A Life In Music: Roy Williams

A mighty influencer. You Tube kids, you don't know you're born. 

In this edition I'm talking with an extraordinary, super-capable, veteran music pro from the Black Country of the UK, who has, quietly, had a massive influence on music making in this neck of the woods and far, far beyond. 

Roy was one of the team that launched the legendary JBs in Dudley, where anybody who was anybody simply had to play. Then he went on to managing, sound mixing, often for a lifetime friend, Robert Plant. and just doing an awful lot for an awful lot of people, simply because it was the right thing to do. 

But it's the sidelines that make this conversation so interesting - the by ways, the diversions, and the way he frequently drops hints and prompts about interesting music areas - areas that eventually emerge as having been profoundly influenced by him. And, of course, the stories.

This is a companion blog piece to go with the Roy Williams Lives in Music Podcast. You can jump to all the podcast episodes here - there are 18 other Lives in Music available right now - or scroll down to listen to the embedded player on this page. 

Photo credit: Suzy Gallier

Links

Robert Plant website
JBs Dudley facebook page
Saving Grace 2019 review

Lives in Music

The Lives in Music series celebrates people who have spent a lifetime in music. They may be famous; they may be people who have spent their lives working in the background for the love of it. They all have stories. Lives in Music is a Radio To Go production.
The intro and outro music in this series comes from the great bass player Mike Hatton, who you can hear interviewed in series 1, here. 'Everything Changes' is included in his excellent 2019 album 'Bassic Salvation'. 

The Podcast

Published in Series 2  (series 1 episodes listed here)

1 - Brian Travers of UB40
2 - Ricky Cool
3 - Mark 'Foxy' Robinson of the CBSO
4 - Roy Adams
5 - Gavin Monaghan of Magic Garden studios 
6 - John Mostyn
7 - Stewart Johnson: taking UK Country back across the pond
8 - Dave Pegg of Fairport Convention
9 - Roy Willams
10 - Simon Duggal (Simon & Diamond, Apache Indian, Shania Twain, Desi Beats)


Subscribe!

Subscribe to the Podcast through your podcast app to automatically download each episode to your device. These will then land with you first, before everyone else hears about it.

If you would prefer email updates each time a podcast episode (or blog post) is published, you can subscribe to the mailing list. Head here and scroll down to the signup form.

West Midlands Rock Royalty at the Robin - Jim's Jam

Celebrating one of the greats...

I blogged about Jim Hickman in 2014. Jim was one of those singers: big, loving, soulful. That post (read it here) is a potted history of the best of Black Country music from back in the day. 

Jim wasn't doing well when we talked: drawers full of scary medication. But he rallied and went back out on the road. Things were good, his voice was right there, and all his years of craft and experience showed in his performances.

Shockingly, he passed away, days after a 2017 New Year's Day gig. His funeral was rammed, a testament to how loved he was. 

Now, there's something grand and happy, this coming Sunday: the Jim Jam, set for Sunday 11th June, to celebrate Jim's life. I doubt we'll ever see such a gathering of old and new-school West Midlands talent in one place ever again.

West Midlands Rock Royalty

The Jim Jam takes place next Sunday at the Robin 2 in Bilston, from 3pm. 

Just take a look at the poster. That's some line up. More acts are coming; there will be surprise guests. If you ever enjoyed Little Acre, or ZooQ, the Honeydrippers with Robert Plant and Ricky Cool, or more recently the Little Band, you should go.  

This gig is to set up to do three things: firstly to remember and celebrate Jim; secondly, to raise money for research into heart disease, which was what took him away; and thirdly to have a bloody good time listening to great musos, all friends and contemporaries of Jim's.

This is proper West Midland old-school rock royalty. I can't wait. I am hoping – no promises – to capture some of the performances for Brum Radio. But when it's live, there are no guarantees. If it works out, it would a lovely little extra to mark and honour Jim. 

We marked his passing on Brum Radio last January this way:




And I hope to take it a little bit further on Sunday. We'll see. Can't wait...

Tickets for the Jim Jam are £8 in advance from The Robin 2 website, here

You might like to check this post out too: the JBs book. Jim's stomping ground.

__________________________________________________________________________

I still do radio stuff on Brum Radio, a volunteer-run internet station. Listen online here; download the Brum Radio app here. My Brum Radio page is here; scroll down for all the shows. 

__________________________________________________________________________

I'd love it if you signed up!

The Mailing List is the best way to follow topics on this blog. You get a short email, most Mondays, with the big recent topics, and once in a blue moon, an offer or an exclusive freebie. I won't pass your address on, promise. 

