Chris Helme: Frontman at the helm of The Seahorsesfrom 1996 to 1999...alongside the guitar pyrotechnics of Stone Roses old boy John Squire
IN this special extended edition, Two Big Egos In A Small Car podcast duo Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson interview York musician Chris Helme, co-founder of The Seahorses with Stone Roses guitarist John Squire.
As he marks 25 years since their debut, Do It Yourself, by revisiting the songs on a DIY solo acoustic tour, Chris spills the beans on his journey from busker to Glastonbury-playing frontman, Hollywood recording sessions with Tony Visconti, a top two album and a parting of the ways brought on by that familiar curse, musical differences.
Seth Lakeman: Themes of love and death, the environment and self-belief are to the fore on new album Make Your Mark. Picture: Tom Griffiths
WEST Country folk singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Seth Lakeman plays The Crescent, in York, tonight when both old and new will be to the fore.
Performing an intimate set in a duo with Plymouth vocalist Alex Hart to a seated audience, Lakeman’s focus will fall on both his new album, Make Your Mark, and on the 15th anniversary of the gold-selling Freedom Fields.
Newly reissued in a deluxe edition on CD and double vinyl in coloured and black limited editions, Freedom Fields comes with exclusive bonus content, such as unreleased tracks and rare demos and with a signed art print from selected stores.
“This is my debut at The Crescent,” says Devonian Seth. “I’ve previously played the NCEM and Fibbers, and I love playing York as there’s a great music scene in the city.
“It’ll be me playing with Alex Hart, and Joe Francis, from Winter Mountain, who’s from Cornwall – over the border – will be supporting. I’ve worked with him a few times before and he’ll probably join us on harmonium.”
Reflecting on playing in this format, Seth says: “I’ll be honest, all the creative industries are struggling with the need to control costs at this time, so you use less of your ‘cast’, but you still get out there and there’s a magic in the duo format.
“It allows you to play different songs and you can move things around in the set list more than you can with a five-piece – and it’s nice to go out and concentrate on the voices.”
Seth is overjoyed to be playing with fellow musicians to live audiences once more on a 14-date tour that began on November 2. “I always think it’s important if you can get people into a room to perform music together,” he says. “Connecting through technology can work but playing in a room is the best way of connecting.”
Make Your Mark, released on Seth’s label Honour Oak Records on CD and digital formats on November 18 and on vinyl on December 10, was written during his Covid-enforced 18 months off the road.
Seth Lakeman’s album artwork for Make Your Mark
Fourteen songs were recorded at Middle Farm Studios in Devon earlier this year as restrictions eased, with Seth producing his 11th studio album himself.
“The pandemic gave me a real determination to come out musically stronger and I really dug deep into myself,” he says. “Being able to record and play with the band again was really quite spiritual.”
Joining Seth on the recording sessions were long-time bassist Ben Nicholls, who has toured the world with Seth since his early days; Benji Kirkpatrick, from Bellowhead and Faustus, on bouzouki, banjo and mandolin; Alex Hart on backing vocals and Toby Kearney, principal percussionist at the Birmingham Conservatoire, on drums.
Reflecting on how his song-writing has progressed since landmark indie-folk album Freedom Fields brought him the Folk Singer of the Year and Album Of The Year awards at the 2007 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, Seth says: “I’ve branched out more [from violin] onto guitars and banjos that I now see as a tool for writing songs.
“I’ve always been interested in lyrics and the process of putting together a song, and maybe as you get to middle-aged life [Seth is 44], you feel more in tune with who you are and what you feel – and that comes with wisdom.
“I’m now looking at a more personal journey in song-writing. When I made Freedom Fields, it was more a case of writing in the tradition but with a modern context to it. I was in the depths of that as a writer for a good few years as I loved intertwining the old and the new.”
Themes on Make Your Mark range from the environment to love, self-belief to death. “They are songs about the bigger things: life and death, but also they’re celebrating lives lived, and I can see why that is challenging, because such subjects are heart-breaking, but that’s why sea shanties are so popular now because they’re so powerful in their emotional impact,” says Seth.
