One of the most memorable quotes from Bob Dylan when he was putting out a regular radio show related to his apparent favouring old records over new ones. “Well there are a lot more old records than new ones” he reasoned, “so I guess that’s why I play more old ones”. It’s something we, as avid music listeners, often tend to overlook when asked to enthuse upon on our latest discoveries. But the fact is that we have around 100 years of easily accessible recorded music to dive into nowadays so surely, it’s only natural that the deep well of musical legacy available gets as strong a look in as the new stuff? In answering questions put to him by Folk Radio, Franc Cinelli touches upon this considering a question about his musical highlights from the last decade. “I really mostly listen to old records” he confesses before settling on The Texas Gentlemen, the last record by Tinariwen and the first Chris Stapleton record as notable memories. Further pondering offers “Dylan’s first Frank Sinatra record and ‘Modern Times’, was that in the last ten years? John Hiatt ‘Eclipse Sessions’ and John Prine’s last record, very very special indeed.” As for revelations in 2019, he’s utilised a far more modern method. “Fink and Jonathan Wilson. Both were “shazam” discoveries in places I was getting coffee.”
Franc Cinelli, currently soaking up acclaim and deserved recognition for his fantastically realised new album ‘Night Songs’, clearly conducts every aspect of his life in music with careful consideration. That he gives all due respect to his songcraft is fully apparent on the album, but it’s nice to hear how he takes the other end of the process so seriously too. Talking about his preferred listening format Franc decisively states its “definitely vinyl, it just commands an attention and respect that no other musical format does. You have to invest in a decent turntable for starters and you need to take care of it and maintain it. You also need to take care of your vinyl’s, or they’ll get knackered and not sound good. You have to get up and turn the side over, so you’re part of it in a way. It’s not a throwaway thing; it’s not a crappy link that you send to someone and they’ll listen for 30 seconds whilst doing eleven other things. You need to slow down with a record and take it in. One of my favourite things about touring is playing in record shops and meeting some amazing people who are just as passionate about songs as I am. I’ve made some very dear friends in record shops. I’ve actually started doing my own stall at some vinyl fairs. Just to be close to it really. I’m there with my guitar, and I play and sell a few records. It’s really fun, from farmer to table as it were!”
Speaking as someone who has been involved with Record Fairs for the past three decades, I can emphatically empathise with Franc on this one! If you’re lucky enough, as I was, to have the seed of musical discovery through vinyl record collecting sewn from a young age, then you’ve got a passion that will perpetually light up your life. Franc’s description of his own formative years in music sounds delightfully familiar. “My folks had a small but fantastic record collection. John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, The Police, Paul Simon & Dire Straits were all on repeat. And it was just instant for me, probably starting with the magic of the vinyl’s themselves and the vinyl cupboard which I wasn’t allowed to go into – so of course, I did, every single day. And for me, it was all roads lead to America really, in terms of the sounds I was drawn to, and the history of it really appealed to me. And once you’re into songs, I think it’s quite normal to be interested in what came before, and before that and before that. So, you find out that the Rolling Stones took their name from a Muddy Waters track, and you go, who’s that? He must be good if the stones took their actual NAME from one of his songs. And you go wow, and then you go back more and find a guy called Robert Johnson who pretty much wrote the blues songbook and you see there’s a really clear lineage with music and writers and how that lineage also reflects the changing times. And all of that you can learn from and maybe be better at what you do because of it.”
One of the things that really appealed to me about Franc’s new ‘Night Songs’ album was the way it tapped into the great LP record tradition. By that, I mean that the whole collection of songs seem to belong together both thematically and texturally. This is a record that appears to have a very deliberate beginning, middle and end. The sequence of these tunes is important and of course, the intimate night theme of the title is definitively captured. Of that theme, Franc says “It’s something that just developed by itself. I didn’t set out with a concept or anything. But I had about 14 or 15 songs I was quite happy with for the album, and it wasn’t until I started listening back to the first arrangements and mixes that I saw there was a thread that held all these songs together. In the still of the night, there’s a moment for peaceful silence and reflection. And I think that was what I was trying to say to myself. Take a moment to consider how you’re feeling about your place within your surroundings. If things hurt, then let them hurt and process that hurt completely so you can move on, really strongly. And when I understood that then I was able to go back to the songs and rewrite some of the words and think about the arrangement in a different way. I wanted there to be a softness in the sound that would feel in some way soothing. That took a while to figure out but that’s what making a record is about, finding that point x in which art meets science and you make technical decisions with all the tools you have to hand, the instruments, the microphones, the mixing, to match that expression and those themes which just seem to present themselves.”
