Folk Radio UK talks to Edd Donovan

“That’s the biggest achievement” Edd Donovan concludes, “The moment when you write that song, then a few months down the line you’ve got someone doing cello on it, someone doing some beautiful bass on it. You’ve got backing vocals just harmonising and lifting it out of the water…”

As we sit and chat about his new album and, more generally, the business of making music, it’s clear that Edd Donovan is intensely proud of the album he’s holding in his hands. The first batch of physical CD’s had arrived only earlier that day and it seems that getting the final tangible product in his hands has already had a cathartic effect on the singer-songwriter…

Creating an album is an impressive achievement by anyone’s standards. For Edd, ‘Making Mountains (vol 1)’ is the result of a year spent juggling his creative pursuits alongside the demands of a family and full-time career as a social worker. He did, however, find novel ways to maximise his time;

“The process kicked off nine, nearly ten months ago now” he explains. “From the moment we had the mixes, I was listening to them in my car while doing the community rounds in my social work job. When you take the time to listen to them you notice things…you start singing harmonies, you think ‘that would be a nice instrument to go on there’. It gives you that time for reflection and to do a proper job, to get the best out of the song. I pay a lot of attention to the lyrics and what kind of image I want to conjure up.”

‘Making Mountains (Vol 1)’ is the second album from the artist who grew up in St Helens, Merseyside and now lives in Cheltenham. Whilst his debut album ‘Something To Take The Edge Off’, attracted praise from the press (read the FRUK Featured Album Review), the new album is a significant step forward, particularly within the recording process;

“With the last one we just jammed the session, just the three of us, then we added a bit of percussion on top and made it a little bit more warm and round. With this one we’ve gone in the studio and we’ve done it how you’re meant to do it. We got the rhythm tracks down, the bass and the drums and then we built on that.”

The new album, a collaboration involving Edd and his musical collective known as ‘The Wandering Moles’, is rooted in indie-folk and Americana but draws on a broad spectrum of influences. The intricate arrangements, rhythmic shifts and close harmonies throughout the record are particularly notable. For Edd however, lyrics are the most important part of his work;

“For me, every line is thought out. I want it to be the real deal. I’m tired of listening to music that just bores me. There are thousands of us out there, trying do something with it. We’ve got this thrill; we’ve got this…I don’t know what it is but we want to share it. I don’t know who the record is going to appeal to…but it’s going to appeal to people like me really.

The obvious question in relation to an album that includes the phrase ‘vol 1’ in it’s title, is whether vol 2 is already in the works?

“I had twenty odd songs when we went into the studio” Edd explains. “We set to work on recording all of them and we succeeded in that. Then as we started working on them, it just became clear…it wasn’t a matter of losing the weak ones; we felt that they were all strong, but all of a sudden they separated and I just thought ‘there’s two albums here and these are the songs that are going to work perfectly on the first one’. Some of the trickier songs that need a bit more thought…we’ve put those aside for now to let them mature a little bit in our minds, so we’re just focused on the twelve that are on this album.”

Inspiration wise, Edd has been through various phases in regard to his musical tastes. “Over the last 10 years it’s been quite specific; Devon Sproule, a lot of American influences, Fleet Foxes, Bowerbirds, Nathaniel Rateliff. They’ve inspired me because they’re lyrically tight as anything. Charlie Dore as well; I just came across her the other day…I finally got her album through the post and I was in tears listening to it. That’s what it’s all about, the lyrics and the musicality just works. That inspires me as well…if I can be brought to tears, how can I bring someone else to tears?”

Edd’s appreciation of folk influenced artists didn’t really develop until after he’d left his native town of St Helens to attend college in Cheltenham where he found every other student had a guitar. Immediately fascinated, he started working through The Beatles songbook and shortly after, his own songs started to emerge. Music provided a focus that had been missing up until that point;

“I left school at eighteen and to be honest I was more into dropping out of society” he reflects, “I didn’t have any direction. I liked to smoke weed at the time. That opened my mind to a lot of new music. I really focused on listening…it was all about sitting there, getting into a nice space and listening to all these new tunes, which St Helens had sheltered me from because it was all the rave scene then. There was the Stone Roses going on which was interesting and there was a lot of Acid House at the time so it was all drug culture. There were no artistry people around me who were writing music, so I was completely shielded from that world until I came to Cheltenham and student life. I met people with different likes and different influences and took it from there.”

Shy by nature, Edd was happy to perform his newly crafted songs to friends but it wasn’t until much later that he developed the confidence to consider presenting his work to a wider audience. His confidence was in part gained as a result of mixing with visiting musicians at an event called Calmer* that Edd and his partner Emma hosted;

“We had some lovely musicians coming through and we filled the venue up” he recalls, “Scott Matthews, Baby Dee, Devon Sproule, Josephine Foster …a fantastic array of talent. We used to put them up and I was just asking questions. It was just brushing up against people like that and thinking ‘actually I could do something with my songs’. It’s just finding your style and what you’re about. So I took to the stage and did an EP and it was alright, it got some radio play.”

“Then I did an album” he continues, “someone funded it, a friend of mine. We had to get out of the studio early so we did a quick cut of something and thought I’d use that as a vehicle to get some interest, but it didn’t really work out. A lot of songs from that have rolled onto the next albums where it started to take shape. My lyrics started to mature…I started to ‘get it’ a little bit more. So those old tunes are pretty much in essence still there but I’ve changed a lot of the lyrics and changed a lot of the arrangements. Now I’m here and I’m confident with them. I’m now learning the trade of standing in front of people and performing them…it’s still a difficult task, I still find it taxing.”

Indeed, the challenges of being a performing musician is something that Edd is still getting used to, not only the performances themselves but the difficulties of coordinating a band. “You’re working full-time, you’ve got kids and then you’ve got to try and find the energy to travel somewhere and entertain. That usually involves a bit of drinking…it wears you out” laughs Edd. “It all still feels like a new experience for me. It’s enjoyable, playing festivals, taking the kids along, all those benefits. But in essence I like to write songs and I like to record songs, I’m very much into that. But I’m getting into this live thing. It’s alright…”

It’s clear that building a live performance schedule is a key part of the ‘Edd Donovan and the Wandering Moles’ game-plan. He already has his sights set on 2017 and Summer festivals;

“We’re going to do this tour and get the album out to as much press as we can, see what they think of it, then see if we can generate any interest for next year. I know you’ve got to book well in advance to do the type of festivals I’d like to do…End Of The Road, Green Man and stuff like that…I’d love to play to those audiences”