A Life In Music: Ross Grant. Around The World In 80 Plays, and lots, lots more

Taking global collaboration to a new level

Ross Grant is a busy man. A very busy man. I'm going to touch on some of this activities in this post, and you can hear more from the man himself at his Lives in Music Episode, released this week. Or just stay here, and you'll find him towards the end of this blog post.  

Let me start with his fantastic current project, Around The World In 80 Plays. There's a link to the YouTube channel below.   

It's a simple idea, but it's also, naturally, a huge amount of work. It also calls for a massive address book, which Ross certainly has. Most of us will have seen those multi-screen YouTube videos where musicians collaborate together at distance. This was a central feature of the Lives in Music episode with Richard March, who played on and produced most of the Tonight Matthew videos that gave a lot of people much joy last year in lockdown. 

But that series ran to 11 videos in the end. Ross is putting together 80 such collaborations. Musicians worldwide have joined in with him, from brilliant local and European folk players to Ugandan and Malian traditional players and more. The guest player takes central stage, and Ross chimes in with multiple tracks of backing, on fiddle, guitar and lord knows what else. 

A contacts list to end all contacts lists

To do this sort of thing, you need contacts, and Ross has them. His address book has grown, first through his life-long involvement with the Bromyard Folk Festival, and also through activities like working with Sistema England, which has taken its inspiration from the spectacular original El Sistema in Venezuela, as have hundreds of music organisations worldwide. Given this work, mainly in the Classical field, it's not surprising his address book has grown.  

But that's not the only area where Ross has people to call on. As a boy, Ross benefited from his dad's folk contacts (he was good mates with Ian Campbell), and of course work with the long-established Bromyard Folk Festival, where Ross is now a director.

Planning a major Folk Festival in Lockdown

This year, after a barren lockdown-flattened 2020, the Bromyard Folk Festival returns. It's not necessarily going to be easy, as despite the September 2021 date of 9-12 September, there's still going to be the need for Social Distancing. Quite the challenge. The previous weekend, Moseley Folk in Birmingham will have the same dilemna. At time of writing, Ross's group Inlay will play at Moseley on Sunday.

There's more, lots more. But I suggest you give the podcast episode a spin. It was a terrific conversation, and a delight to put together.

Links

Around The World In 80 plays on YouTube
Around the World in 80 Plays Tip Jar - show your appreciation!
Music Group: Ross plays in Inlay 
Going since 1968, the Bromyard Folk Festival
Classical Music project Sistema England

Ross Grant on Lives in Music 

 

The Lives in Music Podcast series   

I've been doing these for about two years now. These are interviews with local 
musicians and music enablers, looking at how music has shaped them throughout 
their lives. Series 3 also looks hard at how lockdown has had an impact. 

There are some lovely stories. To see who's in the list of artists, here's a link to 
review every episode.

One further footnote: the intro and outro guitar flourishes I'm using in this series of Lives in Music podcast come from Vo Fletcher, who is also featured, with Loz Lozwold (aka Kingsley), in a podcast in this series. I asked Vo for a bit of live impro, and this was the result.  

The Radio To Go blog
This blog has been going since 2007. I started it to focus mainly on radio stories, as the industry went through convulsive changes. Those changes aren't over yet, not by a long chalk. I then expanded the range of topics to cover local music, another subject close to my heart. I think it was a Destroyers gig that pulled me in that direction. I've banged out several hundred posts since then, and of course deleted quite a few. But if you're interested in thoughts on the local scene and/or radio futures, by all means visit the full topic index on the Radio To Go blog.

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It's only taken me 50 years to work this one out

Onstage chemistry. Powerful stuff.

This time last week, I made very heavy weather of the day. Physically, I was completely shattered; my head, on the other hand, was spinning furiously. I really wasn't up to much.

And what was this about? Simple. I'd sung in a bloody brilliant choral concert at Birmingham Town Hall, the previous day. Now, singing in a choir is really no big deal; people do this all the time. I've been singing for maybe five years with the same group of very nice people; it's thoroughly enjoyable. 

But because I participated in last week's shindig – a proper, pomp and circumstance, full-on, full scale Classical affair, with loads of voices and an orchestra - I now have a much better idea of the things that make live musicians, or for that matter any live performer, tick. It's taken me this long to work it out; odd, considering I've been going to gigs for over fifty years.  

Surinder Sandhu and his funky Karma Machine

One of the most exciting albums I've heard in years. I don't say that very often these days.

I'm ancient. So I've heard a lot of stuff. I've seen the same ideas come round and round and round. And really, there's nothing wrong with that – pop music is always rewriting itself using what's been done before. For many people, including kids making music for the first time, that's a rush for them, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Nothing wrong with grabbing old ideas and giving them fresh interpretation either. Once in a while, the results are exceptional.

Step forward Surinder Sandhu. Surinder takes his time. His projects can take years. This one took at least five, but then he is a busy man. When I chatted with him, he was just heading off for a rehearsal at a local theatre, before finishing off a project for the CBSO, and setting up stuff for the next Mr Khan project.

