On June 17th, 2015, David Gray played to very embracing audience at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. He created such heightened energy among the crowd that they left their seats to join those in the first few rows and fill the isles close to the stage. I had the privilege of speaking with David before he kicked off his Mutineers album tour with Amos Lee to learn how he regards love as well as working with American country and pop artist, LeAnne Rimes.
1. How do you take your tea?
David: “I take my tea very strong. I like it so you can almost stand a teaspoon up in it. It’s Builder’s tea for me. It’s just with some milk, basically, no sugar.
2. Speak a bit about your latest album, Mutineers, and your collaboration with LeAnne Rimes.
David: “Yeah, well I mean it’s been quite a year. Mutineers has been quite a record to put across to the audience. I’ve done it on no uncertain terms. Most nights we performed, at least one hundred shows or whatever it’s been. I’ve played probably seven or eight, to nine, songs from the new record, to nearly the whole record every night. It has a certain authority. The songs have a certain authority because I built a band that did it such justice. Seven people singing. That was something that really felt special and I wanted to make the most of it.
The previous tour had been great. Since, I have dismantled that band and gone back to a five piece. We’ve readapted everything to that smaller set up. We reworked the vocals, threw in a load of old songs in the mix of this summertime tour. Which will be something completely different. It’s going to be loose. Fast and loose. Full of energy, that’s how it feels. That’s how it felt in the rehearsal room. Full of the joys of spring. We’re in the home straight now.
In terms of singing with Leanne Rhymes, that was a lovely little story that happened really. I spoke to her at the end of my Draw The Line tour in 2010. Leanne came to a show in Las Vegas and I was talking about the duets on the record. How much I loved duets. We would talk about “Islands In The Stream” and songs like that. So, when it came to the next time I met her, a record producer called Robin Millar had heard “Snow In Vegas” and he said, “This should be a duet. You need to find someone to sing this with.” I thought, “yeah, of course it is.” So, I mentioned it to her and she just pressed play on her iPhone and sang in harmony with it. I was blown away. At the end she said, “Do you want me to come out tonight onstage and sing it onstage as well?” So I said, “Hang on I need to think about this, you’re coming on way too fast.” (laughs) I walked out of the room and I thought, “What are you doing Dave? Of course she should come out and sing!” So, I walked straight back into the dressing room and I said, “Yeah, absolutely come on down.” So she did. She just got up onstage and just sang it and it was great. That’s what I really liked about her. She just gets it. She’s a proper thinker and doesn’t mess about. She knows what she’s doing and very soulful. Singing on the record together, we did it via Skype. She was in a studio in Los Angeles and I was in London and we worked the parts out and sent them to each other and if anything needed to change we’d talk about it and then listen to what the other person was doing. It’s all part of the digital revolution. It was very high tech. We basically Skyped recorded (laughs) from L.A. to London. It was all very painless. She just nailed it. She’s basically great. She’s just very chilled and a great singer. Her voice is all there and all working. There was never any attitude what so ever. It’s been a pleasure working with Leanne. I’m so excited she is going to be singing with me in New York at Radio City. We’re going to do a couple of songs together, which includes another duet I’ve got. She’s going to come to the Hollywood Bowl show as well. It’s a real joy. It really peps up my game actually. She’s a real fun person. She’s been great. It’s been such fun so we socialized a bit when she was over last time. We went out for a couple of meals and had a bit of fun and it’s been really nice to get to know her. So, I feel like she’s my mate now so even better.
David Gray – Snow In Vegas (featuring LeAnn Rimes)
3. How did you come together with Amos Lee for your tour?
David: “Well, to be honest, this was just something that happened. I’ve not actually met Amos or been to a concert or anything. It’s something that was suggested and we had such fun doing it with Ray LaMontagne a few years ago. I haven’t met Amos before the tour. He’s got a beautiful voice. First thing I notices was he’s got a beautiful voice. I want there to be a synergy between the two types of music on this Mutineers tour. I feel very free and very energized going into this tour. I’m just up for having a really good time and really pushing all the buttons one after the other. I ain’t gonna be messing around.
4. What is your idea of love?
David: “Well it’s obviously surrender. It’s very scary. It’s giving. It’s open. Love only comes with openness. Songs are an act of love, or faith, or something. If you talk about romantic love it’s a difficult thing to compress into a reasonable answer without starting to sound just like some dribbling idiot who sort of swallowed the Dalai Lama’s latest pamphlet (laughs). It’s openness and there’s a certain pain that comes with that because when you open yourself up. It hurts. That’s what it feels like to me.
