No smoke without fire

The leafy English county of Suffolk would hardly be your first choice to site a launching pad for an assault on the alternative country rock scene, but The Smouldering Sons of The West have been chipping away for the last four years, making solid headway. Now, with their second album Something Good, Something Bad on release, they are spreading the word to Ireland with some live gigs to boot.

Lead Smoulderer Ian Brown points out that their unique sound is steeped in traditional, old-time country, with generous splashes of rock and folk. “Some of it can be really filthy, and some of it can be really mellow,” he says. He also reckons that although Suffolk is probably the most rural part of Britain, “with lots of pig farms and big, big skies”, folk music tends to the most popular, as well as a little old-time blues and country.
But the UK music market generally has never been a safe haven for country acts, so isn’t it tough for The Smouldering Sons to make an impact? “It’s hard if you offer anything fresh or different these days,” Brown admits. “You come up against the big network of GWR stations, which means that no matter where you go you hear the same music because it’s all run by computer. But we’re getting plays now on BBC, including Radio 2, and a small number of independent stations. Frontier Promotions, who broke Eva Cassidy in the UK market, are handling that side of it for us and doing a good job”.
Of course as soon as you mention you’re a country act a lot of folks expect the “yeehaw” factor; and people putting on the standard country twang that infects most Irish country singers. Is it the same in leafy Suffolk? “Yeah,” says Brown, in a distinctly Suffolk drawl. “Once they hear the name they expect us to see us wearing spangly shirts and cowboy hats. But we actually wear black jeans and t-shirts and just rock out. Fortunately, with the alternative country scene kicking off in Britain over the last couple of year it’s becoming hip and trendy to play this music, so things are changing for the better.”
Brown has harsh words for music industry people. “You meet so many idiots and time wasters in this business,” he says. “A few years ago I’d written a few songs which Tamsin Archer was going to record. I recorded all the necessary demos for her, spent ages discussing it with everybody, and then she gets dropped by the record company at the last minute! Then only last year I was talking to a music publisher about some of the ballads I’ve written and which don’t quite fit the Smouldering Sons format. They said they were looking for material for Ronan Keating, which really sounded interesting. But then they asked me if I could give him writing credits. They explained they were trying to establish Ronan as a songwriter in his own right. So I told them, ‘Tell him to write some songs, then!’ I couldn’t understand why or how he could get writing credits for songs that were already completed. In fairness, maybe Ronan himself knew nothing about this kind of approach. Maybe they just wanted him to come in and change a couple of words to justify the credit and the share of the publishing royalties for them. But I said no and that was the last I ever heard from them!”
Something Good, Something Bad is The Smouldering Sons Of The West’s second full album, with one other album and a live EP also previously released. Brown believes the new album has moved on from the debut in that the songs are more developed and the band has meshed with time into a more cohesive music machine. “Now that I know the strengths of the individual members of the band I’m tending to write with those strengths in mind,” he maintains.
Brown’s own musical heroes tend to be mainly drawn from the ranks of old-school rock. “Top of the tree is Hendrix. I adore Frank Zappa. Peter Green is another hero, the most soulful guitarist I’ve ever heard, and my favourite vocalist is Roy Orbison. But just recently I discovered Patti Griffin, a songwriter of gigantic proportions, and yet nobody seems to have heard of her.”

Something Good, Something Bad is available now on Topers Rant Records. The band play the forthcoming Kilkenny Rhythm & Roots Festival