There's a new album at last: Karma Machine. I see it as a hugely significant development in Birmingham's world of music.


What fascinates me is how this is all developing. Asian music coming out of Brum is just - different. We should be very very proud of what's going on.  It calls for a bit of  support and recognition.

I've know of Surinder for a while. His Saurang Orchestra album, which emerged in 2003/4, was a hugely ambitious and expensive project involving location recording, the Royal Liverpool  Philharmonic Orchestra, and guitar giants like Steve Vai, along with Surinder's super-expressive work on Sarangi.

Sarangi? It's an Asian stringed instrument, with generally four bowed strings and maybe 30 sympathetic drone strings, but proportions vary. Think of an eastern Theorbo, if you like.

The Saurang Orchestra album sported a host of other luminaries too, but I'm not sure it's recouped even now. The economics of modern-day recording are fascinating and terrifying. But the bonus for you is that it remains a fascinating album mixing Asian traditional instrumentation with full-on western ideas. You should check it out.

East-West fusions? Not new

Of course, east-west fusions have been going on for decades now, from Jazz work (John Mayer, John Coltrane, John MacLaughlin...) and latterly multiple strands of pop and dance emerging now and again into the mainstream. George Harrison deserves recognition for the work he was doing in the mid-sixties with the Beatles, as early as the Revolver album.

Birmingham has rich veins of talent and creativity in this field, with Layla Tutt, Mendi Singh and the Duggal brothers whose cluster of projects takes in Swami and Apache Indian. I know I've missed a few - please correct me if you have the inclination.

Having listened to Surinder's stuff  for a long time, I sought him out for a Radio To Go blog piece a few years ago. At the time, he was planning something new and ambitious, mixing 70s funk with some of his own ideas, under the working title of Funkawallahs. It's finally seen the light of day, and I'm enchanted; I'm astonished and impressed. When I hooked up with him to talk about the project, we talked music and music cultures for hours.

Surinder: For me the album is a look back at my youth growing up in the UK, and listening to James Brown, Earth Wind and Fire, Quincy Jones – later on, Prince... I could go on all day. 

RV: On Karma Machine you're using the Sarangi in a different way to how you did fourteen years ago on the Saurang Orchestra project...

Surinder: It's about serving the song. Playing the Sarangi in a soloist manner didn't serve the music on Karma Machine. I wanted to create something to do with texture, to do with the melody. If you look at Motown, or any of the bands that inspired Karma Machine, there's not a lot of solos in the music. 

So – a lotta lotta funk. Mixed with all kinds of other stuff. You have to listen to it to believe it. Karma Machine is loaded to the gunwales with some of Birmingham's finest, most able musos - Roger Innis, Glyn Phillips, Loz Rabone, Nige Mellor, to pick a few at random. I think they had a ball recording it.

Surinder: I've worked quite a lot with Loz (Rabone).  Loz  is a brilliant songwriter. And we're making music that's fun, that reconnects us with our childhood. That's what makes it so energising for us. The best way to create is to surround yourself with kind, calm, ego less talents. It was a blissful, creative process. 

And it works, by golly does it work. You can check it out on his website and keep your eyes peeled for free downloads in this digital marketing age.

Surinder Sandhu website
Karma Machine promo teaser

Listen to a two-part Surinder special with me on Brum Radio:
Part 1 goes out on Tuesday 9th May at 4pm.
Part 2 goes out on Tuesday 16th, same time.
Both will be also available on Listen-again.

Karma Machine is also the feature album this week on Brum Radio, with a track every two hours outside of live shows.

The problem with promoting: you almost certainly won't get rich. But you may have big fun.

DieDasDer talk of many things: of promoters, cabbages and kings...

We take local gigs for granted. There's tons of them; I think we're spoiled. Given the growth of the past few years, the West Midlands (and pretty much everywhere else) is rich in quality bands doing vibrant gigs. This, at a time when everyone's skint, and we're not out of the recession that's hammered businesses and crushed earnings.

So you wouldn't think it's the best time to lay on gigs, especially risky ones. All that planning dates and venues well in advance, sorting PA, insurance, contract and liability issues, covering travel, fees and exes for everyone, usually on a budget you could put under a cup. Crucially, it means being quite ready to put your hands into your pocket if you need to. 

Welcome to the world of promoters. 

Analogue Tales: James Summerfield and Darren Cannan

Last year, just as summer shaded into autumn, I spoke with James Summerfield, whose latest project is surfacing right now; then it was in the throes of assembly, recording and aligning. Analogue Tales: Sounds From Arden is an extraordinary work, taking the words and ideas of local poet Darren Cannan, and setting it to a lush musical background, supplied by James. It's released on the estimable local label Commercially Inviable. James sings on most of the tracks, but others are voiced by the likes of Paul Murphy, Ranking Roger, Catherine O'Flynn, Mike Gayle, James' nan Marjorie, and myself. 

When you listen to it, the obvious, screaming question is – why don't people do this more often? It's amazing.

