Photo by J.F. Vergal
The “Kaye” record is
such a beautiful tribute to Kevin Ayers – can you tell me how it come about and about Ayers influence on you?
It’s funny. I’ve
always been a fan of Kevin Ayers…various times in the last performing years of
his life, he came over to the US and was doing these really small rooms, like
believe it or not, the back of a vegetarian restaurant. I caught up with some of his music and bought
the original import records that he had out, and he seemed like a person who
never really needed anything but just kind of drifted through life. He was a very gifted individual who never
really reached his potential because he didn’t need to – he had the gift of
being really good looking and charming, charming to serve his own needs to a
certain extent. He was somewhat
self-destructive in a lot of ways, but his music never reflected that. It was always very beautiful, these English
country tunes with a lovely melody. I didn’t
consciously set out to make a tribute record, but something about how work was
really inspiring. He had the Soft
Machine in the early days which was really experimental, and I was going down a
road where I had all these songs that just kind of lined up with his
influence. I had heard about his
passing – he had died about 2 years ago in Spain - and read an article about
how he had been found in his room after three days alone, and sadly no one had
bothered to look for him. The last words
he had wrote, found on the bed next to him, were “you don’t shine if you don’t burn”. I dug into the words a little bit more and
wrote the song called “Kaye” all about Kevin Ayers. That song really summarized how I felt about
him – that he was sort of a cavalier in his life. All of a sudden, all of these sings I had
written took on a different meaning and they felt like they could relate to his
life, and at that point I thought I should cover a Kevin Ayers song. I had always wanted to do “After the Show”,
so it all seemed to make sense and I saw meanings to all of the songs that I hadn’t
seen before.
You pulled together
some amazing musicians for the record, working with people like (Bongos
guitarist) James Mastro who is a really thrilling player. Was it a matter of calling up folks and
seeing who was interested or did you have certain musicians in mind?
Well, James had played on at least two of the albums I had
worked on, and I have known him about 20 years. He’s such a good guy and a
really inventive guitarist, always tasteful in what he plays. Without me initially telling him where we
were going with the project, he had already come up with guitar parts and
sounds that were very similar to what I was hearing in my head, so I just let
him do what he does! (laughs) When we
got further along and I gave more of that (backstory) away, he really didn’t need
any coaching at all. The producer on the
album, Don Piper, I had played him some Kevin Ayers songs and told him that I
wanted a similar vibe without copying it – I wanted it to still be me, but I
wanted him to be aware of that kind of flow of music in the overall performance
of the players. They were all really,
really good players, and they understood the simplicity sometimes that’s
necessary to make the songs stand out, but at the same time every song has a
really great feel to it.
Oh yeah, the
arrangements are all really solid and the playing is nicely understated,
servicing the song without really calling attention to itsel, servicing the
song without really calling attention to itself.
Yeah, there wasn’t one track that took more than three
takes, and so much of it was recorded live off the floor. I mean, we would go back here and there and
fix a bum bass note or keyboard part that we wanted to fix, but we basically
recorded the entire album in 4 days. There’s
one song on there called “Peter Pan’s Dream” which we had no rehearsals for. I
had a basic structure in mind, but we just jammed out a 28-minute version of
the song, which we then edited down to 8 minutes.
Wow…will the original
jam ever see the light of day?
You know what, I listened to it the other day and am
thinking about just putting it up on Soundcloud or something. For those who are
crazy enough to sit through 28 minutes, here ya go, mates! (laughs)
I would love to hear
that. That seems really in tune with
Kevin Ayers’ spirit, though…you work on the song for as long as it takes to
find the heart of it, and it may take you 28 minutes to get there.
Yeah, it was cool because everyone stayed on tracked and was
so focused. We moved in to several
different kinds of music – there was some jazz going on, some Coltrane, a
little bit of everybody hanging on by their coattails. Even the 8-minute version has that spirit, I
think. You can sense some of the early Soft
Machine days in that. When “Kaye” came
along and we were working on the record, I never realized how well these songs
held together.
Aside from Ayers,
what other influences do you bring to your writing? How does your songwriting work?
I always start by trying to put down the lyrics first, but
if a melody comes along I will try to put it against the words and see if they fit. In the early days I would never do this, but
now I’ll write the lyrics and have a melody in my head and if it’s still there
in a couple of days I will tighten up the words and tighten up the melody and I
know we’re heading somewhere with the song.
The great thing is with the advent of Garageband and things like that
you can put down a melody really easily with any instrument you want – one part
may be a cello and the next part a recorder – and it makes it really easy to
get the song flowing. Having the ability to have all of those instruments in
front of me really expands the palette a lot.
Do you find yourself
tapping into your English heritage at all?
Yeah. Two albums back, “Sparkle Lane”, was all about what it
was like coming to America – good and bad.
My roots are that I was born in Birmingham and I left at a time when
England was in a musical explosion, so coming here was really strange at the
time. It was kind of like, the world is happening in London and we are going to
New York? (laughs) Songwriters like Ray
Davies and people like that are obviously still in my musical DNA.
Your band was named by Colin Blunstone and you recently did some dates
with him, so I can see where that influence would be seen in your
songwriting.
He’s a really inspirational
person, one of the most genuine men. He
is amazing, because when you think of his abilities to sing and to motivate, he’s
always got motivational words for you while you sit there in awe of him. He has been a great support to me. And he used to work with a gentleman by the
name of Duncan Browne, who is another musician I adore. Basically, a couple of the acoustic tracks,
we had Pete Kennedy playing with us and we were definitely going after a Duncan
Browne type of sound.
Awesome! So what’s on the
horizon for you after the record comes out (July 8th)?
I’ve been writing for the past six
or eight months, and I have the luxury of having about 30 songs in an English
country-folk vein. I have also been
writing with another fellow, J.F. Vergel, in a much more challenging way – he’s
been pushing me to sing a different style.
So, there are a couple of projects going on right now that I’m looking
at. Yesterday, I had my first session
with Don Piper, and I told him to listen to these eleven songs I wrote with
J.F. and tell me which direction I should be going. There’s no lack of ideas at this point, it’s
just a matter of finding the right direction to move in and start recording
again.