Living amid the beauty of Devon, he has felt the need to express his thoughts on the environment. “Around the coast, it’s getting swallowed up by second-home owners, but the argument goes that without the tourism industry there wouldn’t be the building industry, and you need to keep them both going.
“Here on Dartmoor, a lot of land is being sold off and it becomes a constant thing for us to moan about, when green land is getting sold. I certainly touch on it with my farmer mates, and it is a concern.
The 15th anniversary edition of Seth Lakeman’s award-winning Freedom Fields album
“I have three children – twins aged eight and a five year old – and climate change is right there as the biggest thing to be worrying about for their future.”
Writing about love, the most commonplace theme of all since song-writing began, Seth notes a change in his focus: “In your 40s, you start thinking about your parents and those things you have maybe taken for granted and really should cherish,” he says.
“Then, at this age, thinking about death, it’s about understanding your mortality and coming to terms with it, like losing my best friend suddenly. There’s a lot of his presence and personality on this album.
“I found it like therapy, expressing myself in song, paying some sort of homage to him. I felt his presence as I recorded it.”
Self-belief may seem an unexpected subject for Seth, but he says: “I’ve always had a problem with self-belief and security and confidence, being the third child, with my two brothers [fellow musicians Sean and Sam] being the flag-bearers and me being the black sheep.
“That feeling still exists and it’s probably part of the fuel that keeps me going. Regardless of money, that’s probably at the root of who I am and why I keep doing it. There’s not a lot of money in this line of work. I should have been a chef or a comedian!”
Self-belief, says Seth, is something he returns to time and time again. “I’m never happy with an album, never completely content, because contentment is a dangerous thing. You can be proud of what you’ve done, but you must keep your feet on the ground and keep pushing yourself,” he concludes.
Seth Lakeman plays The Crescent, York, tonight, supported by Joe Francis, at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £20 from seetickets.com/tour/seth-lakeman; more on the door. Please note, seating is unreserved.
The track listing for Make Your Mark is:
Hollow; The Giant; Love Will Still Remain; Bound To Someone; Make Your Mark; Coming For You Soon; the first single, Higher We Aspire; The Lark; Side By Side; Fallen Friend; Shoals To Turn; Underground; Change and Constantly.
Foy Vance: Storytelling singer-songwriter from Bangor, Northern Ireland, now living in the Scottish Highlands
NORTHERN Irish singer-songwriter Foy Vance will play York Barbican on March 25 on next year’s British tour in support of his fourth studio album, Signs Of Life.
His second release on Ed Sheeran’s Gingerbread Man Records label arrives today on CD, vinyl and digital formats as his follow-up to 2016’s The Wild Swan.
Signs Of Life finds Bangor-born Vance – husband, father, hipster, sinner, drinker – belatedly coming to terms with his demons at 47. Driven by percussion, lead single Time Stand Still features a soaring, emotive vocal from Vance, who was struggling with an addiction to alcohol and painkillers at the time of writing.
Likewise, Vance tackles the subject head on in Hair Of The Dog, listing his self-medicating crutches while confessing, “You no longer make me happy/You no longer make me smile/You take everything that’s good within me.”
“I had my first extended period off the road after 20 years of constant touring,” says the moustachioed storytelling bluesman, survivor, rocker and folk hero. “I realised: wow, I drink two bottles of wine and at least a half bottle of vodka a day. I’d start the day with codeine to get myself sorted, and I’d smoke joints throughout the day.
“So, I realised: I have so many incredibly bad habits here. I’m showing all the signs of death, getting ashen, grey, smoking more, drinking more, smoking more…I hit a wall.”
“Signs of Life is about re-emergence: me in my own soft revolution, the world re-emerging in what we’re about to see as we hopefully go back to some semblance of normality,” says Foy Vance
His manager urged him to seek help. “And in those moments, you do wish time would stand still,” says Vance. “Can’t I just stop here and sit in this moment before I have to take up that mantle?”