The day Surinder Sandhu told Steve Vai to wind it down - and down - and down.

The Glorious Process: music cultures flowing to new places, in your town. Be proud.

Some eleven years ago, I was asked to write a review of a newly released album on a local record label. The label folded in the end; financially, it was pretty much a disaster. But the record – ah, the record...! I liked it a lot. I like it even more now. It stayed on my player for months, and I always return to it with pleasure. 

You can still find it in all the usual places. It's called Saurang Orchestra; it was written, arranged, orchestrated and produced by Midlands born and raised Surinder Sandhu. Sandhu now works all over the world, in as many genres as you can dream of. But this early album is, I think, one of the few successful east-west fusion albums. Alongside a huge battery of classical Indian instrumentation, Sandhu deployed saxophones, string bass, acoustic and electric guitars (from, among others, Steve Vai)... and the RLPO string section.

This year, I got to meet and talk with Surinder Sandhu; he was playing at Eastern Electronic Festival. I really wanted to talk to him about this album (but scroll down for details of his newest project) and the bridging of music worlds. 

Here you are, a huge global name, with a contacts book that goes on forever... and you're hardly know in your home town. I don't get it. 

"Somebody said to me, years ago, that you can't be a prophet in your own land! I'm from Wolverhampton, and I've always taken that as good advice. When I was working in Hollywood, working out there, coming back to Wolverhampton, nobody knew who I was. But I'd just been out doing some incredible stuff. It's never been important; the work is always the number one thing. 

"I used to know this guy – sort of still do - he'd walk around Wolverhampton with his guitar, putting his hand up. People knew who he was, but he'd never really played outside of Wolverhampton! I'd be walking alongside him. Nobody knew who I was. I took a lot of pleasure in that. It's a nice thing. He loved the attention, and I loved the work. 

"So the Birmingham thing... Birmingham's a great place. I love the music here, I love the musicians. It's such an underrated city. We've got some of the best musicians in the world, some of the best creatives around. What's interesting about Birmingham is that they are making it happen. Rather than wait for the windows of opportunity, they're making the opportunities. The musicians are doing this. They're going into the venues, setting up nights... I really like that. 

"But coming back to your original question – I don't know. That's how it is."

I guess you go where the work is.

"That's it." 

Can we talk about the Saurang Orchestra album?For me, it's an east-west fusion that actually works. Most of them don't, quite: either it's a western groove with the eastern guys noodling round the edges, or it's the other way around. But not here! How did you pull that sound out of the RLPO string section?

"They were very co-operative! The guys in Liverpool are incredible. The whole of that collaboration spring from me being invited up there to give a lecture on Indian music. We had about 25, 30 musicians turn up. I gave this talk, and I played some Sarangi for them. They loved it. It was the musicians who said 'Will you write something for us? And let's put a concert together!' 

"That, to me, means a lot, more than if it came from the management, so I instantly said OK. So we'd had this thing, and three years later when we came to record the album they were on it, they were happy. But it took a lot of trial and error. 

"You have to understand and respect both sides. Classical musicians can be a bit snobby, they don't think they need to be told."

Is this Western Classical you're talking about?

"No - across the board! Because you spend so much time practising and perfecting what you're doing, you can become a bit insular, a bit single minded with it. I lived in India for a bit, and spent a lot of time around classical musicians, great classical musicians... I'd play a bit of rock or some jazz to these guys. They'd listen to it and say 'Yeah...It's nothing special.. I could do that.' And they'd play something really fast. 

"And I'd try to explain, as a nineteen year-old boy, that that wasn't the same thing! Very impressive of course, but... it's that BB King thing, or a George Benson lick or a Ben Webster lick: playing three notes a certain way is so hard to do. So, so, hard to do. Playing those three notes with passion, with flavour, with feeling – that can take a lifetime of practise.

"But you have to respect it. If you don't respect it, you'll never get that sound. One the Saurang Orchestra album, I was recording Steve Vai - a track called 'Sunday Morning in Calcutta'. Steve hadn't played much acoustic on anything. Some semi-acoustic on Zappa recordings. 

"So I said 'look, I want you to play acoustic'. And he was like 'I'm ready So when we recorded the track. I'd flown in from Calcutta to Los Angeles. I had tapes of the Sarod player. Steve was there, started playing his acoustic, and it was very impressive stuff. 

"I kept stopping him. I must have stopped him about five plus times.

We are talking about Steve - guitar god – Vai, right?

"Yeah. And I kept stopping him and saying 'play less!' 

'OK'

And we'd start recording again... 

'Stop. Play even less' 

'OK' 

"But there's a reason why certain musicians are who they are, and it is because they have this brilliance, this genuine desire to create something special. He's one of those rare breeds, because there's never any ego. He wanted it to be special for me and for me to produce him. If you listen to the recording, I wanted the space between the notes – like we do in Indian music. He played so well on that! 

I'm curious about how you got started. How did you gravitate to the Sarangi?

