Once Kevin Rowland has an idea it doesn't tend to disappear – rather, it tucks itself away, becoming a persistent itch, something he has to return and scratch time and time again.
It's 1985, and his group – Dexys Midnight Runners – have just released their soaring, inspirational, and criminally misunderstood album 'Don't Stand Me Down'. But this is far from his only plan, because in amongst the wreckage of this campaign he has his sights set on another prize, an album that reflected his Irish heritage.
Cruelly, that incarnation of Dexys Midnight Runners would not last out the year, before fragmenting and dissolving into the air. The idea for an Irish record, though, would linger rather longer, becoming a persistent thread to follow through subsequent decades until the release of new album 'Let The Record Show Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul'.
Seated in an office at his record label Warner Music, Kevin begins to look back on the origins of this idea, of this musical notion. “It wasn't a passing thing,” he asserts. “It was very much: this is the next album. After 'Don't Stand Me Down' let's do this Irish album. 100%. We had three albums: we wanted to do 'Don't Stand Me Down', a live album, and an Irish album. That was the plan. But just after that record I got a bit disillusioned, or whatever, and we just didn't carry on.”
“It never really left me,” he sighs. “But having said that, there was periods, of course, during those 20 odd years… I did two solo albums, but during those 25, 26 years, there was periods when I thought, I'm not going to do music again. I went through periods like that. So I wasn't thinking about it then, but every now and again I'd think about doing songs like 'Carrickfergus'.”
– – –
Look, those songs are just in me…
– – –
These are some of the oldest songs in his life, music that dates to his childhood. Kevin Rowland was born in this country to Irish immigrants, but spent vast periods of his youth in Ireland. “Look, those songs are just in me,” he insists at one point in our conversation. “Those Irish songs are in me. They're a part of my psyche. They're so deeply ingrained, and they mean a lot. And they've just been there a long time. So that's it, really. It's just like that. It's like, OK I can sing these songs. I can get a handle on them. It felt like that, really. I'm glad that we didn't make that album in the 80s, really, it would have been very different. That's how it was.”
The return of Dexys – shortened name, renewed line up – in 2012 brought with it a rather fine new record. 'One Day I'm Going To Soar' found the group moving forward, a disciplined momentum that wrought some inspirational live shows. It was during this period that Kevin Rowland was hit with a sudden flash, a realisation that the time had come to finally address those songs of Ireland. “Totally. A bolt from the blue: don't do another record like the last one, do this. Now is the time.”
Does he always put such faith in intuition, I ask?
“When I've done good things I have, yeah. When I haven't followed my instincts it's never done me good.”
– – –
We just felt like it was the right thing to do…
– – –
This isn't a project that looks back. Seated with bandmate Lucy Morgan, the pair echo moments from the past, but continually interpret them in fresh ways. It's even there in the way they dress: Kevin has raw denim, true denim, with a breton top matched again a supreme (and no doubt very rare) cardigan that bears a wonderful trace of Americana.
And it's there in the music. Dexys developed a head of steam on 'One Day I'm Going To Soar', and it's this sound, he asserts, that is being brought to these old, sometimes traditional, songs. “We just felt like it was the right thing to do, to bring Dexys' style to these songs,” he says. “To do 'em how we want to do 'em. I think if we went to Ireland and got Irish musicians, it just wouldn't feel… what's the point of it? You know what I mean? There's no relevance to that, for me. It didn't even occur to me to do that.”
So what you get instead is a merger of soul and country, smoothed out pop and gritty folk, all wrought together in that flamboyant, utterly essential Dexys style. It's a style, though, that is arrived at following methodical rehearsals, with the group approaching every single task with an incredible sense of intensity. “We would do two songs at a time, so the whole thing took nearly a year. We would meet the band with two songs: 'here's two, here's the chord chart. OK. See you next week.' Played it through, talk about it. 'See you next week at the rehearsal.' We'd rehearse that day, we'd record it, take it back, two week gap, we'd listen and talk about changes we'd want to make. Or things we want to add or subtract.”
“There's a lot of editing,” he muses. “Christos Tolera once said, creativity is editing. Art is editing. And I think it is, in a way. Once you've got the basic idea – and we do a lot of that.”-
– – –
Creativity is editing. Art is editing.
