Alan West...Playing The Right Songs
Published in Maverick Magazine in November 2010.
Alan West lives in hope; somewhere where people are decent and always do their best. Actually, he lives in Devon where he grew up, but if this was the real world, or a John Prine song, or there was a town called Hope in Devon, then that’s where he’d live.
“You have to live in hope”, he says, “There’s no other way, at least not for me. I’ve always looked for the best, tried to be the best I could, and looked to play the best music ... and that music, for me, is country music. It’s music that wears its heart on its sleeve, but is certainly more subtle, more engaging and considerably more far reaching than many people give it credit for.” Then he added, with the smile that is never very far from his eyes, “But then, if you are serious about singing country music in the UK these days, you have to live in hope!”
He’s been playing music most of his life; and at a professional level that many people envy and few people achieve. He makes it all look very easy. He won a British Country Music Association Award with Steve Elliott (UK’s Finest Duo) and another BCMA award, Album Of The Year, for The All Day Session. He’s recorded in Nashville with Pat McInerney as producer, toured with Hugh Moffatt and Hal Ketchum, and has Albert Lee playing piano on his latest CD. That sort of commitment and concern, that sort of pedigree, suggests a seriousness about his approach to country music, an honourable career arc, a sense of credibility. Yet he laughs easily, jokes about his love of chocolate, and has a throwaway stage banter that could fool the unobservant into thinking he was always the joker. He may make off the cuff, on stage, remarks about, “‘off your face’ book,” or, “I could murder a cup of tea right now,” but he is a good player and a class act. When he’s not looking to lighten the mood, he can be disarmingly honest,
“Of course, I want to be successful, but it’s not about luck or being in the right place at the right time or something. For me, it’s about being in the ‘right place’ all the time musically speaking, it’s about playing well all the time. Sure, I’m looking and pushing for the next level; but I’m living in hope in this one.”
His recent Nashville recorded CD, Songs From A Neophyte, may have a strange title, but is a collection of terrific songs. They are probably terrific country songs as well, but you get the impression they were chosen for their individual merit not for something to do with genre. They are great songs, but not obvious ones. He does something by Chris Knight, Guy Clark and Hugh Moffatt. There is even a song in the collection that he wrote with the English song writer Steve Black, and it is there by right, by virtue of its quality, not favouritism.
“The Nashville album was something I needed to do. It is essentially a snapshot of the live show I was performing at that time. I literally recorded a live show of about sixteen songs, with Steve Elliott and Dean Barnes, flew to Nashville to meet with Pat, sat in his lounge, we whittled it down to eleven and spent four weeks making it. It was life changing!”
His new CD, The Way Of The World, takes this process a fascinating stage further. It is a project with his long term, musical partner, Steve Black. The pair of them have collaborated on a unique collection of songs; a country CD, with eleven original country songs on it. Why is it unique? Well, all the songs are written by an English writer, Steve, and sung by an English singer, Alan.
“I was fortunate enough to get to play with Hal Ketchum, on his tour. And I took several of Blacky’s songs with me. I thought they would be right and would work, with the audiences I‘d be playing to. And they did. They really did work. A great Steve Black/Jim Almand song like Devil Or An Angel just grabbed people in the right sort of places, including me. And so it was natural to move to the next level, and work more seriously with Blacky. So that’s where the new CD, The Way Of The World, came from. Doing his songs; it just seemed the right thing to do.”
If there’s been a curve to Alan’s career, it’s been a movement towards the songs, towards putting good songs at the centre of it all. There’s no question he can sing. He’s got a voice so arresting, so genuine, it can make even the most hardened country fan narrow their eyes, pause for a moment and then smile. He makes a song his own, and he’s learned how to inhabit a lyric, phrase a melody, make a song his friend and yours.
“My mentor was Kelvin Henderson. I was a fan of his from the age of six and became great friends with him by my teens. It was his interest in songs and writers and doing something original that influenced me greatly. I’ve never been a prolific writer, and to do a lesser song just because it was mine didn’t equate; so to achieve, it had always been necessary to seek out those great songs that hadn’t necessarily been ‘successful’, and make them my own. Then I met Blacky!”
His collaborator, Steve Black, could have written the book on how to look wasted. He’s thin, with a face that is long, lined and drawn, and he peers out at the world from beneath long, straggly hair, with sharp, thoughtful eyes. He looks a little crazy, American hobo crazy, but it’s the look of a man who’s convinced he’s the one who’s sane and that it’s the rest of the world that’s crazy. He seems to weigh his words, count them parsimoniously, before he reluctantly hands them over:
“I can’t sing as well as Alan, and he can’t write as well as me, but together though we make one hell of a singer/songwriter.”
