A chaotic interview with… James

15 April 2010

James’ Mirrorball Tour kicked off in Edinburgh last week and The Blue Walrus sent off one of our new roaming reporters off to meet the band and talk about their new mini album, The Night Before, and have a small glimpse in to their incredible career. Here’s what Ben had to say…

I have loved James since I first rummaged through my older sister’s scratched CD collection ten years ago and realised that there was a lot more to the band than ‘Sit Down’. When Tim (aka The Blue Warus) asked if I wanted to interview the band it is fair to say that I pretty much wet my pants.

But it was important that I remained cool when entering the swanky Edinburgh hotel to interview the band so I took an old friend with me for moral support, I also gave him simple tasks to warrant his presence; he was to record the interview on his iPhone and take photos with a disposable camera because the SLR had stopped working – he failed miserably at both;

Not only did I keep on having to ask the interviewees to huddle up closer to the iphone but it stopped working 35minutes in, so the juicy story about setting fireworks off from a Beverley Hills hotel window and setting a hillside alight is now lost forever, oh, and my esteemed colleague didn’t take one single photo until the after the show when I heard the tinny sound of a disposable camera click and a bright light flash on Tim Booth’s face… smooth.

So, as you can imagine, James may not thought we were the most professional outfit, just as well it turned out they were some of the most down to earth & friendly people I’ve met…

It was clear their was genuine excitement from the band about the new mini album, Jim (the Jim behind the name James) beamed “it has been an opportunity for us to move the music on from the Hey Ma album and develop our sound” The Night Before has retained what we love about James albums – powerful, emotive and well written lyrics, great production, the classic seven piece James sound but more synths and electronics than Hey Ma and less brass.

The Night Before is James’ 11th studio album. The band has so far spanned three decades, seeing a record deal with Factory in the 80s, commercial success with ‘Sit Down’, ‘Laid’ & ‘She’s a Star’ in the 90s and disbandment and reformation in the 00s.

James began in a Manchester bar, where Jim (bass) would hang out with his pals in order to pinch pints from unsuspecting middle class students… enter Tim Booth, an intelligent middle class student with a talent for wild dancing who was about to get his pint stolen and an invite to dance for a embryo of a band that would soon become James.

28 years and 11 studio albums later, the band have grown together, the sharp differing edges of seven band members have blunted and the young angry lads have become experienced musicians, grateful of their careers and respectful of each others different approaches to life.

I asked Jim Glennie if they would have preferred to have had more widespread commercial success in the past three decades, his reaction was “I think we think we deserve it but I’ve gone past worrying or bothering about that – what always used to drive us is the feeling that we were bigger than we were. It was years of virtually no success in which we had to stand up and say come on we’re better than this.” James had commercial success in the 90s but it was never at the level of some the bands that originally supported James, such as Nirvana, Radiohead and Coldplay. Despite this Jim considers himself “one of the luckiest bastards on earth…so to sit here and complain would be ridiculous”.

James currently have a deal with Mercury, which is they say is far from the relaxed type of deals they were used to in the past – “now we have to pay for recording ourselves. In the past we would be able to be as gratuitous, stupid and silly as we liked and know that somebody else was paying. But when it’s your own money, you have to get the job done in the minimum amount of time and work really hard.”

With a repertoire of crowd pleasing hits, James are conscious of not acting as a “jukebox” at live gigs and playing the songs that the crowd are desperate to sing along to. “If we keep writing and playing new songs it means that we can’t cruise through a gig in third gear, which is the wonderful thing because the focus and concentration has to kick in.”

The Edinburgh gig was an opportunity for James to test some of the new songs from the album as well as “challenging people a bit and throwing the odd curve ball in there.” That is exactly what James did, putting a host of new songs and some old ones that only the dedicated fans knew. The Edinburgh crowd was as suspected, hungry for hits but Booth used his effortless and distinctive soaring voice to get the crowd behind him and soon everyone was singing along to the chorus of new song, Ten Below – “When’s the holidays? Holidays? Holidays?”

‘Crazy’ is a dark tale of ongoing paranoia and suffering from hallucinations that Tim Booth recently lived through when he was hospitalised with liver disease. As with the best James songs, there is a dichotomy of sad and painful lyrics juxtaposed with the sound of 6 other band members driving an energetic musical feel that keeps the song upbeat.

