brittney mckenna | freelance journalist

Excerpts from this interview originally published in the November/December 2009 issue of American Songwriter Magazine

Risk, a word unfortunately weighed down by connotations of contingency and consequence, is also one of the most dynamic conduits through which artists can draw their inspiration. Just ask David Gray, the British singer/songwriter abandoned his figurative ship by bringing in a new band and returning to self-production for his latest album, Draw the Line. The result is a collection of songs with what he gladly calls, a new “fire in its belly.”

Your latest album Draw the Line is coming out in September. It’s been about four years since your last studio release (Life in Slow Motion); did you purposely take a longer approach to this record?

It just worked out that way. I think I knew I didn’t want to be on the road for a while, you know, I had done a lot of touring since the release of White Ladder. So there was an element of that, but it was more that things needed to be rebuilt. I sort of broke everything down and built it again from the ground up. It just took a bit of time. Then even when we were finished with the record it took time to find the right deal to put it out. It had all taken much longer. It looks like I’ve taken ages but the first of those four years I spent touring with Life in Slow Motion as well. Then we released a greatest hits and we did about six months work around that. So I spent a long time on the record but it was sort of the start of a new era, a new band and it took a while to put it together and get the whole thing in.

What made you decide to bring in a new band for this record?

Just on gut instinct, really. I just felt it was time for a change. There’s a real danger that you’ll start repeating yourself. There’s a real complacency to it. Just because you made some decent music a couple of years ago doesn’t mean you have the right to make any this year. You have to have a rabid appetite for reinvention and for starting again. So unless everybody shares that, you end up repeating yourself. You just make some musical shapes that are similar to the ones you made before. So there was an element of that. And yeah, I needed a new challenge, really. So it was just a gut instinct thing.

And do you feel like bringing that new band in helped you achieve the challenge you were looking for?

Yeah definitely. It’s like a new lease of life. It was a fantastic working atmosphere. Everyone worked really, really hard. It just gave me a new spring in my step completely because when the new music, the new sound, an identity of what we were doing crystallized it had a bit more lurch to it, a bit more attitude, a sort of muscularity or something. And it sort of opened up the doors to all kind of lyrical scenes that brought a voice I used to have when I started out, a slightly more confrontational or political go on words. It opened up vistas in terms of my writing that have been closed for a while. I’ve been a very inward, personal sort of tip. Certainly there was sort of a spring in the step of the music and a bit more attitude in the music. It just allowed me to get a lot off my chest. I haven’t enjoyed writing a record so much ever, I think. It was just hugely enjoyable. It had honestly been this sort of thunderhead building up inside of me of things I wanted to say. And certainly, with a new band it all just took shape. The whole thing was a thrill really. It’s very empowering to change things and then know it was a good idea. It’s a bit scary when you’re stepping off into the void and you don’t know what they hell you’re going to do. Like a bird upon release, that’s how I felt really.

You wrote the album while you weren’t on a record label.

Yeah, I was out of contract with everybody, publishing and record.

How do you feel like that affected your songwriting on this record?

It certainly affected the atmosphere in which we made the record, because reality was constantly coming to bear. I was spending my own money and looked like a gigantic act of folly in a world of diminishing returns. You know, as the world collapses into itself. The music business is obviously very advanced in this effect. It’s done a good job of shooting itself in the foot for many years. It’s slightly ahead of the curve (laughs). But when the financial crisis kicked in, there I was spending tens of thousands of dollars and pounds on string arrangements and it just felt like a complete lunacy. It takes a lot of guts and a lot of balls, though, to do it but I somehow quite like it. Basically, I was sitting on a pillow of wealth and whatever I had accumulated through the success of my records. And I chose not to sort of extend that period of comfort. I chose to get out of there because we think, my manager and I, that there’s a sort of brave new world and it’s going to be more interesting to be a part of that than sewn up in some hideous sort of corporate hell just for the sake of getting a big check. So there’s more interesting things in life than money, and I think that had a huge effect on the record because they used every bean I had in building my studio and making this record for a couple of years. I was under threat in the same way that other people’s lives were. Obviously it’s in different proportions but there was an element of risk, and I think risk is vital to doing something interesting. So looking at it now, I think there was sort of a sober light that shone on everything, for the good of everything, as well, while we were making the record. I think that the situation I was in had a huge effect on the way that I thought about it and the determination with which I set about my task.

What about the title track, “Draw the Line?” Did writing that one get the ball rolling for you?

