62. The Trilogy That Started with a Broken Guitar – Jon of The Family Grave

Somebody told me recently that, you know, if people don't like you, that's okay, because that's a great filter.

Those are people you don't need to worry about anymore, you know?

It's like, you can live without them.

And it's like sometimes telling yourself that kind of thing is really helpful.

Yeah.

Today on Loves Music, we have John from The Family Grave, here to talk about his new album, Old Songs for Kids.

He has singles ACDC and Big Man, songs that really grabbed me the first time I heard them.

He's here to talk about this project and many others that he has.

If you like what you've heard so far, make sure you like, comment, subscribe, send me your feedback.

So up next, all the way from Brighton, we have John from The Family Grave.

Well, you have such a wealth of music.

I probably could have spent several months just going through your catalog.

But it's also rich in storytelling.

There's so much depth in your music. Despite some of the production being sparse, it still doesn't feel underproduced.

It just feels like these very complete albums that are cohesive and they connect and they connect on all different levels.

Some are fun. Some are heavy. Some you need like a few minutes to sit with.

How did you how long did it take you to create such a rich catalog of music?

I started late. I was a late starter when it comes to writing songs and playing music.

And about a long time ago, fair whack ago, really, I started out with this act called the Highwatha Telephone Company, which was just a name I gave myself really as a vehicle to publicize my songs.

At that stage, I always thought I wrote songs mainly for myself, but I thought maybe somebody else would pick them up.

Maybe I'd be a songwriter for other artists and so on.

And the first album I recorded as Highwatha Telephone Company is called Harry Smith Was My Father.

And that basically came from it just had this bundle of songs.

I thought, hold on, these are good. These have got something. And I wanted to, you know, just

maintain, you know, keep them for posterity. So I just found a friend who was running a studio in

Brighton and went into the studio. It was like, bang, five hours, me and my guitar, about 15 songs,

which I think a dozen of them appear on the album. And that was it. And it was recorded literally

like that in one go, one or two takes each. That's what's out there. That's the album.

And then at that stage, I thought, well, you know, in a few years time, I mean, you know, I have a busy job and I had kids who were still needing some support at that stage. So, you know, every five years, I thought was a reasonable time span for an album or what I thought of as a collection of songs.

So those two High Water Telephone Company albums were, I think, yeah, I think they were five years apart. What changed was the pandemic. And, you know, that just, it freed me up a bit. And, you know, I know it was a horrific time for many people for many reasons. But for me, it meant my job changed. I was able to work more from home. I had a bit more time on my hands, a little more money because I wasn't spending money on commuting.

That was a big cost at that time, which I invested in some studio work, which I'd never been able to do before.

And so then suddenly, you know, I had a bundle of albums that needed recording.

Well, I had a vision for three albums, one of which I'd written, which is the Happy Songs album.

That was already written, but I thought it was basically too good to record in the way that I'd recorded my albums previously, which was me, my guitar, one mic, whatever.

I was just hanging on to these songs

I hung on to them for years

not really knowing what to do with them

I was playing them live a bit and so on

but I didn't know

and then as I say

I went into the studio

and thought well I've got this album

let's record it properly with some friends

get them involved

more of a band feel

more of a studio feel

and that was the first

of what became the

Happy Old Love Songs trilogy

You have songs on that album

that I believe could chart too

there's some really good songs

on that Happy Songs album

Yeah thank you for that

thank you for that

I'm very very proud of it

I'll tell you about the Happy Old Love Songs trilogy, because it had Happy Songs, which was the album I'd already written. And then I had a vision of a song about the album Songs About Love, which is Family Grave Place Songs About Love. I had this idea in my head for different kinds of love songs. And that album is a collection of not traditional love songs. It's like love for, you know, yes, there's love for a partner, but there's also there's bad relationships, there's love for your country, there's love for, you know, becoming, you know, for your past history, migrant history and things like that.

like that. Lots of different variants of love, essentially. But I had this vision. I hadn't

written any of those songs. And basically, I wrote all those songs in one month in February,

I guess it was 2021. I think it was the one a year after the pandemic. So those got written

in literally a very short period of time. And then I also had a bundle of old songs that I

thought were really cool. And I'd never got around to recording. And that became the old songs for

kids album um and there were some of the old songs on that but there's also a few new ones in there

as well uh so it became this thing this happy old love songs trilogy um i have this vision of it

becoming a box setter some stage you know put the three albums together i haven't got around to that

yeah no well well they definitely connect um there is like a through line through all the songs just

similar tone sound mood feel i get a lot of and i don't know if this is a fair comparison you don't

sound like these folks but it kind of reminds me of i hear hints of like nick cave elvis costello

um are you familiar with my morning jacket jim james how his voice has so much personality

yeah it's interesting i mean i think some of my song i think there's a number of people who

influenced my songwriting i mean i i've actually done um tribune nights to people like tim hardin

and towns van zandt who are kind of more classical singer songwriters but i definitely include i mean

Lou Reed was one of my biggest influences,

but then after that, obviously Dylan.

And then Elvis Costello's up there

because I kind of write two,

I feel I write two sorts of songs.

There's a kind of very wordy,

intellectual, story-based song,

which I feel is me and my Dylan-type phase.

And then there's much more pointed,

poppy, kind of indie pop,

kind of punchy sort of things,

which are there in the album as well.

And that, for me,

Elvis Costello is definitely a name

that comes to mind there about,

you know, when I'm writing those sorts of songs.

The name Family Grave, right?

That's basically, that's your moniker.

And it's kind of like a revolving lineup of musicians,

people that you know personally that you bring in for,

I call them mercenary musicians,

but they're your personal friends, you know?

Yeah, it's fair.

They play parts for you.

It's fair enough.

I mean, yeah, they're friends or friends of friends.

And I kind of, it's a bit,

it's a similar model to people like Bonnie Prince Billy,

I guess, who has a similar thing.

And he kind of quite often, some of his,

Well, some of his albums obviously are just him on a guitar doing his own thing.

But then he often has groups of friends that he brings,

and they're different friends each time.

And that's, I kind of like, I like that approach, really.

It kind of worked, it's worked well for me, I think.

Yeah, I was going to ask you where you got the name from.

Yeah, actually, I mean, it was a photograph I took in a local graveyard, actually.

