David Gray
    Interviews

Midnight Rambler

08/24/2003 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Lyndsey Parker

At one time, it seemed that singer-songwriter David Gray was doomed to be yet another one of those sadly unsung heroes, a shoulda-been-a-contender whose talents would forever remain unknown and unappreciated due to major-label neglect. But after releasing albums on both EMI and Virgin that inexplicably landed straight in record store cutout bins, Gray decided to take matters into his own hands, recording his fourth effort, White Ladder, on his own dime and own time, and putting it out on his own IHT Records. Promoting the album on his website, he stated with his typical earnestness that White Ladder was "the antithesis of big-budget sterility, nearly killed me, [and] is about doing something for nothing and next-to-nothing...[it] doesn't try to be anything other than what it is."

With his brittle but beautiful voice and knack for crafting pure and passionate ballads (as well as making an early-'80s synth song like Soft Cell's "Say Hello Wave Goodbye" sound like it was written expressly for the acoustic folk guitar), Gray had created a humble and noble masterpiece with White Ladder, which might have wound up another music-industry-casualty case of great injustice if it had suffered the same fate as his other overlooked albums. But every once in a while, a record receives attention just because it's good--not because a board of marketing gurus forced it down the unsuspecting public's collective throat--and luckily, such was the case this time around. Through word-of-mouth circulated by ardent fans, the Internet, and a handful of supporters at tastemaking college radio stations like L.A.'s KCRW, Gray was able to do for himself what the major-label marketing gurus never could, and suddenly White Ladder was a big-selling, buzz-garnering import in the States.

This success story had an especially happy ending: Gray became the first signee to Dave Matthews's new record label, ATO Records, which officially released White Ladder in America and turned it into a multiplatinum hit. Now Gray has returned with his long-awaited follow-up, A New Day At Midnight, and a new compilation of his overlooked earlier material, Best Of The Early Years. Everything is looking rosy in Gray's world. Gray recently met up with LAUNCH mananging editor Lyndsey Parker to discuss his journey from recording in his London living room to headlining in stadiums across the globe. Here's what the affable, humble Brit had to say:

LAUNCH: The first obvious question would be, how did you hook up with Dave Matthews and end up becoming the first signing to his label?

DAVID: I first met Dave Matthews outside a store called Albums On The Hill in Boulder, Colorado. He declared he was into my first album, and we had a little chat, and then I didn't see him for a couple of years, until we did a few gigs with him. His career was sort of on the upslope at that particular point; mine was kind of hovering in the dubious nether-regions. I didn't really think any more of it, but I watched his career sort of take off: "Oh wow, look, he's doing well," and "Christ, he's really doing well," and "Jesus, he's taking over the world!" And then, strangely enough, he's thinking of setting up a label, and I'm thinking how to get our record out over here [in the U.S.], and the two things sort of merged at just the right moment, just when we were about to try some other distribution idea. I think it's a good vibe. In the past, musicians having their own label hasn't always been a successful formula, but with him and his team and the way they all think, it's a lot more down-to-earth. It's like, he just wants to put some stuff out that he thinks needs attention.

LAUNCH: You've been on a couple of major labels, so what made you want to put White Ladder out yourself, on your own label, before Dave Matthews came around? And what went wrong with the labels you were signed to before?

DAVID: None of it worked out for me; it didn't feel right and it didn't amount to anything in the end, the big-label thing. I think it's very difficult, especially if you're a stubborn, creative pain-in-the-ass like me--you just won't accept anything that isn't quite right. And I didn't quite make the right record. It took me a while. But the reason we put out a record ourselves is quite simply because no one else wanted to--I mean, at the time. It just seemed like the obvious step: "The least we can do is put it out ourselves." It was good fun, basically: "Oh, let's make a record company and do that!" So we did, and then one thing led to another and it's done really, really well.

LAUNCH: How did you fund the recording for this record, without the major-label backing?

DAVID: Well, you can make a record for next-to-nothing these days...and that's sort of what we did. But we got a lucky break with this feature film being made in England by this Scottish director. The film was called This Year's Love. The director asked me to do the theme music, and that came in at just the right moment. We didn't get very much money, but all of it went into the record. And we went around begging people in the industry who were fans and said, "Can you chip in?" and "Hey, let's go to the pub!" So we just begged, borrowed, stole, and everything else, and that's how we sort of got it together. We didn't need very much; we didn't have very much equipment. We just made it at home with a computer and a couple of mics. I mean, it was hard to get it technically right, because things were going wrong, because we had crap equipment. But then that sort of turned into the sound of the record--that kind of cozy sound, really--'cause you don't get any of that sort of really pristine £200,000 production. But that's good; it's a violent sound. Why not have a sound? At least that way, we had a character that seemed right for the record.

LAUNCH: Where did you record White Ladder?

