We’re cold but we hold the fire
Dave Anderson talks to Dom Coyote
Dom Coyote presents a delicious slice of folk, with veins of hip hop, ska and other plundered nourishments running through it. A friendly man in a hat with a spellbinding love for books and ambitious theatrical pursuits, he has everything in the gun cabinet to air his big ideas. When I called to arrange the interview I happened to disturb his absorption of slim prose in the salubrious environs of a country meadow. Impressed, the next day we sat and chatted in a café by a canal in East London, which the previous week I’d fallen into. I was ready for improvement...
I hear the rumblings of a new album?
Yep, the first full-lengther. It’s probably not going to be ready until the beginning of 2011 but a single, which’ll be a free digital release, and a short five date tour, are in place for the end of October.
And have a label taken you under their wing?
No, everything’s self-published. I’m discovering that it’s easy to release something, but it’s much harder to do and get people to know about it. Musicians are notoriously hopeless at the business end of things so it’s good to get your head around it. The album will be available from itunes, the Bandcamp website and also from my blog, www.domcoyote.net (the best way to find out what I’m doing).
I hear your launch parties are more than just schmoozing and vol au vents...
I’m very much interested in mixing things up. For the last EP ,The Wishing Tree, instead of doing a standard launch I organised a variety night at the Battersea Arts Centre called The Dispossessed. Based on one of my favourite novels of the same name by Ursula K. Le Guin the idea came from my love of dystopian science fiction. Pepe del Monte, a brilliant blues folk musician, did a turn. We also exhibited some interesting work by the sculptor Alice Cunningham and Bobby Jackson did some performance art.
I’m always impressed by a polymath. You wouldn’t call yourself a muso then?
I think the written word is the purest form of art. It’s the thing that connects to me the most.
Is your album your ‘magnus opus’ and if so what’s the plot? Who are the heroes and villains?
The good thing about writing lyrics for albums is you don’t need a concept throughout the whole thing. Because I work in theatre and write stories and work with larger plots, I’ve chosen to be, this time, quite free about what each story might mean then looked afterwards at how they might connect. There’s always romance between a man and a woman but there’s also stuff about modern dystopias.
I have trouble with spelling too...
All my work and the books I read are all about the devolution of man, our society and how we are destroying it and about finding our way back into the earth, finding what our real role is supposed to be, which’ll probably happen after a cataclysmic event. It’s a genuine possibility. I’m trying to spend a lot of time in the country, because I get sick of cities. I find a metropolis quite toxic, but saying that I also find it very inspiring. There’s a lot of light and dark in my work. The new record is about the sickness of humanity but also the amazing soul that we have. The love between people is an incredible thing.
That’s the power of love. Huey Lewis isn’t however among your influences I understand. When I read that most of your inspiration comes from obscure sci-fi and fantasy novels I was expecting the type of Stylophone epics favoured by Gentlemen Bronco’s Dr. Ronald Chevalier. Yet the music you write isn’t laden with a whiff of cheesy mysticism. The lyrics are subtle and open to individual interpretation, like all good songs. Could you say something about how the books you read feed into your songwriting and how the atmosphere and words are generated.
On my last EP there’s a track called One for the Passenger inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. In it a father and son, finding themselves among the last people on Earth in a scorched America, keep repeating the line “We’re cold but we hold the fire”. They still believe that even after the Apocalypse love can exist. A line like that provides the start. I improvise. A lot of my words come from a stream of consciousness and I’ll find a story or meaning within that. And that’s what I’ll do live. I’ll start with something quite sweet and perhaps move into an epic freestyle. JG Ballard is also a massive influence of mine. The Drowned World is one of my favourites.
I started Crash but I heard it’s not best to read whilst driving...
My favourite writer at the moment is China Miéville who deals with what he describes as ‘weird fiction’. He’s trying to reclaim the term ‘fantasy’ so it’s not seen as such a geeky thing. I’m absolutely not interested in the run-of-the-mill orcs and goblins. I’m interested in complete surrealism where there are fantastical imaginations, you can run wild and there are no rules. Good science fiction puts you out of your everyday life so it can pinpoint big questions. We can relate to these kinds of incredible ideas, but we relate to them through our subconscious. They don’t make any sense in our conscious life. So if you think about writing fiction more like dreams suddenly you’re thinking about the true and fantastical and that is what all my work is about.
Not my dreams though please. I’d hate to read a book about me sitting naked through a chemistry exam I haven’t revised for.
The best authors are those who aren’t defined by genre. That’s what I want to do as a musician - not be defined by a genre or scene because it feels right.
I agree, no one ever goes to see a film or painting just for what medium it’s in. We all have our roots however...
I used to be a frontman for a hip hop band. The transition into a folkier sound came gradually. I enjoyed making people dance and move and used to always say it was quite ‘shamanic’. I was studying a degree in creative writing at the time and became interested in comparing shamanism with MCs. I was always into Nick Drake and it was through the Kneehigh Theatre group that I started getting interested in moving people emotionally through storytelling, stuff that was hitting my heart.
The music is very redolent and does conjure up an atmosphere of disenfranchised Middle America: empty diners and desert gas stations.
The first EP I was listening to a lot of old country but also modern contemporary folk, reggae too. At the moment I’m listening to really big American bands, Grizzly Bear and Fleet Foxes. Often you don’t necessarily know what you’re doing so you have no idea who it sounds like. Other people might find their connections.
But what makes you stand out is your theatre work. You’ve just done a pretty extensive tour...
Kneehigh are a very musical company but very alternative as well. We took one of our plays Don John to South Carolina. It was a play set in the seventies and was interesting as a singer to go through all the genres of the time like punk and soul. Stu Barker, the musical director, was heavily influenced by Eastern European gypsy music. We took another show to South America with the RSC. We do a lot of funky things.
And I hear there’s been a recent sighting of the Folk in the Box phenomenon at Tate Britain
That’s flying at the moment, a huge hit at events and festivals. It’s a one-on-one musical venue, six by four by eight foot. Inside it’s very dark but there’s a three watt bulb. You have one performer in there and one audience member. The musicians perform in half an hour slots are changing all the time.
No crowd surfing then?
Most of the time people absolutely love it. We have really high quality control because it simply doesn’t work if someone’s not that good. It’s also a real therapy for the performers. Often they’re playing to a packed room of people talking, which is especially hard for singer songwriters who are trying to tell you something from their heart. As Dom Coyote I really want people to listen to the words as well as the song.