And there's just lots of these family graves there.

Big, you know, the big graves where they kind of,

I guess they pile the bodies, really.

I don't really know how it works.

this Victorian graveyard, which sounds a bit gruesome.

But the way I always explain it is it just captured something for me.

And it captured really the two things.

One's family, which is about closeness.

It's about love.

It's about connection and relationships, which a lot of my songs are about.

And the other thing is grave, gravity, seriousness.

And a lot of my songs have a kind of intellectual depth,

the seriousness about them, which I think stands out a little bit as well

in the way in which I write.

It's rare that you see, because now that I know it was such a condensed period of time, I mean, there's a lot of work.

And if you're just getting started in the quarantine time, I mean, you're talking five, maybe six years tops.

Tell me a little bit about your process.

I mean, you're going in, you're banging out a song a day.

You're starting with a concept.

You're starting with a story.

How are you able to take from blank canvas to completed painting so quickly?

It's hard.

I have to treat it as a job of work and I can't do that full time.

So a lot of my albums, I mean, Everybody's Flawed is one.

Happy Songs was another.

We're written 10 songs in a month.

I actually joined, there's a website, I don't know if you've heard of it,

February Album Writing Month.

It's form, F-A-W-M.org.

They're great.

Every February, they basically get people together and say,

look, it's February, it's a boring month.

It's going to be raining all the time.

You're going to be indoors.

Great time to write an album.

and I kind of bought into that and I've tried it a few years some years I end up writing nothing

and then there's been a few years where I've written like an album's worth of songs or the

best part of it and then you can fit in the gaps a bit later but I think having that real focus

is great because I can't write songs on a daily basis I can't write songs every day

so I kind of need to say okay I need a new album now the um so I mean that was happy songs that

was Everybody Is Flawed.

Oh, that was also Songs About Love.

Yeah, of course it was.

That was also written in a month in a similar way.

Old Songs for Kids was different

because I had a bundle of songs I'd written years ago,

which I kind of pulled together

and kind of reworked a little bit.

And then I had a few new songs I added to the mix

that kind of created the album.

There's a new album underway.

Of course there is, you know,

because there's always one in the pipeline.

Yeah, there's one in the pipeline.

that was written essentially because i mean martin who's my kind of keyboardist and bassist

and quite often lead guitarist and then pete my drummer and percussionist pete lives a couple

hundred miles away and so he doesn't you know we don't get together very often and martin's a very

busy guy he's got other jobs other bands in fact so it's like i said look why don't we get together

for a weekend we'll spend two days we'll just record whatever i've got and at that time i said

look, if we just re-record some of my old songs,

maybe some of my Highwatha Telephone Company songs,

that'll be okay.

But about a month before we were going to get together,

I thought, actually, I've got some ideas

for some pretty cool songs.

I said, right, head down, let's write them.

And I ended up writing seven songs,

which we banged out in that weekend, pretty much.

I mean, and then I've been adding to them

and changing them a bit since then.

So, yeah, as a process, I think that's,

I think you've got to kind of lock yourself in and lock yourself away, really, as an artist.

I think it was quite important.

Yeah.

So how much of that process do you feel is intrinsic, like the song's coming out of you?

And how much of it is extrinsic, which means something outside force, story, situation is informing the song.

And it's just kind of like taking you by the hand and like just dragging your hand across the page metaphor.

I think the muse or whatever it is kind of grabs hold of you some way.

And I think a lot of it is inside, but how it expresses itself, that's a very difficult question, isn't it?

I mean, I don't feel there's a kind of, I don't feel like I am the vehicle for somebody else's vision or some other being's thing.

So it definitely comes from me.

But I then think you need to kind of force the music's hand a little bit.

I said, lock yourself away and just kind of pick up your guitar and say, OK, I'm going to play a few chords.

And when the chords sound right and the words sound right, they'll come together and then I'll build it from that.

There's a kind of construction job going on as well, which I guess is more traditional songwriting.

I saw a really interesting Pharrell interview and he said that creativity comes from the universe and the universe is like a library.

And all you're doing is checking out ideas and the idea you check out on Tuesday isn't the same idea you check out on Wednesday.

and all you're doing is borrowing the idea and then putting it back into the universe.

I thought that was really cool.

I think that's quite a cool way of seeing it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I've done that.

I've had songs.

I've sat there obsessing over a song for six hours and got nothing.

I've sat there, put my pen on the paper and looked up in 15 minutes

and I was like, I don't even know where the song came from.

It just happened.

Sometimes you just have to wait for that moment.

Absolutely.

I think that you spoke to a very cool moment when the creativity happens

and you just have to sit in it.

So many songs I've lost just because,

okay, the session's over at 5.

I got inspired at 4.30 and I'm like,

well, I have dinner plans.

So now I have to go to the thing.

But it's like, sometimes the creativity just shows up

and you've got to sit in it.

Like, cancel all my meetings.

We have an album to finish, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm very envious of people

who can keep dream notebooks and things like that.

They say, oh, I had this idea in the middle of the night

and I wrote it down and wow, there it is.

There's a song.

It's like, that's never happened to me.

that just goes

yeah

lock himself in the studio really

you always hear that old

stone story and I don't know if it's true but like

Keith Richards fell asleep

he heard the chord to satisfaction

then he woke up the next morning

he's like I heard this chord in my dreams and it became

satisfaction

I don't know if that's true

or not but

I don't know if it is either

I remember the story about the stones

where Mick and Keith were I think

locked in a room by their manager at the time.

He said, look, I don't want you to record any more covers.

Those old R&B covers, the Beatles cover or whatever.

He said, look, you should be writing your own songs

like the Beatles do.

So I'm going to lock you away.

And you've got to come out with something.

I can't remember what they came out with,

the first song that they wrote.

But it was like one of their first singles

they wrote themselves.

It was great.

Of course it was great.

Of course it's great.

It must be nice, right?

So speaking of old music, how about any new music?

Is there anybody doing anything now

that really impresses you?

I love lots of new music.

I mean, I follow quite a lot of the independent scene.

I say the independent scene is enormous.

But I believe in supporting independent artists,

and I always have done.

So it's kind of like I'm really keen to hear albums

by various people you pick up on social media or whatever.

My friends are in a band called Patience.

I'm also from Brighton.

