The Grace Notes Interview
STEVE, AN ALBUM. WHAT? WHY? HOW?
Really good question. It’s been a bit of a strange one to be truthful. I think I might have been the most reluctant recording artist in the whole of England when I went into the studio for this album. I mean I wasn’t looking to make an album. I’d given up that dream way back when my voice broke in my teens!!!!
Even as we went in to do demos I really didn’t believe in it. Never thought we’d get to it being finished and me being really pleased with what we have done.
SO HOW DID IT COME ABOUT?
Well, Sam Hill and I have been writing the odd song for some time. Amsterdam and Masquerade have been co writes that he’s been singing for some years and last year we wrote one together called 24 Hours about Toronto. Maybe we need to travel the cities of the world and write a travelogue album! Anyway about a year ago Sam was over and I was thinking we should write more songs and maybe get them placed with singers. Something blurred and I was launching my poetry book Dare and Sam suggested we do some poetry/song type stuff. I had been asked to do a poetry gig in Lisburn the night after the launch so we thought it might make that a little more interesting too. So we spent literally a few hours and came up with some stuff. It was okay at the launch but in Lisburn we really got it together and we came off the stage and just looked at each other with a Eureka look.
Sam went off and told Phil Baggeley from Gold Records what we had done and Phil saw and heard something that was quite visionary. He had been doing albums with poetry and music along with Adrain Plass, Mal Pope and Julie Costello and so was into it. He’s always liked Sam’s stuff and seemed to take to my poems. But he actually had not heard us together before we went into the studio!!!!!
HAD YOU PERFORMED YOUR POETRY MUCH?
A little bit. I have never been a real believer in my poetry. I mean I come from the land of Yates and Kavanagh and even closer in geography and time come Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, so I don’t rate myself much as a bard! But people have been buying the books and reading them and the odd time it has worked. But I haven’t the humour or stage presence of a Stewart Henderson so I have not really been pushing it as a career move!!!
EVER THOUGHT OF PUTTING IT TO MUSIC BEFORE?
Well, actually. That is where it maybe has worked. About ten years ago I was involved in a mission event at the Church where I was Assistant minister (First Antrim Presbyterian Church) and somehow started to do some stuff with a singer there called Alison Chestnut. I think we started by doing a Graham Kendrick cover!!!! Before he was a worship writer he did some interesting stuff with a mime artist and wrote a song called No Alibis which was spoken word with a chorus. Alison did the chorus bit and I the spoken word. We then wrote a few things together and it kinda worked in an embryonic way.
One of the songs we wrote was called Wake Up and was a funny dream sequence thing that has a verse about scoring at Wembley stadium. Sam heard a recording of it and forced me to perform it a few times at Greenbelt. It’s a laugh. We might even dust it down again.
In-between times, I wrote a soundtrack poem/song with Iain Archer and Miriam Kaufman for an ECONI(Evangelical Contribution On Northern Ireland) video that they used in a road show. It worked with Iain and Miriam singing the chorus. I also used Iain in a gig I did in Lancaster where Sam actually joined us for a few numbers. Gareth Black, then the guitarist with Halcyon Days also played with me at the launch of my last poetry book Skeletons.
My feeling always was that the poetry needed to be made more interesting. A bit of guitar and chorus replaced the humour or the literary genius!!!!!
HOW DID YOU MEET SAM?
At my very first Greenbelt, I went into a tent to see Peter Case and some other guy was singing. He wasn’t in the programme and my then girlfriend, now wife, Janice asked me who it was. I asked the guy beside me and he said Sam Hill. Janice couldn’t believe it. She knew Sam from the Church she went to at college in Preston. So we met up. Sam came to Mannafest, a big Belfast Youth event and we met again. He found out I was a minister and that quite intrigued him so he looked out my poetry and we became friends.
WHAT HAS HE BEEN DOING?
Not enough! He had been a Greenbelt phenomenon from the gig with Peter Case right up to filling the Big Top one year and garnering three encores. He recorded a great album in Nashville about five years ago with people like Phil Keaggy, Dave Perkins and Phil Madeira on it and it has only been sold a few at a time. He’s got a busy Graphic Design business that has taken his time. I’m kind of glad people are going to get hear a bit more of Sam. Some great songs on this album. Thunder and Rain goes back to his first album in 1990 and Depends is a new recording of the Nashville sessions.
SO WHO WRITES WHAT?
Well, All the songs without poetry are Sam’s apart from Soaked in A Dearer Wine. I wrote the words for that and Sam and Phil Baggeley then put it to music. Caress and Seven Wonders, are my words and have had both Phil and Sam’s involvement in melody and tune. The poems have all been put to music by Sam. Sprinkle that kicks the album off was written literally minutes before we recorded it. Most have been poems I’ve had kicking around. Sam lives in Lancaster and there’s water between us so we don’t get writing time. Maybe if this album works we’ll get a chance to spend more time writing together.
WHAT ARE YOUR HOPES FOR THE ALBUM?
Well, it’s back to me not having ever thought about this. I just have not my head around the whole process and so I don’t really know what I expect or even want. I am very proud of it as an album and I give all the credit to Sam and then also Phil, Mark Edwards, Dave Clifton, Richard Curran and Neil Costello who put it all together. But it sounds great. So I am pleased. It is not embarrassing as it might have been. So now it is a matter of taste. Will people like it? Who knows. I think some will and we need to get it out there.
It is about Grace and grace in every day life. Struggles of family and pressures of work and trying to find grace to see us through and trying not to miss the wonder of grace that is all around us to be celebrated. I would hope people might find the grace of God in listening whether it is for strength and rest or for inspiration and celebration. I’m a preacher who longs to touch people with God’s love and somehow allow God to take the skeletons of what I do and put upon these bare bones His flesh and muscle that they might dance in people’s souls. But as Sprinkle says:
Does a picture fade in two hours of sunlight?
Does a flower bloom in one shower of rain
With the record people can listen for as long as it takes to move Grace from a concept accepted to a truth believed.
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