Alternative/indie vocalist, guitarist and piano player Vance released his debut album, Hope, independently in 2007 before signing to Glassnote Records for his second full-length album, 2013’s Joy Of Nothing, winner of the inaugural Northern Ireland Music Prize. He has since toured the globe with Ed Sheeran, Bonnie Raitt, Marcus Foster, Snow Patrol and Sir Elton John, as well as on his solo headline tours.
In 2015, Vance became the second signing to Gingerbread Man Records, Sheeran’s label division within Atlantic Records. The Wild Swan surfaced in 2016, executive-produced by Sir Elton John, with the singles Coco, Upbeat Feelgood and Noam Chomsky Is A Soft Revolution all being playlisted on BBC Radio 2. That year too, Vance performed on NBC’s Today and CBS’s The Late Late Show with James Corden.
Now comes Signs Of Life. “As always, Foy has knocked it out of the park,” says Sheeran. “I love giving him the creative freedom to do what he wants as I’m at the end of the day just a huge fan of his work. It’s such a joy to be able to put out such great bodies of work from him, I hope everyone enjoys it as much as me.”
“As always, Foy has knocked it out of the park,” says Ed Sheeran of Foy Vance’s second album for his Gingerbread Man Records label
“I feel like I’ve got a confidante in Ed, a real ally,” responds Vance. “In many ways he has found a way to afford me the ability to keep on making art the way I want to make it. It’s comforting to know that no matter what I wanted to do, he would fight for it.”
This week, Vance is playing six intimate sold-out shows on his An Evening With Foy Vance Tour 2021, taking in Leeds Brudenell Social Club on Tuesday, and tonight’s London gig at St Pancras Old Church will be livestreamed globally from 9pm BST with multiple broadcasts to follow. Tickets are available at: dice.fm/artist/foy-vance.
Signs Of Life was recorded in three locations: Vance’s Pilgrim studio at home on the shores of Loch Tay in Highland Perthshire, another recording set-up in nearby Dunvarlich House and at Plan B’s Kings X studio in London.
The album was written and played more or less entirely by Vance, with assistance from young Northern Irish producer Gareth Dunlop.
Among the first tracks Vance wrote was the mea-culpa album opener Sapling – now rapidly approaching two million streams on Spotify –and it showed him the path forward.
“I once built a bower, I could build you a home,” he sings in his promise to his new wife, after her move from London to join Vance in his adopted Highland home, that he would do more than simply offer a new domestic setting. Or, as he puts it in his inimitable style: “Let me go further and do the actual right thing instead of being a drunken ballbag.”
Fashioned out of the grimness of 2020, Signs Of Life is an album of dawn after darkness, hope after despair, engagement after isolation, uplift after lockdown. It comes encased in bold sleeve artwork that reflects Vance’s desire to embrace all sides of everything, all humanity’s textures.
The “mad, striking image” for the album cover for Foy Vance’s Signs Of Life
Shot on a 160-year-old camera that “does arresting things with colours and shading”, the front image depicts him in a dress, blond wig and theatrical make-up back; on the back, he becomes a bare-chested, bare-knuckle boxer.
“They’re just mad, striking images, and I loved the fact that it was male and female,” explains Vance. “You know, life’s extreme, life’s volatile, life explodes into reality sometimes, and stops just as quick. So, to be struck by images on the cover made sense.”
A new collection of Foy Vance songs would be a tonic at any time, not only for devotee Ed Sheeran. Right now, in pandemic times, they cannot arrive a moment too soon. “That’s a huge part of it,” says Vance.
“Signs of Life is about re-emergence: me in my own soft revolution, the world re-emerging in what we’re about to see as we hopefully go back to some semblance of normality. But just life in general – flowers growing through the cracks in Chernobyl. Life finds a way, doesn’t it?”
The full track listing is: Sapling; We Can’t Be Tamed; Signs Of Life; Roman Attack; People Are Pills; Time Stand Still; If Christopher Calls; System; Hair Of The Dog; Resplendence; Republic Of Eden; It Ain’t Over and Percolate.
Tickets for Vance’s March 25 2022 gig – his first in York since playing Fibbers in June 2008 – go on sale at 10am on September 17 at yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Knockout punch: Foy Vance in boxer mode on the back sleeve of Signs Of Life
