee and Joe Foster is as good as it gets. It’s just a shame it didn’t last longer.
Maybe if I’d stayed in Cosmic Rough Riders and we’d released the follow-up to Enjoy The Melodic Sunshine, things could have been different, as we were definitely on the rise.
We were the second biggest selling act on the label after The Hives and there was a big interest in what we would do next…then I left the band. A lot of people were angry with me and I can see why, but it’s never been about money for me.
I knew I would be selling less records and making music on a low budget and with a much lower profile, but at least it would be on my own terms without interference from people I couldn’t connect with musically – not the folk at the label, they were all great.
I’m proud of every album I’ve released since. I also loved some other bands on Poptones – Arnold were great and so were Oranger and Captain Soul.
Your latest studio album, Chrome Cassettes, came out in 2015. Are you working on a new record? What can we expect and when will it be out? Have you written any new songs recently?
DW: I begin recording a new album on February 9 – it’s going to be called Scenery For Dreamers.
There will be 10 songs on the album – seven full band tunes and three acoustic-based songs. Once I’ve got that album out there, I will be recording an acoustic album called I Am A Golden God.
I have 22 songs almost written for the acoustic record. I’m hoping that 14 or 15 of them will make it on to the album. By then I’ll be 60 years old and thinking about retiring, at which point my wife starts laughing…
Will you be playing any live shows this year?
DW: I get offered gigs a lot, but to be honest, I can’t be bothered. I’ve toured the world and it kind of wears you down after thousands of gigs. If I got offered enough money to make it worthwhile, then I would tour, but I think that ship has sailed.
Finally, what music – new and old – are you currently enjoying? What can we find on your hi-fi?
I listen to music every day – it’s my one and only drug. I’m teetotal, so I don’t drink, smoke or take drugs… and I’m a better person for all of that.
Redspencer’s Perks is an album I’ve been listening to a lot recently. They’re from Melbourne in Australia and they remind me of Real Estate meets Blur – when Blur were great. I also love a guy called Bibio – his A Mineral Love album and his Green EP are so beautiful and melodic – it’s shimmering music.
I also love The Goon Sax album – they’re Australian and include the son of The Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster in their line-up. They sound like early Orange Juice meets The Go-Betweens. I like Swiss duo Klaus Johann Grobe – they sing in German and have bits of Kraftwerk, Can and Neu! in their music, but they’re so tuneful and edgy, too…
I also love the latest Black Mountain album, Black Mountain IV, and American band Astronauts, etc – their Mind Out Wandering album is one of the best albums I’ve heard in years.
Other stuff: case/lang/veirs – beautiful country/folk-tinged music that’s ultra-melodic and mellow, Heron Oblivion, Bryan Estepa, The Junipers, Radiohead, Gregory Porter, Murals, Lou Rhodes – great acoustic folk, like Joni Mitchell with a deeper voice – and C Duncan. Both his albums are beautiful.
Daniel Wylie’s new album, Best of the Solo Years (2004-2014) is out now on You Are The Cosmos .
Copies are also available in the UK from Daniel Wylie: wyliebaum@yahoo.co.uk and Sugarbush Records.
blues, cosmic rough riders, country, indie, jangle pop, Sugarbush, The Byrds, You Are The Cosmos
Doctor in the house
March 26, 2016 May 22, 2017 sayitwithgarageflowersLeave a comment
[Photo by Michele Siedner]
Out There, the new solo album by Dr Robert, frontman of pop-soulsters The Blow Monkeys, is a stripped-down, acoustic affair that was recorded on an old eight-track Tascam tape machine at his home in deepest Andalusia, Spain. I had an appointment with the Dr to find out how this raw and rootsy record came about…
With the new album, you’ve said it’s all about the groove of the songs – there are no middle eights, key changes or bridges. Why did you take that approach to this record?
