The weather can surprise you in Liverpool, it can be freezing in some parts of the country, it can be downright torrential and heartbreaking in others and yet as a city that straddles arguably one of the two famous and iconic rivers in the country, the sheer mildness at times of the climate is enough to make you believe that perhaps that someone does truly watch over the city. Looking up above the line that inhabits the view from one of the coffee shops in the city centre, the image of a overgrown red and white costumed seasonal house breaker is caught scaling the outside of the Radio City Tower, one foot perilously close to being put through the roof of the Playhouse Theatre, the other grasping to get a firm grip and perhaps survey with greater clarity all those who have been good and naughty during the year.

Despite it looking warm, once the coat comes off, the cold bites down on the skin and yet Derek King looks serene, contemplative and in the mood to impart season greetings; to talk about music in the city and his album Sometimes that he released earlier on in the year. The topic of conversation is as hot as the steaming tea that has been placed before us and as look across the space between us and the seasonal house breaker again I realise just how cold the day has become.

It’s cold, Santa’s climbing the wall over there but sometimes you just have to come into town and speak to local musicians with things to say like you Derek King!

DK: “Thank you very much, what a fantastic link, you should be on radio! Thank you much for doing your final interview of the year- in theory!”

The album Sometimes – which is why we’re here really, it’s very cool, the way that you’ve put it out as an album, I was quite intrigued by that, it stands alone as a very good piece of Liverpool music.

DK: “That’s very kind of you to say so! There had been a number of songs that had been kicking around in my head, I’d been playing them over and over again on the guitar and just one day I thought I’m going to get all this stuff together properly and I met a very nice chap called John Lawton at Cross Town Studios and he persuaded me to come over and put a few things down and through John I really got the recording mojo and I was able to put down what I think are really good versions of those songs, borrowed a few tricks from various musicians, we had John himself playing the electric lead guitars all the way through. This is one of the advantages of using Cross Town Studios, John takes an interest in your work and also he provides his services as a session musician. He did that guitar for me and he also did a bit of keyboard work for me actually as well plus he writes these wonderful drum tracks which means you don’t have to hire a drummer! You need a drummer live, I wouldn’t attempt anything live without a drummer but in the studio, unless you’re heading towards a particular sound for drums, you can do a pretty good job with midis and the technology of the midis is that far advanced that you can get a very authentic sound and I defy anyone to listen to my album and pick up that it’s not a genuine drummer on there unless of course you are a drummer then probably you’d spot it! If I was a millionaire and had an unlimited budget though, I would have hired a drummer to come into the studio with me.

I did get other musicians involved, for instance, Stephanie Kearley is a wonderful musician, she’s worked locally with Robert Vincent and Ian Till, Reid Anderson; she’s worked with him. I’ve always loved her stuff, she’s put this really understated bit of strings underneath these songs and it’s the kind of stuff she plays that you don’t really notice but if it wasn’t there, you’d miss it. She came along and she’s a one-take wonder, you send her the track over and she comes into the studio and just plays it and she embellishes it and she comes along and does a little string quartet that you didn’t originally ask her to do and the final part of the jigsaw was I needed some female vocal harmonies. I know quite a lot of singers around Liverpool and I thought who’s going to give something completely different and original with a twist – so I thought SheBeat – my very good friend Jodie, she’s such fun. I’ve been on record may times saying that she’s just the sort of thing a musician should be in that she doesn’t take herself seriously, she goes and has a laugh, she’ll play anywhere, she’ll turn up to the opening of an envelope and play or she’ll play in front of 300 people, she is what you get, it’s the same every time and she’s just good fun. It was one of those Eureka! moments; I thought who should I ask to do harmonies on here, I’ll ask Jodie! I’m so glad I did, for a start, she never does what you ask her to do. I had these harmonies worked out and I asked her if she could sing them, she went no, it’s too high, I’ll do it this way! It was better the way she did it.”

The songs To Be a Boy and Beautiful In Blue really are the stand-out tracks for me, they are very cool in relation to the ethos of the album.

DK: “Actually, it’s interesting that you picked those two tracks out, they are very different songs, Jodie’s not on either of them but interestingly both of those songs were entrants in the Liverpool Acoustic Songwriting Challenge, one in 2013 and one in 2014, they were both finalists but neither got the prize but there was stiff competition in these things. I’m proud of both songs and I think they’ve got something to say. About A Boy is kind of about me, a middle-aged man who wakes up one day and decides he wants to be a boy again and misbehave, I want to have a laugh.”

Do you think that resonates in all men, that they are really all children at heart?

DK: “I think so, there’ a few songs on the next album which I’m hoping to release it next year but it might not be until the late spring but there’s a couple of songs which explore the same theme. It’s the man who thinks I’m a boy really, where did all this come from, how did I get lumbered with this mortgage and this bloody job and all this stuff? I want to bounce on Space Hoppers and set fire crackers off.”

That’s a most wonderful and great image, the best I’ve heard in ages! At the end of the day, we all still want to be children again.

