Bobby Long Interview

Bobby Long is one of the most interesting new songwriters to emerge in recent times.  Along with artists like Joe Pug, previously featured on this site, Long represents a literate, intelligent side to new music that brings it’s appeal back to the simple combination of words and music.

The 25 year old Englishman, who now lives in New York, recently released his debut album A Winter Tale is currently touring Australia, playing at Bluesfest and doing a couple of small solo shows in Melbourne and Sydney. I’d strongly recommend you see him in those intimate venues because he’s not likely to be in small venues for long. I had the chance to chat to Bobby before he opened the show last week for Rodrigo Y Gabriela.

HHMM: I’ve got a thing about listening to debut albums – and I know you had an recording that you sold at shows before A Winters Tale – but I’m treating A Winters Tale as a debut album.  You get that feeling from the album, and debut albums in general, that you have a sense that “Wow, I may never get to do this again, and I’m going to pour everything I’ve got into this album.’

BL: There’s always that insecurity.  Even now A part of the work ethic and the reason you are on tour the whole time and you don’t want to turn anything down is that you want to make use of the situation. There is always that slight worry that this is going to be it, this is going to be my one chance.

HHMM: It’s kind of like when you listen to Greetings From Asbury Park – you can actually hear Springsteen seizing that moment in case he doesn’t get that chance again. As it turns out he got to make another twenty albums!

BL: That’s what I hope happens for me. My whole thing is that this is a career base. That was what was in my mind as well. It wasn’t just about what I got on the page it was about what was the best way of me coming across right now and also how am I going to improve on this for the second one. I wanted to stick to my strengths, which were playing live and working with people who understood me. I also had a mind on the future but, as you said, there was definitely an insecurity that this might be it!

HHMM: One of the things that happen in that situation is that lyrically, everyone tries to get every thought and every idea they’ve ever had somewhere on the album. To your credit you already appear to be a very good self- editor and you managed to avoid cramming the songs so full of ideas that they stop making any sense.

BL: Thanks. Before you put anything out you already pulling at it. It’s funny you should say that because I’m finding that the songs I am writing now are much more concise. That’s a thing of being young – you have so much to say and when you have a platform… I had a tendency when I first started playing that every song was like eight minutes long! There was like this machine gun fire of words and I have learnt to self-edit more and be more concise. A Winter Tale was a big, sprawling opener, but then there’s songs like Who Have You Been Loving and In The Frost I learnt that there was no need for another explanatory verse and that the song was fine without it. That other verse doesn’t need to be there. It’s like a painting where you have a really nice painting and you know you could paint a really perfect chapel in the right corner – but it wont add anything. I did try to do that on the album, but I think I have improved on it since then.

HHMM: On your website there is a number of poems. One I really liked was titled Untitled No.2. , where you manage to get Bach, Van Morrison and Starbucks into one piece of work.  How do you decide when a piece of writing is going to be a song and when it stays being a poem.

BL: That’s a completely different hat.  When I write songs, I write songs. I have a tendency not to write lyrics unless the guitar is in my hand. When I do the poetry thing I’m aware that that is what I am doing right now and there is a real separation, and they are two completely different things.  At the moment I really into the poetry thing and I really want to explore that. I was doing some writing today and music is not even in my head.

HHMM: The thing I distinguished between the poems and the songs is that the songs seem to be more about putting the listener in a time and place, whereas the poems are very much about the here and now.

BL: Yeah, the poem thing is much more diary-like and the song is a transportation thing. I’m much more in love with the music side and much more critical of myself, whereas the poetry thing is much more personal and how I feel on a day and I write it more ‘blah, blah, blah…’ (indicates a spilling out motion). That poem you mentioned before I wrote like that, (snaps finger) and I had no qualms putting it up straight away. With a song there’s a lot more work ethic involved in that, before it gets to an audience.

HHMM: There seems to be an emergence of a whole new group of songwriters, people who are not afraid to admit that they have been to school and had studied writing or art. What do you feel that you gained from having a formal education?