It speaks volumes of Franc’s creative talents that he can, upon identifying an emerging concept during the process, re-adapt the work in progress and bring new complementary elements to the table. I noted in my review of the album how the closing track seems the perfect finale, ushering in a new day and the writer can now reveal that it was in fact “the last song I wrote for the album. I had understood there was a “night” theme in the songs – the night is, of course, figurative and it’s about reflection and acceptance. And the ‘Night Life’ song is perhaps about being able to, even for just a moment to welcome the present with acceptance and happiness.” The time taken to compile the material is a key factor to all this as well; these songs weren’t rushed out in a sudden burst, they could arrive naturally in their own time. “I wrote and recorded the album over the course of about a year. I hadn’t written anything in a couple of years or so; it felt nice to just leave it alone.”
Cinelli continues on this subject, “I’ve always written as a way to just understand things in my life better, figure out my place with it all. Like a diary really, that’s really the purpose of song writing in my life. And there came a point where what I was writing just felt safe, and music shouldn’t feel that way. So, I left it and thought if the songs need me, they’ll know where to find me. And fortunately, they did. ‘Fly’ was the first song I wrote for this record and it was a totally different guitar tuning, a different lyrical structure to anything I’d written before. It’s just got two verses and ends on a bridge section – which is quite an odd structure. But odd is good. And after that tune, I felt the need to pick up the guitar and sort a few things out. But I didn’t worry about making an album. When you make your own records and put them out yourself there’s so much to think about and plan for other than music, and I just didn’t want to worry about any of those things, I just wanted to see what the songs had to say and take a moment just to take it all in, and react to it in as honest way as I could.”
That’s a pretty persuasive argument for letting an artist focus on their work without outside interference or rigidly locking into a pressure inducing commercial timetable. Franc confesses that playing live is the fundamental aspect of his work, “music is about connecting, connecting with yourself when you write it and connecting with others when you sing it.” The tracks that make up ‘Night Songs’ were audience-tested prior to being recorded. “I don’t think you can call anything “art” until it is shared with people. I mean that’s the whole point of it really, to use what you’re making as a common ground with other humans and use that as a starting block. You know, where am I? Where do I fit in? What’s the point? All that good stuff.”
Of course, Franc is an accomplished musician and he can write on demand if the need arises, it’s just that he feels the music closest to his heart arrives naturally, so he gives it the time it deserves. “I write a lot for production labels and music for visuals. But that is a very functional type of writing – I’m not having a conversation with myself or trying to figure things out. I’m trying to make a living and am a capable enough writer to do that. But with the songs that I write that end up on my records, I can’t do that on-demand it’s a difficult process and I always feel extremely grateful when I can write one which I think really works.” He calls inspiration a “very shy and elusive thing. If you push too hard, it’s just never going to come out of its cave and reveal itself. It needs to coaxed, but it needs to be ready to come out.” Unlike some writers who have clear divisions between the lyrics and the music, Franc tends to work up from an idea starting with the two elements arriving together. “If I don’t have the two, it’s very difficult to add one to the other at a later stage. I find that close to impossible. Once I have even just a few words that belong to a bit on the guitar, then I can sit and write, usually much more than I’ll need for the song and then it’s a process of stripping off the fat and hopefully just leaving all the juicy good stuff.”
So, he’s painting me a picture of a process like turning on a tap then waiting for everything to pour out prior to editing and arranging. I wonder whether, especially lyrically, this can lead to too much personal stuff planting itself into the songs. “I think it’s nice for the songs to have enough colour in them so that they can also be open to interpretation and open to becoming a home in other peoples’ lives as well. I’m pretty sure all my songs are about me, whether it’s John Giles breaking out of Alcatraz or Charlie singing blues at the 12-bar club on Denmark St. But telling those stories through third-person narratives I think totally opens them up to anyone who wishes to connect with them. That’s my favourite part of writing.” Still, he admits there may, on occasion, be a temptation to re-write the odd line that strays too close to the personal. “Sometimes it’s too close to the bone and every time I perform that song I’m taken back to a painful place and that can be a bit hard to handle. But at the same time, it can be a deeply therapeutic process. John Martyn used to say that he never needed to see a therapist because his songs were his therapy. It takes a lot of bravery to have to confront some situations and feelings and work through them in a song but, consequences or not; it’s something I’m drawn to.”