Yeah. It’s not necessarily the first one I wrote, but it was the first time that a song was born in the studio. I didn’t bring in some already-written piece that everyone had to play on. This was the first time that everyone reacted to an idea that just happened in the studio while we were doing something else. And then, from the ground up everybody was involved in every grain of what turned out to be a very important moment. Then they all felt a part of it and I could see for the first time the potential of what we had. I could sense it before but suddenly it was tangible; it was actual. It just crystallized in this great way from a very simple, driving riff basically. But yeah, when I heard that song back through the speakers when we managed to capture it, it was all just done so fresh that I thought, “Alright, this is it. This is the standard bearer for the record. This set the tone. We have to match this.”

You went back to self-producing for this album. What made you decide to do that?

Well it’s just opinions, really, and objectivity that you’re paying for. I really enjoyed working with Marius (De Vries), but I think that I was sensing there was a slight diminishing in the creative juices that had been flowing amongst us. We made White Ladder together, and then A New Day at Midnight and Lost Souls. By the time of A New Day at Midnight, things had changed. Success had kicked in. By Life in Slow Motion I thought I needed somebody’s input, basically, to move the whole thing along. I needed someone to bounce my ideas off. It wasn’t functioning as it had done. So this time around it was a completely new band. Iestyn (Polson, audio engineer) was still there. He sprung back to life with a new challenge so he was still in the control room. I guess I the part of production I take on my shoulders is in terms of the ideas and how the songs need to be done. In other ways, I have a lot of help. Obviously technically I don’t know what I’m doing. So Iestyn in the control room does all of the engineering and gets the sound, which is often crucial to a song being born or being captured or fully realized. He is a wizard. He gets things when they happen in those moments in the studio. So I have tried and trusted people around me. Rob Malone is on my right hand side, my bass player I kept from the old band. He’s very, very musical so he’s always got ideas and a slant on things. I take reference points off other people all the time. But sometimes you just don’t need the big producer, because all the producer does is try to get the band to do what they need to be doing. Trick of the mind, isn’t it? So it was already happening. There was a point when I thought I might need one because I felt a bit overwhelmed. We recorded so much material I was sort of buried underneath it and I had lost my perspective momentarily. So I got Marius to come down to the studio and listen to some stuff with me, which he very kindly did being the gentleman that he is. But as soon as he started to express his opinions about how things could be different I realized I didn’t want any of it. And I certainly realized I knew exactly what I was doing. And it’s just a matter of opinion. It wasn’t that his ideas were wrong. But I knew I had a gut feel for what we wanted to do.

You were able to collaborate with both Jolie Holland (on “Kathleen”) and Annie Lennox (on “Full Steam Ahead”) for this one. What was that like?

It was great. What a privilege that was. I mean, two completely different types of singer. But it was a totally unpremeditated thing. With Jolie, I think we were both quite nervous about it. That was the first one that happened, it was probably back last winter, around December time. She just can’t sing in straight lines. She just has this wonderful, natural bluesy, folky, jazzy flavor. It’s just in her blood. We’re huge fans of hers. I think she’s amazing, and she’s a totally un-self-conscious person as well—she’s not putting any of it on. It’s just there. So she came down to the studio and I had all of the parts worked out, as per usual, and I was trying to tell her exactly what to do. “No, it needs to be like this!” (laughs) Well, I didn’t quite say it like that. We did a lot of takes and eventually she started to find her own thing. I just had to let her do it because it basically sounded better. I had to take one massive jump back. When you’ve heard a track for a long time and you’ve been waiting and waiting for someone to sing on it, you got so used to it being the way that it was. I had sung the backing vocals myself or the other vocal parts. So when she started putting her own slant on it, it took a hell of a lot of getting used to. She just put the icing on the cake with that one.

Then Annie, she just blew us away. She was just a gale of positive energy when she came in. That was such a massive track, “Full Steam Ahead,.” We put an album’s worth of effort into one song and couldn’t quite finish it off without the other voice being there. So I had written a song and realized as soon as I tried to put the vocal up that it was going to be a duet because the lines sort of overlapped—it was just set up and it’s got a slight hint of Broadway about it or something. But anyway, Annie loved it. She could do the angsty lines—it has a sort of dark sense to the lyrics. She can carry that off so well; she has that “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” style voice. But then she just has this incredible pop sensibility and she gave us all of these parts for the chorus. She said, “I’m just going to throw my ideas out, if you don’t like them it doesn’t matter. I’m just going to sing all day and if you like it you like it, if you don’t you don’t. It doesn’t matter.” Straight away the chorus just came together and finally the song began to make complete sense. So she didn’t just sing on the track. Annie came and we did two huge vocal sessions and ended up singing it as a proper duet together, like Kenny and Dolly, you know, “Islands in the Stream” (laughs). So it was all deeply moving and fabulous. It was just a real adventure. She basically fully realized the song for us. It came out absolutely great, that one. Well both of the duet songs have come out really great. So that’s the interest, obviously, in having these other people. I like it. They’re both not combinations you would immediately think of.

