Jun

10

Mel Wiggins talks to UlsterMusic.com

June 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Mel Wiggins - My Brothers KeeperChanteuse Mel Wiggins plays a series of summer shows to promote her new EP “My Brothers Keeper” kicking off at Blick Studios on Belfast’s Malone Road on Friday, June 5. Reporting exclusively for UlsterMusic.com, Iain Todd enjoys a private audience with Mrs. Wiggins: There is a hidden gem right in the centre of Belfast. It’s called Blick Studios on Belfast’s salubrious Malone Road and, if you’re like me, you will probably have passed it countless times without knowing that it is there. I was lucky enough to come upon it last Saturday [June 5 - ed] when I went there to hear Mel Wiggins sing and promote her new 4-track EP, “My Brother’s Keeper“. It’s a great debut record and really shows off the effortlessness of Mel’s voice, which the acoustic-driven, relaxed accompaniment enables to sound raw and unique. There are some other great elements to the EP as well, like the brass section on the opening track, Simplified, and the double bass intro on Heart As Your Home. Arriving early, I was able to have a chat with Mel in the beautiful interior of Blick Studios. The walls are white brick and the ceiling is glass, which lets the evening sun light up the venue and which, along with the pre gig peacefulness, offers a great place to start the interview. I begin by asking Mel a question about her website blog. In a post from a year ago she seemed a little unsure as to where exactly she was going with her singing career; “I wonder to myself if there will ever come a time in the near future when I will be able to focus on this full time? If there will ever be a time when I get to throw my whole self into what I believe is the bigger picture for me?”

UM: I ask her if she’s feeling any different a year later…

Mel – Yeah, It’s been a bit of a whirlwind year, really. I’ve only been living back in Northern Ireland for just over two years, and I was living in London before that. It’s just such a massive music scene over there, you don’t really know where to start. I had been working for a few different charities, and they knew that I sang and wrote songs and so they asked if I would write some stuff for them. That was really my only secure outlet for song writing and performing and getting music recorded. But when I moved back to Northern Ireland I just thought it was a smaller niche of a scene and it might be easier to connect. The songs I had written for the charities were specific to them, but a lot of my own songs had been forming and I still hadn’t had a chance to play them and to see what people thought of them. So I asked around to see if anyone was interested in playing guitar because, as much as I enjoy writing songs on the keyboard and can hear them inside my head, I need a band to support me. I need to stand on their shoulders because they really make the songs come to life. I’m not really confident enough to play the keys out in public, but I’m happy enough to write on them. So it just happened that a few people were up for playing with me and so I taught them my songs. I’d be thumping them out on the keyboard and hoping they would pick up how to play them and that it would sound okay. We just started doing open mic nights and acoustic nights around Belfast. There were three of us; there was John, who actually works here in Blick Studios, myself and Marty, a guy who plays an upright bass. Then last summer I met a guy through John called Pete, who is a fantastic drummer – he used to be in the band Fuel. He came to hear us play and liked our sound and wanted to be a part of it, so we became a four piece. It was around September time I started to think to myself ‘we’re doing a lot of gigs here’ and I was sick of people coming up to me and being embarrassed at not having a CD to give them, especially when they like your music. I’m not trying to sound big headed here, but it is embarrassing when people come out to hear you and they want to take something home. So we started making plans to record and it’s all just kind of happened. I tested out a few different places, and we ended up recording at Big Space studios with Declan Legge. He produced our four track E.P., and he was brilliant.

UM: Yeah, I heard it on your website, the EP sounds really good…

Mel – Have you heard it? Cool. Yeah well I have recorded lots of stuff before, but I had never really enjoyed that whole process until this one. It was just good craic, relaxed, no massive pressure.

UM: A lot of people I interview say they definitely prefer the live performance to the recording studio

Mel – Oh I definitely do prefer live – there’s nothing that compares to singing your songs in front of an audience – but I was just so happy to have something for people to hear.

UM: Do you think it’s maybe easier to get heard within a smaller scene in Northern Ireland? Do you think that’s a factor?

Mel – It definitely is easier, and I do think you have to be pro active and make it happen. But I think it’s easier to make it happen over here. In London there’s just so much choice, and you could be unsigned and off the radar for years and years and never have anybody take an interest. I supposed there’s just more of a chance here and Northern Ireland has become really good at championing their local artists. I think there’s a good sense of solidarity and community. I think there are a lot of guys doing good things and a lot of guys in bands, so there’s a lot of male representation. I don’t want to be all ‘burn your bra’, but it seems that there are not a lot of females who have really made their mark, do you know what I mean?

