James Yorkston
The first time you encounter the warm, rootsy swell of James Yorkston and The Athletes, you'd be forgiven for thinking that their songs spring from folksy origins. The truth is somewhat different...
'I don't come from a traditional folk background in the slightest' states James Yorkston, as we settle down for a chat about his new album. 'Me and my neighbour. We just got into music ourselves.' In fact, although the modest Fifer now likes to stop in at sessions, he prefers not to play, 'I don't consider myself a competent enough musician, or singer, or anything. I know very few tunes... about three reels and a slip-jig. You know what I mean?'
Yorkston claims to have grown up in an 'unmusical' family, but they're clearly open to artistic expression. His brother and sister provided illustrations for the covers of his first two singles. He points out that his initial exposure to songwriting came from outside the family home. 'We used to go to church every Sunday,' he remembers. 'Hymns and the way they're played and sung have influenced songs like St Patrick. The chords, the turnarounds...'
After pitching up in Edinburgh in the early 90s, he encountered two key musical influences: Madagascan guitarist D'Gary and the reclusive folk singer, Anne Briggs. I had no money. I was living with my brother and we just used to drink music... 'cos we didn't have much money we used to listen to John Peel and Andy Kershaw and that. So I used to get stuff from the record library.' I giggled when I heard that he first picked up an Anne Briggs album because he thought, 'a bonnie wee lass. I'll take that home.' His roving eye served him well. 'There was something about it which really intrigued me. Unaccompanied singing; I didn't really know any unaccompanied singing. So I went and bought myself a copy.' Her inspirational rendition of The Snow It Melts the Soonest introduced James to one of the most powerful ballads on his new LP.
'D'Gary's music inspired me to get an acoustic guitar,' Yorkston confesses. Just six months after buying it, he got his first big gig, supporting a highly-influential figure. 'I had started writing my own songs, and a friend of mine who worked in a record shop was asked if he knew anyone who could support Bert Jansch. He said 'Yeah, my friend James could do it.' I think I had ten days notice to bash the songs into shape, and I was utterly terrified. It was just the one show, and it went down OK, but it put me off singing solo stuff for a good few years.'
Taking time out from playing bass in a local Edinburgh punk band, Yorkston Recorded some of his acoustic material on a four-track. One of those songs became his first single, Moving Up Country. As James puts it, 'I recorded this song and sent it to John Peel, who played it – I couldn't believe it! Then Peel's producer called me and told me a record company had been in touch and would I mind if they passed on my details.' This lead to an affiliation with a small, independent called Bad Jazz and afforded him the opportunity to play around the British Isles.
His new friends at Bad Jazz helped secure the support slot for an entire John Martyn tour. 'That was pretty terrifying. It was excellent!' he recounts with a sparkle in his eye. 'There were 27 dates, and I had to give up my job and everything.' I ask James about the performances which stood out for him. 'Oh yeah, the last show. I drank as much as I could and pretended to be a rock and roll star, pulling poses in the stage light and being an absolute idiot. It was a hard, hard tour, because', he pauses, 'I wasn't going down very well. It was pretty uncompromising. I was singing some unaccompanied stuff; songs like St Patrick, which don't have big choruses, and tentative blues. I was hardly playing the guitar, you know I was just singing, and I was pretty shy and nervous.'
James considers the experience to have been tough but formative: 'I had a really bad panic attack on stage one night. The whole tour was 'make him or break him' and it was just fucking hard work. At the end of it I was sad but very, very pleased... The next solo show I did down here in London, the guy from Domino was just blown away and he said 'wow! That John Martyn tour did you so much good. You're not nervous at all now.''
By that stage, two vital pieces of the JY jigsaw had fallen into place. On one hand, he had acquired the athletes, a bunch of friends from Edinburgh who he describes as 'very nice people and great musicians'. On the other, he had signed a contract with Domino Records. Fortunately, interest from a larger label did not sever him from his roots. Describing his well publicised association with the Fence Collective, James says: 'It's basically just a scence of musicians who are doing fairly honest and original interesting work... I'm quite happy when people say I'm part of it... I play at loads of their shows and I play on some of their records, and some of them play on my records. So maybe I'm one of those people who considers themselves a member and maybe I'm not or maybe I'm not a member and consider myself to be...' Well that's cleared that up, hasn't it?
Returning to the subject of Domino, I should point out that september will see the release of Just Beyond The River, and that production duties on this fine new disc were undertaken by none other than labelmate, Kieran Hebden. so, how did James (who has stated in the past that he doesn't want his recorded work to become 'James Yorkston and the overdubs') find working with the Mr Four Tet, master of sampladelic fusions? Smiles all round, it would seem.
'He helped sculpt the sound and set the vibe. He was great to work with... I played him the demos and what we wanted to do was record the demos better, so we just got nice microphones and played as live as we could,' Yorkston enthuses. 'We'd been touring for the last few years. I just wanted to capture the sounds of the band playing and being themselves. Y'know i didn't want lots of compression and reverb and fancy tricks. I just wanted it to be natural and honest. When I spoke to Kieran that's exactly what he wanted, so between the two of us, we stuck to our guns and we got it natural and honest.'
The result tallies well with James' wishes. Hebden employs similiar mix strategies to those he used on Adem's Homesongs: every pluck and stroke sounds tinder dry and starkly subtle. The difference lies in the nature of the material and its subsequent arrangement. Whereas Adem's songs were lovingly assembled around careful guitar figures and confessional lyrics Yorkston's work is rootsier and more rough-edged. Many of the tracks exhibit the gestalt qualities that only a close-knit band can possess. Dynamics build gradually as pace quickens and volume rises. A common, human pulse propels every note. Surges of pipe and fiddle blend and swirl around the vocals. Despite delicacy and restraint, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
As the interview draws to a close, I decide to enquire what time of day James prefers to practice his guitar playing. His answer says it all. 'In the morning and in the evening. My favourite time... sounds very corny! When i'm sitting in the house, lights off in the kitchen, shutters are open... and the light's on outside and you can see the foxes in the garden.'
