Interview by Paul Quinton

 

With her first solo recoding available, a new live album on the way, a series of acoustic shows with musical collaborator Chris Johnson in support to Touchstone and the first tour with the Heather Findlay Band itself on the horizon, the first full year of Heather Findlay’s solo career has been a busy one. After the set with Chris Johnson at the Touchstone gig at The Robin, she sat down with MR’s Paul Quinton to look back over the year, how she put together her new band, featuring Chris Johnson, her ex-colleague in Mostly Autumn, Dave Kilminster (Roger Waters Band),  Alex Cromarty and Steve Vantsis (Fish) and towards the future.

Midlands Rocks: So Heather, let’s talk about your EP, The Phoenix Suite, first. When you started the project, did you write all the songs from scratch, or did you have any material stored away for future use?

Heather: Well, ‘Seven’ had been with me quite a while actually, I started writing that little piece when I shared a house with Chris in about 2004, 2005, when the initial riffs came for that. When I first met Ian, my husband, and we went travelling together and we decided to buy these two little Washburn travelling guitars and we went to South East Asia. I particularly remember sitting on various hills, just playing that riff over and over and watching all the sunsets, watching the sun go down and the stars coming out overhead, and there was always something special about that little riff. For some reason, some songs never find a home, it can take a long time for them to find a place to be. I had this little riff, and I really loved it, so I gave it to Chris and it suddenly became this funfair that everyone had to deal with. It’s really hard to tame that song, that’s why we don’t do it acoustically, we just can’t find a way to make it work, but with a full band, it really works. It’s taken a while for us to get it to gel, and that was the only song on ‘Phoenix’ that was put together with just a guitar and click track, then each of the musicians came in and contributed their own parts. All the others were constructed before they came in and put their slant on things. But this one was built up in the studio.

MR: It’s ironic then that that’s the oldest song on the EP, yet it’s the one that your band contributed to most.

HF: You can never predict songwriting, sometimes songs come from all sorts of different places.

MR: So from that, how did your band come together? Why did you decide to work with Chris first?

HF: Chris and I have been really close friends for years and years; we’ve shared flats and houses together. For a long time we actually used to be quite anti- in our ideas, we always used to end up in musical arguments. But I think over the years, our ideas have developed, our musical tastes have developed and our horizons have drawn closer together. We’ve probably become less narrow-minded. My back catalogue of songs has always had quite a diverse range of influences, and Chris is quite similar as well, ranging from Prince, to The Band to Public Enemy.

MR: I always have him down as a bit of a Neil Young fan, something about his voice and playing.

HF: We both are! There’s a lot of common ground between Chris and I in what we love. So that was kind of pre-written without actually speaking about it, but when I left Mostly Autumn and I was thinking about where I was going to go and because Chris and I are friends, I probably had conversations with him, so he was there all long and that fell into place really easily. Alex was recommended to me by John Spence, who’d worked with him in the studio and mastered many Mostly Autumn records. He doesn’t recommend people lightly, there are only two drummers he’s worked with that he’d recommend to anybody. One of them’s Gav (Gavin Griffiths, Panic Room and Mostly Autumn), the other’s Alex. So on that I knew I could trust John.

MR: Did you know Alex before that?

HF: Years and years ago he’d worked with Marc Atkinson in Gabriel. I think it was quite a brief spell he’d had with Marc, but we did do a show at York Opera House, a charity event. I remember him and Jonny, Mostly Autumn’s drummer at the time were really into each other’s playing but I didn’t really have enough memories of his playing to know whether he’d be right. But as soon as we got him involved it was clear that he was the one. I can’t think of anyone that wouldn’t get on with Alex, he’s such a laid-back funny and warm character. Steve Vantsis and I had always talked about working with each other since we met a few years ago and we’d talked about writing together. Steve was a writer in Fish’s band and I remember all the musical bits and pieces Steve came up with for Thirteenth Star, Fish and I sat and listened to all Steve’s ideas. There was stuff that Fish really liked the sound of, there was some other stuff that was quite different-sounding and Steve asked if I fancied writing some bits and pieces with him and I thought that would be brilliant. I didn’t see Steve for a few years but we kept in touch and when Chris and I talked we decided that he was the right man for the job. For me, it was very much about vibe, having come from Mostly Autumn, which was very much a family thing, it was very important for me to create something similar because I knew it was the camaraderie I was going to miss more than anything after leaving the band. I knew that Steve would be hilarious on the road and in the studio, and obviously the musicianship was there, so that was a really easy decision. When I left Mostly Autumn Dave was one of the first people to get in touch with me, ‘ to say ‘This is Dave Kilminster, brave move, well done, I’m right behind you and if you ever need me to help out in any way let me know. I’ll be interested to see what you come up with’, which was really nice. I’d known Dave for a while and knew that we’d get on like a house on fire. It’s quite a nerve racking experience, because you put this record together and you think ‘how are these guys all going to get on together when we get in the rehearsal room, when we hear each other play, swapping ideas, being perhaps critical of each other.’ But there was absolutely no reason for me to have worried As soon as I go to put the kettle on, as soon as my back’s turned they’re jamming away, things like the Meters, Parliament funk-driven stuff, or they go into these big Jazz Odyssey things, they can’t wait until they start jamming with each other. They gel really well together, I’m just so chuffed with the way it’s gone, I can’t wait to get in a studio with them, to get rehearsing for this tour.