I brought up this dichotomy to the band and Larry told a story of driving to a gig with two girls in the back seat who were listening to Government Walls from the Goldmother album, as they sung their hearts out jumping with joy Tim was sat in the front seat with a blank expression on his face as the lyrics played “In Ireland they may shoot to kill without warning”

‘Porcupine’ begins with a great polyphony between Larry on lead guitar and Jim on bass, it is typical of the band’s 80s roots but also has a contemporary awareness that is relevant and fashionable now. The lyric ‘porcupine’ is derived from James’ approach to the development of songs – which is basically Tim, Larry & Jim meeting up and jamming. “we work on melodies and tunes with Tim singing phonetics only, sometimes one random word that works phonetically will bolt down the lyrics for a whole song – there was no getting rid of porcupine so we developed a lyric around love affairs and attrition developed that somehow involved porcupine…I’m a skunk you’re a porcupine”

They may well be some of the luckiest bastards on earth, they have tasted commercial success but more importantly James have stayed dedicated to their music and able to provide incredible live music to their fans for over 28 years, always being slightly eccentric, exciting and different. Loving James is knowing that most people won’t agree with you and that means that live gigs remain intimate and every unrehearsed cock up on stage makes the band seem more human.

After the gig, we saw Tim Booth and he asked what our favourite song was, I replied “Dr Hellier”, he seemed pensive, it is after all probably a very dark take on his recovery from illness. Out of nowhere a flash of light from a disposable camera lit Booth’s face, my esteemed assistant struck again and before we knew it the band were already on the tour bus.

I’d love to show you the photo, but the assistant hasn’t had it developed yet… (we might add that later -ed)

James have got two dates left of this tour so get yourselves down to:
Friday 16 April – London Royal Albert Hall
Saturday 17 April – Liverpool University

Pre-Order The Night Before from Amazon | Play

As well as the streams below you can pick up a free MP3 of Not So String from We Are James right now.

An interview with folk legend Chris Wood

By: Lauren

6 January 2010

In: Interviews

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Chris Wood is remarkable. There comes a character in every genre catalogue of music who truly is the whole package; musically talented, down to earth, interesting to speak to, socially aware, and ultimately, a pioneer to their section of their craft. In folk music, Chris Wood is your man. I had the pleasure of catching up with Chris last month before his show at Norwich Arts Centre…

His latest project – ‘Handmade Life’ – is an exceptional exploration of the issues associated with modern life, and the inspiration behind it shows a socially passionate man with educated and knowledgeable opinions to offer about all aspects of contemporary society. “I found out what ‘quantative easing’ actually is – they look at a spreadsheet for the country, then if they don’t like the figure at the bottom, they just change it,” he explains. “To change the figure in the nation’s spreadsheet is one thing, but then to carry on from that point as if that’s the real figure – that’s just too much.”

It’s these realisations that inspired and then led directly to the creation of ‘Handmade Life’. “Once you realise how virtual everything has become…I just needed my own kind of personal reality check. The songs [on ‘Handmade Life’] are about real things.”

A troubadour in every sense of the term, Chris credits much of his own work and the work of music as a whole to the idea of tradition, and values the traditions associated with folk as an important element of life and society. “What you’ve got in tradition is this incredible repository of our ancestors’ attempts to unriddle their universe. Now it seems arrogant to the point of stupid to just ignore that, and I think any time you do spend looking at that material, you will gather an incredible perspective of what it is to be a human being in the world,” he explains passionately.

Over the past eighteen months, music journalists – myself included – have exploded with terms, phrases and pigeonholes to tame the groups of new ‘folk’ artists emerging from London – from nu-folk to post-folk to alt-folk to anti-folk, it seems the idea of folk music is always pre-empted with another phrase these days. As it happens, of course, the musicians involved in making the music hate the titles, and Chris is no exception to this.

“It’s all bollocks,” he says unhappily. “As far as I’m concerned, you’ve got classical music, which I think is relatively easy to define – you tend to have a composer and then you tend to have a hierarchical structure which realises the works of the composer. Then you’ve got the ‘music industry’ – the Simon Cowell end of it, which really has nothing to do with music at all; for me, that’s not even on the radar. Everything else, as far as I’m concerned is folk.”