"When you're in the 60s and 70s, growing up in the UK, the links we had back to India were temples, Bollywood movies, and family events. I don't watch Bollywood movies now, really, but in those days, we sat as a family, and watched on VHS. And I heard the Saurang; as soon as I heard it, I loved the sound. It wasn't until later that I discovered more. There's a fantastic organisation in Wolverhampton called Surdhwani, who do Indian classical music concerts. The people who ran it, Mr and Mrs Sarcar, I think, did it purely out of passion for Indian classical music.

"We had, in Wolverhampton, the best classical musicians in the world coming: Ravi Shankar, Zakir Hussein, Amjad Ali Khan: all the best, the crème de la crème, came to Wolverhampton, because of these guys who loved Indian Classical music. I started going to concerts, I spent a lot of time in the library... taking out books, records, cassettes. That's how I ended up with the Sarangi, and finally moving to Delhi, to study with a master." 

But you're not the only one to do this. Mendi Singh swapped pop banghra for classical Tabla studies. And you like to collaborate, clearly, which is a very Birmingham / Wolverhampton thing.

"I think it's that British thing when, you're from a family of immigrants in a new country. There's two sides of culture, isn't there? There's a fantastic choreographer I work with called Shane Shambhu – he studied Bharatanatyam Indian dancing. He's from a South Asian background. We have similarities in the way we work. What's interesting is the creative parallels: we have this cultural heritage. But then there's the fantastic array of music that we're exposed to in the UK. With respect – because in India it's there, but it's kind of almost a novelty."

Is it filtered in some way?

"It is, even with the internet. But here, we really tend to get stuck in. I was born and raised on great pop music. I grew up on 70s pop music, which was probably the best we've ever had."

You always identify with the stuff you grew up on as a teenager. Can I ask you a question? We've seen things evolve in Birmingham and elsewhere, to the point where we have a fabulously diverse and very cool music scene. But I'm surprised to see so little progression into the mainstream from young Asian artists. Why do you think that is?

"You know, I always say it's about a diet. A dietary process of what you're listening to. If Asian audiences don't have good role models, then you're screwed. I used to have this conversation with the BBC Asian Network about the music they're playing, and why they need to play better stuff. Creative new Asian musicians are not being pushed."

Plus ca change... that radio blockage is no different in spirit from those at US radio in the 50s, and UK radio in the 60s. They played safe and obvious, and held back the new kids until they couldn't stop them. But now we live in an age where radio is not the only way to spread the word. 

And yet, and yet... That glorious process, where music seeps from one culture to another, sometimes over decades, is now happening. The town is bursting with home grown musicians, of undisputed brilliance and adventure. We've hardly scratched the surface. There are treasures to discover, everywhere you look. It's something to shout about, and it's one of the new aspects to this city and this region that gives me a lot of hope. 

Surinder Sandhi is part of that glorious process. And he has a new crossover project in the pipeline: Funkawallahs

"I'm just prepping the Funkawallahs album for mastering at Abbey Road over the next two weeks, after which there will be a month long series of clips appearing online sales. We plan to press a limited edition vinyl batch too  We're not announcing live dates yet but will do after September."

Links

Surinder's web pages, with more details of Funkawallahs.
An earlier interview with Surinder around thw Eastern Electronic Festival

See more music posts on Radio To Go

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Eight musicians, eight different cultures. Five days to write, rehearse and prepare for one live gig.

A Birmingham story: Culture Shock

The inaugural Culture Shock in 2012

The day after this blog post is published, a clutch of musicians from across Birmingham will meet up for five days of intensive creation and experimentation, culminating in an evening of live music on Saturday 28th September, at St Annes Church, Park Hill in Moseley, Birmingham. 

This is Culture Shock, now in its second year. It’s a free event, supported by a range of institutions, and powered by the adventurous collaborative spirit of the participants - a leap of faith in many ways.

Keyboardist Pete Nickless holds this project together, working from a multi-purpose music studio at the seriously industrial top end of Digbeth, Birmingham. It bristles with instruments, including – oh joy – a Hammond organ complete with Leslie cabinet. And Pete's boundless enthusiasm. It's one hell of a brave project; yet another reason for us to have such fierce pride in our musicians.

We do it because we love it. All you have to do is find it

Great, unusual music, there to be explored and enjoyed. Free. Bring your curiosity and a sense of adventure.

Zirak Hamad plays the Daff hand-drum. Amazingly.

I first met Zirak Hamad at one of Paul Murphy’s Songwriters Café sessions. Zirak is a lovely guy, irrepressibly enthusiastic, and a terrific musician. He has a hair-raising background, which makes his current situation all the more remarkable. Zirak is largely responsible for a fascinating new musical development in Balsall Heath, an inner city part of Birmingham: Musikstan, which, every other Thursday, gathers musicians to play together from, literally, around the world. It runs on love and goodwill. 

Entry is free, but you really should make a contribution when they pass the hat around; there are musicians' expenses to pay and the event has running costs to cover. Zirak’s music is great – there’s a Musikstan clip or two to enjoy after the jump. And while it’s a worldwide music thing, chances are you’ll catch some delicious local musical collaborations, as some of Birmingham's finest have started to drop by.


