SHEFFIELD singer-songwriter Richard Hawley’s visit to York could not be better timed.
His appearance in Futuresound Group’s second summer of Live At York Museum Gardens concerts on July 5 coincides with the 20th anniversary reissue of his fourth album, Coles Corner, a day earlier on Parlophone/Rhino.
Hawley, 58, will perform his Mercury Music Prize-nominated 2005 album in full for the first time with a string section, alongside a selection of favourites from his 11 albums, from 2001’s Late Night Final to 2024’s In This City They Call You Love.
“I’ve been going to York on and off since childhood,” says Richard. “I’m from Yorkshire, so you don’t have to join the dots. In fact I used to busk in York, anywhere by the Shambles, but it was tricky [to find a pitch], so you’d have to get on the 5.30/6.30 train from Sheffield.
“Going back 35-40 years ago, I remember a time I got there for 7 o’clock, got my stuff out, but found I was competing with this big Scottish guy with bagpipes – and you can’t compete with a jet pilot!”
That said, Hawley prefers the tuneful playing of bagpipes to the irritating sounds emerging from headphones on trains. “That’s becoming more and more common in public, as sounds around us become louder and louder but more and more irrelevant,” he says.
By way of contrast, “let’s hope we can communicate some good vibes in the Museum Gardens. I know it’s built on the site of Eboracum and was added to by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society,” says the cultural history enthusiast .
“Maybe Coles Corner [in Sheffield] is like one of those ruins in the gardens. Obsolete, but from a distance quite beautiful. It’s weird, because of the nature of what I do, I try to preserve things that are lost or are being lost, and at one time Coles Corner was a meeting place for friends, lovers, whatever.
“John Lewis ended up taking over the family-run haberdashers there. The original building was knocked down, and there’s a picture of these guys taking the lead off in 1969. That was two years after I was born, but the ripples of its very existence carry on – though the irony of it is that I tried to preserve something that now people think more about the record than the place.”
The romance of the title track is captured in sweeping strings and swooning chorus on a universal paean to the loneliness of the city at night. “The council wanted to out the lyrics to Coles Corner on the street corner but I said ‘No’ because Coles Corner doesn’t belong to me, but to the people of Sheffield. I think there’s a vape shop there now.”
Coles Corner was former Longpigs and Pulp guitarist Hawley’s fourth album and first for Mute Records. Recorded in Sheffield’s Yellow Arch Studios and co-produced with his long-time bassist Colin Elliot and Mike Timm, it featured Shez Sheridan (guitars), Jon Trier (keyboards), Jonny Wood (upright bass) and Andy Cook (drums).
Richard Hawley’s sleeve artwork for his 1995 album Coles Corner, featuring the Stephen Joseph Theatre vintage frontage in Scarborough
Inspired by Hawley’s love of vintage 1940s and 1950s’ chamber pop, country, blues and rock’n’roll, they conjured a set of intimate love songs full of nostalgia, regret, sadness and a bittersweet atmosphere that bore witness to Hawley’s abiding love and passion for his home city of Sheffield.
From next Friday, the expanded edition will be available on Half-Speed master black vinyl, housed in a gatefold sleeve, 2CD deluxe edition, featuring B-sides and previously unreleased acoustic tracks, and limited-edition bundles.
Describing the experience of revisiting his original recordings, Richard says: “It’s a weird place, but occasionally you’re allowed to glance over your shoulder. Going back to figure out how to play half of those songs is difficult because we’re different human beings now, even from a year ago.
“I like to move forward all the time, to seek new experiences, but by the very nature of what I do, as an older person, a 58-year-old musician, I create music that has the vibe of something lost.”
The album sleeve does not feature Coles Corner, but the art deco frontage of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, the former Odeon cinema building in Scarborough. “It fitted more with what I had in mind with that album, and like most cities and towns, inch by inch, day by day, we are losing those values of what we were.
“Now it’s vape shops and Poundland, and that’s more to do with being in the north. There’s not a lot of sharing going on in this country.”
Hawley sums up his songwriting in the words of a former girlfriend. “She once said ‘you’re one of the few men that deals with male grief’. (My nan would have called me ‘a moany ****’!) I hadn’t thought of it that way; it was quite a shock.
“I don’t think it’s a curious thing, though, because the best kind of music opens us up to our very core. Gender is kind of irrelevant to that”
Looking ahead to July 5, Richard says: “My wife’s going to turn up at the gig, but she says it’ll ruin the day because York’s a nice place to visit without you playing!”
Futuresound Group presents Richard Hawley at Live at York Museum Gardens, York, July 5; gates open at 5pm. Tickets update: still available at futuresound.seetickets.com/event/richard-hawley/york-museum-gardens/3237716.
Hawley will be supported by 2024 Mercury Music Prize-winning Leeds band English Teacher and England-based New Jersey songwriter and multi-instrumentalist BC Camplight, promoting his new album, A Sober Conversation (Bella Union, June 27). Gates will open at 5pm.