The New Cue #367 March 17: John Bramwell
"I'm Cate Blanchett's favourite songwriter of all time – she must like a drink!"
Good morning,
We hope you had a good weekend. In today’s edition Chris has a chat with John Bramwell, formerly of Mancunian cult heroes I Am Kloot and now an equally brilliant solo artist. Before we get to that, a quick reminder that this Friday, we’re hosting a very special event with Jah Wobble at The Social in London, where he’ll be reading from his new book Dark Luminosity: Memoirs Of A Geezer. There’s a few tickets left, so if you’ve not snapped one up yet just click HERE.
Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… John Bramwell
As leader of Manchester’s I Am Kloot, John Bramwell crafted six albums of witty, lovelorn songs which frequently found him dwelling on life’s disappointments, what Bramwell himself pithily described as “songs about drinking and disaster”.
Though they built a devoted cult following and received plenty of critical acclaim - even picking up a Mercury nomination for 2010’s Sky At Night - the wider success enjoyed by their pals Elbow (Guy Garvey produced 2001 debut Natural History, Sky At Night and follow-up Let It All In) eluded them and in 2017 Bramwell announced that they’d called it a day after nearly two decades together.
Kloot fans can take heart though, as last month Bramwell released his second solo album, The Light Fantastic. It’s a beautiful record that glows with a quality you might not necessarily associate with Bramwell: positivity. Here, why not have a listen while you read this?
A few weeks ago, Chris called up John to talk about his new life as a solo artist, the perception of his old group as “the band that should have…”, famous fans, not coming across as a twat and more.
Hi John, how are you?
You’ve caught me on a bit of a high to be honest, we played the first show last night and I’m absolutely delighted. We did a two hour show and just the way everyone was playing and singing, I was knocked out.
When you first started doing solo shows, were you confident that people would come with you? I Am Kloot didn’t tend to have casual fans, people who liked the music, loved it.
I did feel confident to be honest because everyone who gets into my stuff does properly get into. I bought some music magazines and had a look at where other people were playing and just rang all the venues up. I had a mobile phone, my dog, a couple of guitars and camper van and just did that and did two or three gigs a week. I didn’t really have a route, it wasn’t a tour, I was just gigging for five years. We did places like The Union Chapel but also these small folk clubs and pubs. I wasn’t trying to be precious and be like [affected posh voice] ‘Oh my god I don’t want to have anything to do with the music industry anymore and all these bread-heads…’ I just thought it was easy and I was re-establishing contact with people who love my music. I didn’t have a setlist, I know my songs, there’s lots of them, so I’d have a few that I’d always play and just ask for requests.
Is that freedom the big advantage for you of not being in a band anymore?
Yeah. It is with the benefit of having all of the things that Kloot did though. This freedom has come from the benefit of being in Kloot. I did always manage to make a living from Kloot, unlike a lot of people I know. We were often out of deals or whatever and we used the money we made to make the next record. We weren’t one of the chosen hip bands, we never were – which wasn’t surprising really considering our behaviour – so by the end of Kloot I was OK. I got a canal boat with my dog, which isn’t without its problems.
Did you feel that with I Am Kloot luck wasn’t always on your side?
I think one small thing happened right at the beginning that had a continuous knock-on effect. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but just as our first album came out, it was not necessarily going to be in the shops [Natural History went out of print in the UK and was only available in Europe for a time], which was all there was at the time, at which point the media completely stalled on us because our record might not even be in the shops. From that moment on the record underachieved and we got this constant thing, and it still happens to me to this day, ‘the band that should have…’ From 2000 onwards, no matter what happens, any introduction, the last thing I ever do, that’s how it’s written about. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy almost.
It becomes the story…
I don’t like the hard luck story. From my perspective, it never felt like that. It was only when I read it. ‘Oh, Christ we’re failures, apparently…’ And then I’d walk out on stage and there’s two and a half thousand people there. So I’m thinking, ‘Well, this is terrible. Oh my god, this is disastrous! You know, we only got asked to play Glastonbury seven or eight times! Awwww, fuck this is a nightmare! I’m at the Fuji Rock festival, this is terrible! What?!? We’ve got to tour Australia again?!? This is a disaster!!!’ OK, so I’m not a household name, but I’m not entirely sure I’d be suited to that. I think after 16 years we did pretty good. We lasted longer than The Beatles!
Are you a different songwriter from the person who wrote I Am Kloot’s music?
This is the same guy, but it’s not the same guy. A lot has happened to me and I’ve learned a lot about myself. I was a seriously edgy bugger. It came out more on stage than in reality but it led people to think I was unapproachable. I can understand it from how I was on stage, my humour was quite sardonic, but that’s because that’s what I was pitching in the songs. But I didn’t realise that a lot of that pain and anxiety and anger, that was me. Being able to do these gigs and not have a set list and feel laughter and have people realise that I’m not a twat, you know, it’s just been brilliant. It’s uplifted me and it’s changed me. The last seven years have changed me and I think as an artist I’ve reflected that. I can hear that on this record.
You can really feel a lightness and optimism on the record which isn’t something you’re necessarily known for.
Yeah, and it’s a reflection of how I feel. Maybe there are some Kloot fans who might say: Oh he’s lost it! But that’s the road I’m going to go down. If you’d have said to me ten years ago that I could write songs like this and perform them in a real way and for it to be where I was at, I really don’t think I would have said that I could. But that’s what’s happened.
Are there any famous I Am Kloot fans that you see at the gigs?
There’s a weird Doctor Who thing with Kloot. Christopher Eccleston, we saw him in the audience, that’s why we got him in the video for [2003’s] Proof. The same thing with John Simm. We saw him at a gig and he was there with that guy from Teachers, what’s his name?
Andrew Lincoln?
Andrew Lincoln. So they must be mates because they were at the gig together and I went into the dressing room after this gig and they were backstage and they were absolutely wankered. I clocked them and said, ‘Did you enjoy it?’ and they were like: ‘Yeah he’s great isn’t he, such good songs, that band are fantastic aren’t they?’ They were so wankered they didn’t recognise me, I’d just come off stage. So I got him in [Simm appears in the video to 2013’s Some Better Day].
Tom Kerridge the chef is a massive fan, he had Proof on his Desert Island Discs, but the mad one is Cate Blanchett. When she got an honorary award at the BAFTA’s she said she wanted Proof as the backdrop when they show all her clips and when she was on the Jimmy Kimmel Show recently as she walked on the house band played Proof and she picked it on her Desert Island Discs. So apparently I’m Cate Blanchett’s favourite songwriter of all time – she must like a drink!
She’s got good taste. Thanks so much for talking to us today, John. Genuinely, the new record really is brilliant.
Thanks a lot, Chris. Take care, bye bye.
CC
The Light Fantastic is out now on Townsend Music