They've got an album out called Post High Lows,

which I just adore.

And they're really exciting to see live.

So bands like that are really cool.

Also slightly bigger bands.

I bought some records recently.

I got the Kevin Morby album.

That was cool.

His Golden Messenger.

I don't know if you know him.

And Aldous Harding, someone I really rate and have done.

I actually, I've seen her, I think about eight times over the last decade, I guess.

And I've got a ticket to go and see her tonight in Brighton.

So I'm looking forward to that.

Oh, cool.

That's a good time.

All right.

So we always start as artists, right?

We start out with this blind optimism.

And it's a little bit different when you're younger starting out.

You're 16.

You pick up a guitar and you're like, our band's going to change the world.

And then your expectations kind of get whittled down by reality.

But we still have things that we've dreamed of.

And sometimes some of that stuff happens.

What is something that you kind of hoped would come to pass since you started doing music

that has actually happened?

Like it's something that you've always dreamed of.

And you're like, oh, my gosh, I got to do that.

I mean, I was a slow starter.

For me, I was never like a...

I mean, when I tried to first pick up a guitar,

I was terrible at it, and I gave up for years

because I thought I couldn't play it.

I didn't know how.

And I mean, it's weird.

I found this guitar.

No, it's not here.

So I'm looking around and I'll show you.

But you can see, if you go to my Elastic Stage site,

which is where my vinyl and CDs live,

There's a picture of this kind of decoupage guitar.

This is a guitar.

I found a dustbin on the Hattie Road in London.

Somebody got really annoyed for whatever reasons.

I smashed this guitar in the wall and just put it in a public bin on the street.

And I thought, actually, that's pretty cool.

So I took it home and I decoupaged it.

It was an art project.

And that's kind of what it was.

It had no back.

It had, I think, four strings left or three or four strings.

And, you know, so it was just literally, it was a thing.

It was a little sculpture.

Yeah.

And then many years later, I was kind of looking at this thing in my office and thinking,

okay, let's just pick it up and see what it sounds like.

And I started plucking away chords.

And, you know, I mean, you play guitar, right?

So, you know, you can play just a small number of strings.

You can make some interesting sounds.

And that's the idea.

And so I kind of started picking up the guitar and thinking, okay, maybe I can do something with this.

And then I started kind of, you know, learning chords and designing, you know, doing covers.

And then thinking, okay, I can actually create something here that's a bit different.

And it became this very slow, slow process.

I'm literally just sitting on my sofa playing with this broken guitar.

And then, of course, I got a proper guitar and started doing it properly.

And it just built from that, really.

Did you get any kind of YouTube tutorial?

Or was it just you, your chords, and your patients?

I mean, me and my chords and my patients.

Looking at chord shapes.

I still can't do barric chords.

I've just got really stubby fingers. That's just, you know, that's never going to happen.

So I cheat. I do the simple G. I just, I play very simply. That's my style and that's okay.

But it was starting out with covers and then you kind of get a feel for how other people write

their songs. You know, Lou Reed was someone, Tim Harden very early on, Beatles songs. And then you

start thinking, well, hold on, actually, I've got some ideas. What if I do this chord? What if I do

you that chord and you kind of then start building your own patterns and it kind of grows from there

really. I very much liken myself to those. I think part of the reason why I called the first

I was a telephone album, Harry Smith Was My Father, it's kind of dedicated to those Harry Smith albums.

Do you know the Harry Smith anthologies? This guy, he was a guy in the 1950s who influenced Dylan and

quite a lot of the folk scene really because he basically put together these compilations of

1920s and 1930s blues and folk singers from old 78s essentially. And it's a beautiful box set of,

I think, I think three albums. And anyway, these people were people who just sat around at home

with a guitar. If they were lucky, there might be a piano or something and just, you know, taught

themselves to play essentially. And that's how some of the early blues songs were written. And

you know, you can tell that from listening to them really. And I kind of liken what I did

a bit to that. They were sitting on their front porch with a bottle of whiskey, maybe,

guitar in hand, rocking away. And I was sitting on my sofa with a bottle of beer,

basically doing the same thing. 80 years later, whatever it was.

That's cool, man. So what do you think is more important? Because as somebody who,

like for me, for instance, I'll give you an example. My brother is naturally gifted. I mean,

since he was maybe nine, I'd be like, hey, man, you ever hear that song that goes such and such?

And he sits down at the piano and just plays it. I'm like, of course he can.

You know, somebody, somebody now me, I'm not naturally gifted. So anything I had to do

was hours in the studio, get the song completely right, bring an engineer. Meanwhile, my brother

can literally like walk on stage with a guitar strapped to his back, get paid for a gig and

leave. I'm like, of course you can. What do you think is more important, natural talent or work

ethic? This is completely a self-justification, but I am not, and I don't have a natural musical

talent. You know, I'm very much an amateur and I always will be. I don't think my voice is

particularly great. It's got a better character sometimes, but you know, it is what it is. I think

I'm a good songwriter. I'm a good lyricist, but I think sometimes I like the fact that I am

a little bit amateurish about things and a bit, you know, a bit sloppy at it. You know,

we have this rule in the studio where we tend to kind of go at things where we did initially,

at least just three times. If it wasn't working after three goes, you just think,

well, let's just stop that and go on to something else. And I think sometimes doing things that

really rough way, it's very much just the way it is, the way you are means, you know, you're not

going to end up sounding like someone else. You sound a bit more authentically like you.

If I was a better guitarist and a better singer, I'd probably just start sounding much more like

other good guitarists and other great singers and it wouldn't be so authentically me so in some ways

I'm quite pleased that I'm just not as good as your brother in an odd way that's where you and

I differ I wish I was as good as my brother yeah um if you if you talk to people that are making it

or you even see these interviews everybody's saying be brutally yourself be so authentic

and then there's also a commercial viability to it where it's like well if myself isn't selling

records i should probably sound a little bit more like a b or c you know so where do you draw the

distinction between sounding specifically like yourself and then still trying to pay the mortgage

with music you know because yeah yeah well i'm not paying off my mortgage with my music unfortunately

it's uh it's not that big an earner so i'm not sure i'm i'm not the right person to advise people

If you want to succeed in the industry, I mean, you know how it works.

I mean, yes, be really talented, focus on your art,

be really good at what you do.

