Writer · Performer · Label Director
During The Bedlam Six’s last tour we had a day off in Amsterdam. Instead of doing what most British visitors would do and head to the nearest hash bar we teamed up with producer Michael Kneebone and recorded a new song in the beautiful house of Arnout and Laurien (the latter of Snowapple fame). We figured it’d be nice to put something brand new out just before going on hiatus. No mixed signals or anything…
Here it is, “Long Way down”
Today is my mother’s birthday. I’m a hopeless gift-buyer. Actually I’m a hopeless anything-buyer. Most shops fill me with a kind of weary dread; I tend to end up emerging with an item bought out of desperation rather than intent. Add to that the fact that I’m currently on tour abroad so can’t even drop by with a bunch of flowers and I suddenly make a pretty promising candidate for Disappointing Son.
But I have written a song for the occasion.
It needs a bit of explaining though.
My mother has just written a new book – Remnants Of Empire – a culmination of years of research and travel and general head-scratching. I’ve been doing some copy-editing and proof-reading over the past few months so I know it pretty well now. It’s really good. Part anthropological study, part archive, part memoir; she has tracked down hundreds of ex-inhabitants of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) collecting stories of pre and post independence, exploring issues of class, race, imperialism and, perhaps most interestingly, memory – both collective and personal. This is not a cold piece of data collation, my mother grew up in Broken Hill (now Kabwe) so the dust of Africa is very much in her blood (a favourite go-to cliche of many interviewees in the book). Plenty of writers have talked about the British Empire – some celebratory, some apologetically, some nostalgically – but not much has been said about Northern Rhodesia (not in comparison to, say, India), with most accounts centring on the copper industry rather than the everyday comings and goings of the people who lived there, be they native inhabitants, imperial fortune-seekers or just folk trying to find a niche for themselves and their families.
After I read the final draft I wrote this song inspired by some of the accounts in the book, particularly to do with the self-glamorising of one’s memories. My mother has always been fond of the Bedlam Six’s Theban Sacred so I tried to go with a similar blues feel, tuned down to D with a heavy stomp to the rhythm.
So here it is… Broken Hill Hotel.
Happy Birthday Mum.
x
© Andrew AB 2014
Over the years I’ve heard a lot of songwriters refer to their songs as babies. “Oh no, of course I don’t have a favourite, they’re ALL my babies!”
Though I’m as protective over my back catalog as the next writer I don’t think of my compositions in those terms. To me they feel more like foundlings and strays, lost dogs that I’ve given a bath and haircut to. I certainly don’t think I’ve birthed any of them, the raw ideas drift in from who-knows-where and then I scrub them up with a few fruity metaphors, the musical equivalent of teaching an orphan table manners in a Victorian novel before it turns out they’re actually the long lost heir of a viscount.
In the end, refer to these little creations how you will, it all amounts to the same thing. Despite the dubious sense of misplaced ownership one has over any artistic product derived from myriad social factors, there is an inevitable sense of pride and protectiveness over anything one has composed. For me the greatest sense of achievement is when a song goes off on its own path. When they are adopted by other performers, in whatever style, it’s such a thrill to witness a song filtered through another person’s outlook. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.
This emotion has a nervous and unpredictable twin though. One that accompanies a burgeoning desire to will these covers into existence rather than simply letting them surface unbidden. More and more I feel compelled to write for others as I become increasingly frustrated with my own limitations, boxed in by gloomy premonitions of how certain species of song might develop under my sole guardianship. So I picture another artist and write with them in mind. Sometimes this sense of distance perversely brings a song even closer (for instance I wrote “Tonight” for Liz Green but rarely omit it from my own live performances, indeed it’s The Bedlam Six’s regular soundcheck tune).
But terror comes with the reveal. Approaching a band or artist with a song you’ve written for them evokes the same emotions I used to feel as an adolescent asking a girl to go out with me. One feels decidedly prone. What if they don’t like it? What if they think you’re a creep for doing that? What if the whole wretched ordeal is something you can never get past, always skulking in the background of any future projects, the embarrassing rejected song – irreversible and unwelcome.
I decided I wanted to write a song for Dutch band Snowapple, a group famed for their amazing vocal harmonies who joined the Debt Records roster last year. My own vocal style naturally lends itself to rapid consonants so I was particularly keen to incorporate more lingering vowels and a sort of tidal urgency pushing at an overall slowness.
The song is called Widow. Widow is a beautiful word if one dissociates it with the morbid connotations. If you can. (I can’t)
I was overjoyed when they told me they liked it (the blushing teenage version of me nervously proffering a bunch of flowers mercifully unspurned!). They decided to record it with Becca Williams (another singer I’m immensely fond of) and the result is an absolute dream come true for me.
Here is the result:
Image © Steve Hall 2014
It’s foolish to try and pinpoint a single trigger for a human being’s desire to be or do something, there’s usually a smorgasbord of ever-swelling factors vying for attention. But if there was one deciding influence that drew me away from my chosen field of academia and towards a life on the road in a touring rock band it was Martin Scorsese’s film The Last Waltz.