5. How closely do you feel you tap into your emotions and empathize with the emotions of others?
David: “Well, yeah, obviously I think you have to be thin skinned in one sense. To be an artist, that’s what part of it’s about. Things really get into you so you feel what it’s like to be alive, maybe through somebody else eyes. So lets say the homeless guy you’re passing in the street, when it’s five degrees below zero, looks at you right in the eye, it’s going to do something to you. Obviously if you live in the city you learn how to flick a switch and it only comes through for a millisecond and then you put something else there instead. This sort of strange, pipe music sort of starts playing in your mind (laughs), but you block it out. Everybody has their own way of dealing with it. It’s a high pressure world that we live in. There’s a constant guilt trip waiting around every corner. Guilt for what you’ve got, the choices you make, the life you have, and the full knowledge that other people are suffering, slaving, being ripped off left, right and center so that you can live your glorious, roman style, heated, hot food existence. Everybody has to navigate their own way through what are very murky waters and feeling for other people. Sometimes it just drives you mad and you feel like you’re going to snap. Once you know what’s going on with the world: environment, extinction, pollution; it’s a crazy, mad galloping horse ride we’re all on towards a great big cliff that just drops into the sea. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with all this information. Music is one of the ways I have of trying to cope.
6. What would you say is something you were searching for in your life? Have you found it? Has it changed?
David: “I guess I’m always searching for something because there’s something about “making” that I need as a person. It’s been there even since I was a little boy. I’ve always been making things as part of my coping strategy. I don’t know why it’s so acute with me. It will never stop. I will always be doing it. So, I’m always looking for the new form or the new way in, what I call, “The new path to the waterfall,” which is a Raymond Carver title. I’m looking for the new way to the good stuff, because just when you’ve think you found it, it wears itself out. I know that’s something I can do.
I love artists like painters and sculptures, who follow a slow curve. So, there was Braque and Picasso. Picasso dazzled everybody. He could do anything, and show everybody. He blew everyone’s mind. Braque just kept on with his Cubism and gradually it transformed into something majestic. He was on a slow curve. He didn’t try and dazzle. His art became more and more. It just deepened and deepened. For me anyway. I loved his paintings. I didn’t get them immediately. It took me a while to acquire the taste to look at them properly. I was more obsessed with Picasso. You can think of Matisse as a similar thing. He worked a beautiful curve. As much as he has an extraordinary ability to draw and paint, and was dazzling in his own way, he pursued an interest in simplicity. I’m on a slow curve. I’m a slow learner. I’m cautious and take cautious steps at times. Suddenly they’ll be a bold leap and this record’s (Mutineers) been a bit of a leap for me. It’s thrown open a world of possibilities and now I’m seeing other places I can take my music. There’s a certain amount of dismantling that’s going on in my mind. What a song is, what music is, where it’s coming from, how I need to make it, how I need to listen, what I need to pay attention to, including things in myself and things in the world. There’s music in everything. It’s not just something where I can sit down and come up with something, like by pretending I’m Mozart or something. Maybe it’s just there and all I need to do is pick it up. I’m reappraising my entire approach and I’m thinking about it from all different angles. That’s part of where I’m at, at the moment. I think this is a part of it’s evolution. That’s where I’m at. I’m still sort of on this slow curve. I left the album, Mutineers with the song “Gulls.” That’s where I want to go to, the land of the gulls. Some rarified place of “otherness,” that’s what I’m looking for; something I haven’t seen or heard before. I’ll never stop looking for that. You loose a bit of piss and vinegar as you get older. You maybe loose a bit of edge and urgency. You refine in your processes and your delivery. However, something else comes with time and it’s this faith in the power of using less to say more. Perhaps that’s what I’m slowly, slowly headed towards.
7. There is definitely evidence of humor in your music videos. Where do you feel your humorous side comes from and how do you bring that humor into such heightened emotion?
David: “It’s hard. I don’t think my humor has made enough of an appearance in my music. People probably think I’m very serious and po-faced. I think my dad played a big part in my sense of humor. He had a bit of an absurd take on life, he thought the whole thing was sort absurd and he just laughed. There’s a guy called Spike Milligan that he was very fond of. One of the goons (1950s radio hit The Goon Show). He’s also got this obserd, almost melancholic twinkle in his eye, looking at the ludicrousness of the world. A lot of humor has come from him. It’s all around us isn’t it? It’s something like you’ve gotta laugh over or else you’d cry.
