Juliet Lawson
Juliet Lawson burst onto the music scene in the seventies with her debut album Boo and now she is back with her brand new EP Songs From The Suitcase.
This is her first collection of new material in a decade and we caught up with her to chat about the new tracks and what lies ahead.
- You are about to release your new EP Songs From The Suitcase so what can fans expect from the tracks this time around?
The album is a bit of a mix as there is a slightly jazzy and slightly bluesy sound; there a track called Waste of a Woman which is quite comic as it is about a mix up of gender identity.
It is quite funny and it always goes down live - I have done it in a 1930’s style. So it is a mix really. The Skin You’re In is a kind of country almost barn dance feel, so I would say that it is a good mix.
- You have slightly touched on my next question as there is a whole host of genres from jazz and folk as well as having some great instrumentation so how did you fin yourself going down this path? And was it a plan to mix so many genres together?
Funnily enough it has always been a bit of a problem for me because I like lots of different types of music and I don’t like putting myself in box; I don’t like being considered a folk singer or a jazz singer - so I do mix and match.
A lot depends, of course, on the instruments and musicians that you are using; the violinist Billy Thompson came a long and said ‘what do you want?’ And I just said ‘well what do you feel?’ So a lot of it happens unplanned.
I will go into the studio and I will have the skeleton of the song and then we work it up for there - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t (laughs).
- How have you found the early response to the new collection of tracks?
I have been very pleased. It has been a long time coming as I have been floating around the business for years and years and years and people keep saying ‘when are you going to do some new tracks?’ So yes I have been pretty pleased.
It is a hugely competitive world out there but one of the good things about being ‘mature’ (laughs) is you care less and you are not so concentrated on ‘I have go to make it this time’.
You are doing it because you like the music and then it is up to other people to slot me into their own vision of it; the jazz people can take a bit of jazz people and the blues people can take a bit of blues. I like to think that there is something for everybody.
- This is your first release in ten years; there has been a greatest hits album in that time, so why have you not recorded something in so long and what made you decide that now was the right time to return?
I kept on writing and I have a huge arsenal of songs that I have never released - I hope that over time I will be able to do that.
I have just done other things; I also paint and that has taken up a lot of time. I have gone from one thing to another. I look back on ten years and think ‘wow is it really ten years?’ I just don’t know where the time goes.
I have written a couple of plays and I have done quite a lot of live work, I was doing the live work instead of recording. Nowadays you don’t have record labels forcing you to release something by this time next year you do it at you own speed.
- You have mentioned that you have continued to write and have also been writing plays so how have you found that transition as it is a very different writing style?
It is a very different writing style. A play that I wrote and performed in the mid nineties was actually about the problems of working mothers and it was a play with music.
I find dialogue quite easy, I suppose it is because I am into lyrics and so I like listening to how people speak, I like writing conversations.
I have also done one woman shows which I have written myself and they have been a one woman drama on stage. So I am very into theatre and the dramatic - I sometimes see my songs as little dramas.
- And what was it like getting back into the studio again after being away for so long?
I love it, I just love it. I wish I could just die in a studio (laughs). I love the intimacy of it as you can be there for hours and hours and you can just forget time as your focus is just in the studio.
I had been into studios doing demos and recording songs and then either rejecting them or putting them to one side - as I said I have a lot of songs that I haven’t released.
Depending on how this EP does I will be recording more and I may extend it into a full album. A lot of people now record at home but I am just not into that whole engineering thing - you either engineer or you perform (laughs).
- Who has served as producer on the record?
A guy called John Hamilton, who I have worked with a lot over the years actually. We did an album way back in the nineties but it rather fizzled and it wasn’t really released - I put it out privately so I sold it at gigs.
There are no more copies left but I might be able to retrieve some of the songs to release as individual downloads. It has been a bit of a mix and match and I call it my stop/start career as there has been no consistency - but I love it.
- You have mentioned that you would like to record a full album so how likely is that given the fact that you have continued to write over all of these years?
I think it is very likely, I think it is very very likely. I am actually going to discussing soon. In a way the EP is a kind of taster - a lot of people are putting out EP’s today.
