Newton's Lore

ne of many highlights at The Music Show this year is certain to be a rare master-class and public audience with singer-songwriter and ace acoustic guitar player, Newton Faulkner. Since the release of his superb 2007 debut album Hand Built By Robots, a UK No.1, the dreadlocked Surrey native has been on a permanent roll. That album went on to sell over a million copies, also scoring a Brit-Award nomination, while the follow-up Rebuilt By Humans was greeted with equal acclaim. A tireless live performer, he has described his life over the past few years as “running around the world like a lunatic”. He has played Glastonbury several times and is no stranger to this country, having appeared at Cois Fharraige in Kilkee, Co Clare and at this year’s Oxegen.

However, he says his appearance at The Music Show will be a whole new experience for him – one that he will relish. “When I heard that I was doing a master-class I thought, what? Me? Are you sure? But now that I’ve thought about it, I’m really looking forward to it. It’s not often that I get the chance to slow down and actually analyse and talk about the way I play and write.”
Faulkner’s wonderful, distinctive acoustic guitar style – a combination of fast-paced finger-picking and rhythmic tapping on the body of the guitar – is, he says, partly down to the fact that he once played bass in a Green Day covers band! “I think that style of rhythmic playing becomes ingrained into your guitar style. A lot of bass players end up doing melodies and that’s what I did. I just transferred that style to the six-string. It’s probably why I work with alternate tunings too, but I don’t really think about it in a completely structured way. I suppose the way you play just becomes instinctive.”
His songs – the lovely cover of Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ being a prime example – have a natural, highly melodic, easy-going feel about them. But his approach to songwriting is, he says, anything but disciplined. “I work in a lot of different ways and I don’t have a system that I stick to rigidly. I really like being a bit lost and fumbling around in the dark when writing. When you have an idea, you have to get as much going as possible and you can end up in strange places. It gets less creative once you’ve had that initial spark; sometimes you have to be quite rigid to finish it.
“But I’m always up for trying new things and I’ve just built a studio in my home and that’s been great. I’ve never been in a position before to have the technical know-how to be able whack down an idea, but I did some film music recently which is a very different discipline. I found that very interesting.”
While at The Music Show, he will also undoubtedly talk about the joys and pitfalls that can befall a musician when out on the road. However, you won’t hear too many complaints: he says that he just can’t get enough of it.
“The truth is, I could not love touring more if I tried,” he jokes. “I’m a proper road monkey – I even sleep better on a tour bus than I do in my bed at home. I get a lot done on the road too. I’m much more productive in every sense. I think you are in a state of heightened connection to everything when you’re on the move. One of my most productive times is at sound check – it’s like instant gratification, though it pisses off the sound engineers when I’m trying new stuff.”
His advice to budding live performers is to keep your cool when the pressure is on you.
“Getting angry on stage is the quickest way to lose the audience. There was a Canadian guy I saw recently who completely lost his thing because people were talking during his set. It’s your job to stop people talking and to make them listen. If they aren’t listening it’s probably your fault not theirs.
“And remember,” he adds. “The odds are stacked against you up there – there’s a lot more of them than there is of you. I did a weird thing recently at Hammersmith Apollo in front of 6,000 people. I asked them to boo instead of applaud at the end of one of my songs, and it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever heard. It snowballed a bit further than I thought it would. When people realized they were allowed to boo, an element of menace came into it. As a social experiment it was interesting but I don’t think I’ll try it again.”

Newton Faulkner gives a guitar masterclass at The Music show, which takes place in the RDS, Dublin on October 2 and 3.