The thing is, we don’t expect good songs, good country songs that is, to come from an English writer; it doesn’t seem to fit. Yet there should be no reason why not; a good song is a good song, and it shouldn’t matter where it comes from. Alan Cackett says of him,
“If Steve Black was to put ‘Austin-born’ on his CV, then he’d be hailed up there amongst the best of legendary Texas singer-songwriters.”
He can see that an English writer like Steve Black can be compared to Townes Van Zandt, or Steve Earle, or Guy Clark, with no one coming away the loser. There are others, Jack Hudson, Steve Knightley, Mark Knopfler, for example, who can write blisteringly good country songs, yet we don’t take our good songwriters seriously enough, not in the world of country music anyway. It’s as if good songwriters have to come from Nashville, or somewhere else in America. Maybe, as an audience, we aren’t confident enough yet. We still need to be convinced that something made here can be as good before we’ll recognise its value.
For me, Alan West isn’t simply an English country singer, but a terrific singer who sings songs that, for want of a better description, are country songs; songs that have a concern for melody and meaning, with simple arrangements, that welcome a Dobro or lap steel accompaniment, or a chugging Telecaster, and that appeal to the heart. He has a presence on stage, an authority, like he is comfortable there and it’s where he belongs. Above all, when he sings, you believe him. He has authenticity, whatever that may be, in his voice, in his phrasing. When he sings, “he gave her no reason, just a line in the sand,” well it’s there, in your imagination, you can see it; a ragged, man-made, line on some cold, windswept coastline, carved roughly in the ground, the tide always threatening, always encroaching, but never quite washing it away. He makes an image, something abstract, come to life.
That line is from a song by an English writer, Steve Black. All right, maybe, just maybe, the rest of that song’s more domestic setting doesn’t quite live up to that strong, central idea of drawing a line in the sand, with its finality and almost mythical power. But it’s wonderful to see an English writer attempting to write in this way, on this sort of scale, in a country song; taking what might otherwise be something of a cliché (drawing a line in the sand) and giving it, and no other word will do here, grandeur. Alan West is right to sing country songs by an English writer when they are this good. If you listen to no other song this year, I urge you to listen to Alan West doing Steve Black and Jim Almand’s Wasilla. Maybe it’s about lost love, maybe it’s about the epic Iditarod dog race in Alaska, perhaps it’s really about the nature of memory and loss and the power of reflection, I’m not really sure; but it is a great song, a great country song, and a great performance, by anyone’s measure.
I watched Alan West and his Band play to a full house. The audience tapped and swayed to his opening, up tempo, country classic, and then willingly followed him down, the talking over, everyone listening intently, while he did an evocatively mournful version of Tom Russell’s St Olav’s Gate. The place had been noisy beforehand, with people at the bar ordering drinks, rattling glasses, swapping banter. Then the room was silent, attentive, and happy to let its heart be played with, by a guy with a voice this good, doing an equally good song. It was an old lesson in the art of stage management; an up-tempo tune followed by the slower, more intimate one. It may have been an old trick, but to make it work for you in a club, you need to have some magic on your side. Alan West can do that, seemingly without effort. Like a musical conjuror, he can make audience noise disappear. Maybe, in a strange way, he’s too good, too professional. If you catch him live, with his favoured band, then everything musical he does is seamless. When he does Leaving Louisiana In The Broad Daylight, he’s got Emmylou Harris’s ‘hot band’ sound off to a T; the lead guitar licks sliding in the right places, the bass thumbing just the right weight, the timing spot on. Everything is done so impeccably, you think it must be a recording. You have to remind yourself there are some seriously good musicians up there doing it live, fronted by a singer with a real voice. Maybe he needs to be less than perfect, reveal a little of the stuffing sometimes, offer a few flaws, to help us appreciate what it is he is able to do. When he chooses, he can show us new paths, new songs, or new ways to appreciate old songs, if they are good enough songs. It’s something many people would like to do but he is one of the few who can.