UM: Definitely. Do you think it’s harder for female singer songwriters? Do you feel solo female artists can be judged too much on stupid things like appearance, making it harder within the industry for female artists?

Mel - Yeah I do, I really do. I think it’s harder for them to be taken seriously and I think that a lot of people in the music industry think that girls are more easily walked over, easily faded into the background. It disappoints me a little bit. Maybe that’s a judgement I have completely made out of turn, but that’s just the way I have seen things. It just seems like there’s a bit of a roof on it for girls, where they can only get so far. But Jenna Hayes is doing some great stuff, Juliet Turner in her heyday, who has maybe quietened down on her touring and promotion. She was really amazing. Maybe it’s more about the genre, maybe it’s only really if you’re singing grass roots Irish songs that it’s really taken to if you’re a woman.

UM: There is definitely a gender applied to certain styles of music…

Mel – Yeah, there is. There are some great girl singers who are doing amazing stuff that I think deserve the recognition. Like Eilidh Patterson, who’s playing with me tonight, she’s brilliant. She’s had a lot of good opportunities recently, and people are seeing her for her talent. I do still think there’s a restriction for girls, but hopefully that’s changing.

UM – Do you think it’s harder for solo artists to become recognised as it is anyway? Is it easier being in a band and having that name behind you?

Mel – Could be that, actually. Hadn’t put much thought into it, but it could be that. There are the likes of Foy Vance – he’s a singer songwriter, but when you think of Foy Vance, you don’t really think of him as such. There’s just so much more to him than that, and he has kind of superseded that idea. To me, the singer songwriter genre as a whole just sounds so mundane, it’s just become the same songs, same chords, no life (laughs), just depressing! Whereas someone like him has the ability to capture a crowd. When you go to a Foy gig, you don’t feel like you’re just going to see a singer songwriter. It’s an experience.

UM – So was it important to get a band behind you then, in that respect?

Mel - (Laughing) Well in the respect that there would be no music if I hadn’t! So yes, it was very important! I always battled with the idea that, you know, they’re my songs and I’m singing them, but should it not be called ‘The Mel Wiggins Band’ or ‘Mel Wiggins and…’, instead of just ‘Mel Wiggins’ all the time? Without the other three, there wouldn’t even be any songs, they wouldn’t have been brought to life and no one would be able to hear them. People would get up and walk out if I played the keyboard ‘cos I’m rubbish. The guys in my band have a great wealth of knowledge and are just basically good guys.

UM: Yeah, the inclusion of the double bass on the E.P. is a great touch. I think it gives it something that’s lacking in some solo acoustic records…

Mel – I do think there is something you have to have visually as well. You have to have something a bit different for people to be interested these days, like the Lowly Knights, who are doing really well. They have like a 25 piece band or something, they use piano, cellos, violins, guitars, double basses, and they’re doing some great stuff. They supported Snow Patrol over here and over in England, and they’re all from here; from Belfast and Bangor. But they just look amazing.

UM: Is that something that you would like to maybe do in the future?

Mel – Yeah, I just think it’s great to look at. For our E.P. launch we had brass, and on the recording we use strings, and I love all that. I’d love to have a few gigs where they were all up on stage, but they would have to be really special, big nights. It would be cool, but it would have to be well planned. All the musicians that play with me all have full time jobs so it would be difficult.

At this point the rest of the musicians have arrived and it gets fairly noisy. Mel suggests going outside to finish the interview off, so we head out the door. It is around eight o’clock in the evening and is still sunny and warm.

Mel - So yeah I would love to have a big band with me all the time, but it’s hard enough to get the four of us together, never mind four more after that. It’s just me and John tonight, which will be nice. It hasn’t been as small a team as that in a long time. That’s how we started out, just me and John.

UM – So back to the old days, then

Mel - Back to the old days. Stripped down. It’s good, it kind of keeps you on your toes because it’s easy to hide behind a big band, although the energy is great with the four of us. We feed off each other, and it’s exciting.

UM – It’s nice and chilled out though, when it’s just two

Mel - Yeah I think it is going to be chilled out tonight, because this venue is kind of hidden out of the way a bit. I hadn’t heard of this place until John started working here. When we were launching the E.P., we needed a venue and there are so many pubs around Belfast we could have used. That would have been dead on but we just wanted something a bit different. So we decided we would use this place, get a P.A. system, some fairy lights, set up the stage, and it was grand in the end. It ended up being a great night – lots of food and drinks and great craic.