Most of the advice is don't be too weird, don't be too different,

be consistent in your style, your musical style.

I can't be consistent, and I don't want to be consistent.

I like playing around, I like experimenting with new things.

So you get that, you listen to my album,

in particular the last album, Old Songs for Kids.

You know, it starts off with kind of some indie pop,

and then there's a kind of big rock song.

and then there's a kind of this latin dance number which you know was was great fun to do and we

didn't intend it to be a latin dance number but it was just the moment in the studio that

that just worked and so we just built on that are you well you have songs on that album that are

commercially viable like i've listened to i've listened to acdc since you booked the meeting i

listened to acdc three or four times i played big man multiple times like i went back i was like i

to hear that again. So, I mean, if you get the earworm, that means the song worked, worked,

worked from a commercial standpoint, you know? So you had songs on that that worked. I think,

I had an artist tell me, and I was like, he's a, he was a hip hop guy, but he makes such relevant

music. And now he's on the other side of 30, still making really relevant music. And let's face it,

it's a, it's a, it's a young man's game, but he's still, I mean, we're talking millions of streams.

He's doing really well. And he was like, and I was like, how do you, how, how are you staying so

relevant and making these these pop songs and he's like no no no i'm continuing to make experimental

music it just happens to be accessible it's all experimental until it breaks through and yeah

ah okay so it's almost like it's almost like permission to be weird you know and you're and

your tribe will just find you you know i think so i think that's the i think that's just a great way

to be i like being i like the idea that i'm my tribe will find me at some stage you know and it's

That permission to be weird thing is great.

I mean, Daylight was the classic example.

That's the kind of Latin dance number from old songs for kids.

And if you go to the Elastic Stage site, there is a version, the original demo, which was

like a two-minute folk song that I'd written, me, my guitar.

That was all it was.

And brought that to the studio.

We started laying that down.

And then we were listening there with my engineer, Paul, and we were kind of thinking, we're

just chatting away and saying, that would sound really good

with a bit of a Latin, you know, little Latin riff.

And Martin, my keyboardist, said basically it was a real hold my beer moment.

He just said, right, hold on a second, I might have something.

Sat down at the piano and just start on this little riff.

And it was only like a two-minute song.

And we took that away and then I came back to the studio

and I said to Paul, I love that riff Martin laid down.

I really love it.

Let's just double the song.

Let's just kind of do a copy and we'll have that running through

and then we'll just put some other layers on top of that

and just make it something really different.

And that's what we did in the end.

And I really love it.

I think it works.

Isn't that cool when it happens like that?

Yeah, you can kind of like let go.

Some people get a little bit too possessive with the music.

What's the saying?

Sometimes you have to kill your babies.

You know, like you'll have it the way it is in your mind

and it's so precious and you don't want to try anything

or do anything and, you know.

Yeah, Martin's great to work with

Because whenever he comes into the studio, it's like odd days at a time.

But he comes in and it's like a little playroom for him.

Because he does keyboards and he does things with strings.

So, oh, great, there's a guitar I've not used before.

I'll try that.

Or, you know, I love that particular bass.

Or there's an organ over there.

Oh, I haven't done an organ for a while.

And, you know, the new songs we're doing, he found this kind of weird little synthesizer

at the back of the studio and thought, well, let's give that a try and play with that.

And it's worked out really well.

So we're using some of that as well.

So, yeah, I think that freedom, just give people a bit of freedom.

If you've got the right people with the right spirit in the room,

they just come up with magic sometimes.

Yeah, and that's good that you can have that kind of collaboration, too.

And it's good to have people you can work with, too.

There's something to be said about the musical community, so to speak.

You hear these guys that try to, I have guests that come on

and they just kind of make music in a vacuum.

It's just like them, a computer and a keyboard in a bedroom.

And then you hear these stories about exhaustion and burnout and everything.

So having people to support you, it's not so much what you make, but how you make it.

When you think about like the environment and the people you want to be working with,

because at the end of the day, it's a marathon, not a sprint, you know?

So you're making music with people you want to be friends with for the next 10, 20 years.

I've never been in a band and people quite often ask, why have you never been in a band?

I mean, it's partly just a time thing.

I've, you know, never been an organizer.

But it's also that there is that thing that I know a lot of bands have been together

and then really broken up badly.

And it just creates a kind of,

it creates a management role

that you don't expect to have as a musician,

but you actually need to make a band work.

And that's a kind of different sort of mentality.

Yeah, great artist, bad administrator.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, the dream is you have a band

like probably the Beatles started out as,

or a band like, I think of REM, for example,

as a bunch of friends that just grew up together

and developed together.

Well, those are the ones that work.

I mean, Dave Grohl has this great quote,

And he was like, people go to these talent shows

and they learn these very structured way

of making bands together

where they put four strangers together

into the pop machine and they become a band.

And he's like, no, that's not how you do it.

But you have people that you would die for.

You go to a yard sale and get shitty instruments.

You play them loud, play them often,

and you become the biggest band in the world.

That's how you make a band.

And I'm like, I have tears in my eyes as I'm reading it.

I get the chills.

You need to do the work and building friendship

as well as just, yeah, chainsaws.

Well, something about your composition, which is neat, is you really let your vocals breathe by themselves a lot.

You know, like when you can tell it's like, like, for instance, you don't do a ton of doubling, not a whole bunch of like elaborate harmonies.

Like the vocal is it just kind of sits in front of the mix and all that personality breathes through.

But but also because it's a sparser composition, the arrangements of the music are kind of like they kind of dance back and forth with each other, you know, between your vocal and the way you have the instruments.

It's not like, like when you hear a Whitney Houston song, you just hear, you just hear Whitney booming over a fairly generic arrangement.

You know, there, when you hear like hip hop, you hear the guy rapping and then there's, you know, just a beat.

The arrangement supports a very interesting vocal, but the vocal is, is sparse.

If that makes sense, you know, you let, you let your voice just be what your voice is, which separates it, which makes it sound different than everything else that's out there.

It's yeah.

Thank you for that.

it's a really interesting observation.

I'm not a big fan of my own voice.

I find it quite difficult to listen back to a lot of the time.

And yet,

actually,

when I listen to some of the old songs I've laid down and then listen to

again after,

you know,

a year or two's gap,

then I start thinking,

well,

actually that's okay.