MR: Just going back to something you said, you seemed to have relied on Chris an awful lot, rather than taking on everything yourself.

HF: I think the major reason for that was that I wanted to move away from Mostly Autumn, to go solo, to put out a record or records, but having just made the announcement that I was going to be leaving Mostly Autumn I found out I was pregnant and I didn’t really know what to do. What I should have done maybe was said ‘OK, I’m going to be taking a sabbatical for maternity leave’ but I thought ‘I’ve said it now, I’m going to do this’ and actually it has been a lot to take on, a lot of admin, a lot of connections to be made or to be forged, so it’s been a really challenging time to try and balance everything, make sure my family have enough time amidst all the work that I have do surrounding all this. If you want to do things in-house, there’s so much work that goes along with it, so for that reason there haven’t been perhaps as many EPs as I originally intended to do, but they’re still waiting in the wings to come out. At the moment the focus is on touring, get the first tour under our belts and see what happens next.

MR: From what you’ve said, it seems that the band pretty much fell into place, but was there anyone you wanted to work with, but it wasn’t possible for some reason?

HF:- Actually, no.  I really got my first choice of who I wanted to work with. The drummer thing was difficult, because having worked with Gavin before it was really difficult to know where to go next. Gav’s such a brilliant person, such a rhythm king, it was always going to be difficult to find someone as good and as creative and I think Alex is up there and I’m really, really happy to have found him, but for a while it was like ‘Where do I go with this?’ And Steve is an amazing musician, a great personality and great friend and Dave, I can’t believe how lucky I am to be working with him. Sometimes I’m not going to be able to gig with him, because he’ll be out with Roger Waters, but that’s not a bad problem to have, really.

MR: You mentioned the EPs, why did you decide to do that rather than a full album?

HF: Well, for two reasons really. Because I think my influences are so diverse, once I started working without any boundaries I started to realise things were coming out in lots of different directions and trying to fit them together on one cohesive record was really difficult. I found things didn’t really fit, there was some more keyboard driven stuff coming out and some electronic.  I really hate pigeonholing things, by electronica I don’t mean dance, but more electronically stuff that was put together using percussion loops and keyboard rhythms, rather than sit down with a guitar. I was pregnant with Drayke and what my hormones wanted to do and what my body wanted to do was write these lilting acoustic lullabies and I didn’t want to, at that point, put anything like that out, because I am really worried about getting typecast. Odin Dragonfly had done that and I’d written a lot of songs like that with Mostly Autumn and had I stepped out of Mostly Autumn and recreated something really similar it would have been even more shocking if I’d then moved on to doing something different. What I’d really like is to be free as an artist to explore lots of different flavours and textures within all sorts of musical genres, without saying ‘I’m going to do an EP and it’s going to be completely dance music.’ These things might have a feel or flavour of certain things, but they won’t necessarily fit with the stuff that’s on The Phoenix Suite.

 

MR: Moving onto the live arena, how have the last few days on the road with Touchstone been?

HF: Brilliant. We’ve had such a great time. We were honoured to be asked and lucky to hang out with such lovely people. I keep saying this, but it’s paramount if you’re going to spend any time really close to people, often in emotional situations. It’s really nice to be welcomed to the fold, we haven’t had to lift a finger with our gear, we really didn’t expect that, but Touchstone’s crew completely looked after us, the band themselves have been just wonderful. I hope we’ve been easy to deal with as well, because we’re just a duo. We’ve just had a really good time.

CJ: Yeah, it’s very noticeable about the audiences as well. We’ve probably got about two hours of material, but actually playing for an hour a night. We’d really like to play some quieter songs, but we thought people would be chatting, we’re only the support after all, so we prepared a lot of louder, faster songs. But the audiences have been completely silent all the way through our quiet songs, all the really delicate stuff and I’m not even having to dig in on the guitar. I can really play quietly, and that’s beautiful because then you get the magic in the room. So hat’s off to Touchstone’s audience for that.