Alan West may be always looking forward, to the next level, but, whatever level he settles for, I hope it is one where he continues to keep good songs, written by good songwriters, at the heart of what he does so well. I guess it’s not just Alan West who lives in hope!
copyright neil dalton September 2010 www.neildalton.com
Alan West lives in hope; somewhere where people are decent and always do their best. Actually, he lives in Devon where he grew up, but if this was the real world, or a John Prine song, or there was a town called Hope in Devon, then that’s where he’d live.
“You have to live in hope”, he says, “There’s no other way, at least not for me. I’ve always looked for the best, tried to be the best I could, and looked to play the best music ... and that music, for me, is country music. It’s music that wears its heart on its sleeve, but is certainly more subtle, more engaging and considerably more far reaching than many people give it credit for.” Then he added, with the smile that is never very far from his eyes, “But then, if you are serious about singing country music in the UK these days, you have to live in hope!”
He’s been playing music most of his life; and at a professional level that many people envy and few people achieve. He makes it all look very easy. He won a British Country Music Association Award with Steve Elliott (UK’s Finest Duo) and another BCMA award, Album Of The Year, for The All Day Session. He’s recorded in Nashville with Pat McInerney as producer, toured with Hugh Moffatt and Hal Ketchum, and has Albert Lee playing piano on his latest CD. That sort of commitment and concern, that sort of pedigree, suggests a seriousness about his approach to country music, an honourable career arc, a sense of credibility. Yet he laughs easily, jokes about his love of chocolate, and has a throwaway stage banter that could fool the unobservant into thinking he was always the joker. He may make off the cuff, on stage, remarks about, “‘off your face’ book,” or, “I could murder a cup of tea right now,” but he is a good player and a class act. When he’s not looking to lighten the mood, he can be disarmingly honest,
“Of course, I want to be successful, but it’s not about luck or being in the right place at the right time or something. For me, it’s about being in the ‘right place’ all the time musically speaking, it’s about playing well all the time. Sure, I’m looking and pushing for the next level; but I’m living in hope in this one.”
His recent Nashville recorded CD, Songs From A Neophyte, may have a strange title, but is a collection of terrific songs. They are probably terrific country songs as well, but you get the impression they were chosen for their individual merit not for something to do with genre. They are great songs, but not obvious ones. He does something by Chris Knight, Guy Clark and Hugh Moffatt. There is even a song in the collection that he wrote with the English song writer Steve Black, and it is there by right, by virtue of its quality, not favouritism.
“The Nashville album was something I needed to do. It is essentially a snapshot of the live show I was performing at that time. I literally recorded a live show of about sixteen songs, with Steve Elliott and Dean Barnes, flew to Nashville to meet with Pat, sat in his lounge, we whittled it down to eleven and spent four weeks making it. It was life changing!”
His new CD, The Way Of The World, takes this process a fascinating stage further. It is a project with his long term, musical partner, Steve Black. The pair of them have collaborated on a unique collection of songs; a country CD, with eleven original country songs on it. Why is it unique? Well, all the songs are written by an English writer, Steve, and sung by an English singer, Alan.
“I was fortunate enough to get to play with Hal Ketchum, on his tour. And I took several of Blacky’s songs with me. I thought they would be right and would work, with the audiences I‘d be playing to. And they did. They really did work. A great Steve Black/Jim Almand song like Devil Or An Angel just grabbed people in the right sort of places, including me. And so it was natural to move to the next level, and work more seriously with Blacky. So that’s where the new CD, The Way Of The World, came from. Doing his songs; it just seemed the right thing to do.”
If there’s been a curve to Alan’s career, it’s been a movement towards the songs, towards putting good songs at the centre of it all. There’s no question he can sing. He’s got a voice so arresting, so genuine, it can make even the most hardened country fan narrow their eyes, pause for a moment and then smile. He makes a song his own, and he’s learned how to inhabit a lyric, phrase a melody, make a song his friend and yours.
“My mentor was Kelvin Henderson. I was a fan of his from the age of six and became great friends with him by my teens. It was his interest in songs and writers and doing something original that influenced me greatly. I’ve never been a prolific writer, and to do a lesser song just because it was mine didn’t equate; so to achieve, it had always been necessary to seek out those great songs that hadn’t necessarily been ‘successful’, and make them my own. Then I met Blacky!”
His collaborator, Steve Black, could have written the book on how to look wasted. He’s thin, with a face that is long, lined and drawn, and he peers out at the world from beneath long, straggly hair, with sharp, thoughtful eyes. He looks a little crazy, American hobo crazy, but it’s the look of a man who’s convinced he’s the one who’s sane and that it’s the rest of the world that’s crazy. He seems to weigh his words, count them parsimoniously, before he reluctantly hands them over:
“I can’t sing as well as Alan, and he can’t write as well as me, but together though we make one hell of a singer/songwriter.”