It’s only now I realise how strange this is. After all, it’s a film about endings rather than beginnings, the record of a band’s final show (indeed THE Band‘s final show), concert footage peppered with statements about needing to quit while you’re ahead, not wanting to end up as one of those Rock & Roll fatalities. “I just want to break even” grins Richard Manuel during one of the group interviews – a heartbreaking sentiment if considered with hindsight, this being a man who, less than a decade later (three years after The Band reformed), came offstage at the Cheek To Cheek Lounge just outside Orlando in Florida, downed a bottle of Grand Marnier and hanged himself in a motel bathroom; an act that retrospectively transformed The Last Waltz from an historical artifact into a tragic one, the words “may you stay forever young” echoing out prophetically from the final moments of that concert.
So I suppose among The Bedlam Six‘s very foundations was a ticking notion that such projects are never eternal, that our blueprints contained a clearly marked self-destruct button. I think this awareness is quite healthy, after all it doesn’t take an expert to realise most bands end with either the annihilation of the central friendships or the annihilation of the friends themselves.
We are not done yet though. We had a meeting earlier this year to discuss the future and we decided there is one. But we are going to have a break. Not because we are tired or think we deserve a rest. We simply need to work out what we want from this. Too many bands limp along for years, more out of inertia than dynamism, ricocheting from gig to gig, pinning whatever lingering ambitions they have to the next show… the turning point always just around the next corner. Then, before they know it all their old friends are cooing over grandchildren, while they themselves are still lugging amps up the backstairs of some crumbling mill to breathe in generations of neglected mould spores and subject their ear drums to another senseless battering. (And they never did get round to writing that opera.)
If that’s the way I’m going to go, fine. But I won’t do it blindly. I want to know what we’re all supposed to be aiming for, because I’m not sure I know at the moment. I’m not sure anyone knows.
Right now it’s pure enjoyment, glorious exploration, six guys who still get on playing songs that make people dance. But right now we’re also caught between two worlds and if we don’t pick one then it’ll all start to unravel pretty messily – no amount of disintegrating festival wristbands and old backstage passes will sustain the good memories when tested over decades spent in the artistic wilderness, as the cultural currency of what we do depreciates more with every passing epoch.
Just because singers and songwriters once flew the flag for forward thinking and free expression that doesn’t mean those flags are still flying now. When I meet someone new and they ask me what I do for a living I hesitate. I used to chirpily say “I’m in a band” and the conversation would roll along in little bursts of interest about style and influences. But these days that answer tends to elicit a state of terror in a lot of people, no doubt they worry I’m about to launch into some sales pitch about a Kickstarter campaign or urge them to “like” me on Facebook or join my mailing list. It’s a bit like knocking on a stranger’s door and saying “Have you heard the good news?” – very few are welcomed over the threshold. No, I’m afraid we rock bands are no longer glamorous. Not by default anyway. We are old fashioned, our methods unsubtle, our ambitions second hand. We are not the embodiment of freedom or rebellion or progress, but vanity and wishful thinking. Rock musicians are all too often simply a nuisance. Always spamming, begging, moaning, trying to make investors out of enthusiasts. We were once the escape and now we set the traps. When did it all get so damn tacky?
It’s probably not our fault. These are changing times and we’re caught in a peculiar hinterland between two philosophies. Some cultural commentators say the internet is a good way of broadcasting to EVERYONE; others say it’s a tool to focus in on those who are really interested, a specialisation aid. More and more I’m veering towards the latter notion, yet we must still pay a certain amount of lip-service to the former or else risk eschewing legions of promoters who gauge success with numbers alone. Those dreaded ugly numbers.
As usual I’m over-thinking things, at odds with that Devil-may-care attitude people in bands are supposed to have.
The problem is that we started The Bedlam Six at the tail end of another era, all our role models operated in a completely different set of circumstances and expectations. True we wised up to this relatively early on but that doesn’t alter the fact that most of the time we (and most other independent acts I know) are running to stand still. I’m glad we went down the DIY route, I’m glad it got us thinking, I’m glad we aren’t mindless drug addicts being shepherded about by a greedy manager. I like the way the internet has encouraged a more considered version of DIY with an emphasis on sustainability rather than hedonism (though I must admit the new buzz term “musicpreneur” does cause a certain amount of bile to rise in my throat). We developed on the road, met a lot of fascinating people, found ourselves in some amazing moments and did it all on our own terms. I wouldn’t change a second of it. But I’m curious to know how we’d do things if we were only just starting out now, in 2014 – if we’d gone into all this with even half an idea that our musical peers would one day refer to themselves as “brands not bands” in a completely non-ironic way. Yuck.
So we’re stepping back for a bit. Just to have a think. We’ve got one more full band tour (see gig section for details) then we’ll go on hiatus. We might be gone for such a short time that no one even notices. We might not. There will still be a trickle of music videos emerging over the coming months and I’ll still be playing solo shows (have to pay the bills somehow!) plus my band-mates likewise have plenty of other projects that require their attention (see their various personal websites linked on www.bedlamsix.com for details); but the extravaganza that is The Bedlam Six will disappear behind the curtain for a while. Who knows, maybe it’ll prove to be something of a chrysalis (as biological metaphor rather than 90s indie label reference). We still ain’t done being young… but we do occasionally find ourselves wondering what we’d like to be when we grow up. No doubt we’ll grow down again pretty quickly. We’ll just have to see.