DAVID: It was mainly made in my spare room, in my house in London. It was the summer and we had the windows open. I mean, for most of the making of it, we weren't really thinking, "We're making an album!" We were just carrying on, doing home recording because it was going well, and it seemed to be getting better. So we had the windows open and the cat was wandering about, cars going by, but it just felt good. All this extra noise was going down on the tape, but even that seemed like quite a valid thing to be doing. I said, "Why not? I don't care if I was listening to a record and I heard a car going by, it's quite a nice sound."

LAUNCH: Weren't there some odd circumstances surrounding the recording of the drums?

DAVID: Yeah, we couldn't do drums in my house 'cause the neighbors didn't like it. So we got this photographer who said he was going away for two weeks, and we could use his studio. So we went down there, and unknown to him, his assistant had decided to line up all these shoots. We were like, "No, no, we're recording our album!" And the assistant was like, "Actually, no, I'm taking photos of models." So we had drums set up on one side of the room, and he had his models in the other. Oh, it was absolutely mad--there was also a film being filmed above us. They told us to shut up. It was crazy. So we were doing these stupid, stupid takes, like, "He's having a cup of tea right now, come on, play the music, f--king tape it now>!" It was mad, but it also hung together, it seemed to make sense. We managed to sort of hang onto what we were doing the whole time.

LAUNCH: Now, White Ladder was the first album on which you used samplers. Did some of your diehard fans react the way some people acted when Bob Dylan went electric? Were they upset about this supposed "selling out"?

DAVID: There was a bit of that, but we were expecting much more, to be honest. It was a radical departure for me. It's not a radical record by anybody's standards, but compared to what I'd done before, yeah. There's beats, there's drum machines all the way through, really. That was brilliant, because the way we were working, you couldn't drum and we couldn't do all those things. We had to find other ways and means of doing it, so we started out with just a beatbox, and then we did a bit of drumming in some way and sampled it. It sounded great. There was a bit of a backlash, but Christ, we thought there was going to be hundreds of people: "This is terrible. What have we done?" You know, especially 'cause the first track on the album, "Please Forgive Me," is particularly...it's got a slight cheesy kind of pop element to it. But no one seemed to really give a sh-t.

LAUNCH: You do have some pretty overzealous fans, don't you?

DAVID: Yeah. I mean, I suppose I'm asking for it, really, with my heart-on-sleeve style. On my website, it gets a bit crazy at times. They don't have enough of a grip on real life, like this is so important. It's unbelievable how they really fight about things: "He's a sellout 'cause he's doing this." "He's not selling out. He should be doing that." "He's selling out." "He's not selling out..." You can't actually listen to it. It's just some ridiculous dialog. I think because my songs are kind of wordy and they're quite revealing and they're open--the emotions in them--people think they know me because they've listened to the music and it meant something to them.

LAUNCH: Any particularly odd fan encounters you can think of?

DAVID: The first time I came to the States and toured, I remember getting to Los Angeles and this guy followed me around. I didn't notice him to begin with. Then I was like, "There's that f--king guy again!" He was a weird little guy, crawled up from the mountains or something. At the end of it, I was lying by the swimming pool in L.A. with some ridiculous hangover, and he walked in calmly, walked around the swimming pool, and presented me with this photo album, which was basically me doing all the things I'd done in Los Angeles. It was like, "Here you are buying some Fritos. Here you are buying some potato chips..."

LAUNCH: Did that freak you out, or were you flattered by that?

DAVID: I just thought it was funny. "Would you like to sign my copy of Catcher In The Rye?" Um, yeah...

LAUNCH: Now, you were talking about wearing your heart on your sleeve. Is it difficult or uncomfortable for you to put yourself out on the line like that emotionally, in your music?

DAVID: Well, no, because that must be the essence of the whole job, to be vulnerable and real amongst all the complete nonsense. I mean, that uncomfortable quality has got to be the point of the whole thing. It does become difficult, but I think if it's not difficult, then you're not doing something right. The whole point is it should be difficult.

LAUNCH: Your music therefore comes across as very honest and real.

DAVID: Well, I really don't do things in an "ironic" style. That's not my thing, irony. I just find that boring. I don't mind people being ironic in conversation, but I consider making music a more powerful thing than the source of needing just to be ironic with it. It's funny for a little while, but then it isn't. It's a very short-term sort of "look, we're cool!" thing. Yeah, maybe you are, but whatever...but anyway, I won't get into that...

LAUNCH: Does it feel kind of vindicating to you that, after putting out albums on major labels that didn't get much attention, you finally broke through to the big time by recording and releasing an album on your own? Was that kind of like the best revenge?

DAVID: I would say that's looking at it in a negative way. But there is an element of that. What's that saying? "It's not enough that you succeed--others must fail." That's Oscar Wilde or whatever. There's an element of vindication, but more that the world is a f--kup, but don't try and tell me that I have to become a f--kup too in order to work in it. I'll do it my own way and it will work, and that's more a total pleasure. There is a different way you can go. You'll go our own way, with none of the big boys behind you, and you'll actually do all right. In fact, you'll do better! So yes, there's a pleasure, but it's more just a joy of actually being alive, a sense of belonging as opposed to trying to fit in.