“I’ve been playing folk music for 35 years, and I’ve not yet found a name for what I’m doing,” he adds. “Go to America – look at their blues, their hiphop – it’s all folk. It’s all come from that.”

Interestingly, though, Chris has a theory about the renewed interest in folk and acoustic music. “There’s a cycle. Every now and again, the mainstream music industry completely runs out of ideas and basically it goes looking at folk music – ‘Could this be the next big thing?’” he explains. “They want to know if there’s any money in it, and there doesn’t seem to be, so they very quickly move onto something else.”

“However, the artists are getting much more savvy at connecting directly with the people. The question is whether the industry is leaning towards the folk music, or is it that the industry has slightly less control than it used to have, and now the people are deciding?” he muses with a cheeky grin. “As it turns out, what they’re interested in is this human level music where I sit down and sing you a song – no smoke and mirrors, no production team. If that’s what’s happening, then that really is a change, and it’s encouraging. It kinds of validates what I believe in.”

I spent a lengthy time with Chris and he was incredibly easy to speak to; as somebody heavily involved in music, you meet a lot of different personalities, but Chris was exceptionally interesting and exceptionally down to earth; the kind of guy you’d have a drink and a chat with at every opportunity at your local pub. The Blue Walrus will certainly be catching up with Chris in the future, and look forward to all he has to offer in 2010.

A Quick Q&A with Alan Pownall

By: Tim

25 November 2009

In: Interviews, News & Leaks

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Alan Pownall has been flying around the edges of my radar since I first read about him over at The Daily Growl, and I was lucky enough to get a few questions with the rising songsmith last week. He has risen through the ranks along with Mumford & Sons, Jay Jay Pistolet and others that have been part of the resurgence of folk we’ve been covering in and around our nations capital over the last 18 months – but folk doesn’t quite cover all of his repertoire. Colourful Day may be a wistful piece of acoustic guitar folk, but Take Me is more upbeat pop perfection (download below), whilst my favourite, “The Others”, easily plods along beautifully with a violin part that can’t help but draw you in.

But enough of the introductions, here is what he had to say for himself (he’s the one in italicized bold being the important one here as normal)…

You were previously studying art in Italy. Do you think you could have had the success you’ve had in the London folk scene over there?
‘London Folk Scene’? I like to see myself as more of a crooner than a folk singer!

Haha – especially with your folk makeovers (now I feel guilty calling them that) of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” and Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown” I suppose. Why did you choose them anyway?
I chose them simply because they were on the radio at the time and I liked them.

The London folk scene (there I go again) is quite a mixture of solo artists and bands, how do you think being a solo artist compares with those touring as bands?
I don’t know what it’s like to be in a touring band, but I imagine solo artists and bands both have their own advantages and disadvantages. Being creative is something I’ve always preferred to do alone. I envy those who can share the experience with their friends, It must be very gratifying

With your status as a folk/pop/acoustic solo artist – some have described you as the British Jack Johnson. Compliment or no?
I’d prefer Michael Buble

Right, onto your actual releases…Your first two singles “Clara” (Young & Lost) and “Colourful Day” (PureGroove) have been released on small indie labels. How has that compared to working with Mercury for the album?
It’s been a pleasure doing stuff with Young & Lost and Pure Groove, they are both really great Labels with lovely people behind them. I can’t compare it to working with Mercury though, firstly because I am yet to release anything with Mercury and secondly, because they are two completely different machines with different goals.

Talking of the album, any dates set yet for when we can hear it?
I’m hoping May next year (2010). I’ve still got a bit to do before a final date is set for release.

There you go folks, album coming May next year – just in time to play it in the car on your way to the cheese rolling festival (OK, fine I was stuck for anything else happening in May – but that gives you all plenty of time to wander down to your local record shop to pick this up).

Alan Pownall – Take Me

…and then a minimal electro remix by Seams of his next single:
Alan Pownall – Colourful Day (Seams Remix)

[BUY] Clara on 7″ @ Young & Lost
[BUY] Colourful Day on 7″ @ PureGroove

Alan Pownall LIVE in London
Tonight @ Queen of Hoxton (Young & Lost Club)
2 Dec @ St Moritz (Clash Christmas Party)
9 Dec @ St Barnabas (Christmas Party)