Zirak’s Musikstan gigs are by no means the only music gatherings in town that run on similar lines. Once a month on Sunday afternoons on Moseley, you can catch stunning musicianship, organised by the magnificent percussionist Joelle Barker at the Dance Workshop. On top of that, the City centre Island Bar hosts the Free Love Club, an all-dayer of a folk-ish bent, for free, on Sundays; Sue Fear’s Moseley’s Muso Monday, also (logically) on Monday nights, works on the same principle, there are regular gatherings of different music stripes at the Tower Of Song; and of course there are many more such events.  If I've missed yours out, I apologise - but please do let me know for future reference. 

Here's Zirak, at Musikstan, tearing it up on the Daff hand-drum. I recorded this in September.


Zirak kicked off Musikstan in March of this year. It’s got a clear and simple goal.

Zirak Hamad: Musikstan is about sharing and bringing people together. The business side of music is important, but having music just for music’s sake is important too.  A friend of mine, Andrew Bland, invited us to play at the Old Print Works, and accompanied us on piano.  And it gave me an idea to do something regular. So that’s how it started. Musikstan is based on bringing different musicians together, from different backgrounds and different styles. People are able to ask questions about the music, about the backgrounds and the styles of each type of music. 

In the six months since you started, how has the network of musicians developed, with different people coming in to play?

To start, because I’m a musician, I can bring in many musicians that I know. But then word got out – word of mouth – about Musikstan. Session by session, it developed; musicians contacted me to come and play. We keep it very informal. Musicians are invited to join us, and we leave time for the audience to ask them questions at the end of their set.  We aim to have one musician from Birmingham, and one from outside of the area, because we want musicians to meet and exchange ideas and music, and play together. 

What about your own music?

I have a Kurdish band, and I also have a band called Village Well, which has an Indian tabla player, and a Caribbean steel pan player. I also play in a gypsy band with an Albanian and a Romanian musician…. 

Tell me about your band Village Well….? 

We got the idea in 2010, with a Khora player, me on violin, and Indian Tabla from Pritham Singh. Unfortunately, the Khora player, who lives in London, could not stay with the band, so we added Norman Stewart on Steel Pan instead. This brings all kinds of people together.  Some Kurdish people might come to see me, and Indian people because of Pritham… and Caribbean people because of Norman. So we really are bringing people together through music. 

If you went back to the old country now, after your years in the UK, what would happen? How would people react to you?

Kurdistan has changed a lot since Saddam Hussein’s regime. Kurdish people are more open-minded now. When I went back, I was made very welcome. When I left Kurdistan, I had 24 hours. I found out that a friend of mine – who was working with the Intelligence services under cover – that the next day, they were coming to arrest me, and god knows what would have happened to me afterwards.

So it was: don’t go to work tomorrow, and sort yourself out to get away, because everything was going to end for me. I left Kurdistan straight away. After ten o’clock, they went to my house, and my family said they didn’t know where I was. And that was the truth – they didn’t know where I was, or how I had left. I went to Iran, and then to Turkey, and then  in the end I came to England.

Are your family …OK?

They weren’t. They arrested them and tried to force them to tell where I was. But they didn’t know, because I didn’t tell them what I was doing. So the secret police accepted this - in the end. Now, after Saddam ‘s regime, they’re all right. We have our own government; people are more liberal, and more free…

Did you come to the UK and claim asylum? 

Yes, they gave me asylum. I had to pay a smuggler to get me to the UK. My family supported me, though friends, not directly. We couldn’t use the phone or anything like that….  

So this must have cost your family a fortune in the end.

About 8000 dollars. That’s a lot of money in Kurdistan. 

It’s an extraordinary story, but Zirak might well say that everyone is extraordinary. Now settled in Birmingham, Zirak runs school workshops in middle eastern dance and  music. In 2003, he organised a Kurdish band: Daholl Kurdish Ensemble, as Birmingham didn't have any Kurdish musicians at the time. And his dream is to see Muzikstan become a world music festival in the UK. 

So now he’s  back doing what he loves, which is making music, and working with other musicians. And, as always, this being a Birmingham thing, there’s a lot of collaboration. Paul Murphy has played at Musikstan, as has Joelle Barker, and there’s some mighty collaborations planned for the future. Live, experimental cross-cultural collaborations in an intimate acoustic environment: it’s not something you can bottle. You have to experience it. . Long may it continue

Links: 

Muso Mondays at the Station, King's Heath, Birmingham

Tower Of Song -

Songwriters Café 

Fathers and Sons: 60s veteran Don Fardon is back working, with DC Fontana

Old and in the way… or possessed of invaluable perspective? With Don Fardon and DC Fontana, it's, emphatically, the latter. 

Don Fardon interviewed. Pic by Mark Mortimer

It’s fair to say that most music ventures tend to draw on people of much the same age range. And the more image-conscious the venture, the more this pattern seems to apply. 

