Issue 84 / Dec 2017/Jan 2018

PREVIEWS
“What I write about,
stuff like truth and
wisdom, I’m trying
to impart that for a
younger generation”
GIG
CHRIS
WOOD
Philharmonic Music Room – 24/01/18
Chris Wood has been
championing the craft of
songwriting for almost three
decades: Paul Fitzgerald talks to
him about changing politics and
their faith in younger audiences.
The latest CHRIS WOOD release, So Much To Defend,
sees the uncompromising songwriter taking further
steps away from the folk tag of which we’ve become
a little too familiar, and he’s becoming a little bored
of hearing. Wood is a contemporary songwriter with a unique
vision of his subject matter. He helps us understand the
characters in his work by highlighting their circumstances
through themes familiar to us all. Social injustice, the struggles
of the everyday, love, light and our condition, and our place in
it all.
Wood is a prolific teller of stories, and a gifted
instrumentalist with a foot firmly in roots music and the
history of gathered songs, and passed down tales and a
keen eye on the times. Though a two-time winner of the BBC
Radio 2 Folk award, and having his name for many years
identified with the world of folk through his recording of
many traditional songs during the earlier part of his career, his
recent releases show a side that’s reveals him to be keen to
slip away from the shackles of what he calls ‘the f-word’.
Chris, you have a great gift for talking about contemporary
themes, but from a traditional folk storytelling position, and
that’s really to the fore with this new record.
It’s funny isn’t it… I’ve met a few people lately whose entry point
has been So Much To Defend and they’re saying ‘What’s all this
folk thing?, Why have people got you down as a folkie?’ They
haven’t heard the old stuff, they just say I’m writing songs, this is
current songwriting, you know?
I guess it’s a difficult one… it’s the Brits. The Americans have
totally got their head around the concept of the songwriter. They
wouldn’t call Neil Young a folkie, whereas we probably would,
because we haven’t yet got our heads round that songwriter slot.
Look at Billy Bragg, it’s the same sort of thing. When he brought
out that Mr Love & Justice album, that’s a real soulboy album –
they’re soul songs – yet the British music public have still got him
down as an old agit-punk and there’s nothing he can do about it.
You have a unique close sound on your recordings – there’s
always a great live sound held in the voice and the guitar. It’s
different somehow, to so many other singer-songwriters we
see doing the rounds – its deeper, warmer and wider.
I work really hard with sound engineers to get the sound right.
So many of them see an amp and just hang an SM57 over it and
assume that’ll do. They see a bloke going up to sing so they just
roll all the bottom end out of the voice because that’s just what
they’ve always done. It’s their go-to position so often. But the thing
is that, what I’m doing is just not like what everyone else is doing…
everything I do is driven by the sound. The guitar I play and the way
I play it, and the words I use are very often driven by their sound,
it’s not just the meaning. When people write reviews of the albums,
they completely fixate on the meaning of the lyrics, because they’re
people of letters, they use words, but they don’t ever seem to pick
up on the musicality of the words and the way there’s all sorts of
internal rhythms, it’s not just their meaning, it’s their sound. It has
to sound like me too, that’s the only way it’s going to work. I don’t
want to sound like me pretending to be someone else.
You write often of truth, of justice and of injustice, and the
current world malaise. This government and seven years of
austerity must have given you plenty of scope for content.
Don’t mistake political governance for power. It’s bigger
than governments. Political governments don’t have power.
Governments don’t have control of anything. It’s all about the
money. The money’s using algorithms to manipulate us, and
they’re algorithms over which we are completely powerless. The
money is the power.
Maybe there’s a change coming, a new energy maybe? We
have a whole generation who are beginning to believe in that
change. I see younger people in the crowd at your gigs these
days. Do you think there’s a new energy coming forward?
Yeh, well for a while I was writing for older people, but I’m kind
of switching slightly, I think. What I write about, stuff like truth
and wisdom, I feel like I’m trying to impart that for a younger
generation now. My kids are in their 20s, and I’ve been round
the block a couple of times, so I’m trying to offload some of that
knowledge, I guess. Things I’ve seen, found and heard. And I
want to make all that available to them.
My daughters are of a similar age, I see that change, and I find
that it’s that driven by their age, and the fact they’re more likely
to listen, and to have those ‘bigger’ conversations. I think that’s
coming through in this most recent album, and these new
songs.
Yeh, I think they realise that the stuff that needs be talked about
is stuff that’s actually going to affect them. I mean, Brexit is
such a perfect example of that. It’s a massive generalisation
but the stats are in. The old voted against the young. I know
an old guy, up at the allotments who actually said ‘Who cares
how it all turns out? I won’t be here anyway’. And you’re right,
increasingly now, I am finding younger people in my audiences.
And they need to know, it needs to be packaged for them, so
that we let them see clearly what’s going on… the other reason
they’ve got an interest is because in Jeremy Corbyn they can
see something different, something that might just be worth
getting behind and putting their faith in, in a way that until
he came along, there really was nothing. Like we said, it’s the
algorithms that are running the show. Say whatever you like
about Jeremy, he’s not an algorithm… let’s hope. If only just for
a change. Let’s hope that there is something there, and that
he’s not a man of straw. Let’s just see how it turns out. Fucking
hell, we’ve had our go round and we’ve made a piss poor job
it, haven’t we really? If there’s anything I’ve learnt, I’m happy to
pass it on, and I’ll pass it on through song because that’s how
I do it most clearly, but the songs aren’t for me, they’re for kids
who want something a bit more real than X Factor, something
more substantial. !
Words: Paul Fitzgerald / @NothingvilleM
Photography: Hugo Morris
chriswoodmusic.co.uk
So Much To Defend is out now via RUF.
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