You know,

that's,

that's not,

that's not quite how I felt about it when they originally recorded it.

And it,

that's it,

it is fast.

And I do some double tracking and I've,

my friend Tim kind of lays back some backing,

vocals on the last couple of albums, which is really cool. It's a really nice addition, I think.

It gives a warmer feel. It's probably a little bit more commercial, not that really I'm doing

commercial work. But yeah, the vocal, I do think the vocalist, partly because I'm a lyricist

fundamentally. And so for me, the words have to stand out. They have to be clear. So it's quite

important for the vocal to kind of stand out and sit on top of the song a bit as well.

You do a lot of things well and you do have like a really interesting process.

What is the biggest challenge for you in terms of trying to get a project out the door?

Time.

A lot of the time.

I mean, a lot of the albums I make, I mean, even though, as you observed, you know, I'm

quite productive.

There's a lot of albums that have come out over the last few years and they've had a

lot of work put into them.

It's whenever we can grab a moment, you know, we book, you know, a day a month, pretty much,

You know, there may be a couple of days to kind of lay down the kind of core of the album.

And then maybe a few other days where there's a few more songs laid down.

And then it's kind of one day a month over the course of the next year, really.

Just kind of putting things together, mixing things properly, maybe adding a trumpet here, a bit of backing vocals there and so on.

So it's just working things through.

And I think the time thing is the biggest challenge for me.

I'd love to be able to do it full time.

And I don't.

So, you know, I'm envious of, I don't know if you saw,

I was talking to somebody about that Rolling Stones,

the Jean-Luc Godard film about the Rolling Stones doing,

when they build up Sympathy for the Devil, it's called One Plus One.

Very famous sort of late 60s film.

And he just, amazing chance of opportunity,

Jean-Luc Godard in the studio with the Rolling Stones,

as they are building up this song, Sympathy for the Devil,

which is obviously one of their, you know, really great songs.

And it starts out in a, again, a bit like some of my songs,

It's a simple kind of, Mick Jagger's got this idea for a lyric, lays it down with a bit of simple guitar,

and then they start building it up and they kind of get their drumming in, a bit of dum-dums,

the backing vocal scene is just beautiful to see.

I'm deeply envious of bands like that.

The Beatles as well, obviously, with the letter B.

You could just spend day after day in the studio just playing things.

But even they, I say I'm in this, I am in this, but then,

the best moments are those moments of inspiration.

It's when the music hits.

It's like when Paul McCartney comes into the studio and,

and he's just been at home playing around on the keyboards and,

and the song he brings in is like,

let it be or something,

you know,

it's just like,

Oh my goodness.

Where did that come from?

I don't know.

How about that?

Like I was reading,

there's a,

there's a McCartney biography.

It was written from,

it's a lot of it is a,

it's like a,

it's a transcript.

So the guy was like on scene,

I forget that.

I forget the writer's name.

It's called many years from now.

And it's a lot of like,

Paul talking about like,

like when he recorded and what he recorded.

So he's like,

he's like,

so you see him talking about,

he's like,

John wrote the chorus and I did the two verses here.

And then we recorded this.

And there was like a run of like maybe six or seven days when like eight of

the 10 best songs of all time.

They didn't end up like a week.

I'm like,

how do you go to a studio and do like,

Oh,

blood D then go do blackbird.

They go like everything.

All these songs are getting recorded like day after day.

And you're just like,

yeah.

When you think about some of the really great artists,

the work they're really famous for,

the work they've really brought in the beans,

you know, it's a very small part of their life,

a very small part of what they do.

I mean, Dolly Parton's the classic one.

She wrote, you know, Jolene and I Will Always Love You,

literally, I think it was on the same day,

literally within, you know, basically eight hours.

How'd you do that?

That's just incredible.

Yeah, it's insane.

It's insane.

And then you think about, I mean,

you've had days where you've just,

you've had days where you've wrote multiple songs in a day.

So let's just say in retrospect,

let's say you did have a song that broke through

and then these songs are part of your catalog.

There'll be somebody on an interview like this being like,

I can't believe John wrote these two songs in one day.

Yeah,

maybe I don't think I've had my two,

my two absolute classics in a day.

Yeah.

There you go.

Taking ourself out of the equation,

right?

We all know that artist in our,

maybe in our neighborhood or somebody we've,

collaborated with, that incredible musician, somebody we so admire and we know them personally.

And for whatever reason, they just cannot get out of the park. What do you think is the biggest

obstacle holding back artists that we believe are talented, but just can't get out of either that

local following or they just don't perform or just can't get moving?

It's really, yeah, that's a really hard one. I definitely have friends like that. I mean,

every other person you bump into in Brighton, my own town,

seems to be a musician or some kind of artist or something.

And there's a lot of people who are really, really talented.

Some have had brief moments and then never really made it.

Others have never made it at all.

And I think some of it's that you've got to put the work in.

I mean, you know, not everybody succeeds,

but if you're not out there trying,

you ain't going to go off starting blocks, really.

And that means when I put the work in, it's not just creating music,

It's doing the whole job, the promotion, writing to people,

finding people like yourself, like blogs, like websites

who are going to help you promote your music, get the word out there.

It's just so important, making connections.

And that's, you know, a lot of people think,

oh, I'm a musician, that's all I do.

I don't really know how to do this other stuff.

You've got to be out there doing it.

It's part of the job.

I had somebody explain it to me, and it made a lot of sense.

Because the minute you decide to subsidize your life with music,

to subsidize your expenses with music,

it is now a music business,

which means you have to be able to do four things.

Make a thing, tell people about the thing,

sell the thing, deliver the thing.

And they said, even with music,

you have to be able to do all four of those good to great.

You don't have to be exceptional,

but you have to be good to great on all four.

You know?

Yeah, yeah.

And that makes so much sense to me.

Yeah, because we're musicians.

We're like, yo, I'm a guitar virtuoso,

but I also, I can't even make a webpage.

Or, hey, I'm really great.

I make these awesome videos,

but it's also nobody can buy my stuff

because my website is too complicated to buy an album.

So I can't deliver it, you know?

And you hear people like, my music's so good.

Why isn't it enough?

It's because it's one of those other pillars.

The good music is only about 20% of the music business.

It makes you think, I mean, I'm sure,

well, I know some of my friends who haven't made it.