DK: “Being an adult is so complicated and without getting too maudlin about it, when I was sort of 18/19, I thought when I grow up and I’ve got a proper job life would be easier then but actually life has never been any easier, it gets more difficult year by year, different problems present themselves and then you get to my particular time of life which without wishing to give too much of the game away, I’m probably in middle, middle age but how many people do you know who are 110? You start to get on top of all your other woes and the daily aches and pains, the thing that’s started to bother me is that I’ve started to get arthritis in my fingers which if you are a guitarist is hard work. It destroys me, it’s only been the past five or six years where I’ve actually worked hard at playing the guitar to try and be good at it and it’s been a thing that I’ve picked up from time to time but the last five or six years, I’ve tried to get good at it and now I’m possibly reaching the end of the time when I’m going to be able to play it very well at all.”

I hope that it doesn’t happen, I really do. Like yourself, Dennis Parkinson and John Jenkins, you all seem to have come out of this vacuum which once existed, you all suddenly appeared at roughly the same sort of time and you’re all producing such good work that it would be such a shame not to have you around, if that makes sense?

DK: “Absolutely, I’ll carry on doing it even if I can’t play the guitar, I’ll get someone like John Lawton to play the guitar for me, I’ll carry on making music. To go and perform somewhere is what it’s all about recording is great but performing is something else and I’m something of a perfectionist, I don’t like to go somewhere and be rubbish. I like to be able to play what I want to play and not fluff it. So I don’t want to get onto that sort of theme, I like the ‘can do’ mentality.

One of the things I found really supportive and quite lovely about the Liverpool Acoustic scene is that you can rock up somewhere and play a few tunes and there’ll be people of all ages, 18 year old kids, well there’s ones younger than that, some older than me, all walks of life and everybody’s mates, everyone puts their arms around each other, encourages each other and I was a little bit nervous about getting involved in the early days a few years ago but when you realise that everyone is the same as you, they are just going along to try and do the best they can and no one is going to belittle you or put you down, everyone is extremely supportive and it’s quite cathartic in many ways and then as you say, over the past few years, we’ve had other people like John Jenkins and Dennis Parkinson who are of a similar age to me have come through and I really enjoy going to the same places that those guys play.”

You do seem to support each other very well, back over August Bank Holiday weekend at the Kazamier Gardens, there was a great afternoon of music. You were also complimented by Katy McGrath, you had that wonderful sense of enjoyment but also enthusiasm for the day.

DK: “You get this juxtaposition don’t you, you get old fossils like me playing then you get Katie McGrath playing who just jumps up on stage and stamps her foot and just blows all the cobwebs away – fantastic! Roxanne De Bastion played as well – what a talent, you’ve got those sorts of people. As I say, I’m not going to win any beauty contests or anything like that, I think I’m on a level playing field musically with these guys, we’re doing similar kinds of thing, they are younger, better-looking and a bit more popular than me, they might find it easier to sell C.D.s but you know!”

What you all offer Liverpool is perhaps something that wasn’t there a decade ago and it’s taken that mindset to offer it. One last question, you alluded to a new album?

DK: “I like the idea of having a theme to the album, sometimes as you’ve sort of identified in your review, it was all about the everyday, its sometimes we’re happy, sometimes we’re sad, sometimes it’s a special occasion, sometimes its normal. Every song on there was to do with a different human emotion. The next album is a similar sort of idea, in that it’s called Seasons. I tend probably a bit too often to sing about the weather! The title track of is also called Seasons and it’s again about the human condition, everything in life is transitory. There’s a line in the chorus which says: ‘dreams and schemes are castles made in sand, we can’t control’, everything collapses, there is a point in us making certain plans but don’t blame us if things go wrong because the tide comes in and washes it all away because things change, you fall in and out of love, whatever.”

It’s almost like it’s humanity’s folly to plan. Sometimes what’s the point in planning because you don’t know what the next day will bring. I might put that in a poem for you!

DK: “Absolutely! Oh, please do! That’s fantastic! The other songs – I’m trying to do a similar thing with, it’s all about seasons, different aspects of humanity and there’s not let’s dance or fall in love music, it’s the everyday. There’s one track on it which I really like which has hit home for a number of people and it’s been out there for a number of months now is Faith And Belief, that was inspired by the sort of ridiculousness of fundamental religious fervour that seems to be gripping the world recently and it’s all very well to say those so and sos cut peoples’ heads off but I hear just as horrible things from people who purport to be Christians, describe themselves as Christians, Jews and Muslims, if you’re going to believe in big guy upstairs let’s have let’s all believe that what the big guy wants you to do is to be nice to each other. Why hate each other and cut each other’s heads off? Faith And Belief is about that and I make no bones about it, my own view is that I’m a confirmed Athiest. If people want to believe in the big guy then let them but accept that what he wants you to do is to be nice to each other.”

We’re all here for a short time, it’s the erasing of the sand again….

DK: “Yeah, as Jimi Hendrix said: castles made of sand melt into sea eventually!”

Ian D. Hall