Interview: Foy Vance talks new album, Nashville and Elton John

"You know Noam Chomsky?! Wow! Could you send the song to him? It’d be great to get him in a video, wouldn’t it?”
Foy Vance certainly thinks big. The Northern-Irish singer-songwriter is being driven through a European mountain range somewhere en route to an airport, and consequently the phone line isn’t exactly the best. He’s disappointed when Hot Press explains that he hadn’t actually said he knew Noam Chomsky personally.
“Oh, that’s a shame!” Vance laughs. “I’d love to have him in the video dressed up as a 1950’s rockabilly.”
The American linguist, philosopher and political activist is namechecked in the title of the very first song on Vance’s critically acclaimed new album, The Wild Swan. A blistering R&B stomper, ‘Noam Chomsky is a Soft Revolution’ is a roll call of musical, philosophical, literary and polemical insurrectionists. It’s a fitting opener to an eclectic sounding album – mixing up rock, folk, blues and gospel - the title of which was inspired by W.B. Yeats. “The album is a lot of things to me,” Vance explains. “It’s a collection of trinkets, a collection of ideas and thoughts. I don’t think it’s any one thing to me.”
The Chomsky song was one of a couple that were written entirely in the studio. “We’ve got this song ‘Casanova’ on the record that we had no plans of recording,” he says. “We did it as a little mind-break. We were recording another song called ‘Upbeat Feelgood’ but by the time we’d played through it three times it was quite clear nobody was upbeat or feeling good! We were just playing the parts and a bit too aware of everything. We played ‘Casanova’ just to blow out the cobwebs and then go back and record ‘Upbeat Feelgood’. But we got ‘Casanova’ in that one take so that was another song on the record. We did the second verse in the shower and the third verse in the toilet!”
The album was recorded in the Nashville studio of legendary producer Jacquire King. “I have recorded in Nashville before, but it was the first time recording and making a proper full length album there,” he explains. “It was great. Just the energy there, the energy is great when you go somewhere new, really. It doesn’t really matter where it is but Nashville just made a lot of sense because of Jacquire King. That’s where he resides and he’s pretty much got his own homestead there in Blackbird Studios. He’s got his own sort of wing of it. He knows the studio inside out, knows the mic collection, knows the desk so it made a lot of sense to just go to him.”
Was he Vance’s first choice of producer?
“I guess there were a few names in the hat and he was someone that I’d always admired. He did a few Tom Waits’ records but one in particular, Mule Variations. I just loved the sound and I loved the record as well, the songs are fantastic. It’s an effortless record. The sound of it was something that really struck me as well, how it was recorded. Some of the recordings were outside, yet it still sounded impeccable. So I knew Jacquire for a while, and he also did another couple of records that I’d liked.
“So when I saw his name in the hat, I instantly called him and had a chat with and it sounded like we were on the same page, he continues. “But I wanted to make sure so I flew out to meet him in Nashville. We went for a pint and had a chat. I told him the kind of record I was looking to make, and he told me the kind of record he wasn’t looking to make, and he was on board from the beginning.”
Although it’s his third album, The Wild Swan is Vance’s first release on Gingerbread Man Records, the new label launched last year by Ed Sheeran and Atlantic Records with Jamie Lawson’s self-titled No. 1 album. Vance is apparently close friends with Sheeran. Was he around during the recording?
“No, he was a busy boy!” he laughs. “I don’t even know where he was so I kept him abreast of what was happening as often as I could. But Gingerbread Man Records are absolutely great to work with. The truth of the matter is there’s absolutely no way under the sun that a 41-year-old bald guy that lives in the mountains would be signed to a major label if it was not for that wee fella. The truth of the matter is as soon as I started working the label they were all really behind it, and really supportive and in line with Ed’s dream for this album and his passion for it.”
No less a personage than Elton John is credited as The Wild Swan’s executive producer…
“Elton’s always a great supporter of many artists he takes a shine to and that’s what happened to me,” he explains. “Just to have someone like that on board to bounce songs off and bounce ideas off was really useful. At the end of the day you always make your own decisions, the buck stops with me. I’m sure you’ve got editors and other people overseeing the work you’re putting out, Olaf. They might be trying to influence what you should be writing about or who you should be reviewing but at the end of the day you’re going to make the decision as to how you edit what you say… and it’s kind of the same here.”
Vance is literally just about to start a support tour with Elton John.
“It’s just about to start now actually. I’m on my way to the airport, we’re flying to Geneva. We’ve got a festival in Geneva and then we start the Elton John tour the day after that. So I guess that’s the start of it, although as it’s a support tour I don’t really think of that as touring the record as such. I think touring The Wild Swan begins in earnest in September when we start the world tour.”
Obviously Elton John’s audiences will be massive. Having played Wembley a couple of times with Ed Sheeran, however, Vance is no stranger to large crowds.
“Yeah, that was to 87,000 people,” he recalls. “When I played my set the first night it was only half-full, so it was only 46,000. Then I went back the night after that to do a song with the band Rudimental, and I almost missed it. I was on stage in 15 minutes and we were sitting in traffic. I could see Wembley, but we were nowhere near it. Basically we got as close as we could and I jumped out of the car and ran the whole way to the backstage. Threw my bag at my tour manager, he threw me a pass, ran out through the back gate, ran up on to the back stage, put my ear-pieces in, switched the microphone off and it counted me in and I walked out just in time. So I was out of breath and then startled by the sight of 87,000 people! It was a bit of a surreal moment for sure.”
It must have been for an artist who’s seemingly been struggling for most of his career. Not that Foy Vance sees it that way…
“You know what, Olaf, I don’t know,” he says. “I know in industry terms it would be seen as struggling, but I’ve never seen it as struggling. I’ve seen it as I’ve always been working… and I’m still working. That’s what it’s always been to me. Alright yeah, the work is getting a bit better, I’ve been promoted a little bit, you might say. But I’ve never felt like the struggling artist going, ‘Why aren’t more people listening to me?’ That’s not why I make music. I make music for myself, for my own pleasure, and if people like it then that makes it all the better.”
The Wild Swan is out now on Gingerbread Man Records