I know they've got a bundle of fantastic songs out there,

you know, and I just, I kind of want to steal it away

and kind of softly release the demos I've got

or some of their stuff,

because I think it's that good.

You know, they need a bit of help.

But we'll see.

A lot of times it's volume.

Like I know people that'll go out

and do a six song set.

And I'm like, dude, like you're not,

you're too big for this place.

And then you look at them like,

oh, I've been doing music for 15 years

and I have these six songs.

And it's like, oh, that's why, you know?

So there's two quotes

and you tell me which one do you think is more accurate.

One is from Ashley Stahl.

It says, indecision is death.

You can always start, but course correct along the way.

You can't just stay stagnant.

And then the other one is from Alex Formozzi.

He says, distraction kills more dreams than difficulty.

You know, just people not being able to focus.

Which one of those obstacles do you think is more prevalent with artists?

I'm probably of the first.

I just think you've got to go for it and just keep going and then correct as you go.

Take opportunity.

It's not about, one of my favourite quotes is by Samuel Beckett,

it's kind of, you know, start, fail, fail every time,

but next time fail better.

And that for me just has real resonance.

It's like, yeah, just try, just try.

Don't worry about the failure because you're going to try again.

Next time fail better.

But I think a lot of the good things that I've done,

it's just been opportunistic.

And some of the opportunities, they're opportunities I've created.

Like the very first time I recorded, it was just thinking, well, I've got some songs,

I should do something with them.

What am I going to do?

I don't know.

I'll find someone who can record them.

Great.

Pay them a little bit of money and we'll just take the opportunity.

Other things just come along the way and you just think, well, let's give it a try.

One of the interesting things I'm doing at the moment is I'm working with a Nigerian producer

who's originally got in touch because he liked the music, liked my songs and said, well, why

don't you help me produce some, you know, I'll help you produce something.

And it's kind of like...

You know, it feels like the worst idea in the world

when a Nigerian contacts you and asks you for money.

But actually, I chatted and I trusted him.

And actually, that's proven really good because he's a good friend now.

And he's got a very good style.

He kind of makes sure you know you're getting something.

It's not like, you know, an open book or anything.

Anyway, he starts out with the idea that he'd produce me

and my vocals on his music.

And we tried a couple of tracks.

And there's one track that's out there that's like that.

And it was okay, but I kind of thought that wasn't going to work.

And then he thought, actually, you know what I should do?

I should form a band to cover your songs.

I thought, well, okay, that's interesting.

And let's work together on the production and, you know, do something.

So there's a Nigerian band out there now basically doing cover versions of Family Grave songs.

There's an EP with five of them out there already, and they're recording another five,

and there'll basically be an album of, you know, covers.

And I just think, okay, that's cool.

I never expected that to happen.

But if I didn't put a little bit of trust in the world

and just kind of engage and think,

okay, let's just experiment.

You know, you take chances and, you know,

you take the sorts of chances.

You're not scared to write them off if you have to.

That's okay, because I've got to just pull the plug

on the whole project if it wasn't working

and that would have been okay.

Or you can just let it go and see what emerges.

Now, do you think you would be as productive

or successful if you started earlier?

And the reason I ask is because

I got into music. I kind of had like a music renaissance of sorts. So I started when I was

about 28 or 29. So I had this mindset that it was like, I don't really have time to be scared.

So I was just going on stage and do wild stuff, see if people responded. It was kind of like a

hip hop rock project, you know, so a lot of question response. So I just went on stage and

saw what worked. Like, I just don't have time to be scared. Do you think you would be as productive

if you would have started younger with, I mean, with such a huge breadth of work,

the distractions of being younger or whatever.

And I don't know much about your personal life,

but I know that 21-year-old me

would have a hard time getting the songs finished,

but 29-year-old me was able to kind of like

plug through and finish albums.

I mean, same with me, absolutely.

I'm definitely more focused as I was older.

And, you know, and there were less distractions.

And you kind of, you know, I don't know about you.

I don't know your life either,

but I mean, maybe you have a bit more stability in your life,

a bit more security.

You're not having to look for a home necessarily.

Maybe you've got a good partner who's supportive

and, you know, all this kind of stuff.

But I definitely am a late starter. So, yeah, I have no regrets about starting late.

I don't think it makes me feel, I mean, I do feel, you know, time is short, life is short,

and that's for sure. That's definitely true truth. But I don't think that's where the

pressure comes from. I think it's just that kind of willingness to kind of just see where

the spirit takes you, where the muse takes you and just kind of see what emerges and just

keep being productive. I suppose I did it in a different way when I was younger,

but it never emerged as songs and music. I feel like the social validation wasn't

as important when I was older. When I was 20, I didn't really know who I was yet.

So to go on stage, present art, I don't think my insecurities would have let me deliver music

with the same enthusiasm and confidence as I did when I was 30, where I was like,

look, this is just kind of who I am now. Take it or leave it. Interesting to think about it.

Now, that being said, if you could give your younger self a message, you can go back in time, a quarter century to that young guy and give him a message.

What would that message be?

Well, I think I think just, yeah, just let it go.

See what you know, take take the opportunities, really.

See what's out there.

Don't don't say no.

You know, just just just just engage.

I mean, you know, the story about how John Lennon met Yoko Ono.

Yoko Ono was putting on an exhibition in London in the mid 1960s.

