Occasionally in life you may find yourself in conversation with a person who leaves you feeling so utterly at peace with yourself that you cannot but help relax, intrigued with what they have to say, and finding that despite your phone doing its upmost to scupper the connection made between two human beings, that the interviewee is calm, collected and kind enough to understand that these things happen, that at the end of the day the Cavalier approach is quite often the best policy to adopt.
Cavalier doesn’t mean being off hand, indifferent- not in the hands of one of the finest voices that Scotland has produced, for Eddi Reader, who first found the call to the world of music via the sirens of Sauchiehall Street and the Punk band Gang of Four, it is more of an acceptance that music, and those who are inflamed by its passion, deserve time to talk about it, to find the understanding that music, that a song, can save a life, can bring love.
The world of Fairground Attraction is never too far away from her soul, and even in the distinguished solo career that she has made for herself, the enticing back catalogue, the wonderful nights on stage, there will always be a part of her that remembers the nod to perfection.
It is perfection that makes Eddi Reader such a superbly informative interviewee, you cannot help but take the time to go down avenues you might not have thought of, and ahead of her new tour in support to her latest album, Cavalier, and the night of music eagerly awaited at the Southport Atkinson, I was fortunate to spend time talking to her on the phone.
How are you?
ER: “I’m good, I’m good – it’s only twelve but I’m fine!”
Congratulations on the new album, Cavalier.
ER: “Thank you, have you heard any of it yet?”
Yes, I reviewed a couple of weeks back, on September 9th for Liverpool Sound and Vision, yes – it’s very, very cool!
ER: “Oh, I did read it! Thank you for that!”
It’s an absolute pleasure and obviously on the back of the couple of appearances you’ve done at the Liverpool Epstein Theatre, it was very cool album in which to record. Are you looking forward to coming back – you’re playing Southport next time you’re in the North West?
ER: “Well, I’m looking forward to transferring what’s on the recording into a live performance. Some of the songs we weren’t sure how we were going to do without taking a million people on tour with us or quite a few anyway, we’re trying to cover all the sort of traditional bases and the contemporary bits and pieces. We’re looking forward to it and we’re rehearsing just the two days before the tour starts so everyone’s staying at mine and all that, so it will be fun I think and a beautiful experience. For the first time, I’ve got a couple of lassies with me – Siobhan Miller is the support and she might get up and do some backing vocals, the boys did it before but I kind of love female voices so I’m excited about that.”
That certainly comes across on the album, I think more so on this album than on the previous couple, there’s a very feminine undertone if you don’t mind me saying”.
ER: “Yeah, I like the idea of not doing them myself as well which helped, it’s amazing how different voices are – they are as individual as a fingerprint. For me, it’s like playing a little game with myself, in identifying the singer without the D.J. telling who it is; I do it with male and female singers. It’s interesting as there are definitely things on there that I wanted to hear, for example, Siobhan Miller and Annie Grace – they do harmonies on Maiden’s Lament and other things that I’ve got on there and there’s the wonderful Monica Queen from Glasgow, she’s amazing, you might have heard her sing, she sings a lot with Belle and Sebastian. She’s just been a constant, fantastic singer I believe she did some backing vocals for the Jane Pops back in the day and she’s made her own records but she hangs around Glasgow and I called her and I love the sound of her voice, she can do things with it that maybe I can’t and also Siobhan and Annie just laid claim to making that song sound as female as it does, you know? When I say female, I don’t mean female, I just mean mothering really.”
That’s a better word definitely!
ER: “A more mothering concept, there are there’s something about a female voice that harks back to our time in the caves or any human singing – I think human beings singing signals an – at ‘peaceness’ because you only do it, especially casually and unconsciously when we’re feeling relaxed. I think if kids hear their parents singing or adults singing, I guess they feel more inclined to feel that there’s a little bit of relaxation going on.”
It’s almost a reassurance isn’t it?
ER: “For me it was anyway.”
That definitely comes across. You mentioned the wonderful Maiden’s Lament and I pick up on that in the review but there is some really stirring stuff in there like Your Favourite Dress for example and Starlight or Maid O’ the Loch. There are some incredibly beautiful images coming through.
ER: “A lot of that was down to my producer and husband John Douglas – he’s been involved in bits and bobs since the Burns album but this is the first time it’s been full blown with being involved from start to finish. I mean just playing on it, there’s quite a few of his songs and a couple of blues and a couple of John’s writings and one or two of my own so I just of my traditional or the things that I’ve found that I wanted to expand on like Maiden’s Lament. On Maiden’s Lament, you can maybe hear Seamus Bagley, he does it unaccompanied live in a very odd way.”
