stop okay go interview

‘Stop Okay Go’ have just done a little feature on me with an interview – you can read the original along with other thoughts and musings at http://stopokaygo.typepad.com/ or read it below…

I often forget that there’s anyone reading this blog, happily wrapped up as I am in my own obsessions. So imagine my delight and surprise when I found out that London folksinger Robin Grey read an entry I wrote on him way back in April. Luckily, the medication was working that day and I was being nice. And what is there not to love, really? The thoughtful Grey sings in a deep English voice that gives his songs a sweeping and poetic quality. His album Only The Missile is out now. Read more from the ukulele-teaching and Eminem-loving (we have so much in common!) Robin Grey below:


Stop Okay Go (SOG): The song ‘Every Waking Hour’ is soooo romantic. What girl doesn’t want to hear that there’s a man who is thinking of her in his every waking hour? Tell the truth: was it written sincerely or as a way to pick up girls at shows?

RG: Definitely from the heart. I write silly/insincere songs too but they don’t sit with the majority of my material so I choose not to perform or record them at the moment.

I have been toying with the idea of putting on a wig and adopting an alter ego so these other songs get an occasional airing in public but the lighter side of my personality gets a good work-out teaching kids ukulele so I feel no need at present. At the time of writing ‘Every Waking Hour’ I was lucky enough to be living next door to a drum and bass producer called Mark Watt who also rocked the double bass. He jammed a groove which made the song for me and really picked up the tempo. I recorded that rest of the song about two years later when I rediscovered Mark’s bass line whilst deleting old material from my computer.

SOG: I also love the storytelling and delicate pluck-work in ‘The Finchley Waltz.’ What a beautiful song. I read a review that said your voice sounds like it would be suited for protest music. Is there a message in the song and how do you feel about political songs? You don’t hear many of them anymore.

RG: Thank you. There is a political message in ‘The Finchley Waltz’ somewhere but it gets very tangled up with the other themes of Englishness, motion, love and lost innocence. The song was written just after the 7/7 bomb attacks in London when the police were bringing the town to a stand-still whilst raiding the houses of suspected ‘terrorists’.

When I sing ‘The Good Guys and The Bad Guys stopped play’ I am certainly flagging up my sorrow at our politicians/media/societies urgent desire to pigeon-hole situations into ‘us’ v ‘them’ and ‘good’ v ‘bad’ etc. and how unhelpful I think that can be.

The image in my head at the time was of cops and robbers (suicide bombers) stopping a cricket match and stuffy elderly Englishmen in the crowd (politicians) tut tutting about what a bad show it was and how they should jolly well stop all that nonsense (and further opining it should be prevented by locking up anyone who stands out of line).

I have written political/protest songs but canned all of them thus far because they either sounded preachy or trite. For the time being I think politics will remain a background theme in my lyrics unless I can pen anything as good as ‘Blowing In The Wind’, ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’ or ‘What’s Going On.’

SOG: We’d love to see you here in the U.S. Will you be performing stateside any time soon and what does the future hold for Robin Grey?

RG: I’m currently settling for pretty much the first time in my nomadic little life with a lovely little studio and house in a leafy, ramshackle corner of East London. I am finding it hard to leave my neighbourhood, let alone the country at the moment. I would love to travel with my guitar again one day but I am enjoying putting down roots and growing things too much at the moment.

As for the future, I have another 20+ songs I am working on at the moment and now I have a better idea of the recording process I can’t wait to start playing with microphones again. I may also have a stab at putting my own band together at some point to expand the live show.

Since my album has been out I have been getting better shows and audiences and I hope I can continue to grow things patiently whilst having fun and learning more about songwriting, arranging, recording and performing.

SOG: Thanks Robin! Best of luck!

la gare d’austerlitz

my words fall flat and clumsy,
my pen scratches the page.

school-boy rhymes collide with stunted haikus,
scattered amongst extinct to-do lists,
and piled up under a burden of exile, expectation and exhaustion.

on four hours sleep, in le gare d’austerlitz,
i let down my guard and fall in love.

the lady with red trousers and a violin sits down next to me
unaware that we are married and expecting a son called claude.
we exchange smiles and i put hers in my pocket as she gets on the train.

at the toilet i urinate next to a boy with a machine gun.
somewhere between platforms 18 and 10, after passing
a hairy man scraping chewing gum from the concourse,
i fall in love with paris too for good measure and remember
that i need to buy some nail-clippers when i get to orleans.

another form of relief review

A second review which I only found out about today!

ANOTHER FORM OF RELIEF

The art of the protest singer seems to have been lost in recent years. Which is unfortunate as there hasn’t been in a time when they have been more needed. The state of this world, and this country in particularly, is practically screaming out for someone to put complaints into words. Which is something of an odd way to open when I’m not sure I’d even consider Robin Grey to be a protest singer.

He does take some swipes at the government of the day (”On the radio politicians dutifully opine which liberties they are taking away”), but most of The Finchley Waltz centres on the personal. It’s a melancoly tale of finding love (at first sight, no less) and then realising it’s not quite what the movies cracked it up to be. So still a protest song to a degree, just not in the political sense.

But then what does all this matter with a voice like this? Grey is one of those wonderful talents that could recite the phone directory on record and you’d still be enthralled. His voice is restrained, yet you can still feel the emotion behind every word. This allows each song to sound light and breezy enough to pull you in at the start, before the emotional punch comes in out of nowhere. Leaving us with the kind of cheerful misery that’s perfect for this time of year.

song by toad review

Somehow I only found out about this review yesterday…might explain why things have been a bit more lively on my myspace though…you can see the original review and browse around the rest of Song by Toad‘s excellent site by clicking on the picture below.

This is going to be a slightly equivocal review, I think. Robin is a new artist, and I always think twice if I’m going to be less than entirely generous about people you may never have heard of before.

What do I mean? Well I’m not entirely convinced by all of this album. There are a couple of tracks, most notably Somewhere, which are pretty unremarkable – I’m thinking Hugh Grant starring in another of those dismal Working Title romcoms of his, basically. Going to his MySpace page, there are a couple more like that, which made me a little nervous, I had to admit.

Associating these lapses with the rest of this album is easy, but really completely wrong. It’s actually a fabulous album for the most part, really it is: warm, melancholy, gentle, witty and just playful enough that the sparse instrumentation and generally slow pace never flirt with tedium. It has real life, this record, albeit a low-key, non-intrusive kind of life.

He plucks and rumbles along, in a most English manner, tells his stories in a plain and unpretentious way that is really personal and really engaging. By the end of the record you realise you’ve listened to the sort of music that feels like a relaxed night in with a good friend at the end of a tiring week. And you’re a bit drunk, but not too sozzled. And you feel a little sleepy, but in a nice, warm way. Things are fine, actually, aren’t they?

Bluesy and folky, with enough embellishment to add texture, but which never detracts from the gentle strum of the guitar and raspy, but not growling quality of his voice. It is minimal, but it’s not sparse, and it may be a bit DIY, but it’s not amateurish, and it may not grab you instantly, but it’s a really bloody good album.

radio song?

A few kinds folks have suggested radio DJs to contact about getting airplay… after a little digging it turns out that they are probably more likely to respond to requests by you (the listener) than by me hassling them so it would be super cool if you could email you favourite DJ and suggest they play your favourite tune (of mine?!).

If you don’t have a favourite DJ and have time please pop a note to tom robinson here.