JON BODEN | INTERVIEW
The former Bellowhead frontman talks to John-Paul Davies on the difference between solo and band gigs, folk and pop songs, and anonymity and fame as he embarks on the Welsh leg of his Afterglow tour.
Buzz: So this is very much a tour of two halves: first solo and then full band dates. How do you prepare for such different performances?
Jon Boden: Oh gosh, it’s really difficult actually. I thought it was a good idea to run them both together but it’s actually twice as much work because you have to totally readjust to the band after getting completely absorbed in the solo tour. They’re very, very different shows basically and it’s a different process – going on stage solo and having that quite intimate, one-to-one, relationship with the audience. And then the band which is quite a big, logistical, thing just to get from one gig to another and get onstage.
Do your parts change? Do you play different instruments in the full band compared to solo?
Yes, absolutely. But it’s also different material. I’m playing a lot more Bellowhead stuff in the solo gigs, it’s a little more varied. The band gigs are much more focused on the new album and material that relates quite closely to that album. It’s not a completely different set but there’s quite a lot of difference between the two sets.
All your Wales dates are solo. Is that defined by the venue, or availability of the band?
For the tour it’s about which venue works best. The tour gets booked in a long time in advance, so availability hasn’t been a problem. But availability is a problem for festivals with so many highly in-demand musicians in the band.
Your band, The Remnant Kings, features some Bellowhead alumni. How different is the sound they create compared to your old band?
It’s very different actually. On paper it looks quite similar, in terms of the instrumentation. But because the music is more focused on my songwriting it’s a lot more poppier and rockier with The Remnant Kings. And there’s less traditional songs which changes the feel of it quite a lot, I think.
The last time I saw you was at Pontardawe Arts Centre with Bellowhead. Any possibility of full band Wales dates in the future?
It’s one of my favourite gigs, Pontardawe. I think Pontardawe would be a great gig for us – well, there are lots of great gigs in Wales, but as I said, Pontardawe is one of my favourites, having done it so many times. So I’d like to think we might appear there sometime.
You’ve had a great response to Afterglow, your third solo album, including Radio 2 playlisting. How helpful is that sort of exposure?
Very helpful. I think, particularly, because it is such a change from Bellowhead. So it’s a really helpful way of being able to say to people, who may know me from Bellowhead: this is the new stuff. It’s different, but it’s maybe something that you’ll hear some commonalities with Bellowhead in as well.
Afterglow is a very different album from its predecessor, Songs For The Floodplain. How do you feel it fits into your own musical journey?
It feels, to me, a bit like an amalgam of those two things. I approached it very much the way I approached Bellowhead arrangements. I wrote the arrangements out and the instrumentation was similar and the process of recording was similar, whereas Songs… was all recorded by me playing everything, layering up in the studio in a kind of improvised way. Afterglow was almost a mix of those two things and it felt like a real coming together of lots of different strands of my career.
Yes, it sounds more like Bellowhead but with ‘songs’ rather than folk songs.
I’ve always slightly struggled with that because as a songwriter, I don’t write, particularly, in the folk idiom. A lot of people who sing traditional songs tend to write songs that you could pass off as a folk song. My tendency has always been to write more in a mainstream, pop idiom because that’s what I grew up listening to.
And you write with chord progressions, rather than in a modal style.
Yes. One of the difficult things with writing folk songs is that they tend to be quite short melodies, compared to a pop melody – you’ve got your verse melody and your chorus melody and your bridge melody as well to play with in the arrangement. In a folk song, generally, you’ve just got a 16-bar melody that repeats maybe 10 times, and you’ve got to structure an arrangement that tells the story of that song while using a very repetitive motif. So that’s quite a challenge actually – a fun challenge that yielded some cool stuff. But it’s quite a relief to go back to writing songs where you can write a complete melody with a chorus and all that.
Both this album and Tales From The Floodplain have a concept album feel to them. Is this a way of scratching your narrative drama itch left over from your musical theatre days?
Yes! It is. That side of it all, again, meets in the middle somehow because I’ve always been drawn to narrative songs in the traditional idiom when arranging narrative ballads. And I’ve always been drawn to storytelling and theatre and I’m a big reader of books. It was a real coming together of different strands as I was able to tell a story.
I’m telling in it quite an abstract and pointillistic manner. The interesting thing about telling a story in an album is that you want people to listen to the album 50 times and construct their own, elaborated, story around the signposts that you put there. It’s quite different, I think, to writing a book or a film or something.
And the songs have to work independently as well.
Well, exactly. People have got to want to put it on. That means you’ve got to have hooks and all the roots in for people.
You’ve won more BBC Radio Folk awards than anyone else, ever. Is it tough walking down the street or is folk music the best genre for combining success and anonymity?
It is [laughs]. Absolutely, yes. It’s lovely because now and then I get to feel famous when I go to a folk festival, or indeed my own gigs. But the rest of the time complete anonymity, it’s great. I always rather hope that someone, at the checkout at Sainsburys or somewhere, would say, ‘Oh, you’re Jon Boden!’ but it’s never happened. That side of it is certainly in a different league from the properly famous people.
You make a lot of varied music these days. What’s next?
Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure. I actually find myself edging back toward theatre at the moment, as a few things have come in. And the plan is to complete the trilogy of albums; to get on with writing a third album that carries on, not necessarily the same story but a story with the same aspect as the other two. I haven’t started it yet, but that’s the next thing on the list.
Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon, Tues 17 Apr. Tickets: £20/£10. Info: 01874 611622 / www.brycheiniog.co.uk
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Thurs 19 Apr. Tickets £20. Info: 01970 623232 / www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk
Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea, Fri 20 Apr. Tickets: £19/£17.50. Info: 01792 602 060 / www.taliesinartscentre.co.uk