If you go back a little bit, it’s extraordinary the way you went from something like Vagabond to this latest album, Vagabond is very shall we say masculine – I don’t mean that in a bad way, Euan Vernal, Boo Hewerdine, Gustaf Ljunggren and Ian Carr on it doesn’t it – wrapped around your vocals. It’s a very upfront appeal whereas this new album is just scintillating to be honest!
ER: “I like that, I’m going to carry that one round on a t-shirt!”
It would be nice for me to be on a t-shirt for once! I could live with that! What are your plans for after the tour?
ER: “Well, there’s definite plans for travelling outside of the U.K. – Ireland then Japan and Australia. They’re putting their hands up saying please do some work over here and I’d like to do more in Europe and so I don’t know. I’d like to do some of those American festivals. The Irish have got the American festivals sewn up, they get to do – they are quite big the Irish festivals out there. Scotland does not have the same pull and neither does England, it’s a really strange thing. Our cultural heritages are all equally vibrant but we just don’t seem able to do them in the way the Irish do.”
It seems weird when you can get bands like The Shires doing well in that type of field but then not coming across there.
ER: “England’s got The Levellers and Eliza and Kate Rusby, Seth Lakeman, Sam Lee – there’s a massive, untapped seam of amazing singers – if it wasn’t for Maddy Prior and Steeleye Span singing Scottish folk music, I think we would have lost a lot of our cultural references. I’m a big fan of presenting it all in ‘of the moment’s’ surrounding. Like today, when I present Cavalier I hope to think that I’ve got the trail of history behind me and that people who are led to this point keep inspiring the likes of myself and others who are here now to present a music which has all those cultural influences. I would like to do that a bit more and spread our difference nuances around a bit more.”
Please forgive me but I don’t actually know, where Fairground Attraction big in Japan back in the day?
ER: “Perfect and the album was, the album went triple Platinum in Britain and the song was no. 1 in about 40 countries – Spain, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and in America, it got to the top 100 just before we split up so it was quite big. I mean, sometimes people come up to me and say did you just to that one song? Well no, not exactly but that one song was massive in many different places. I met a guy from Spain at a gig in Ireland who’s living in Spain now and he told me how Perfect kept him alive because he was conscripted into the Army and he played it to stop him self-harming! Those kind of people coming up to me and telling me that it means so much”.
That’s quite a responsibility knowing like that, it’s quite a burden, an expectation to carry.
ER: “I just wanted to say that I don’t feel very responsible for anything that happens, I mean I totally assume responsibility for making sure my instincts are listened to but beyond that what people do with them – I’m as amazed as anybody else when someone comes up to me and says I was walking around a Sri Lankan beach or in Sierra Leone listening. or a Parisian café – that’s so amazing that music can do that, it works – and it did work for me and I’m very lucky and very happy about that. I can see that people want to know what the formula might be – I don’t really believe that the Simon Cowell’s of the world rely on marketing and the sort of ideas walking through the doors then they can do what they do but you really need that kernel of freedom to express and explore and kids have it, that’s why we get so many young geniuses, it’s not beaten out of them by pressure about achieving it or what will they look like.
Some of the best things written I’ve found when my children were growing up were the words they used and the way they saw things I try very hard to maintain that instinct for what I want to say, what I want to sing or how I want to hear music because I want to hear a song that’s got three chords in it, where the bass is, where the backing vocals go, they can take it to a completely different place emotionally and those things can be minute to some people but massive actually to others, having a bass player do a solo who’s harmonising with himself like a double bass line – that can mean nothing to somebody who’s hearing that explained to them but to hear it on a tape it’s just a different emotional experience.”
It gets into the soul rather than anywhere else, doesn’t it?
ER: “Certainly, it gets into a place that I have no scientific awareness of, I just know that when you hear for something for example like Sweet Mountain of Love by Brian Wilson’s girlfriend or wife at the time – Marilyn (Marilyn Rovell), I think he produced it and I tried to reproduce it and I couldn’t. It’s to do with the scratch of the echo, the cheapness of the microphone, it’s to do with the silly, vocal of one of the harmonies; it’s just something that you just can’t quite understand and that’s what I’m constantly looking for in Cavalier, I’m just trying to maintain that. I’m sad that there’s about five or six songs that aren’t on it, it’s 58 minutes – I can’t, I’ve got E.P.s, I’ve got lots of little lucky bags full of surprises to present as well. ‘m going to be excited to see how these songs translate live.”
Thank you so much, i’s been wonderful to talk to you!
Eddi Reader will be performing at the Atkinson Theatre in Southport on October 18th.
Ian D. Hall