Pop your email in the box below, and you're all set.

Miles Hunt. Straight outta Stourbridge to a world tour.

Friendly Company! The Stuffies are coming to yours

 Miles and Erica Nockalls - from The Wonder Stuff pledge page  

Like a thousand other towns across the country, developers and lousy town planning have ripped the guts out of Stourbridge. The town is a tangle of road improvements and pompous corporate new-build. It's totally out of step with the charming, human scale of the unprofitable parts left behind.

I head along old streets of small terraced houses, down a clearly ancient pathway behind a church. I fetch up in a quiet neighbourhood boozer, one of several I'd passed. No piped music, no fruit machines, no Sky Sports; instead, a large affable dog and some excellent ale. 

And Miles Hunt of The Wonder Stuff. 

Beyond the band #3: Pete Williams

Nicely connected after a lifetime of rock and roll ups, downs and setbacks, Pete Williams is punching out fabulous songs.

It didn't start with his bass work with Dexy's Midnight Runners in the 80s, or even through the revived Dexy's in the Noughties and again in 2012. But often that's all that you read about him. Pete played in both bands, and people always want to talk about the juicy stuff.

There's a lot more. Williams has just come out with his second, very successfully crowd-funded, album, Roughnecks and Roustabouts, and he's doing shows, on the road in his own name. The past may be lurid and colourful, although much of it is not of his own making. But it's what's come out of that past now that matters.

70s heroes: Jim Hickman and Little Acre. Bostin.

The day after Glastonbury wound up, I went to Lower Gornal to meet Jim Hickman. 40 years ago, Hickman was the lynchpin of a killer band that came so, so close to getting there: Little Acre. They had impeccable credentials and terrific Black Country and Birmingham connections. As is so often the case, success and ultimate failure was driven by factors well out of the band's control. Little Acre had a rotating personnel of up to ten, which lead to crowded stages and small returns from gigs. But they were one of the UK's very first successful blue-eyed soul bands. Working in that chronological gap between Rock and Punk, they had a lot of room to move.

Jim was a bass player and powerhouse singer. He's getting on now, could be healthier, but the voice is still there. We met up, caught up... and talked for hours. 

I think you were the first band we pulled into the old BRMB to do a session. All of you, in one tiny studio, recording backing tracks live to stereo, bouncing down if we had to, and then adding vocals. 

I remember the night very well, it was fabulous. We put the tracks on a private album, just for old friends. Mostly it was a cassette of a reunion gig at the Coach and Horses, Willenhall. Roy Williams did a fabulous job on it, on reel to reel. And the BRMB session tracks.

I'm glad they survived! Very little BRMB stuff did. Tell me how the band came together.

I'd just come back from Italy – we'd gone out as a band called State Express, to do 15 days. We stayed three years. We were based in Turin. Three of us came back, two stayed, I did a normal job for a year and when the other two came back, we got together with a few other people in a cellar in Upper Gornal. It went from there, other people came in, some left... 

Tell me something. I remember UK soul bands in the 60s. Mostly they were, frankly, embarrassing. Guys trying to sound like Otis, and failing miserably. Same with the blues bands. If you dig out very early Stones R'n'B cuts, they're pretty awful. But by the 70s, things seemed to have sorted themselves out. You weren't the only ones... but you were one of the bands that hit that spot. Can you explain why?

Influences. Little Acre, as a band of people, enjoyed each other's company. We liked each other. We liked what we were doing. And State Express, the first band, used to back all the soul acts that came over – James and Bobby Purify, Edwin Starr, Sam and Dave... loads of them. And that's where I learned a lot. One of my favourite ladies was Inez Foxx. We did a fabulous tour with her. She was a fantastic Hammond player. Really, really nice. And we did Mocking Bird, and I sang Charlie's part. It used to change on the night, and she insisted that it changed. Experiment with it!

So you got some groove right from the source.

They'd explain things. You'd get this rhythm... 'think of it this way: one foot on the pavement, one foot in the gutter'. Boom–tschk, boom-tschk. They'd use these analogies and you'd get it. 

Now it's gone worldwide

That's the web. Here's a story about the web....I played with Ricky Cool and the Rialtos after Little Acre. Ricky's still going; lovely man. We did a reunion with the Rialtos a couple of years back, at the Robin Hood in Bilston. There was Ricky Cool with the Rialtos, the Big Town Playboys and the Hoola Boola Boys. A night for Ricky, fabulous guys. We were sat in the dressing room having a drink. And all of a sudden the door bursts open and Robert - Robert Plant - walks in, cursing us. 