Tell me about “Fugitive,” the lead single. Did you decide it was going to be the first song released? If so, why did you choose it?

Well it wasn’t my doing. If everyone else starts saying something loud enough, I’ll listen. Everyone was just like, “Fugitive.” There never seemed to be any doubt about it. If it were down to me, I’d probably lead with “Draw the Line” and my career would grind to a halt (laughs). I don’t know about singles and stuff. I can hear that “Full Steam Ahead” is a single. That for me is a hit. But “Fugitive,” it doesn’t really have a chorus in the “here comes the chorus” sort of way. It’s really just a groove, an uplifting, powerful one. Everyone just seemed to agree on that across the board. On each side of the Atlantic different record companies and publishers, everyone was excited about that one. So we’ll see. It seems to be going well so far.

What inspired the story behind the song? It’s an interesting metaphor.

Yeah. I think that’s the fire in its belly. This album is more outward. It’s not like I’m singing, “I’ve been a fugitive.” I’m singing out into the world. Don’t be a fucking fugitive. Don’t just lie to yourself because it’s just a crock of shit and it’s not worth getting out of bed in the morning and sticking your neck on the line. President Bush becomes President Obama—miracles happen. Don’t tell yourself it’s some sort of conspiracy. There’s a lot of half-living going on. We’re overwhelmed by a sort of barrage, a tide, a tsunami of information. It’s totally dispiriting and crippling, It’s like, “what’s the point?” You just feel this overwhelming sense of firm futility, really. But I don’t believe in all of that shit. It’s not our responsibility. We can’t not live in order to save the planet. Do you know what I mean? You have to do it. You just have to harmonize somehow the crazy cocktail of life and sing your parts as clearly and loudly and sweetly as you can. That’s it. End of story. It will go by so fast, you’ll have missed it if you don’t get on with it. Basically the salesman have control of the green issue, the environment and now it’s all over. They’re selling you consumerism back again but this time it’s going to look after the planet. Yeah, right. Everything is just multi-layered enough to be frustrating, isn’t it? It’s a more outward anthem, but I think there’s a fire in its belly because perhaps I felt like I’d hidden a little bit in my own life. I think in the success and the spotlight and the way that all happened, I sort of retracted into my shell like a little hermit crab maybe for a while. It was a bit too bright and a bit too scary out there. And you think you’ve got over it and you’re not quite there. Let me go back to that thing I was saying about money as well. I think that some sort of sea change has happened in my point of view—I don’t know quite how it happened. It’s all a trick of the mind. Suddenly I’m over that shit, what it means to be famous and what everyone else thinks or your credibility or some such phantom nonsense. It’s just like life’s too short, and suddenly I’m just enjoying it for the huge blessing that it is. So that’s where I find myself. I can see that I’ve hidden maybe a little bit for a while, because that’s the way that I am. I’m naturally inclined to take things cautiously, I suppose, on one level anyway. Another level, obviously not. So yeah, I think that’s the fire in its belly. Perhaps it comes from a release within me. There’s so much of a sense of release in this entire record. It’s like pent up energy just bursting through. So I think that this is another example of it.

I think a lot of people can relate to that need for a release, with the economy and whatnot how it is. And like you said, the change between Bush and Obama gave them an outlet.

Yeah, I mean how the fuck did that happen? Let’s just rewind a few years. You went from the most depressing, retarded, fucking idiot in the whole fucking political stage to something completely earth shattering. A black man is president of the United States. It’s fucking incredible. You know, I’m a cynical bastard but I was moved. How did that happen? There’s no conspiracy. The world’s too fucking crazy and disorganized for anyone to get that shit together. That’s not to say that people aren’t smoothing the parts that are embedded—petrochemical or pharmaceutical interests—of course they are. But let’s not pretend that magic doesn’t happen.

Shifting gears a bit, it’s been over 15 years since your first record (1993’s A Century Ends) came out, which is already a longer career than many artists manage to have. Did you ever expect or hope to have this kind of success, or were you just taking it as it came?