This EP is very much a toe in the water and if there is a good response then I will have no difficulty in adding… I won’t add for the sake of it.
I have what I call a built in filer system and I will only let out songs that I believe in and am very happy with and I don’t want to just churn it out for the sake of it and not really believe in the material. So if I do do it it will be because I have got some very good songs that should be released.
- You have always written your own material so what is your major inspiration when it comes to putting pen to paper?
Oh gosh, everything. People often say to me ‘are the songs personal?’ Some of them are but a lot of them are just stories or conversations that I have heard. I often get inspired by going to other gigs actually as you will be sitting there and somebody does something and it just gives you an idea.
I always take a notebook to a gig and scribble things down - I don’t mean copying but ideas can be triggered. Sometimes I see a film and that triggers a storyline. It is just that wonderful moment when you get a line fly into your head and one I have got a line or a title then it is quite easy from there.
There are dry periods and I have gone for a couple of months with absolutely no ideas or inspiration at all. I play keyboard and guitar and you sit down and it just sounds horrible (laughs).
It is not something that you can force. I am not writing too much at the moment, but I will. I have never written with anybody else and maybe I should try that.
- You kicked off your career back in 1972 with the release of Boo so how would you sum up that time when you look back on it now?
It was incredible. When Boo came out I was completely blown away by the reviews as I had the most fantastic reviews. On that basis I should have been a superstar but various things such as contractual management and record companies mean that that didn’t happen.
I just felt that I didn’t have any control so I was just signed to a company and I went into the studio and sang these songs. It’s funny because I get so much reaction on my Facebook from all over the world about Boo; one guy emailed me to tell me that Boo was one of his favourite albums of the seventies.
It was very different and I think that the artists didn’t have that much control and you were told what to do. I was very shy and very timid and intimidated by the business - I don’t know if you have seen photographs from the time but I had this frizzy hair and this black eye makeup and looked rather frightened.
I am not lamenting that time but it is incredible to me how Boo has got its own legacy and people still seem to love it.
- It's now 2013 so how have you seen the industry change in the years that you have been in it? And how has it changed in the years that you have been away?
It’s kind of easy to answer because given that I had Boo out and then did another recording that never saw the light of day because of contractual issues. Then I got married and had children and was away from the business for five years.
So when I tried to come back we were into punk and, or course, I didn’t fit into that at all - I just felt like an alien in a strange land. Then I became the eighties and Simple Minds and all that came along and I didn’t really fit into that that either.
It also became a lot more manufactured and now artists are very much created - you only have to look at the girl bands and the boy bands. I think that it has become broken up into niches and what I am trying to do is find my little niche; which is concentrating on live.
Hopefully I can reach people with some of the lyrics and people do write to me saying ‘I can identify with that’, which is fantastic. I don’t need to play stadiums, I don’t imagine that I ever will, but I don’t feel the need to do so.
It has become more of an industry and money is very much a factor - but money doesn’t have anything to do with music.
- So where did your love of music start? And is this the career that you have always wanted?
No, I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be a theatre designer but I was absolutely useless at it because I was completely impractical; to do theatre design you have to build the sets and make sure it doesn’t fall down.
I drifted away from that and I literally drifted into a rock band in the early seventies - everybody seemed to be joining bands.
I took some of my songs to a record company and they wanted to sign me there and then - I don’t think that that would happen now, I really don’t.
So I switched from this visual art thing into music really by chance. I came across old tapes of that time and they really are fantastic as they are the most indie of indie tracks that I have ever heard - I am almost tempted to put them on my website.
I don’t think that I ever said that I wanted to be a singer and I very much see myself as a songwriter first and a singer second. I did struggle with singing in the old days and I didn’t enjoy live performances because I was too nervous and my voice would go half way through a gig.
Now I have had voice lessons and I am much more confident as a singer. It is a funny thing being a singer/songwriter as I think that you are usually better at one than the other
- Finally what is next for you?
Gigs. In fact I have got a meeting coming up in the next couple of weeks with the company who is going to book them.
I want to get out around the country and do some more festivals and that sort of thing. It is very much listening music rather than dancing or anything. Then I might possibly do a full album and just keep going.