– – –
Each song would begin with a sparse demo recording constructed by Kevin Rowland and Sean Read, often using little more than a vocal and a drum beat. I wonder aloud what he would have to sing against, and if it recalled a recital – perhaps something from childhood, stood beside the fireplace singing for family.
He smiles, and turns to Lucy Morgan. “We're very big on rhythm in Dexys,” he says. “You said to me once: oh you hear the rhythm before you hear anything else. And I do, it's the first thing I hear, really. Is the rhythm. At that stage it would have just been a recital vocal. But then, over that period I was working on my vocals quite a lot. I had to find a way into each of them, vocally. I didn't want to just sing them, I wanted to feel I was in 'em.”
It's easy to see that this is a project – much like any he undertakes – that is close to Kevin Rowland's heart. 'I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen' and '40 Shades Of Green' are standards, but the fresh arrangements and vital, urgent vocals lend new meanings to those words. It's an approach that also fuels the non-Irish material, the 'Country Soul' of the title.
“What happened was that when we had that idea to do this album originally it was going to be called 'Irish' was going to be all Irish songs,” he explains. “But then over the years it just broadened out because I felt like I really wanted to sing these other songs. And at the end of the day, at this stage, there's not many more Irish songs I feel I really want to sing, really. At this point. So that's what we did, really. And then the album title just sort of described it, so there was a clear description of it. It's loosely country soul, it's not out and out country soul but it fits into that.”
– – –
A very melancholy time of year. The end of the summer, summer's dying…
– – –
So Kevin began picking out other songs, new songs, that he felt worked within the spirit, the direction he was seeking. The Faces' old war-house 'You Wear It Well' is driven down to its essence, courtesy in part to a vocal performance guided by youthful memories. “I love the song, and it's very melancholy, for me,” he says. “I just think that's such a beautiful song. When I first heard it – when it came out in '72 – it was the second hit single after 'Maggie May'. It was September when it came out, which I find a very melancholy time of year. The end of the summer, summer's dying. And it just captured a moment, and I thought 'wow'. I thought we really wanted to bring that out more, maybe, if possible.”
“I don't think we've changed it massively. In a funny sort of way – and I know this'll sound weird – it's a bit Stones-y. The drumming. And we decided to make it more like that, or more like The Faces. In a funny sort of way.”
“It's just running on instinct,” he says. “The guitar is quite rocky. I think I said to Tim on guitar: 'I want you to out Ronnie Wood, Ronnie Wood.' I think he has done, really. He's just gone for it!”
One of the most moving performances on the album is 'To Love Someone', a baroque late 60s masterpiece originally written and recorded by The Bee Gees. An ode to the pain of rejection, the sublimely bittersweet atmosphere of the original is inverted, with Dexys adding more than a little bit to the recording. “There would have been absolutely no point singing it sweet, like the Bee Gees. Not that I was looking for a way to make it different. It's all intuitive, really, and then the brain work comes after that.”
– – –
It's all intuitive, really…
– – –
“I would often just take my lyrics to the park, put headphones on, listen to the track… and if it's a quiet day in the park I might even practise a bit of singing in there because I quite like to do it in the open air. Practise a bit of singing. And with that one… I just realised. I just had a bolt from the blue with that one, I thought: right. OK, I know how to sing this.”
Returning to the studio, Kevin asked the band to picture a moment of heartbreak, to envisage a period of pain in their lives. “It sounded a bit polite on the choruses,” he says. “So me and Sean (Read) went to everybody and said: 'look, on those choruses think of somebody who rejected you. Imagine somebody you felt rejected by – picture them. Picture their faces.' And then we got it. It just changed completely.”
That indescribable, inescapable feeling, he argues, is what Dexys is all about – get the music right first, for sure, but seek out that feeling, the kind of feeling that only music can provide. “All of the work is done,” he insists. “Everybody knows those songs inside out by the time we get to the studio so all you're looking at is going for a feel. Capturing a moment. That's what it's all about – it might be the first take, it might be the tenth.”
“Capture the moment. That's what you're looking for, really. That's what we're looking for in our music. You're looking for that something else.”
– – –
– – –
'Let The Record Show Dexy Do Irish and Country Soul' is out now.