BL: My education was really weird, because I did fucking awful at school! At the age of 15 you can make the choice about whether you want to go to 6^th Form college or not. You needed to get five C’s to go on to do A Levels and go to University. I got two C’s. But I was allowed in because I was a quiet kid who didn’t bother anyone and I did acting and art and music.  They obviously thought I had something.  I went to a very normal school, I didn’t go to a private school. I learned far more from self-education than I did from going to school. The books I read weren’t the books I was reading at school. I enjoyed Shakespeare and Brave New World and stuff like that at school though. I definitely benefited from education from the point of view of keeping me in one place and keeping me focused and not making me go out and do loads of drugs or drinking , but my education thing didn’t have a huge effect on what I’m doing now. But it helped me to be surrounded by a bunch of people who went to school and being in that environment. You hang around with a bunch of drunks then you become a drunk. You hang around with a bunch of kids who read, then you are going to pick up a book. That had a big effect.

HHMM:  With people like Joe Pug and yourself there almost seems to have been ten years of music that you have chosen to ignore and that’s the ten years between when you where say 10 and 20, which is normally the most impressionable years. Are you conscious of that?

BL: See, I love Radiohead, and I loved Oasis when they first came out, but I was like seven or eight then. It’s not like they inspired me to pick up a guitar or anything, but I though they were great. But I think you are right. Jeff Buckley and Elliot Smith I love, but Jeff Buckley died when I was like thirteen, so you are right. When I was in London when I was at University, there was a big thing for indie music that was like boy bands and leather jackets, and I didn’t want to hear it at all.  I couldn’t associate with any of that stuff.

HHMM: Do you think that the emergence of people like yourself is almost like a reaction to the era of Idol and X Factor, when music was populated by manufactured pop stars.

BL: I don’t think it’s a response but I remember when I was young thinking that all I was hearing was bad, fucking dance music.  But I think you are right that people are bored with this pre-packaged, compressed, digital stuff. But see, my girlfriend loves X-Factor and American Idol and I’ll watch it with her. I’m not going to vote or anything, but it doesn’t make me want to write a song to counter-act it. It’s just this whole other thing. It’s like watching a soap opera, and these people aren’t really affecting me and what I do. But hopefully it might make people think that music is cool, and then after a little while they might realize that it doesn’t have to be this glamourized television stuff, but music is actually something that real people do every day.

HHMM:  You actually wrote a thesis on the Social Impact of American Folk Music. I’ve read that you mainly did that as a means to get your degree, but having said that you probably worked out pretty quickly that American folk music consisted of more than Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Do you consider some of your influences like Leonard Cohan and Neil Young and The Band as folk music?

BL: Oh yeah, definitely influenced. I don’t even think that what I do is all that folky when you put it in with people like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Folk music really is like a form of documentation of and a voice of social discontent and I’m not really that. And I’m not making political comment.  But I love those three artists and they are definitely carrying that torch on and so I think that’s a natural progression from people listening to Woody Guthrie and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and early Dylan. But The Band wrote a lot about Civil War didn’t they?

HHMM: To me, by that definition, Ray Davies is a folk artist.

BL: Ray Davies is like one of the best writers of social observation, as is Randy Newman. Randy Newman is fucking amazing. Ray Davies, for English life, there is not one  better writer out there for that. Stevie Marriott was good too with the Small Faces. But Ray Davies is killer. You hear a song and it sounds like England, and it takes you back and you recognize stuff.

HHMM: Do you have any idea how cool it is for someone my age to be talking to a guy who is 25, about Ray Davies and Randy Newman, and The Band and Leonard Cohen.

BL: The thing is, that I just think it is good music and it’s worth talking about it. I was also kind of force –fed it by my dad. When we were in the car and he’d be playing Dylan and The Beatles. Lucky I fell in love with it!

HHMM: One thing you have inherited from the folk tradition is that troubadour spirit of getting out and playing a lot and taking your music to people in that way.

BL: I did another interview today when the guy said, ‘Oh you play so much’, and I thought it was just normal.  That thing of getting out and playing every night is just the way to do it. I love the idea of Bleeker St in the 60’s where  you’d have Dylan playing every night and The Beatles in Hamburg would play four shows a night.