It’s often the fate of veteran musos to find themselves reverently placed on a pedestal, to be worshipped from afar rather than collaborated with. For example, much as 70s Brum metal monsters are venerated by 21st century rockers, I’m not at all sure the new kids would actually welcome any of the old boys onstage. And that’s a great shame, because every generation has creative goodies to pass on to the next. You could look at it the other way too: every new generation, no matter how much it thinks it's  blazingly original, actually feeds from, builds on, and recycles what’s gone before.

It’s not a hard and fast rule. There are exceptions, and when they work, it’s a pure delight. 

The excellent Friendly Fire Band, one of the keepers of Birmingham’s reggae flame, is only too happy to work with reggae veterans whenever they can. World, Blues, Jazz, Country and Folk, too, also all hold their veterans are held in high esteem. With Rock, Pop and Dance / Club / Urban variations, I think it’s a slightly different story; there, image and tribalism carries much more weight.  

So it was nice to learn that a band I really admire, DC Fontana, who have great (but not compulsive/obsessive) love for 60s pop, had forged a link with Don Fardon, who himself had had a fair go in the 60s as a solo artist and with his band The Sorrows. 

Don (based in Coventry) was hooked up with DC Fontana (based in Tamworth) by a promoter in London; it’s proved a fruitful connection. DC Fontana leader Mark Mortimer was thrilled at the prospect of working with a seminal 60s name; Don, for his part, was very happy to have another canter round the course. 

I met with Don and Mark as Don added vocals to an alternative version of the lead song on the next DC Fontana EP. In keeping with DCF’s nod to the 60s practice of recording multiple language versions of the same song, there’s talk of a Spanish version of the single. Hey, if the Beatles could cut German versions of their songs (Sie Liebt Dich, anyone?)…

The song in question is Pentagram Man; you can see the original YouTube clip down the page in this post. It’s about Aleister Crowley, the Leamington spa-born occultist. This is very 60s in itself: both Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath paid a lot of attention to Crowley. The single even has The Great Beast himself intoning at the start...


Pentagram man: DC Fontana with Don Fardon 

Mark, I hope this clip of Crowley is now in the public domain? I’d hate to think of him dropping by in person for his royalty share….

It's a recording taken from a wax cylinder dating right back to the early 1900s. So we are presuming it is in the public domain, and we’re safe to use it - as safe as can be expected when dealing with the Great Beast! We’re hoping to get the 6-track ep released by the end of September. We’re releasing on our own label, DC Tone, but it will also come out in vinyl on an Italian label called Teen Sound records. We release in all forms: CD, mp3 and vinyl. 

Tell me about hooking up with Don?

We’d been asked to do backup for Don; he had re-formed the Sorrows, and this was to cover his solo work as well. We’ve had this sort of thing offered to us before, but it’s never actually happened for one reason or another, so I wasn’t expecting too much. Ironically, I’ve always loved his music. ‘I’m Alive’ by Don, which came out in 1969, is one of my top ten records of all time. 

A couple of months later, we were approached by the same promoter; the gig was definitely on, could we look at contacting Don? 

We met and hit it off well. He’s a lovely guy, with a lot of stories to tell. We worked up a show where we open up with some of our material, and then Don comes on and we play his stuff; it’s looking very promising.   

So when is this show going on the road?

It’s started. We played in August at Euro Ye Ye in Gijón in Spain. It’s a great festival, held in the city square, in front of nine or ten thousand people. Great gig, big stage… we got to do an hour of DC Fontana and then 45 minutes with Don, and it went down an absolute storm. He’s an absolute pro. We’ve now been offered shows in Australia and Europe on the back of this. Don was a big-selling star in the 60s and 70s in those markets; there’s still a lot of fondness for him over there. 

DC Fontana live, August 2, 2012 in Gijón, Spain. Photo: Fernando Da Silva.

 Let me just rewind for a second here, Mark. You’re playing in front of ten thousand people in Spain….and you’re doing Australian tours. I know you do shows in France. That’s great, but how the hell does all that square with the gigs I’ve seen you play in Birmingham – several times now – in front of a small but dedicated audience who certainly like you a lot? There's a bit of a disconnect here…

It is a bit surreal – but I really enjoy that surrealism. I quite like the fact that we do so many different gigs, from the sublime to the ridiculous and back. We do gig a lot, because we need to fund our existence… which is a bit surreal in itself. A lot of bands are struggling to survive; we’re no exception. We deal with this by gigging a lot. We’re very old-school in that respect. But we are phasing out the smaller gigs now.

Like the one I saw you first at, in the Witton Arms behind Villa Park – the one with no stage at all?

Ironically, we’ve just been asked to play there again. They’re actually turning the beer-garden in the back into a bit a venue for bands. They’ve got quite ambitious plans. There is a gig happening on October 6th, outdoors, where they have Aslan coming over from Dublin – where they are huge – to play a fairly low-key gig. We’re supporting. It’s a bizarre combination again, but I like that – it opens us up to a new audience. The plan from the pub’s point of view is that it helps to put them on the map as a Birmingham music venue. 