HF: They’ve been amazing, they really have. Wherever they’re from, we’ve felt completely supported by everybody in the room, backstage everybody who’s come to see the show. It’s given us a taste of what to expect, we’ve slowly ramped up to what we’re hoping will be the climax of the year, the full band tour, which we’re really looking forward to now. Obviously that’s going to be different to what we’ve done tonight. We’re not going to do all of the songs we’ve done tonight, there’s going to be more of the Phoenix Suite and the back catalogue.

HF: Yes it does, absolutely. I’ve been waiting for that moment to arrive when I’ve thought ‘I’ve really made the wrong move’ or ‘I really miss where I was then’. I miss it for different reasons to what I thought I would. I’m lucky to have been able to go out on the road, to get back in the studio while my children are young and that can only be because I come from a background where I’m really supported at home. But what I’m beginning to miss was the camaraderie and the adrenaline of going out. You have to reprogramme your body, almost. I’ve done so much gigging and touring and your body begins to expect it at certain times of the day, but my energies were going elsewhere. For me it was missing the people, missing the band, they’ve all been really close to me over the years. But I think, actually missing the shows or the music, I think because I’ve been lucky to have spent so many years at it, I think I almost look back as if my thirst has been quenched. There may be a time when I think I’d really like to be back doing that, but at the moment, it’s really enough to sit back and watch them do what they do. I’ve seen them a few times this year and it’s beautiful, the same essence remains. It’s a beautiful thing, Mostly Autumn, and Bryan’s absolutely right to have continued in the way that he is doing and he’s doing a wonderful job. It’s a different thing now. If people say to me ‘It’s not the same as seeing you with Mostly Autumn’, times change, and I think it will be for the best in the end.

MR: So now Heather Findlay is running her own band, how do you go about putting a set-list together?

MR: Did you feel you had to play, say, ‘Evergreen’? Everybody assumed you would.

HF: I did think that might be the case, but at first, not necessarily, we weren’t going to for a long time. I did think people might expect us to play it, but we’ve been trying to lean away from that. We needed to put an hour and a half, an hour and forty minutes together for something else we did, but we tried it out and I immediately fell in love with it. I don’t know if you picked on it, but I think it’s the sign of a great song that it can be played with a different beat, a different feel and it’s still the same arrangement. I really love the way Chris plays it and I really love the different harmonies that Chris put in. It’s really different because all the different members of Mostly Autumn that have sung on Evergreen in the past and Chris has managed to pick a harmony that, to my ears, has never been covered before. I thought it was different enough, but in the same mould, to make it worth doing.

MR: In a way, you’ve answered my next question by including Blue Light in the set tonight, but did you ever feel like reaching into the farthest areas of the back catalogue and really pulling out something totally unexpected? Steal Away, maybe, or even Eyes of The Forest?

HF: Eyes Of The Forest, definitely. Sometimes, because there’s a lot of back catalogue that has a real folky edge to it, we did quite a lot of that for a solid few years, to me it’s quite nice to put that aside for a little while. I’m not saying that these things will never reappear, or that I’ll never use folk instruments again. I quite regularly go to the folk nights in my local pub and really enjoy the flutes and whistles and violins. And cello, I absolutely adore cello. All those things are still there, lurking. We are going to do some interesting stuff when we get to the full band show.

MR: So you’ve got your own Phoenix Suite, you’ve got your Odin Dragonfly material, which is great to hear again, and obviously whatever you choose to do of Mostly Autumn. How will you cram all that into a 90 or 100 minute set?

HF: I think what would be a luxury would be to rehearse way more than we need for the shows in November and just interchange songs. There’s songs that I’ve written with Iain Jennings, songs that I’ve written with Bryan, songs that I’ve written with Liam even for his album, the songs that I’ve written with Angela, all of those have been written in the same way as all the songs I’ve written with Mostly Autumn, so it would be really nice to put in something I’ve written with Liam or to put in maybe one of Angela’s songs. I’d rather throw a curve ball that way and keep it close to home. Part of this whole thing of me stepping out is to start being a little more out of the box. I hope that we can maintain raised eyebrows here and there, but I’m not doing it to piss anybody off. I haven’t stepped away from that Mostly Autumn sound forever, I love those songs, they’re part of my life, but I want to keep shape-shifting, that’s what I’m about.

The Heather Findlay Band will play The Robin on November 27th. The Phoenix Suite EP, and the acoustic album with Chris Johnson, Live At Café 68, are available at the shows and from her website. I would really like to thank Heather for her time after the gig and for being her usual warm and open self and for making the job of interviewing her so easy.

www.heatherfindlay.net