HHMM: The difference now is that you can travel rom town to town but the internet has got there before you, so there is usually some sort of an audience already waiting

BL: It is important but it can be frustrating from time to time too because you really have to fight to maintain any kind of mystery. You have to isolate yourself from it and at the same time you use it. I have a Twitter account but I don’t put anything personal on it. So I tell people about shows and stuff. It’s not flyers and magazines anymore, it’s Twitter.  It’s weird to do a show and then there are videos on You Tube the next day from five different angles! I might say something on stage and if I say it again a few nights later in a different town there will be someone who says, ‘you already said that’. So there is good and bad elements to it.

Vessels – Bryan Estepa (Laughing Outlaw)

This is the third album from this Sydney based artist and although the first two have apparently attracted a sizeable following in Australia and internationally, he remains one of those “best kept secret” type artists.

Lets hope that changes.

Bryan Estepa is a tremendously talented pop songwriter – and by ‘pop’ I mean the sort of pop that owes its existence to writers like Lennon and McCartney, Ray Davies and Brian Wilson, rather than ‘pop’ that is currently exemplified by Justin Bieber or Katy Perry. (If you don’t know who they are, don’t worry)

Digging deeper into the Estepa lineage you will find traces of Difford and Tilbrook, Alex Chilton and more obscure influences such as Mitch Easter – that is to say his ‘pop’ is breezy and melodic on the surface but beautifully constructed and layered as you scrape that very same surface.

Thus, by definition, this album doesn’t consist of a collection of genre-breaking, revolutionary, new frontier type music – rather its an example of the fact that a lot can be achieved by those old faithful ingredients of sweet melody, memorable hooks, and spirited performances. Songs such as Alone, Tongue Tied and the closer Ball and Chain contain all three ingredients in abundance and are spectacularly successful as a result.

There are a couple of darker songs on the album, when Estepa channels Tom Petty in a more somber moments – one of these is Let It Go which also manages to rachet up the instrumental textures a bit.

As the album evolves there’s a lit more time spent on working a slower, slinkier groove into some of the songs with the soulful Shade being an example. Another strain of influences that might include The Raspberries and some Otis Redding may even come into play. The Raspberries and Big Star impact is best felt on Instincts which is the sort of song that would have held pride of place on a Matthew Sweet album a decade or so ago.

Obviously for reviewers of my vintage playing “spot the influence” is fun and instructive – and if you are a fan of any of the above-mentioned acts you will find a lot to like about Vessels and its creator.  But if you are a youngster taking your first tentative steps on a voyage of discovery that goes beyond Video Hits, then you couldn’t find a better roadmap than this album.

See My Friends – Ray Davies (Universal)

It’s interesting to observe the different approaches currently being taken by various legendary artists to keep their legacy alive and breathing. Just today, in a JB-Hi store, I was confronted by the number of box sets, greatest hits compilations, re-packaged and re-mastered albums. There’s duets albums, tribute albums and albums matched with books, DVD’s, bonus downloads and t.shirts. It feels like just about every angle is being covered in the quest to wring every last drop of blood from great catalogues.

As an aside, I wonder how many of todays new artists will be given the opportunity to build such catalogues. I suspect very few. But that’s another debate.

Of all the re-workings of great catalogues this contribution by Ray Davies surely feels like one of the most joyous. He’s taken the “duets” route – re-recording some great songs from his extensive repertoire with fans and admirers who have been impacted by his work.

This isn’t the place to extol the virtues of the Ray Davies songbook – if you are not already aware of the depth and importance of his songs then you probably wouldn’t have been moved to read this far anyway! Suffice to say he has a multitude of truly great songs at his disposal and they have been well selected here.

The album opens with Better Things, a song that could easily have been written for or buy Bruce Springsteen. The two voices are contrasting, Springsteen’s gruff, robust vocal combining well with Davies thinner, reedier and needier approach. The song works, but its only an entrée to what is to come.

There are some absolute gems sprinkled across the album. Jackson Browne contributes to an incredibly gentle rendition of Waterloo Sunset. It loses the urban, London jauntiness of the original and becomes a delicate, very soulful acoustic ballad.  The late Alex Chilton combines with Davies and LA band The 88 to re-produce Til The End of The Day, a song that Big Star had already covered and the approach reflects that style. Davies lets Chilton dominate the vocal.