Yorkston claims to have grown up in an 'unmusical' family, but they're clearly open to artistic expression. His brother and sister provided illustrations for the covers of his first two singles. He points out that his initial exposure to songwriting came from outside the family home. 'We used to go to church every Sunday,' he remembers. 'Hymns and the way they're played and sung have influenced songs like St Patrick. The chords, the turnarounds...'
After pitching up in Edinburgh in the early 90s, he encountered two key musical influences: Madagascan guitarist D'Gary and the reclusive folk singer, Anne Briggs. I had no money. I was living with my brother and we just used to drink music... 'cos we didn't have much money we used to listen to John Peel and Andy Kershaw and that. So I used to get stuff from the record library.' I giggled when I heard that he first picked up an Anne Briggs album because he thought, 'a bonnie wee lass. I'll take that home.' His roving eye served him well. 'There was something about it which really intrigued me. Unaccompanied singing; I didn't really know any unaccompanied singing. So I went and bought myself a copy.' Her inspirational rendition of The Snow It Melts the Soonest introduced James to one of the most powerful ballads on his new LP.
'D'Gary's music inspired me to get an acoustic guitar,' Yorkston confesses. Just six months after buying it, he got his first big gig, supporting a highly-influential figure. 'I had started writing my own songs, and a friend of mine who worked in a record shop was asked if he knew anyone who could support Bert Jansch. He said 'Yeah, my friend James could do it.' I think I had ten days notice to bash the songs into shape, and I was utterly terrified. It was just the one show, and it went down OK, but it put me off singing solo stuff for a good few years.'
Taking time out from playing bass in a local Edinburgh punk band, Yorkston Recorded some of his acoustic material on a four-track. One of those songs became his first single, Moving Up Country. As James puts it, 'I recorded this song and sent it to John Peel, who played it – I couldn't believe it! Then Peel's producer called me and told me a record company had been in touch and would I mind if they passed on my details.' This lead to an affiliation with a small, independent called Bad Jazz and afforded him the opportunity to play around the British Isles.
His new friends at Bad Jazz helped secure the support slot for an entire John Martyn tour. 'That was pretty terrifying. It was excellent!' he recounts with a sparkle in his eye. 'There were 27 dates, and I had to give up my job and everything.' I ask James about the performances which stood out for him. 'Oh yeah, the last show. I drank as much as I could and pretended to be a rock and roll star, pulling poses in the stage light and being an absolute idiot. It was a hard, hard tour, because', he pauses, 'I wasn't going down very well. It was pretty uncompromising. I was singing some unaccompanied stuff; songs like St Patrick, which don't have big choruses, and tentative blues. I was hardly playing the guitar, you know I was just singing, and I was pretty shy and nervous.'
James considers the experience to have been tough but formative: 'I had a really bad panic attack on stage one night. The whole tour was 'make him or break him' and it was just fucking hard work. At the end of it I was sad but very, very pleased... The next solo show I did down here in London, the guy from Domino was just blown away and he said 'wow! That John Martyn tour did you so much good. You're not nervous at all now.''
By that stage, two vital pieces of the JY jigsaw had fallen into place. On one hand, he had acquired the athletes, a bunch of friends from Edinburgh who he describes as 'very nice people and great musicians'. On the other, he had signed a contract with Domino Records. Fortunately, interest from a larger label did not sever him from his roots. Describing his well publicised association with the Fence Collective, James says: 'It's basically just a scence of musicians who are doing fairly honest and original interesting work... I'm quite happy when people say I'm part of it... I play at loads of their shows and I play on some of their records, and some of them play on my records. So maybe I'm one of those people who considers themselves a member and maybe I'm not or maybe I'm not a member and consider myself to be...' Well that's cleared that up, hasn't it?
Returning to the subject of Domino, I should point out that september will see the release of Just Beyond The River, and that production duties on this fine new disc were undertaken by none other than labelmate, Kieran Hebden. so, how did James (who has stated in the past that he doesn't want his recorded work to become 'James Yorkston and the overdubs') find working with the Mr Four Tet, master of sampladelic fusions? Smiles all round, it would seem.
'He helped sculpt the sound and set the vibe. He was great to work with... I played him the demos and what we wanted to do was record the demos better, so we just got nice microphones and played as live as we could,' Yorkston enthuses. 'We'd been touring for the last few years. I just wanted to capture the sounds of the band playing and being themselves. Y'know i didn't want lots of compression and reverb and fancy tricks. I just wanted it to be natural and honest. When I spoke to Kieran that's exactly what he wanted, so between the two of us, we stuck to our guns and we got it natural and honest.'
The result tallies well with James' wishes. Hebden employs similiar mix strategies to those he used on Adem's Homesongs: every pluck and stroke sounds tinder dry and starkly subtle. The difference lies in the nature of the material and its subsequent arrangement. Whereas Adem's songs were lovingly assembled around careful guitar figures and confessional lyrics Yorkston's work is rootsier and more rough-edged. Many of the tracks exhibit the gestalt qualities that only a close-knit band can possess. Dynamics build gradually as pace quickens and volume rises. A common, human pulse propels every note. Surges of pipe and fiddle blend and swirl around the vocals. Despite delicacy and restraint, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
As the interview draws to a close, I decide to enquire what time of day James prefers to practice his guitar playing. His answer says it all. 'In the morning and in the evening. My favourite time... sounds very corny! When i'm sitting in the house, lights off in the kitchen, shutters are open... and the light's on outside and you can see the foxes in the garden.'
