Liverpool Acoustic’s Luke Moore caught up with the chart-topping singer songwriter ahead of the next leg of his Feels Like Home tour.
To most reading this, Newton Faulkner will need no introduction. Striking gold (double platinum, in fact!) with his debut album Hand Built By Robots back in 2007, he’s continued to make original new music with a musical CV that looks like most singer-songwriters’ career bucket list!
We got together for a very pleasant chat ahead of his Liverpool tour date at Hangar 34 on 27th April and after a quick introduction, here’s what he had to say…
How’s life treating you?
Good! I’ve got a 9 month old so pretty much in the same boat as you. And heading off on all sorts of tours so I’ve got a lot coming up!
What are you up to at the moment?
I’m currently rebuilding my pedal board and foot percussion set up – I’m streamlining it for Australia because luggage wise I’m trying to keep it to a minimum. I’ve been travelling with a lot [in the UK] so it’s been like ‘let’s just put everything in the van’ which is fine but now I think I’ve got it down as much as I can. I think it’s still light enough to fly – I weighed it yesterday – so I’ve been being a massive nerd!
And I’ve recently tried 17 gauge strings on my guitar – it does sound really punchy and solid but it’s hard work!
The foot percussion thing I’ve been building looks totally nuts – it’s got a drumstick poking through two clamps so full renegade! But it hasn’t fallen over yet and I’ve been hoofing it in here so I think it’s quite happy.
Sounds like quite the achievement – you can’t go wrong with a bit of DIY can you?
I find it quite satisfying. I built a folding shelf once which was wobbly as anything and anyone that saw it looked as if to say ‘are you actually going to use it?!’ and I was like ‘yeah, it’s fine!’.
You’re at Hangar 34 here in Liverpool on the 27th April – tell us a bit about your tour?
The plan is to do a Feels Like Home tour every year. The first one was a bit of an experiment but we talked about the route and how that helps to connect with fans. It’s a pleasant way of spending a few weeks and it gives us the opportunity to do the guitar workshops, which I’m really passionate about and have been working really well.
The last big tour I did felt like a very different beast – for example, I played more electric guitar than acoustic and there were three of us. So what I wanted to do was ground myself in the instrument and if that’s what people want to see from me they will be able to. I want to tip my cap to where I came from which springs me up to go forwards in loads of other directions.
I had a look at the tour dates and noticed you’re at the Atkinson just up the road in Southport and also Buxton Opera House which is a gorgeous venue!
Yeah, I’ve had some great gigs there in the past! I remember one gig there where the security guard asked if I was going to hang around afterwards and I said I usually stick around to say hi to folks. He told every single person as they came in that I was sticking around for signing things and to stay for that. At the end, the sold out crowd had organised themselves into a long line out into the car park and all wanted stuff signed! I’d played for two hours and was there another four after which was great!
Amazing! Are there any other places you’re really excited to get back to?
Yeah, loads! I’ve got a massive soft spot for Scotland – I just think it’s so beautiful. The Olympiad Theatre in Dublin is great too but I just love playing. There are different places for different moods, too. This tour is a bit more theatre-y and a bit more sit down whereas the last one was no seating and all standing venues, all guns blazing sticky floor kinda vibe which I love being able to do. I never want to do just one or the otherand I like that I have to cater each performance to the room.
One of the really nice things about being solo is that you can really lean the performance to which direction that audience wants.
There’s nowhere that I don’t like playing. And it’s about how nice the backstage area is as well. I’m just really looking forward to getting out and playing.
On this round of the tour you’re going to be previewing tracks from your album that’s out later this year. What can people expect?
There’s stuff that I’m still working out how to do live. I think there was a line that I crossed before where it was so complicated what I was doing that when I watched it back it felt like live maths in places. So I’ve taken a step back to look at reevaluating how to make sure people can get on board with what I’m doing.
I bought a piece of equipment from Nashville called a junk hat which is like an upside down dustbin lid on a stand. When I introduced that it did something interesting. I tried a few other things which didn’t quite work but when I added this – basically a dustbin lid on a hi hat stand then suddenly crowds really started moving in a totally different way! The junk hat came in and it was hips and feet and it affected my playing locking in. It’s a really physical thing and that small industrial junkyard element works really well.
It sounds like there’s a quite industrial, almost primal vibe going on there?
Yeah, definitely. That’s come in more and more. The thing that surprises me most is my electric set up which I would not have seen me doing in a million years – it’s fully MIDI and I’m not using a real pickup at all. That goes out to the SY1000 [guitar synthesiser] which is creating all of my guitar sounds, which is…odd when my background is fully acoustic! But when I plugged it in at first it was fun and then I built a guitar sound from the ground up with a simulated acoustic, distorted electric and distorted bass. When you put all three together it’s such a satisfying guttural sound! And also I can change tuning at the touch of a button, which I do quite enjoy. I will have that with me for this tour, along with the acoustic, ukelele
and other fun things.