It’s a welcome addition as far as I’m concerned. North Birmingham simply doesn’t have enough music venues. Turning to the EP again – are you producing a video?

We’re done three – to support a six-track EP.

DC Fontana are issuing series of videos from Pentragram Man EP. Here's number 1  

Wow. Did that cost a lot of money?

Well, we haven’t got a lot of money! We tried to box as cleverly as we can. We try to surround ourselves with people who are really creative, who are quite hungry as well. We want to work with directors and actors and performance artists who want make their name in the world, who’ll be happy to work with people like us on a collaborative basis. We do try to make out videos look a lot more expensive that they really are.

Well, that’s part of your goal, isn’t it?

Well hopefully. It’s not easy to pull off. We do spend thousands… but not tens of thousands like some people do. I used to work for a record label in Birmingham (Network Records, based at Stratford House in Camp Hill) and I can remember the sums of money we spent on bands like Altern8, the rave duo, KWS from Nottingham, who had a number 1 hit… Brum based house duo Mother, and people like Groove Corporation, who we now record with…  we spent an awful amount of money on videos. I can remember hanging out on set and seeing how it was done. I always felt that, as a lot of things were with the music industry back in those days, that everybody was ripping everybody else off, everybody was making a huge amount of money, when it could have been done with a much smaller budget. 

Meantime, back in the studio, Don Fardon was warming up nicely up as he worked up through a bunch of takes. We spent a lot of time talking about his early career, and especially about how the vast sums of money he made in the 60s …. never actually seemed to trickle down to him. Don’s got a lot of solid advice for anybody starting out, and this is going to be the subject of a separate post later in the year. But he’s a contented man. It wasn’t always that way

Don Fardon: The first agency agreement I signed with the Sorrows, we signed at a champagne reception for the farewell tour for the Drifters. We didn’t know until two years later that we were managed, and owned, by the Krays… The company was called Capable Management. My advice is: take advice before you sign anything. We didn’t, and we paid for it. 

Louise and Don Fardon on stage in Gijón, Spain. Photo: Fernando Da Silva.

Not a contract I’d want to break. Here we are in a studio in Balsall Heath, a funky part of Brum in all senses of the word, and you’ve just dropped vocals onto DC Fontana’s 60s psychedelic pop. And it’s 2012. How does it feel?

Pretty good. The big concert we did in July in Spain was such a wow. We all enjoyed it, and they said we’d love you to put vocals down on one of the main tracks of the new album; I said of course I would.  

But are you getting a royalty on this?

We haven’t even talked about it! 

But it's crystal clear that you're having a ball...

Absolutely. This is different. This is for friends! 

DC Fontana's second video from the new EP, shot in Birmingham's Custard Factory

Links
DC Fontana website
Don Fardon Wikipedia page

ADO emerge blinking into delight

In early 2011, this blog posted a flurry of enthusiastic posts about ADO – Alternative Dubstep Orchestra – as they powered though a string of gigs at the Hare and Hounds in King’s Heath in Birmingham. Then... it went quiet. No live action, no posts. But now, with gigs planned, and a box-fresh video that you can see after the jump, there’s an awful lot to talk about. Shelley Atkinson’s doing the talking. 

I’m very fond of ADO. One reason is purely sentiment: the seeds for the band’s genesis were sown at the November 2010 launch event for The Pilot project, which I led, and for which ADO manager Shelley Atkinson had played an invaluable role as lead researcher. At the PP launch, Shelley and DJ Karl Jones had challenged each other to see if live musicians could work coherently with DJs and turntablists; from that challenge came the first version of ADO.  But there's more. 

The second reason there's a lot to love about ADO is simply the pure musical adventurous spirit of the project - a collection of hugely disparate musicians and DJs, working together across genres that have never meshed before. 

The potential was huge, and it still is. Throughout 2011, I'd never before been able to watch a band evolve so fast and so nakedly, in public. It was charming and enthralling at the same time. Musicians spun in and out of the line-up, as the band worked towards a degree of identity and a coherent music vision. Some people struggled to find their feet; others took to it like ducks to water; some found they had other fish to fry, or obligations to meet. And that, of course, is often the way it is. 

Time for that chat with Shelley about how things are now...

It’s 21 months since ADO came into being. Tell me about the first idea that drove ADO 

Shelley Atkinson: Oh, to celebrate Birmingham's music scenes and encourage 
collaboration. To showcase musicians from different genres, to create something along a basic dubstep line, but to enhance that and mix different music together.

But wasn’t there a musical point you wanted to prove?

Yes. Two of us came up with the ideas: Karl Jones and myself. I’ve put live music on for the past five or six years…working on festivals, creating festivals. When we met, we were at loggerheads. Karl was trying to convince me that dubstep is innovative, that turntablism is an instrument in its own right. Lots of things that he’s very passionate about. Coming from where I had been – more ‘traditional’ music making, if you like – I disagreed, largely. I felt DJs had too much stake in popular music.  I wanted to inject more live music into his world, and he wanted to inject into the ‘live’ world, more evidence that dubstep isn’t just one thing, that it can be varied, that it had twists and turns, and that it can be live. So we both had agendas…. But we both wanted to celebrate Birmingham music and music-making, of all kinds. 