One aspect of the album I found particularly enjoyable was the sometimes surprising shifts in tempo and tone. I referred to the funky African bounce of ‘Walk With Me Jimi’ and the gospel flavourings on ‘Breathe’. Franc indicates that these changes were all purely in the name of giving the music the treatment it was calling for on each specific track. Of ‘Breathe’ he remembers “I started writing it for someone and soon realised I was writing it for myself. The breath is the central part of our existence; it’s the source; it’s the fire that keeps us lit. And it’s something that can help you find your bearings when you’re totally lost; it keeps you grounded but also makes you feel like you’re ready to fly. It’s such a simple thing, but there’s so much there, it’s the source. The original recording was really a ‘Nebraska’ style thing because I had made the error of setting out to make a type of recording, but the delivery and the sound did not match the story of the song. Also ‘Walk With Me Jimi’ was a similar thing. They’re both moments in which a speck of light comes in through the window and you know that whatever happens, however long it’ll take, that new day is coming and you’re going to climb through and figure it out. You will. As Tom Waits put it so perfectly ‘you can never hold back spring’.”
I had also speculated about who Franc was writing about on the song ‘Stay Strange’. It’s not really playing fair to just directly ask a composer who a song is about, but I thought I’d test the water anyway. His response was a direct “I wrote it for you, and for me and anyone who might find themselves at any time, momentarily resting on their laurels.” He is similarly forthright about the rambling man we hear him singing about, clarifying that there’s no distinction between the man in the song and the singer. “I am the rambling man. I couldn’t sing about it if I wasn’t it, that would just make me a fraud really.”
Well, that was never in doubt, Franc Cinelli is the real deal for sure. Even the recording techniques he deployed for this album were all in the name of getting every detail correct. He confides to a love for nocturnal recording “particularly for recording the vocals. I’ll usually lay down a guide vocal to work with and once the arrangement feels nice, I’ll do the vocals properly and it’s nice to do those at night and by myself.” He’s made his own studio in London, which affords him the luxury of working on his material in a relaxed environment. “I love all the aspects of making music, from the song writing and the arrangements to the technical side of recording and mixes. It’s so much fun and there’s so much to learn. When I first started to learn about recording and the studio, it felt like I was getting to see how the magic works. Slowly the tricks get revealed and there’s all these fantastic eureka! moments when you figure something out and those magical vinyl’s get demystified somewhat. You see that it only comes down to other humans going through the same things as you are and it’s totally achievable – to figure things out, to get through them, but also understanding how much or how little you push a piece of kit while you’re making the record can have a big impact on the emotional connection someone can make when they listen to the music. That’s just magical to me.”
Talking about the sessions for this album he continues “I got the songs to a nice place and then on the tracks that Laurence Saywood and Drew Manley played the bass and drums, they came over and put their parts down on top of what I already had. But it’s always nice to get them to come in on different days and try and capture their instinctive response to the music. Because if you arrange it all together in the room first, then you can run the risk of making safe decisions, the things you’d expect to do and it’s nice to do all possible to avoid that. It’s maybe not the norm to record drums on top of guitar and strings and bass after that but who cares? It’s the situation that I found to make recording fun and get the best out of the fantastic musicians I play with.”
Having created a marvellous album around the theme of night-time music, I had to ask what records Franc himself would put on in the wee small hours? “The last Tinariwen record that Warren Ellis plays on. It’s magical. And Ralph Vaughn Williams, the lark song. That’s a wonderful piece of music to fall asleep and dream to, I highly recommend!” Well having received that hot tip how could I not follow it up and investigate? In reply, I simply say thank you Franc, just like your own album, that was a welcome addition to my end of year listening. Indeed, that spirit of sharing and discovery never leaves us vinylists! But the final word should go to the man himself, who gave me this compelling answer to a routine question about any pivotal events in his life leading up to the creation of ‘Night Songs’. “Every day is pivotal; every day needs to matter as much. I really believe that and I try and live my life that way. I try.”
“Night Songs” available now.
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