It’s really interesting that the lines between acoustic and electronic have blurred so much over the years. Do you think it’s important to experiment and push yourself as an artist?
I think it is, yeah. One thing I was never going to do was make the same album over and over again and get stuck in the same sound. It’s important to be pulled in different directions. I think in terms of production, as well, which I spend huge amounts of time doing, I think the way that you construct songs is different. I fully intend on keeping everything going all the time, so sometimes I’ll sit on the sofa and write an acoustic song without touching a machine and others I might write while producing as I go and dragging in samples because I love that as an instrument in itself.
That’s really interesting – I’m interested to know what recording software you use, as someone that lives in Ableton myself?
I’m ProTools and have been for a really long time but I kind of use it as a giant tape machine and try to get a good take of everything. I try and get one that’s got the vibe and have a bunch of other takes. I am thinking of using Ableton Live so I can recreate some of the studio tracks live and link the recording and performing with a more natural progression.
I love looping and I’ve used it very sparingly in my career because people presumed I was doing it when I wasn’t…
…it was just really accurate playing!
Yeah, with the percussive multitasking stuff like Teardrop people thought it was someone else doing something somewhere and I’ve had to prove it wasn’t! I had a Headrush looper board – it’s an amazing piece of gear so if you’re going to loop, I highly recommend it – and used it a lot on a tour. I did the whole gig on click though, which felt like a strange disconnect from the crowd. I feel like if I start adding too much other stuff it takes away from the communication element of music. This setup has really landed.
That really resonates – that question of do you want people to feel something when they’re listening.
That’s the whole point!
And the records we grew up listening to and fell in love with didn’t have autotune or quantising – the mistakes almost felt like part of the character.
Definitely – half the tracks were out of tune in terms of tuning. If you listen to old Crosby Stills and Nash stuff it’s all over the place – they’ve sat with the guitar then sang over it. “Shall we put the piano over it?” – “No”!
Your rendition of Teardrop and live cover of Bohemian Rhapsody jump out as covers you’ve really made your own. A question for some of the artists that will read this – how do you approach covering other people’s work?
I did a whole covers album and did every one I’d done live. Bohemian Rhapsody was terrifying to record! And I put a few more modern covers in like Dua Lipa. But you know, I think it’s something I try not to think about too hard about.
There’s something in it which is just me and runs through it and I don’t understand what it is. When I’m writing sometimes I write melodies as different characters – like what would David Bowie do with this – and just try and tune into other artists’ vibes. I thought that might confuse the process but it never seems to. The one that took the longest was a ukelele shuffle version of All I Want for Christmas and that took a while to find – it’s the only one that didn’t land straight away. My inability to recreate the original is quite helpful – it’s a bit like Hank Azaria on his Simpsons voices!
The industry has changed a lot in recent years. What challenges and opportunities has that presented to you since starting out?
For me, one of the most exciting areas has been the social media side of things. I’ve been a bit late to get into and for a while I was like ‘no, that’s not my job – I’ve already got a job, I’m busy’.
When I started I was big on MySpace – me and Lily Allen were the biggest thing on there – but fast forwarding to now, massive chunks of my day are spent on social media. I’ll do lots of videos in one then share them after. It’s such an accessible thing. It’s taken the fashion element out of music where before you had to go to the record shop, listen there and never buy a record you hadn’t heard. The streaming thing has taken that out of the equation and you can find anything from the whole history of music. It’s a totally different landscape but with the option to speak directly to people and a huge opportunity – I don’t have to call the label and ask if I can speak to someone.
How important were record labels and how has their lack of presence now impacted the scene?
They’re still there and they’re still working with the massive artists but they were an absolute necessity and that’s changed hugely. All of the big playlists are run by labels and they’re not there the way they were but they’re sort of operating in the shadows. The knock on impact is that there are relatively few artists that are new and doing really well that will get the support to keep doing well. You hear people say if someone like David Bowie came along now they wouldn’t get a deal because they didn’t fit anywhere.
The way music gets released is pretty nonsensical at the moment and you can pretty much do what you want. Constantly feeding the machine by putting things out is the thing.
It’s very sobering, that always on culture but in our industry.
Absolutely. It’s about being creative about how you approach it.
Can I finish by asking what tips or advice you have for any artist that might be starting out now and reading this?
My advice is to take control of the things you can where you can do it personally. Sometimes that’s gigs and talking to people, driven by you, sometimes it’s the social media stuff. Don’t wait for someone to tell you to do anything and don’t let anyone tell you to do something you don’t want to do. I’ve done it where I’ve made even a slight compromise on a track or album and if it goes well it still might feel a bit tainted and you’ll question it. If you only do what you believe in, even it doesn’t work, you haven’t lost a piece of yourself and that’s better for your wellbeing.
Newton Faulkner performs at Hangar 34 in Liverpool on 27th April. Tickets available from eventim.
© 2024 Luke Moore – Liverpool Acoustic