We’ve got to rewind to my first album, which was recorded in 1992—17 years ago. Christ, my first single was probably recorded in 1991 which would be 18 years ago. Bloody hell. When you land a record deal in those days and someone says, “Okay, you’re going to make a record. Here’s 20 grand,” you’re like, “That was amazing.” It was almost mystical, the power of it. I was like, “Wow, I’m actually going to make a record, an actual LP that’s going to go out there into the shops. People are going to be able to buy it.” That’s as far as it went in my head. I didn’t know what was going to happen after I had made this record. I put so much into my first record. It stands up, it’s alright. It’s got something. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was doing things for me when it went out there. But if someone were holding up some kind of commercial yardstick, measured against that it was failing completely (laughs). Life becomes much more complicated. I was just shambling through a succession of messy record deals that got steadily worse. I made White Ladder myself and released it and it became this kind of fairy tale. But when the door finally creaked open and it was my chance to step inside, there was no way I wasn’t going to. At that point, the issue was to get through the door. But that’s about all I ever thought, really. It just sort of happened to me, the whole thing. It’s different now with this record. I want to make this happen. I’ve grown up a bit. This is different, I feel this record is important and I’ve got to get it across. I’m trying to cast a cursory glance across the last however long (laughs), but it didn’t start with, “I’m going to conquer the world” or some other nonsense going on in my head.

That being said, you’ve lived through some huge changes in the music industry, with the advent of digital media and declining sales numbers. How have you weathered that storm?

Well obviously I was lucky, because I managed to sell some records when people still bought them. I think if you take a scan of youth taste now, one of the things that comes out is that we don’t buy records anymore. I met someone in the airport yesterday who said, “Oh I love you, I’ve got your song!” It was “Babylon,” and he spent 79 cents or whatever downloading that. And that’s somebody who actually bothers to pay. It’s obviously changed hugely. The digital industry, the computer world obviously doesn’t give a monkey for nurturing music. It’s the perfume that’s sexed up the entire digital equation. So it’s never been more needed and yet the price has just dropped right off, due to not just the callous-hearted digital age, due to the utter incompetence and shortsightedness of the music industry itself. What we’ve witnessed is just sheer idiocy on a ridiculous scale. How it got to this point where music is so valued and yet worth nothing is ridiculous. You can trace it back to things like MTV when they gave all of that content away for nothing. Here, have an entire station based on the hundreds of thousands of dollars we’re spending on videos, which you can just have for free. “It’s okay, it’s promotion.” And you still get it now. I just got approached to have my album put on someone’s new “wonderphone” and it would be given away for free and highly promoted. I was just like, “Fuck off.” That’s where we’re at. It’s like, “Hey come on, sex up the equation with David Gray on there.” Anyway, it’s obvious insulting and makes no sense but that’s where we’ve ended up through gross mismanagement. So that’s what I’ve witnessed, this steady crumbling. But I don’t think any of us can believe how quickly in the last five years particularly things have changed. Great big chunks of building are falling off. So I don’t know what the future holds, but obviously for a new band it’s not easy to raise the dough, you know. People talk about the Radiohead model and all of this fantasy nonsense. They’ve had tense of millions of pounds spent on them over the last 16 years. Build 15 years of mystique up, develop a huge back catalog, become the coolest band in the world then release your own record, it’s like, “Yeah, that’s going to work.” It’s the same as anything. It’s how do you get people’s attention in the digital world. They scored a hat trick with that idea, giving it away for free or choosing whatever you want to pay for it. It had been done before but because they were righteous and cool and everything was good about the world it got a huge amount of attention. It worked unbelievably well but they wouldn’t be able to do it again. So I just don’t know what the future model is. Obviously the live ticket has become everything. You have to keep playing and keep doing your thing. I don’t know what the answer is though.

Well where do you see yourself in the next 18 years? Still playing musicThat’s an awful long time. I doubt I’ll ever stop. If left to my own devices, it just doesn’t go away for me. There’s no, “Oh thank God that’s over at all.” But it’s a tough process. I’ll take six months off. I think I do need to take a bit of a time out. I’m looking forward to enjoying life, which is something I haven’t completely gotten around to. I’ve always got other plans as soon as I stop doing one thing. So yeah, I don’t see that my spring is unwinding in any sort of great way. I think I’ll just keep on keeping on. I imagine if I’m still around and haven’t been, you know, killed by some terrible disease or hit by a bus I’ll still be making music and playing gigs. It’s my life blood, in a sense.

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