You hear a lot of talk about “how nice!” and “how
humble!” certain musicians are when people talk about them, so it feels a bit
futile to say all these things with fear of putting across what sounds like
empty words. But what I will say that within ten minutes of walking through the
maze of stairs to the dressing room at infamous London venue KOKO, Foy Vance
has already poured me a gin and tonic, and as we sit in the back room with the
window open he apologises for smoking about ten times (I’m trying to quit for a
bit, after picking up a horrendous chest infection, and I assure him it isn’t
his fault when I erupt into ugly fits of coughs every couple of minutes).
Foy Vance is a singer-songwriter from Northern
Ireland, and in this past year he’s released much acclaimed album, “Joy of
Nothing”, toured with Ed Sheeran, and collaborated with Bonnie Raitt. Tonight,
he’s in London for a sold-out gig, in the middle of the UK leg of his tour.
I want to start off talking about the album, and Foy explains
that he started writing a lot of the songs that are now on the record when he
was living in London, but the inspiration really began the moment that his
train pulled away from Euston, when he moved away. “It was when I moved to the Highlands - you
know what? I booked the house, unseen, because I was told where it was and who
owned it and all that and I thought, that's going to be alright, so I put the
deposit down and thought, I'd better go up and see it. So I got on the train at
Euston station. And that journey, that change in scenery... I felt that this
weight of city life was starting to settle the further north I got. By the time
I got into the Highlands I was in love already, and I'd written the first
lyrics of a song called "Closed Hand Full of Friends" and that was
the catalyst to the record. The journey to the new record started before even
getting there, but it was only when I got up there that it all came together
all of a sudden.”
His move to the Highlands was an escape, after finding no
comfort in the city where so many artists go to find inspiration. The title of
his album, “Joy of Nothing”, refers to the silence and peace he became at one
with, when re-settling in the Birks of Aberfeldy. “There is a nothingness up
there - a beautiful nothingness, a simplicity I think. And I think I was
feeling pretty complicated - to quote Annie Lennox - in London. It was like, I
was touring all the time, trying to facilitate the London life, because living
here's so expensive. I found that I actually wasn't enjoying London. The reason
to be in London is when you can appreciate all that it is. It's one of the most
amazing cities in the world, but all I was getting was the stress and the
traffic and the to and from the airport and crowded trains, and paying for a
house you couldn't swing a cat in. I just had enough.”
He says that we don’t spend enough time in silence, by
ourselves, and points out to me how noise is something that it’s so hard to
escape. “We're sitting here now and we're engaged in conversation. But I can
hear the buses go by,” he says, gesturing out of the open window, traffic jams
through Mornington Crescent, going down to Chalk Farm Road, there’s the occasional
ambulance, or car alarm, in the distance and always a faint hum of machinery.
“I can hear people talking in there,” he indicates to the lounge, next door, “but
there's something about being in Aberfeldy, or anywhere where it's quiet, being
in silence just focuses you. It does me, anyway.”
But Foy’s roots are not in Scotland – he grew up in Ireland,
the son of a travelling preacher. “It was by the sea, by the water, which is a
different kind of thing all together, even if you've got the city and all the
signs of mankind behind you, you still look out to the sea, out to nowhere, and
where does it go? I wonder, if I just went that way, where I'd end up. So I
loved that growing up. Especially on Bangor Bay, because the boats would go out
there and I'd see them going by and think, where are they going?”
I ask if he sees stories like this in everything. “It was
beautiful. I remember just thinking having that sense of travel with me, if
being born by the water had helped that, I've always had an affinity with the
natural elements more than anything else.”
Leaving London, he says, has helped him not only to find
inspiration but be creative in an environment far from the heart of the music
industry. Yeah. You know what, not to put too fine a point on it, but it
honestly felt like I'd moved from the humdrum of the industry to the haunts of
the ancient bards, because that's what it's like up there, you know what I
mean, people go there to write, and where I live's quite an artisan area, a few
galleries, and a guy that's trying to reinvent tweed... or not reinvent, but
he's a designer basically, with a little tweed shop. There's furniture makers,
there's guitar builders, an old nineteen fifties art deco cinema, it's a lovely
wee spot, and you feel that when you go there and it just makes you want to
create.”
Foy also collaborated with Ed Sheeran on album track “Guiding
Light”, and toured all over the States as Ed’s support act – arenas full of
screaming girls being a very different experience to his normal shows. “It’s
not what I'm used to at all. I mean, until that the biggest names that I'd
toured with were people like Pete Townsend or Bonnie Raitt. Actually, The Who
is a bad example because people go mental at their concerts, but Bonnie Raitt -
you go to her concert and people sit down and they're there for the music and
nothing else. The celebrity element doesn't come into it, it's about music,
it's all about music. That's what I've kind of always strived for - a music
loving audience. Because there's something... again, silence, at a gig,
sometimes I get finicky about it when people talk or shout out during songs and
I don't mean to be a prick, I don't mean to be a pretentious little twat but
it's just cause I think music works better in silence, because then you can
play with dynamics and go places that you just can't go if you're working with
a constant din. At Ed's gigs, they were great fun, and I had a ball, and it was
great to get to know Ed better. He's just a solid heart, a really good guy. But
the gigs were just a different thing, I played to the people more than I played
music, really, and had fun.”
However, he doesn’t want his audiences completely silent
necessarily – people singing along is something that he finds very unifying and
special. “I get people to sing a lot - well not a lot, but for a bit, and I
like that, I like that when a room feels unified, but I also like it during
quieter songs or whatever when you can disappear into your own little world and
you know, almost forget that they're there, finish the song and open your eyes,
hopefully they've enjoyed it as much as you have. But in saying that, very
often when I play in Dublin - it always happens in Dublin - they just sing.
Everything. And it just changes the gig, it's lovely. It's lovely because it
makes it kind of... it makes it as if you're all in a band together. So I guess
you've just got to take gigs how you find.” Silence, however, is important,
both in his performance and his day to day experiences. “I like to be on my own
as much as I can, because I think it’s good for you. We don’t spend enough time
by ourselves.”
The show that night in sold-out KOKO is a beautiful collaboration
of joyful unity, loyal fans singing along with lyrics like it’s a gospel
church, and moments of complete silence, nothing but the music filling the room.
Highlights include a special guest appearance from Foy’s ten year old daughter,
Ella, who plays percussion excellently during the jovial and majestic “Closed
Hand Full of Friends”, an angry and heartfelt rendition of “Janey”, which Foy
dedicates to his friend Janey, who is in the crowd tonight. He pays amendment to
Lou Reed, covering “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” and asking the crowd to “doo-doo-doo”
as he declares, aloud, “Dear God - If Lou Reed isn’t in Heaven, I don’t think
any of us want to go there.”
He ends with “Guiding Light”, once again, asking the crowd to
sing along with the refrain, and they do – a continuous repetition of a
thousand voices chanting “When I need to
get home, you’re my guiding light, you’re my guiding light.” And the most
magical thing is that they carry on, long after he’s left the stage – in their
seats, in the foyer, and out in the street.
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