UM – Do you have many plans for the summer, then?

Mel – I am hopefully doing a London tour at the end of August and up until then there are just going to be a few gigs in and around Belfast. We’re playing McHugh’s next weekend, at their Country Club night. I wouldn’t really have described our music as ‘country’, but when someone asks for country musicians you just kind of go ‘Yeah, I’ll do that!’ to get a gig! But country crosses over to folk and to soul.

UM – Would you describe yourself as folk?

Mel – No, but only because I don’t know what I would describe myself as. I’m reluctant to do that, because every song is so different. Any review that we have had of the E.P. over the last while hasn’t been able to put us in a category, which is good, but every website you try and sign up to asks you to give a genre. It’s kind of a bit of folk, a bit of soul, a bit of country, Americana maybe.

UM – There are obvious influences; you have mentioned Simon and Garfunkel yourself, and I think there is a bit of Eva Cassidy in there as well…

Mel – Do you think so? Her voice is incredible. It would be a complete privilege to have anyone say I sounded anything like that. Her sound is kind of gospel as well, you can’t put her in a category. Vocally, Karen Carpenter, Eva Cassidy, and all those soul legends would be the main inspirations. In terms of writing the music, and lyrically, I would say Simon and Garfunkel, Dylan, songs which tell a story and which take the listener on a bit of a journey. I’m going to sound like a granny here, but all there are a lot of songs that are just noise! I think anyone can be in a band. You want to put your soul into it, you know? And I don’t think I could ever be really proud of something that just sounded like noise! I think all that music that came out in the 60s, it’s not ever in your aim to surpass it, because you don’t want to. You don’t even want to try and be better than that, because you don’t want there to be anything better than that!

UM – So what are your thoughts on the future?

Mel - I was talking to Declan about that the other day, and I think we’re in the process of figuring out our direction. I mean, the direction definitely is forward and we’re not stopping. It’s not a case of making one E.P. and then flogging that forever, without doing anything new. I think it has given us more inspiration to just keep going, and put out more E.P.s. There’s something about a four track CD, it’s like capturing what’s been going on in your head. There are a few tracks that we cut out of the first one and would love to get recorded. We’re putting together a team of talented musicians, people in the know and with connections. So it’s exciting, and things are getting going at an important time in Northern Irish music.

At this point, it is around 45 minutes until the gig begins, so I leave to let Mel and John run through their set and warm up a bit. When I arrive back at Blick Studios, I realise for the second time what a great setting it really is. It is darker now, and there are candles on the tables and people gathering together to sit and listen to Mel and John. I’m thinking about what Mel said about tonight being stripped down, because the first track on the E.P. is probably the most lively. In fact, the mood of the evening is more like the last track, My Brother’s Keeper, with which they finish. Sometimes you just can’t beat an acoustic guitar and vocal duo, and when it’s done with such ease as Mel and John do it, it is always impressive. Mel looks like she really enjoys singing, and she makes it look remarkably easy. John’s guitar playing is intricate and has just the right timbre to accompany Mel’s voice, much like on the E.P.

The second song they do is Simplified, and I think the stripped down, acoustic style of the performance adds a different element to it than the recorded version. I think this song shows off best what Mel means when she says there is a soul influence to her music. It’s a relatively short set , because there are a few other performers playing tonight, but they finish with the E.P.’s title track, which is more on the country side of Mel’s sound. It reminds me of the American singer, GinaVillalobos, or Eva Cassidy. I think it is definitely hard to confine her to a genre for that reason, as she seems capable of various styles and genres. That is invariably the mark of true talent.

After the gig, Mel is incredibly modest and friendly, and even offers me a lift somewhere, although I am walking to meet some friends. As I’m walking up the Malone Road, I can’t help but think about Mel’s ideas on the attitude towards female singer songwriters in the mainstream music industry. I think it’s good that people like her are putting out records in Northern Ireland and are providing something different than the usual four piece guitar bands. Mel insists that what she plays can’t be described as folk, but I think that there are elements to her method of playing and promoting herself which remind me of the folk ethic. As she says herself, music should take you on a journey, should tell a story. It is definitely a unique time for Northern Irish music, and I think that Mel Wiggins is another voice putting out material that has its own, distinct style and that tells its own story.

Mel Wiggins is playing this Friday, June 12 at McHugh’s in Belfast. My Brother’s Keeper is available now [from CD Baby - ed]: see  http://www.melwiggins.co.uk

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