The thing is, we don’t expect good songs, good country songs that is, to come from an English writer; it doesn’t seem to fit. Yet there should be no reason why not; a good song is a good song, and it shouldn’t matter where it comes from. Alan Cackett says of him,
“If Steve Black was to put ‘Austin-born’ on his CV, then he’d be hailed up there amongst the best of legendary Texas singer-songwriters.”
He can see that an English writer like Steve Black can be compared to Townes Van Zandt, or Steve Earle, or Guy Clark, with no one coming away the loser. There are others, Jack Hudson, Steve Knightley, Mark Knopfler, for example, who can write blisteringly good country songs, yet we don’t take our good songwriters seriously enough, not in the world of country music anyway. It’s as if good songwriters have to come from Nashville, or somewhere else in America. Maybe, as an audience, we aren’t confident enough yet. We still need to be convinced that something made here can be as good before we’ll recognise its value.
For me, Alan West isn’t simply an English country singer, but a terrific singer who sings songs that, for want of a better description, are country songs; songs that have a concern for melody and meaning, with simple arrangements, that welcome a Dobro or lap steel accompaniment, or a chugging Telecaster, and that appeal to the heart. He has a presence on stage, an authority, like he is comfortable there and it’s where he belongs. Above all, when he sings, you believe him. He has authenticity, whatever that may be, in his voice, in his phrasing. When he sings, “he gave her no reason, just a line in the sand,” well it’s there, in your imagination, you can see it; a ragged, man-made, line on some cold, windswept coastline, carved roughly in the ground, the tide always threatening, always encroaching, but never quite washing it away. He makes an image, something abstract, come to life.
That line is from a song by an English writer, Steve Black. All right, maybe, just maybe, the rest of that song’s more domestic setting doesn’t quite live up to that strong, central idea of drawing a line in the sand, with its finality and almost mythical power. But it’s wonderful to see an English writer attempting to write in this way, on this sort of scale, in a country song; taking what might otherwise be something of a cliché (drawing a line in the sand) and giving it, and no other word will do here, grandeur. Alan West is right to sing country songs by an English writer when they are this good. If you listen to no other song this year, I urge you to listen to Alan West doing Steve Black and Jim Almand’s Wasilla. Maybe it’s about lost love, maybe it’s about the epic Iditarod dog race in Alaska, perhaps it’s really about the nature of memory and loss and the power of reflection, I’m not really sure; but it is a great song, a great country song, and a great performance, by anyone’s measure.
I watched Alan West and his Band play to a full house. The audience tapped and swayed to his opening, up tempo, country classic, and then willingly followed him down, the talking over, everyone listening intently, while he did an evocatively mournful version of Tom Russell’s St Olav’s Gate. The place had been noisy beforehand, with people at the bar ordering drinks, rattling glasses, swapping banter. Then the room was silent, attentive, and happy to let its heart be played with, by a guy with a voice this good, doing an equally good song. It was an old lesson in the art of stage management; an up-tempo tune followed by the slower, more intimate one. It may have been an old trick, but to make it work for you in a club, you need to have some magic on your side. Alan West can do that, seemingly without effort. Like a musical conjuror, he can make audience noise disappear. Maybe, in a strange way, he’s too good, too professional. If you catch him live, with his favoured band, then everything musical he does is seamless. When he does Leaving Louisiana In The Broad Daylight, he’s got Emmylou Harris’s ‘hot band’ sound off to a T; the lead guitar licks sliding in the right places, the bass thumbing just the right weight, the timing spot on. Everything is done so impeccably, you think it must be a recording. You have to remind yourself there are some seriously good musicians up there doing it live, fronted by a singer with a real voice. Maybe he needs to be less than perfect, reveal a little of the stuffing sometimes, offer a few flaws, to help us appreciate what it is he is able to do. When he chooses, he can show us new paths, new songs, or new ways to appreciate old songs, if they are good enough songs. It’s something many people would like to do but he is one of the few who can.
Alan West may be always looking forward, to the next level, but, whatever level he settles for, I hope it is one where he continues to keep good songs, written by good songwriters, at the heart of what he does so well. I guess it’s not just Alan West who lives in hope!
copyright neil dalton September 2010 www.neildalton.com