So how has that worked out – have you reached a perfect medium between the two approaches?

I think so...nowadays it is less about trying to prove a point and more about seeing what comes out once you get 10 different musicians together coming from different points of view. For me the sounds that come out from that are exciting. Everybody puts their point of view into the pot. Sometimes there can be creative tensions, but that's what makes the music sound so different - nobody is following a formula. You’ve got producers, songwriters, and people who are very passionate about their genre in there…

Surely it’s a case where the musician creates and the DJ curates?

I would have said that initially, Robin…but if you were to speak to Richard Shawcross, for example, who is a DJ in ADO, or Karl Jones – they would say they were musicians; they create bass lines, rhythms, melodies. Which they do! So we’ve had this debate from the word go. The lines are so blurred now! 

Sounds like healthy creative tension to me…

Yes. I think people fighting for different things musically can create a new thing. And you have to compromise, you have to work together. So it’s a great process. To me, the process is just as important as the music itself. 

Let’s talk about the process, because you’ve done quite a lot of that, live, onstage. The band lurched chaotically into life on stage, and it was a pleasure to see that lurching. I’ve never seen that before. Normally, all that stuff takes place in the rehearsal room…

 … and then you go out and gig when you’re ready. You don’t book a gig before you’ve got a band, like we did! But it was scary, and exciting. Some of the musicians hated it at first, to be honest. They hated being put in that position. It’s scary and it’s not fair, to do that to a musician. 

Leaving them naked on stage….

Naked, yeah! Often many of them were doing styles of music they weren’t really knowledgeable about. But that really doesn’t matter anymore, that’s not the point. And it never was, actually.

But that’s what excites me: something unique might emerge from this huge fermenting mess of ideas and abilities.  Let’s get back to the present. I saw almost all your gigs last year, and it was lovely to watch you evolve and nail new approaches. But I think you’ve only done one hometown gig in 2012.

It was important to play live, and to inspire people in a room, and do stuff on stage that hadn’t been done before. We used every gig to grow and learn. All those experiences came to a head after a year, and then it was time to make some music in a recording studio. And I don’t think you can do both at the same time – it’s very difficult. So that’s why it’s been a bit quiet. Lots of writing. And we wanted to approach this work in the same way - not to churn a product out. 

What is the timescale for the rest of 2012?

We’ve got a video out now – see above – filmed at two of our gigs. We’re hoping to do a November tour. Some of the members play in other bands: you’ve got Leighton Hargreaves who plays in the Destroyers. Tom Livemore’s going to be touring with Carina Round again in October. So everybody’s finished what they’re doing by November. Which lets us tour, and also put out a release, with Hero Records.

Conventional wisdom says you should only play with one band if you’re going to give it your best show. You can’t do that with this band. So how do you deal with that? 

These are signs of the times. I don’t know many musicians who just play with one band in Birmingham. Actual working musicians in our city all play with different bands; and they all are going to have one band which they have loyalty to. I’ve never, as manager of ADO said to anybody ‘You must choose’. 

And that is a brave and a good thing... because, when it comes to collaboration, ADO set a new record for cross-town multi-stranded musician membership. Brass section stalwarts Christopher Holmes plays with Sister Henry and The Prescriptions, and Fly Harper with Friendly Fire. Bass player Spike Barker also plays with Toy Hearts, and the brilliant percussionist Joelle Barker also plays with, among others, TG Collective.

Now a tricky question: this is your first major managerial gig. What would you say to yourself of less than two years ago, just starting up the band?

Good question. Let a lot things go by – you can’t take it all on. With ten people, you’ve got ten lots of emotions and inspirations and hopes. We’re all on the same page, but I don’t take on every little thing. The times when I’ve found it difficult is when I’ve forgotten the big picture. The big picture is what you need to keep you eye on!

What happening in 2013, Shelley?

More tours, more recording. We hope to come into our own. We hope people will stop saying things like ‘That’s not dubstep’ or ‘that’s not orchestral’, and just realise it’s a musical force. We want to work with some well-established artists as well

And what’s the ‘brand’ going to be: ADO or Alternative Dubstep Orchestra?

Oh - ADO. 

Just to round things off, it's worth noting that, just as ADO grew out of an unlikely and idealistic collaboration, where different musical worlds collided with very satisfying results, so ADO in turn is now spawning yet more experimental ventures, Past members have gone on to form exciting ventures like Electric Swing Circus, and Jolt Music is a new collaboration between present members Leighton Hargreaves, Tom Livemore and Joelle Barker. That's not all; there are more ventures cooking up even now. I rather hope that, with this level of musical curiosity and willingness to explore, that we will see more ventures in the future. Long may all this continue. 

ADO Facebook page