'You didn't tell me you were bloody playing tonight!' 

Cos the Rialtos were the Honeydrippers for one tour, you see. 

'We didn't know you were in the country!'

'Well, I gotta get up and do something!' 

Which he did; he played for an hour. Anyway, I went to the bar to get a drink, and the place was rammed. There were people there I hadn't seen for years. And I asked a few of them how they knew this was going on... and it was on the net. Great night, and we all got a good wedge. 

Little Acre came to an end – and we'll come to that – but along the way, they recorded with Bob Lamb, in the same King's Heath bedsit studio he used for the first UB40 album. So in a way, they bridged from the soulful sixties right up to the stroppy late seventies; as they were winding down, UB40 were winding up. And their paths crossed in the same studio. 

We recorded some really good stuff. We used to go over, and get him out of bed...

So what happened with Little Acre? You should have made it. You were plenty good enough. 

We were playing the right places in London, we were lined up with a manager, he'd got Atlantic Records nicely warmed up. And then, punk hit. And everybody wanted a punk band. And of course, just before us, there'd been a band called Kokomo. They'd made it hard for other bands like us. A couple of them were a bit starry. So nobody wanted big line-ups.

I think that the industry always wants new kids, not only so they can present the next big thing, but being very cynical, because they can sign them cheap on dodgy contracts. You guys had been knocking around for ten years or so. 

But kids today aren't that stupid.

I've heard a few stories... But that was basically it?

It was sad at the time. We were talking to Mercury Records as well; Chris Rea, bless him, had introduced us. And it all went Pete Tong too. 

To cut a long story short, two members of the band were detained at her Majesty's pleasure for three months, just as punk came in, and that was enough to lose the impetus.

So you carried on working?

Yes. I was with Ricky Cool and the Rialtos, and then Zoo-Q, and then I started writing my own material. And I went off and did other things. The music's not a career. I just write the songs. Now we (Jim and Dave Lowe) work on a laptop, with a time signature, an acoustic guitar, and vocals - I very rarely do retakes. Dave Lowe does the rest.

Its not for everyone, to stay performing or to carry on writing. 

No, I don't think it is. You're part of a jigsaw puzzle, and you don't have control over most of the pieces. So at the end of the day, it's luck. If they out there doh like it, it doh matter how much work you put in to it. 

The conversation wound on. We'd both been watching bits of Glastonbury on the beeb. Robert Plant and Dolly Parton were the subjects – the topics were of survival and craft. Jim was and is a fine musician. He's worked with Plant, and a host of others who went on to great success. 

So do you feel bad about Little Acre getting that close and not making it?

No, no I don't. I have fabulous memories. We did these gigs... some gigs, we only did three numbers. We'd start on a funk groove and stick there. The crowd went with it. I feel very privileged to have been there. It was a fabulous time. But you, know, some of the young bands now... it's such a pleasure to see them too.

It's interesting to look back at the 70s. The early years were a bit... vague. Progrock and Psychedelia had had a good run; Heavy metal was splintering to sub genres; the British Blues Boom had run its course too. The Beatles were over; the Stones were faltering again. Glamrock was big. Image started to really matter. In the middle of all this, a host of bands tried out different grooves, before punk upset the apple cart. Little Acre had their day in the sun, but it should have gone on for longer.

 

See more music posts on Radio To Go

_______________________________________________________________________

Subscribe to the mailing list 

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Email Format

• html
• text

     

Joanne Shaw Taylor: Black Country blues. From Detroit.

JST's latest CD - live, one take stuff

In November, a Detroit-based blues guitarist comes to Birmingham Town Hall. Nothing particularly unusual in that, of course, we get touring US musicians all the time. But this one’s different. Joanne Shaw Taylor is a Brit, born in the Black Country, raised in Solihull and elsewhere across the West Midlands, and she’s got a ton of local connections. .

Now, she’s based stateside, by no means the only Brit to have moved countries to further a career. More recently, Davy Knowles, from tiny Port St Mary in the Isle of Man, relocated to the US to further his blues career, while Birmingham’s Toy Hearts – familiar to Joanne from their sets at the Roadhouse in Stirchley, South Birmingham - are currently in the middle of a very extended spell playing Western Swing and Bluegrass and working out of Austin, Texas.

It's not the first time that British musos have taken their versions of USA music back to the mother ship. Rewarding though it may be, it’s not the easiest of paths to travel.