© Christine Keating 2014
Of all the release parties I’ve attended over the years I have two clear favourites: Alabaster dePlume‘s Copernicus LP and Richard Barry‘s Diffident Fecund Album. They were markedly different in theme and fuss but shared one key likeness (other than being on the same label): they were both small. Most artists try to go big with album launches – as big as possible, often bigger than they can comfortably accomplish. We’ve watched generations of rock and pop bands do BIG so many times it’s what we all naturally aspire to. It’s an instinctive impulse. We think of inflatable pigs over Battersea Power Station or heroic effigies floating down the River Thames. It’s not enough to simply celebrate a recording – EVERYONE must celebrate it. Everyone must be bullied into having an opinion… it is album promotion as military campaign (who will win: Art or Indifference?).
Too often the consequence of all this pomp is the artist/band ends up caring more about what strangers think than what their actual audience thinks. What started out as a genuine celebration becomes PR ammunition for the next project and the wretched cycle perpetuates itself indefinitely, with each press release just a little bit more cynical than the last.
Richard Barry has been on the Debt Records roster from the very beginning but has only just released his first full length album with us. Preparing for the launch was a nest of complications from the start. Indeed, we’d been discussing it for well over a year before it actually happened. The date kept getting pushed back; the event concept kept changing; band members’ calendars were forever protesting and going out of sync. It was not an easy birth. We all loved the record and wanted to do it justice, yet all we managed to do was continually delay its emergence – simply because we wanted it to be BIG. Unfortunately our ambitions were not the only big thing needing attention – there was also a big problem. Around the time the album was nearing completion Richard began to suffer terrible pains in his hands. Any prolonged performance became an agony, particularly exacerbated by stringed instruments with a high action or heavy gauge. Touring was, for the time being at least, completely out of the question.
This is a huge blow to any performer, especially now that we so often hear the argument “the recording industry is dead, it’s all about playing live”. The prospect of being surrounded by zillions of boxes of CDs and unable to shift any of the damn things can lead even the most optimistic individuals down a rabbit hole of melancholia.
It is also a problem for small labels. Debt has a rule about only working with acts that perform live, not because we sneer at shy bedroom producers, it’s just that our marketing budgets are so meagre (you can count the thousands of pounds on a single hand – and that hand is generally a fist) the only real hope for our records is to simply get on the road and put them directly in front of people’s faces.
So here we were with one of our original signings (and one of my best friends) unable to promote the album it had taken years to make.
Of course, the worry is not merely that an individual album cannot be toured effectively but that the momentum in general becomes almost non-existent. It doesn’t matter how ecstatic people are about your music, if you sit still too long then the more casual element of your regular audience simply forget you exist.
Still, we were pressing on. A year passed, a single came out and, later, so did a baby (though the label had nothing to do with the latter). By this time we’d finally settled on a launch date and an event strategy whereby we’d establish a “Richard & Friends” scenario and pepper the main performance with a series of guests so that there’d never be more than, say, twenty minutes continuous playing for Richard (whilst still giving the audience a formidable quantity of his songs spread throughout the evening). The issue now though was Where. Large capacity venues seemed an unrealistic proposition after such a hiatus, but small ones seemed inappropriate for a proper celebration. No one wanted to be confronted with a beautiful yet half-empty theatre, but neither did we want to be folded away in some generic pub backroom.
So we did what we always used to do in the days before the label started, when we were just a ragtag bunch of skint twenty-somethings still looking for a niche. We filled a house with booze and instruments, set up a performance area and enjoyed ourselves. We did a bit of promotion on social media but only enough to spread through existing networks rather than to lure strangers or the press. The result was a house full of people we liked – some playing and some spectating – people who had previously only seen Richard on a stage now got a chance to talk with him at length in a relaxed setting (and not just Richard, there were representatives of pretty much every band on the roster, just there for a good time… no hard sell, no agenda). Anyone who knew about this gig only knew because they’d deliberately positioned themselves near enough to Richard and/or the label – people with an active interest in what he’s up to rather than those idly scanning event listings for a night out. A sort of reward for the most dedicated.
Next time we’ll do the usual thing and hire a venue with a fancy lighting rig and a big sound system, with a backstage that has lightbulbs round the mirrors (you know the sort of place). We’ll put up posters and charm local radio and maybe get a few bits and pieces in the paper; we’ll get a respectable crowd that mingles the long-term enthusiasts with the cultural grazers. And it’ll be a different kind of fun, a more impressive kind of fun. An environment in which a performer can publicly gauge their success and be judged accordingly. In this instance, however, I think it was good to go small, to put on an event specifically for the people who really wanted it, who were hungry enough to sniff it out.
Because if you’ve been away without going anywhere, experienced hard times and dead ends, felt like your options were shrinking before your very eyes, you don’t necessarily need the applause of those you’ve coaxed back into the room, you need it from the people who never left in the first place.
Richard Barry’s Diffident Fecund Album is available to stream and purchase here.
