Can you please tell Ink Pantry about your journey as a musician?
I’ve been absorbed by music for as long as I can remember. I had piano lessons from age six, then guitar from a couple of years later. I was enthralled by the pop music I heard at the time (late 60s/70s) and also by the folkier stuff that the likes of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon were writing, especially their lyrics.
I’d say I got music from my father, who was a great violinist, though never a pro, and words from my mother.
I got a big break and publishing deal when I was sixteen, but I took a while to get going from there; I think the ’80s were a funny decade in that most of the music I liked was seriously out of fashion. I started getting busy, both as a writer and as a producer, in the early ’90s.
I wrote songs for – and with – some well known acts (Fairport Convention, Paul Young, Clare Teal, Lindisfarne) and I also met Thea Gilmore, whose work I’ve been heavily involved in since 1998 and several of whose hits I’ve co-written.
My work has also appeared on hit movie soundtracks, and a song I co-wrote was used by BBC TV as the lynchpin of their coverage of the 2012 Olympics.
I have released five solo albums and last year my song ‘I Hope I Always’ was heavily played on Radio 2.
Neil Gaiman has praised your solo work, calling it ‘literate, melodic and quirky’. Wow! What do you like to read and do you like poetry?
Neil came to see me at The Jazz Cafe in London a few years back… We’ve become friends and he’s very supportive. Yes, I do read a lot; I’m big on fiction and I always have a novel on the go. A lot of contemporary fiction, anything with a clear voice and decent characterisation, but I’m up for most things. I kind of take a lot of time choosing what to read and, having done that, I never abandon a book, even if I don’t love it I feel I’ve made a deal with it and always finish it.
Poetry wise, yes, I adore poetry and go to it a lot.
Where to start… For the range of his body of work and constant brilliance I’d say William Butler Yeats is the man. When I was on tour in the US a few years back I bought a Robert Frost anthology and lived and breathed it for a month; it was incredible to read his words when, in some cases we were passing through the places he wrote about.
I also love Louis MacNiece who I think is very overlooked, but truth be told I’m a bit of a sucker for rhyme so I can also always find a reason to visit the 19th century boys: John Keats, Alfred Tennyson etc. Also, Edna St Vincent Millay.
Contemporary wise I like Paul Farley, Don Paterson, Leonitia Flynn, Luke Wright… there’s so much!
Is there a recurring theme in your work? What do you care about the most?
I wouldn’t say a recurring theme, no. What I care about is writing it the way I see it and connecting with people. Finding something new, random or magical in the everyday.
I’m not an apolitical person; I do have songs which touch on social issues and to a degree political situations, but they are relatively few and far between. I think there’s a line which lyrics quickly cross over and become polemic or sloganeering, so I tread carefully.
As the years go by I hope I may have become a better writer, but I definitely think I’ve become a better editor. I’m quicker to rein myself in; I’m less interested in playing with words and more in working with them. Basically trying to say it with less, but reach people more.
Tell us about your creative process.
Every time is so different. With me there is no routine, it tends to be a pretty organic process. If I’m writing alone I probably start with either a title, or a sense of what the song is going to be about, its mood and atmosphere. When I have a few key lines in place I’ll try to concentrate on the tune, see where that leads me. And when the music starts to feel settled I’ll revisit the lyrics and flesh them out… by that time I’ve probably become a lot clearer about what I want to say.
What do you think is the most important element in song writing?
It’s the union between words and music, how the two can set each other alight. There are certain writers – Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, say – who stand up beautifully on the page, but for the most part song lyrics are there to be sung, not read.
I’m very interested in the alchemy through which a rise or fall in the melody, or a nuance in a human voice, suddenly brings resonance to a phrase that may not look that special on the page.
Can you share with us a couple of examples of your own lyrics and walk us through the ideas behind them?
FROM ‘I HOPE I ALWAYS’
‘I hope I always have your number
I hope I always have your trust.
While there’s a you and there’s a me
I hope there’ll always be an “us”’
A lot of people took this to be a romantic love song, but I actually had my elder (then only) son in mind when I wrote these opening lines. The title was clearly taking me somewhere, and I wanted to open with a very tangible image (phone number) then follow it with a more abstract, emotional concept (trust). I’d been reading a piece about a parent estranged from their kid and it reminded me how there are no givens about how relationships evolve as years pass.