And John went to see it.

there was this little bit of the exhibition was a step ladder to a word in the ceiling and the word

on the ceiling was yes and you had to climb the step ladder to be able to read it because it was

that small and john lennon always said that if the word had been no he probably wouldn't ever have

been interested in meeting yeko ono i didn't know yes you know it just just triggered something in

and they thought actually this this person's interesting and you know i want to know more

and I think so yes but some yeah I love that story obvious obviously like I said we do have

some challenges like what does what does a bad day look like for you um like on a day you just don't

have it because everybody has their own version of a bad day like what does yours look like

I think a bad day is when I let the world go on top of me there's too much intrusion from

you know other stuff people's other people's problems really I think somehow you have to

learn to kind of grow as i get older i've grown a thicker skin and that's really healthy you have

to kind of let things kind of just wash over you a bit really and and let them pass and i think when

you do that you kind of go with the flow much more then things start emerging you start finding time

and space to do creative things um i find the the worst things when there's other people's

distractions we have this problem at the moment in my house i have it's just full of stuff for

various reasons. My mother died a year ago and I got a lot of her stuff in the house, which is,

you know, she was old, it's fine. I mean, it's sad, but it was unexpected. But it's just like,

lots of her stuff is now in our house. It's like, what do we do with that? I'm not distant enough

to get rid of it. I kind of feel close to it and I don't want to do that. And there's lots of other

things that are kind of crowding my space and it's physical space, but it's also crowding my mental

space. And, you know, we need to kind of free ourselves from some of that a bit. And then,

yeah, as we create physical space, it actually will also create more mental space to kind of do

do more new things. I think that's why some people also, that's quite healthy to kind of

buy that space. I mean, people do art degrees, I find, all the people I know have done art degrees,

not because they learn anything from their lecturers. I mean, nothing at all, a lot of the

the time but what they do get is time and space to do art and resources to do art and other people

to do art with sometimes and it's just that's the best reason to do an art degree is just to kind of

use that space to kind of develop yourself really actually as you're as you're saying it i feel like

i'm like looking in a mirror because like like i wouldn't i wouldn't i went into this show because

it was like i wanted to be close to music and to do something i wanted to be excused to hang with

musicians, but also can't afford to be in a bar five, six nights a week. So I'm like, so I'm like,

so what do I do? And having, and like working with an engineer and having somebody like produce

like, like this, this show, it, it literally is just a space that forces me to be creative,

you know, once, once, twice a week, you know what I mean? Sit here, think of questions,

immerse myself in somebody else's music to a point where I have to like actually invest in it so I

can talk about it and sound informed and not like an idiot you know like i've actually listened to

the music you know and can have intelligent conversations you know and then be here and

that's what it is it's almost like i forced myself to create a space to be creative and because i'm

paying i actually have to show up you know yeah yeah exactly which is a good thing as well i never

looked at you just made me look you just made me like reframe like my purpose for doing the show

really interesting yeah so when you do have those days when you feel like the world's just kind of

piling on you what are some of the useful things that you tell yourself in those like quiet moments

to kind of bring yourself back out and recenter yourself as i say i've developed a pretty thick

skin these days i don't let things go on top of me um and i think that's kind of come from experience

i you know i've definitely i've had really black days when i was younger and you know i've certainly

i've you know i've seen i've been in counseling i've kind of you know had moments where i just

not want to do that.

I mean, one of, you know,

there have been times,

but I think because you've been through this period

and one of the lessons I've learned is,

you know, I'm a very up and down person.

There are some people who,

they're just kind of at a constant level all the time

and it's very,

their graph of experience and emotion is quite flat.

Mine's not, mine's pretty up and down

and I, you know, that's just the way I am.

But recognising that in yourself

and recognising that when you're in a down part

the curve, it's going to bounce back up again. That's kind of important. And then thinking about,

okay, so what are the things that are going to get me there? If you're in a bad place,

separate yourself from whatever it is that feels bad. You know, go for a long walk,

maybe listen to some good music, maybe go and see some friends, maybe just, you know,

maybe have a few beers if that's what kind of frees you up, but it's okay. You know, don't,

don't kick yourself. Don't blame yourself. It's, it's that separation. It's a bit like,

If you want to create art, find a space to create it and give yourself space to do that.

And I think mentally it's the same thing.

It's like separate yourself, give yourself a bit of defense.

We need a little, um, a little moat around the castle.

I think that's kind of a, I like that kind of image really.

Build your moat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Boundaries, like safe, safe boundaries, you know, be kind of a little bit more selective

if you let in, you know.

Somebody told me recently that, um, you know, if people don't like you,

that's okay because that's a great filter those are people you don't need to worry about anymore

you know it's like you can live without them and it's like sometimes telling yourself that kind of

thing is really helpful yeah yeah if you could choose one skill to refine to um get better at

let's say you're going to bury yourself in this one project for like six months you're like i'm

going to get better at this i should probably say i should be a better guitarist but i don't think

that's going to happen my little stubby fingers so i think vocals i think i could i think my vocals

have changed and improved actually over the years and you can kind of hear that in some of the albums

um and i think i'd like to spend more time working out what my voice ought to sound like

i have this idea that i can kind of do a different you know work with other musicians and kind of

work do other kind of work like that um but what i can't do is find find someone else to vocalize my

my myself really so yeah that's probably the thing if we were to have this conversation say

a year from now, right?

What would you have liked to have completed

in that window of time

that you would feel like,

yeah, I did it?

There'll be a new album

and I hope it's going to be really great.

I think it's going to be great.

I'm really pleased with the song.

So I think it's coming along really well.

I'd like a lot of people to hear it.

I think it's,

we're talking about the jobs of a musician

not being just music.

So I think that sales thing

or that kind of promotional task

to do that better

would be really helpful

because I want to find my tribe.

And I know they're out there somewhere.

And they definitely haven't all found me yet.

A helpful reframe for me is somebody said,

and I don't know how accurate it is, but it was helpful,

is they say, all right, they use one of my albums as an example.

And they say, what kind of effort and creativity

did you put into this album?

And I was like, oh, yeah, well, I was listening to a lot of this at the time.

And I wanted the bass to sound like this and the vocals to sound this.

And this is the mood.

And I gave this long, elaborate answer.

And they said, cool.

when the album was done, what sort of creativity did you put in the promotion?

And I was like, oh, I sent out flyers and invited people to the record release party.

Is there a part of us?

Will there ever be a part of us as artists where we can put that same creativity into the promotion?

I'm not talking about the analytics.

I'm talking about like color, visual aesthetic.

Yeah, I wonder.

I mean, probably not because that's not what we do.

That's why we should, if we had enough money, employ managers.

you know and other people who are specialists because everyone has a different special

specialism but of course we're small independent artists and we can't do that so we have to just do

what we can whenever we can they were speaking about a more from it like a like a creative

standpoint you know like the like the actual creativity aspect of your promotion not just

volume not just um you know post clicks things of that nature but it's like uh like i saw like

There's this artist, for instance, her name is Lena Cooper.

And her thing is yellow.

Everything she wears is just yellow.

It's like her color.

But her album, her 2025 album is called Some Girl That Never Made It on the Internet or something like that.

