Foundling Himself

David Gray might be a pretty big star nowadays, but even million-selling, internationally-renowned artists don’t always get to access all areas. Although he was playing support to fellow folk-rocker Bob Dylan in a Limerick stadium recently, the affable English singer still couldn’t manage to get a face-to-face with the Big Zim.

“I couldn’t get anywhere near the fella!” Gray laughs. “It wasn’t anything like I expected it would be. We were even in a different part of the building. The passes didn’t work. It seemed like it was impossible to get close, which was a real shame. I would have loved to have shaken his hand, at least.”
As a headliner in his own right, that Limerick date was the only support slot he’s played in recent times. Following its release in September 2009, the 42-year-old has spent almost all of the past twelve months touring his acclaimed Draw The Line album around the world.
“I’ve been non-stop. I’ve been on the road for a long time, really. It slackened off a little bit in the last month so I just had a summer holiday. But yeah, basically it has been non-stop. We’ve played some fantastic shows – especially in America where the record has done really well.”
Despite the constant touring, we’re talking because Gray has just released his ninth studio album, Foundling. He’d recorded it at the same time as he recorded Draw The Line, and his relief to finally get it out is palpable.
“It feels great to just get it out there. It’s been burning a hole in my pocket for over eighteen months, and I’m pleased it’s coming out when it is. After I’d finished the Draw the Line record, I got down to finishing this one because I’d just written and partly recorded it at the same time, so it was finished and mixed by the time Draw the Line came out. So here we are now. Better out than in!”
As the sole owner of a state-of-the-art Crouch End recording facility called The Church (so named because that’s what it used to be before Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, who sold it to Gray, converted it), he’s been able to work on his own creative terms without the added pressure of paying for commercial studio time.
It’s the studio that White Ladder bought. Despite the economic meltdown, he still considers it to have been a good investment – from a creative perspective at least.
“Well, I’m never going to be getting shot of that place now, am I?” he chuckles. “Now that the music industry has collapsed around my ears, there’s me standing there with a great big recording studio! I’ve got more chance of changing it back into a church and then selling it back to them, oddly, than I have of selling it on as a recording studio, but I think that’s going to be mine for some time to come. The only way I can look at it is to try and make as much music there as I possibly can.”
Well, by any standards, it’s a pretty great studio...
“Yeah, it’s fantastic, it’s unbelievable,” he agrees, nodding proudly. “The flowering of Foundling expresses the facility that was at my disposal. I was able to push further on into quietude, you know, like really making things so you’re hardly playing, and hardly singing, getting braver all the time. It’s because I had this facility that I’m able to go back and try out things. A lot of these records are far more stripped-down and naked and quiet in a way like nothing I’ve ever recorded before has done. I’m delighted by the power of this understatement, that it’s something that I always try to make the most of. On this record I took it a little bit further.”
He’s not understating Foundling’s musical understatement. Sad, subtle, bittersweet, it’s very much a minimal reflective record – the kind of mournfully soulful album that can make you feel good about feeling bad. It’s unlikely to win Gray a new audience, but he doesn’t seem concerned.
“It’s the record I’ve been wanting to make for a long time, and it’s as strong a statement as White Ladder in its way – a jumping off point for what might happen next. I felt like this was my private record, I didn’t get too picky, I threw out a lot of the everyday concerns of record making, and it’s actually a wonderfully liberating feeling.”
One of the tracks is called ‘A New Day At Midnight’ – also the title of his 2002 album. Presumably the song is from that period?
“Yeah, this is the song that gave its name to the 2002 album. For some reason it never appeared on either that record or the following record. But the recording you hear on this record was made in 2005. It was made for the [Life in] Slow Motion record so if you listen to my voice I’m actually four or five years younger on this one – less wrinkly.
“It has just taken a while to find a place for it. I mean, we were just mixing this record, and I said, ‘Look, we should get that track up and try and finish it’. And then we did, and I saw exactly what we were going to do with the end of the song, so it finally found its place.”
It’s about the birth your daughter, isn’t it?
“Well, it was written around that time when she was born so it certainly has the feeling of something having changed.”
Another standout track is the gorgeously raw ‘When I Was In Your Heart’. He tells me it’s one of his favourites: “Yeah, well that’s cutting to the very nub of the whole album, there. That’s a track I had recorded with the band during the [Life In] Slow Motion record, which is when I wrote it. And on this version I just re-cut it on my own. And added just a vocal over-dub in the middle. They were just double tracks on the full set up, and I’m really pleased with how that came out. And that’s quite a hard-hitting, and strange, quirky animal. I don’t really know how to throw any more light on it. I think… love-gone-wrong… it’s broader than that. It’s the world gone wrong, I think, in that song.”
Alongside the likes of Beck, Snow Patrol and Beth Orton, Gray has just contributed to an as yet untitled John Martyn tribute album, covering the late singer’s ‘Let The Good Things Come’. Had he ever met the man?
“I didn’t know him. I did meet him a couple of times. I supported him in 1990 in Stoke. I think it was at a very bad moment for John. He was obviously heading into a bit of a struggle. And then a couple of years later he was on Jools Holland – the Later… programme – when I performed there. So I said hello, but we didn’t really get a chance to chat. I was too shy to try. Even at that point I didn’t know his music as well as I know it now. I knew a few things, but I didn’t know anything in-depth.
“I think he was a real talent. And obviously a difficult life, and a difficult career, but there’s some fantastic music in there. It was a privilege to try and cover a John Martyn track, and you know, I did the best that I could.”
Beyond the Foundling tour, what’s coming up next for Gray?
“I don’t see any reason for slacking off the pace in the studio, so I think there’s a period of reappraisal, as there always is, to be gone through when I get back from the road,” he says. “It will have been a hefty old tour.
“All that’s concrete at the moment is that I intend to do a tour for the Foundling record which will be very different from what I’m doing at the moment. It will be a real listening show. Things miked up, like real piano, harmonium, and cello. Real quiet, real listening, like a theatre show. Beyond that, I’ll probably go back into the studio and I don’t really know what’s going to happen, but I’ve got a lot of faith in the musicians that I’ve worked with over the last few years. I’m sure we’ll come up with something special.”