The song developed into what people have called a secular prayer for self improvement, and I’ve been moved by the volume of people who’ve told me it resonated with them in profound, sometimes turbulent times in their lives. ‘I Hope I Always’ is the only song of mine to be published as a poem, in a recent PanMcMillan anthology – though I must say I still consider it a song.
FROM ‘BUILT FOR STORMS’
‘Word up, Nostradamus
Glory God on high
Thank you for the music
Shame about the sky.
Me, you and fickle fate
Here we go again
Two blue umbrellas
Seven kinds of rain.
Shout out, Captain Noah
The band are back together
From Galveston to Goa
There’ll be trigger happy weather.
Go tell it on the mountain
Pater Noster, Kyrie
Namaste om shanti
Gabba gabba hey.’
I wanted to ‘go scattergun’, to convey a sense of mayhem. Personal turbulence in a relationship, global unrest – maybe both. I also wanted the phrases to bounce off each other, so I alternated iconic names with doom laden overtones with more hopeful affirmations; I alternated biblical prayer and Buddhist incantation with references from pop culture.
I was trying to evoke the way that, in desperate situations, solutions, paths, and thoughts don’t appear logically or sequentially. I was after capturing the randomness and fear, but hope is also in there. The chorus linking these verses is:
‘Call me when you’re ready, I’ll hold steady,
I will be the fire that warms.
Anyone can shine when the forecast’s fine
But baby we were built for storms.’
This chorus appears three times: the instinct of the head and heart for survival gets to affirm itself repeatedly amidst the madness.
Who inspires you lyrically?
I’m not sure! I like Paul Westerberg a lot, have spent a long time identifying with his work;
but there isn’t any writer who specifically makes me put pen to paper. It’s more everyday living, people I hang out with and observe, trying to clock those moments and little events which resonate and which an entire day can turn on. I store up thoughts and odd phrases which jump out of conversations.
Tell us about one of the best days of your life.
That’s a hard one. I’ve been lucky and there are a lot of contenders! It’s tempting to go to the day my son was born, or say my honeymoon in Mexico, which was full of astounding days, but I’d probably also go for a day in October 2004 when Thea Gilmore and I had just landed in the US to tour as special guests on tour for Joan Baez. We had the most staggeringly beautiful three-hour road trip across New England; I’ve never seen colours like the sassafras, dogwood, and sugar maple on that day.
Then we arrived at the theatre in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Joan and her band chatted to us over dinner and she told us that the last time she played the theatre in question was with Bob Dylan on the opening night of the Rolling Thunder revue. I love Joan and everything she stands for… suddenly the air felt heavy with history and ghosts and everything felt a little transcendental (OK, so we were a bit jet lagged too!). We had an incredible show that night, got a standing ovation, and I guess it doesn’t get much better.
What’s your creative space like?
As well as a songwriter I’m a producer and sometimes a touring musician, not to mention a husband and a father of two boys under ten; so my life is not quiet.
I think when you’re young you have so much space in your life but you don’t realise it. Getting older and busier you need to learn how to navigate to the (internal) place where creatively things can start happening, and get there pretty quickly.
So to me it’s more about staying open and alert, paying attention to what’s going on around you, rather than necessarily a physical space. We do have a room at the top of the house which is kind of set out for writing, with a couple of nice old acoustic guitars, a bookcase, and two Buddhas, and I’ve done a lot of stuff up there. But I’m storing ideas all the time. I write in studios, in hotels. I actually wrote an entire lyric for a song that’ll be on my new album in the back of a cab travelling across Manchester.
Have you any advice for any budding lyricists?
Write every day.
If you call yourself a writer it’s kind of your duty.
Doesn’t matter if you produce nothing of worth, the process still kind of keeps you open and in touch with the part of your brain that reacts to ideas.
If you want it badly enough you’ll make time.
What is next for you? What are your plans?
I have a new solo album nearly finished, hopefully for Spring 2017 release. I hope you get to hear it!
I made a record with a Welsh band called Songdog, which is getting a lot of national radio play, and I’m just finishing producing Thea Gilmore’s new album.
Nantwich Words and Music Festival 2016