It's like this long title.

It was cool, though.

And I'm like, this album, it sounds like 2025.

It's incredible.

But her promotion is almost like this pandering.

It's almost like a spoof on how people promote stuff, if that makes sense.

So like the people that do to just like hot views and stuff, it's like her in yellow trying to do it, you know, but it's like, but it's parody of it, you know?

And I'm like, it's so creative and interesting.

I'm like, the promotion is as good as the album.

You know, it's like her in front of a Taco Bell eating and lettuce is poured all over.

And she's just like, like my song, make sure you like my song.

It's like a sloppy, you know, like, but it works.

It's great.

And I'm like, huh.

I was like, I was like, you really can, if you can not take yourself so seriously, which

is kind of what you're talking about, having the thick skin and just being like, I have

nothing to lose.

Just put it all out there.

There's some kind of, there's a creative funness to the promotion.

It doesn't have to feel like work.

I haven't found it.

Yeah.

Have fun with it.

There's no, no, I have no idea what works.

I, you know, I think if you were in the industry, you'd spend loads of money.

That's not what we do.

So what else are you going to do?

But yeah, play around, have fun.

You know, you can do a really serious promotion one album.

That'll be okay.

You know, I try to do that.

I've tried to write good PR.

I kind of like put it out,

try to find loads of email addresses to send it to

and try and find the right people.

Sometimes you can just do something fun and different.

And yeah, great, go for it.

Well, I know that what's coming back now

as you're starting to see is like the album rollout

is like a thing now.

Like it was before it was, you'd have,

You'd have a, I mean, and this is, I'm probably painting with some broad strokes here, but

I mean, you would have like your big music video, you do a couple of interviews and then

the album comes out, you know, and you get a nice push for about five to seven days.

But now people are doing like an album rollout and it's, and I'm starting to see some like

really interesting things.

And I'm like, oh, this looks, this looks kind of fun.

Like for instance, um, did you know the artist Halsey?

Oh yeah.

Pop singer Halsey.

Like she did an album called the great impersonator.

So she did a photo shoot of her dressed up as like the different,

different female artists.

And I'm like,

that's actually interesting.

But it was like,

but it was like maybe like 15 or 20 different artists.

So Instagram had a different picture of her.

She's like,

I'm a partner.

Her dress is Britney Spears.

Her dresses,

you know,

and then by the time the album came out,

I was like,

I had just as much fun looking at the pictures as I did listen to the album.

You know,

you remember her name and you kind of know what she's doing,

what she's about,

which is part of the art really.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it kind of gets you thinking too.

It's like, like there's, you think about your album,

but then you think about your rollout and it's like, wow,

if the rollout had as much emphasis as the album,

it actually might be a cool symbiotic relationship between my promotion and

the art.

Yeah. There's no, there's no rules to any of this. I mean, you know,

some people say the album's dead.

So you've got to release loads of singles because that's all people listen to.

I mean, yeah, that worked for some people,

but I think the album is going to come back and it will change.

And I think what people want more than anything is something that feels a bit

new, a bit fresh, a bit different.

Right.

And I don't know what that's going to be.

You know, it could be, it could just be anything.

What I know is if you just try and follow the industry rules

and do what other people tell you you should do,

you're probably not going to get far.

So that thing about being yourself or just having fun

and seeing what emerges, I think is kind of important, really.

I agree with that too.

I think if you try to rework what's already worked, it's too late.

It's almost like if an investment looks like a good investment,

you're too late.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like if you're already doing what's already worked,

It almost looks like if you look, you either look like you're crazy until people think you're ahead of your time.

You know, he looks completely nuts and then it works.

And you're like, ah, he was ahead of his time.

You got it.

Yeah, man.

Yeah, exactly.

Speaking of promotion, how can we support you, man?

You're doing really cool and interesting stuff.

I want people to know about it.

How can we best support you?

Yeah, I mean, I'm out there on, the only site I'm not on is Facebook, actually, because Meta hates me, basically.

And they ban me.

I think because the last album cover for old songs for kids,

which has got a picture of my son when he was like two years old on a beach

somewhere.

I think it's great. It's a great, great photo.

The crooked sunglasses. I love it.

Exactly. That's the one. Yeah. And it looks really cool. And you know,

it's not like people haven't used kids on covers before. I mean, nevermind,

you know, by Nevada.

It's great. Anyway, meta hate me. And I think the,

the the automate automations the ai kind of decided to ban me so i'm not on facebook at all

but everywhere else i'm on and i love instagram that's a lot of fun i like threads that's kind of

chatty it's quite good for independent musicians i think you kind of meet a different sort of

community that way and i i've really enjoyed that i'm on band camp of course i'm on band camp so if

people want to download my stuff uh i'm a big fan of every once a month usually band camp friday i'll

be buying independent musicians music because i just think it's it's like paying my music tax as

a music fan i think it's important that we do that you know and then i've got records and um cds

available on elasticstage.com and again you can go to my link tree um normal link tree

slash family grave and you will find me i'm always there under the family grave and there's a link to

the albums um they look really cool especially the latest one old songs for kids it's not that

great bitch on the cover um i always do a really cool inner sleeve with all the lyrics and so on

so that looks really smart um and elastic stage is a very interesting company i don't know if you've

heard of them um they're kind of they're enabled to do very small runs of vinyl i never expected

to have a vinyl release um and and i do now i yeah it sounds really good um the way they master

their stuff is just fantastic i think i love that too um i can i can give my own shameless plug

the

old songs for kids first off I love the title

I like kind of ironic titles to albums

like that I actually have my album is called

songs about girls it's like my fourth album

so it was like it was kind of neat

I kind of felt like a kinship to you but

old songs for kids incredible album

deeply emotional still elements of

fun ACDC is probably

like I call that the banger single

on the album that was the song that really connected with

me big man is a really good song too

if you can spare

10 minutes just to check out some music

I personally would point you to those two songs.

I personally vowed for ACDC, Big Man,

on the album Old Songs for Kids

from John from the Family Grave.

Thank you very much, Ian.

Thank you so much for spending time with us, man.

I really appreciate it.

It's been fun.

Good talk.

Good talk.

Awesome.

Awesome.

I certainly enjoyed it.

And the rest of you,

thank you so much for tuning in.

Make sure you check out Loves Music,

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