Dr Robert: It was because I used a lot of open tunings on the guitar, which deliberately restricted my options. I wanted to avoid my usual progressions. I might try an album of just middle eights next…
It’s a very rootsy and primal record in places. Tracks like All The Way Back Home and Rack and Ruin are down and dirty, bluesy grooves, and there are some jazzy vibes on the album, too. (Lost in Rasa). Were you influenced by artists like Tim Hardin and Fred Neil, whose work you’ve covered in the past?
DR: Well, people like Hardin and Neil are part of my DNA now, so I tried not to edit myself. I just let it flow, like I was jamming in my kitchen.
One of my favourite tracks on the album is A Bottomless Pit. I think it sounds like Jacques Brel doing Johnny Cash. Can you tell me more about this song? Where did it come from?
DR: I don’t know where songs come from. That was an effortless one. Sometimes they come along fully formed. I was lucky.
For this record, you worked with drummer Richard “Snakehips” Dudanski, piano and accordion player Jos Hawken and saxophonist, Joe Degado. How did you hook up with those guys?
DR: They are friends. Richard goes way back. He’s a proper gent and an inspiration and he’s been in bands with both Strummer and Lydon, which is good enough for me! Jos is young and blessed with an innate calm and special talent. They both live nearby, so I always had them in mind.
What was the atmosphere like when you made this album? Was it loose and laid-back? From listening to the record, it certainly sounds like it…
DR: I tended to record the ‘takes’ in the morning. My voice works better then – especially on the low notes. I was alone most of the time. I was doing a take, then running to the tape machine to stop the tape unwinding!
How did writing and recording the album at home in Spain affect the sound of the record?
DR:I live in the mountains, south of Granada. Landscape and environment have always been a major inspiration. And smells. From the sugar beet on the Fens, to the orange blossom of the Lecrin Valley.
Throughout your career, you’ve worked with acts including Paul Weller, Curtis Mayfield, PP Arnold, Beth Orton and Kym Mazelle. Do you have any great memories from any of those collaborations? Is there anyone that you’d like to work with?
DR: They have all taught me something. Curtis was a humble soul. The best always are. I’d like to work with Tom Waits.
Out There is your tenth solo album. After more than 30 years in the business, do you feel like a prolific solo artist, or will you forever be a Blow Monkey? How does it feel now, looking back on your days as a ’80s pop star?
DR: I’m a prolific Blow Monkey. The ‘80s were the last great ‘pop’ decade. Things have changed. Mostly for the better.
How did it feel when you reformed The Blow Monkeys in 2007? Why did you decide to come back? Was it a case of unfinished business and how was it when you got back together to play and make new records?
DR: I missed being in a band, but I wanted to make new band music. We are a strange mix. We all love different music, but we never argue. We’re a slightly dysfunctional family – like all the best bands.
Any news on The Blow Monkeys? Do you have more new material or gigs planned?
DR: There are lots of gigs up on our website and a new album proposed for spring 2017. I’m writing some punky soul anthems right now.
The Blow Monkeys were known for their left-wing political views. Does it seem strange to you that nowadays more mainstream artists don’t use their music to convey political views, or protest against wrongdoing or unjustness?
DR: Some still do. PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake was a masterpiece in my opinion and Beyoncé did a fine thing at the Super Bowl.
There’s a track on your new album called I Ain’t Running Anymore, yet, after more than 30 years in the business, you seem to be busier than ever. What’s your secret? You had a health scare a while back and you quit drinking. What effect has that had on you? Are you in a good place?
DR: I don’t have a secret. Just keep your eyes open and your lips pursed. I try to remember how it felt to hear Ride a White Swan for the first time. My whole world opened up.
What music – new and old – are you currently listening to and enjoying?
DR: Old – Bukka White. New – Kendrick Lamarr.
Finally, how ‘out there’ are you?
DR: Not enough, yet. I’m working on it.
Out There by Dr Robert is released on May 2 (Fencat Records).
For more information, go to http://www.theblowmonkeys.com/
blues, Dr Robert, Out There, Paul Weller, retrosoul, rockabilly, The Blow Monkeys