Who would have thought  Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora would actually elevate Celluloid Heroes? They do a great job, giving the song some added muscle without detracting from its extraordinary pathos. The same could be said for Lola – its probably the bravest choice on the album because its just so iconic in its original form, but British soul singer Paloma Faith does it justice and then some. She sings the song superbly, but more importantly she brings another type of understanding and perspective to the lyric. It’s not a song you can just ‘sing’, you’ve got to inhabit it  and that’s exactly what she does. And Davies subtle vocal parts provide a brilliant balance to Paloma’s inspired efforts.

But even that is not my highlight. That comes from another unexpected source – Billy Corgan. Destroyer was a song that Davies himself plagiarized from his own catalogue, borrowing the riff from All Day And All Of The Night and adding a wonderfully kooky, paranoid lyric.  Here they actually merge the two songs with Corgan doing a memorable job with the partially spoken word lyric.  He sings almost in character – with a wink and sneer and another wink that reveals how accurately he understands both songs of this hybrid.

There’s not a bad track on the album – proving that great songs can be approached in different ways and still be great songs. Other honourable mentions go to Frank Black who reads This Is Where I Belong as a country oriented ballad and Gary Lightbody who provides a fragile vocal to Tired of Waiting.

The overall impact of this album is joyful celebration of a masterful songwriter and it’s a long way removed from being a cynical exercise in mining a catalogue.

Ray Davies New Album Sound Very Cool

Ray Davies is rightly revered as one of the great songwriters in rock n’ roll history as well as being one of its more interesting characters. Thus it comes as no surprise when it came to recording his new album a fascinating cast of guests have been happy to appear.

Various confirmed and unconfirmed stories seem to suggest that some of these suggestions are close to the truth.

In 2009 Davies recorded a version of Better Things with Bruce Springsteen, while Bon Jovi contributed to Celluloid Heroes. An American magazine has reported that Billy Corgan has been working on the new album, with the Smashing Pumpkins singer contributing to a new version of  Destroyer from the under-rated Give The People What They Want album. If you know the song you can just hear Corgan sneering his way through that one with Davies playing the paranoid role!

Big Star frontman the late Alex Chilton is said to have recorded his contribution prior to his death earlier this year while Lucinda Williams also due to appear.

That would be worth the price of admission alone.

But to add to that there’s a few more contemporary stars said to be lurking around the studio.

Mumford and Sons,  Paloma Faith and Amy MacDonald are all expected to appear although a rumour of The Killers being involved is false.

Work on the new album is continuing with recent visitors to the studio including members of Spoon and possibly even Frank Black.

Glastonbury Line Up Almost Makes It Worth Going To England

The Glastonbury Music Festival is one of the biggest ever music events and each year there are literally hundreds of acts performing. Lets face it, I’ve never heard of a lot of them and readers of this website thingy are only going to be interested in a few.

But what a few they are!

The Glastonbury Festival have announced its full bill for this years event which takes place between June 25 and June 27. On various stages at various times it includes:

The full line-up is as follows:
U2
Dizzee Rascal
Vampire Weekend
Snoop Dogg
Willie Nelson
The Flaming Lips
Hot Chip
Florence and the Machine
Gaslight Anthem
The Stranglers
The Black Keys
Mumford & Sons
Tegan and Sara
DJ Fatboy Slim
Newton Faulkner
Muse
Scissor Sisters
Seasick Steve
Jackson Browne
Lightning Seeds
Pet Shop Boys
Imogen Heap
Reef
George Clinton with Parliament / Funkadelic
Christy Moore
Nick Lowe
Imelda May
Al Stewart
Laura Marling
The Lightning Seeds
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
The Avett Brothers
Stevie Wonder
Faithless
Jack Johnson
Ray Davies
Slash
Norah Jones
Orbital
MGMT
Grizzly Bear
Temper Trap
The Hold Steady
Ash
Julian Casablancas
Broken Social Scene
Gang of Four
Rodrigo y Gabriela
Toots & the Maytals
Dr John
Jackson Browne with David Lindley
Richard Thompson
Loudon Wainwright III
Empire Of The Sun
Gomez
The Saw Doctors
Imelda May
Judy Collins
Teddy Thompson

Even I could be entertained by a cross section of that lot!