The Unity Theatre in Liverpool has long been a home for the adventurous and the glorious. It has been and will hopefully always be the place in which the avant-garde shakes hands with the rebellious and in which the seditious, defiant revolutions can start.
These revolutions may be small, they may be missed by the greater good and the world in general but they take place none the less and alongside the plays and productions that take place within its two theatre spaces and even a nod to Kerouac having been filmed within its walls, it is music that carries the revolution nod gently along.
Finding The Midnight Ramble’s Paul Dunbar with a spare 15 minutes is a revolution in itself. Like all people thrust into the modern world of 21st Century thinking, being busy is the rhetoric to stop the world from thinking. Like so many millions of others though Paul Dunbar uses the time with the brain firing off ideas in which to captivate, illuminate or just make someone else smile, with patience and ease.
Catching up with a master of the music rebellion inside the home of Liverpool revolution before he goes on stage ahead of showcasing the first song from the new forthcoming album is quite an honour. Time is precious…then again so is music.
We’re sat in the Unity Theatre ahead of a very big night for you, a sort of little teaser for the Liverpool public for the next Midnight Ramble song.
PD: “Yes, the song is called I Led A Lie and it was recorded with a guy called Marc Joy who’s a music producer. He’s done stuff with Oasis, Radiohead and Primal Scream and many, many other bands. We worked with him on our previous E.P. which was High Time and we packaged it up as High Time/Live, which was a seven track live recorded at the Unity Theatre as well so he’s back at the helm and another guy called Paul Thompson who’s been doing a lot of work with Ellen and the Escapades who are a Leeds-based band and so those two have sort of double-headed that single and they are going to be doing our album which is going to be released later in the year.
So this single is the first single to be lifted off it. It’s a bit of a different approach for the Midnight Ramble, it’s not as loud or as raucous, it’s a bit more laid back, a bit more Fleetwood Mac type-feel and it doesn’t contain any brass either. So we thought what will this do for the sound of the band but we really like the song and we think it’s a really good approach for the band. We just wanted to show a different side to the band the Midnight Ramble. We’ve got many different colours, many different styles that we all sort of mix together and this is a bit more of a mellow, country rock approach I think.
We’ll talk about the brass in a minute but the song title seems very heavily led shall we say? It’s almost damning of a certain type of person?
PD: “It was originally written acoustically before I fleshed it out with a band sound and it’s a very personal song to me because it doesn’t really chart my journey through the music scene but it’s a bit more of an honest approach and storytelling of what I’ve kind of experienced – the lies that you’ve got to tell to get a gig in some ways or to blag as such so that’s what it’s kind of about. The band responded to that and created this sound – very honest and very wholesome type sound and that’s what we’ve achieved in the recording of it, and with the lack of brass it still sounds great, it doesn’t really need it because we got so many musicians who can all play different types of instruments we didn’t just want to use the brass like we’ve used in everything else, we wanted to do something that suited the song the best and the brass just didn’t quite work so we left it out. Our trumpet player Mr. Rory Ballantyne (he has to get a name check!)is on guitar for this track, he’s using e-bow effects to create a real atmosphere for the song. In terms of production values on the song as well, my vocal is very prominent at the forefront of the song, it’s not swamped by guitars, so it gives it a bit more of a personal approach. It’s very self-confessional; although I wouldn’t want to go as far as pretentious or self-indulgent.”
I was thinking more along the lines of the poetry of Anne Sexton for example, the very confessional feel of that, you could never call her pretentious.
PD: “I completely agree. The lyrics are kind of shrouded in a little bit of mystery and it doesn’t name anyone’s names or anything. It’s the experiences I’ve experienced through the music scene. I’ve been it for about twelve years now and have been in many different incarnations of bands and met many, many great people – including your good self Ian, many bad people! You learn a lot through that and even though I’m only 27 this year I felt I needed to get it off my chest now and is something that I feel very passionately about.”
I say self-confessional, it’s almost self auto-biographical in that case, with you saying that there’s a lot to say about your life anyway in what you’ve done and the amount that you do within the Unity Theatre. It’s more autobiographical than self-confessional.
PD: “ In terms of the song itself, it’s very much autobiographical and I’d say on the upcoming album, a lot of the songs are along that same line. I feel as if I’m writing the strongest stuff I’ve ever written; lyrically, musically and in terms of packaging it all together as who I am as opposed to who I want to be.”
Do you find as you get older, the more experienced that you are, there is more of a pressure on yourself or on the band to beat or to enhance what you’ve done before? Your debut album was terrific; it was one of the finest albums of that year, which I said to you at the time. Your live album was another step forward again. Is there too much of a pressure on you? Can we do it a third time; can we really get above the parapet?
PD: “I think there is. I’m not going to lie to you, we’re an unsigned band, we do everything ourselves, but that’s the way we like to do it and with that, we’ve achieved good success in what we do and we’re very proud of what we do. We’re not at the same level as some bands or artists at this certain point but I think we’re definitely growing and in terms of what we’ve done before, yeah, it feels like we’ve progressed, that we’ve stepped up our game just through playing together so many times, knowing each other and getting to know more about each other as well, subconsciously you just start to feel differently about how you play and how you interact in the rehearsal room and on stage or even just having a beer together, you just step that level up in some way.
Marc and Paul, the producers of the album are very, very good at guiding us. The usual role of the producer is to do that, but they are also a bit like counsellors in a way, they kind of let us work it out for ourselves and guide us to the best possible outcome and I think that has helped us so much from when we last recorded, we’ve developed this unspoken relationship and they know what we’re about and what we’re going for and they can guide us to that next part. So I think with their help, the way that we interact with each other and the songs are better than ever, I think there has been a step up from what we were and it’s definitely the best stuff we’ve done.
The recorded side of things – we did vocals and brass for the remaining tracks on the upcoming album last weekend and we’ve got to go back to do a bit more, but with that and mixing and mastering it should be out in August sometime, but again it’s definitely the best stuff we’ve done by far. It’s self-autobiographical, it’s everyone putting their own personality into it.”
Bearing in mind where you are now in the Unity Theatre, there’s empty seats around you, the sterile feel of an empty theatre, when you’re out there later this evening or at any venue, what’s that initial rush like when you walk on stage? Knowing that you’re showcasing a brand new single for people to hear?
PD: “It’s the anticipation more than anything, and if I’m being honest, I don’t really get nervous. You do what you do for your enjoyment but also it’s for somebody else to connect with that enjoyment, what you’re saying, what you’re playing. You’re trying to get people to connect with your band and with your sound. That’s the anticipatory side of things, we all walk out and really want to do well at this and really show what we’ve got but not in a competitive way either. A lot of bands these days think they’ve got to outdo each other?! We do what we do, we love doing it and we just want people to connect with it more than anything.”
Ian D. Hall