Ten Blue Songs is Jason McNiff’s latest offering. Despite its title, it’s a celebration of the musical life he’s spent years building.
In our review of his 2017 anthology, Rain Dries Your Eyes, Thomas Blake called McNiff a hidden gem in the British indie-folk scene who, at that time, had been quietly and confidently building a large body of consistently outstanding work since 2000.
To say that he has continued in a similar vein would be a huge understatement. Blake observed how McNiff had managed to maintain “a clarity of purpose that is rarely found, let alone maintained throughout a decade or so of music-making.” Close to another decade has elapsed since then, a period underpinned by an unfaltering dedication to live performance – a working life.
The press for this new release reveals that McNiff has sold out two major music theatres in Hastings (Stables and Kino) in the last year. He hosts the events ‘Sundowner’ and ‘Folk Blues and Beyond’, playing solo or with his band and featuring, over the years, a huge cast of guests from across the UK, Europe and the US. Every Saturday, he plays the ‘Coffee House Sessions’ – an homage to Bunjies and Les Cousins, featuring Matt Armstrong on double bass, alongside local players including Richard Moore (violin) and Bjorn Dahlberg (clarinet).
“I always loved how Woody Allen would play his clarinet every Monday night for 50 years, missing the Oscars, but never missing a show. Now, I have 3 well-attended nights a week in Hastings, and i never miss a show! This album is evidence of our working life and couldn’t exist without the gigs”
Produced and recorded live by Trevor Moss (Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou), and featuring clarinet, double bass, piano, and violin accompaniment, the recording captures the feel and immediacy of a live performance, taking inspiration from writers Italo Calvino, the stripped-back writing of Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway, as well as the guitar legend Davy Graham.
Enjoy this wonderful insight, courtesy of Jason McNiff.
Track by Track by Jason McNiff: Ten Blue Songs
1. Morning’s Come
This is really the introduction to the record. It sets the scene: slow, brooding, with a kind of tango feel to it. It has also become a very natural way for us to open gigs, so it made sense for it to do the same job here. Trevor Moss, who produced the record, added a few little flourishes, which really help create the atmosphere. He’s doing all the back vocals at the end, which sound like a Gregorian chant. Clever chap.
2. Nightshift Blues
One of the key tracks on the record for me. It has that mixture of folk and jazz which is really at the heart of what this band does, and this is where Bjorn Dahlberg’s clarinet really comes into its own. The song was inspired by a short story by Italo Calvino, about a married couple whose lives and working hours barely allow them to meet. We recorded it live in the studio, and of all the tracks on the album, this is one of the ones that most closely captures what we actually sound like onstage. Matt Armstrong plays a mean Double Bass part.
3. Lost My Way
I found the lyrics to this at the bottom of a drawer while moving house. It’s an older song that I’d forgotten about. It has a slightly unusual structure — the second verse is much longer than the first — which I like because it gives the song the feeling of wandering off somewhere rather than behaving itself. There are images of Poland in it, and of standing at my grandad’s grave. By the end, it opens out into a kind of lads’ singalong chorus, while Bjorn’s clarinet smokes the whole thing up beautifully.
4. Whoever I Am
One of the most recently written songs on the album, and one I really like. It’s set in Hastings and walks ‘over the hill’ — the same hill John Martyn used to walk over when he lived here. Not very much happens in the song, which is part of what I like about it. It’s mostly real-world details: people and places, things noticed along the way. I suppose I was after something a little like a Hemingway story, where the ordinary details are allowed to carry whatever else is going on underneath. Richard Moore plays violin on this one and gets right inside that atmosphere.
5. Dreams Coming Home
You might recognise the guitar introduction here from Davy Graham’s “Anji”. It’s a little nod to one of the great English guitar geniuses, and to a piece I’ve been playing for twenty years, actually probably longer. The song itself is another very recent one. The idea is that my dreams are like prodigal sons: they’ve gone off into the world, got themselves into trouble, and now they’re coming home. I particularly like the bit about their mum: “Can’t conceal my happiness / I’ll forgive before they confess / They can tell me about their mum.” There’s something about treating your own dreams as errant children that amused me, but there’s some truth in it too.
6. Folsom Prison Blues
This has become another live favourite. A reviewer said that my voice lacked the gravitas of Johnny Cash, which is very rude, but I’m not really trying to impersonate Johnny Cash. What interested me was the prison story itself and trying to get inside the head of the person telling it. Maybe he didn’t have a voice full of gravitas either.
We changed the song quite a bit, putting it into a minor key, and it seems to reveal something different that way. It feels less like a rock ’n’ roll hit and more like an old folk ballad — a dark story that might have been passed around for years before anybody knew who wrote it.
7. Scared to Love
I nearly threw this one away. I felt slightly embarrassed singing it and was reluctant to play it to anybody. The basic idea had been around for a while in different forms, with other melodies and bits of music attached to it, but nothing ever seemed quite right.
Eventually I realised it needed to be very stripped back and vulnerable. We needed another song for the record, so I brought it in, still feeling rather unsure about it. Trevor said he loved it and that it absolutely had to be on the album. I’m still not entirely sure. Maybe that’s appropriate for the song.
8. One More Goodbye
An English road song, really. I’m driving around the Weald with my girl when, quite unexpectedly, we pass the house of an old flame and everything comes flooding back. I liked the idea of that sudden collision between the life you’re living now and another life that once seemed just as real.
Lyle Zimmerman, a multi-instrumentalist originally from Washington, D.C., and now living in Hastings, helped me with the lyrics. It feels very rooted in this part of the world to me — the roads, the landscape, the way memory can suddenly attach itself to a completely ordinary place.
9. Gatling Gun
This came from the funeral of an old friend of mine. He was only my age, and his death was completely unexpected. I remember the arrival of the coffin, standing there in the chapel, and the overwhelming feeling that the whole thing was wrong and strange.
There are some experiences you don’t really understand while they’re happening, and perhaps never understand afterwards either. This song came out of that feeling more than any attempt to explain it.
10. 3pm Home Alone
This is a song about getting ChatGPT to interpret a dream. I had a lyric that made that completely explicit, but quite a few friends and family members protested that you can’t have a song about ChatGPT. Eventually I yielded and changed it.
Maybe they were right. I’m still not completely convinced. I need to ask ChatGPT.
Order Ten Blue Songs: Digital (Bandcamp) | CD (Norman Records)
For Live Dates, visit: https://www.jasonmcniff.com/