Day Four - Geography

 

“All my stars are upside down …”

You can hear an audio version of this post here. I just record them in one take so please excuse the odd hesitation/fluffing of words etc. 

Today’s song is Geography, written by Boo Hewerdine. Boo is a very prolific songwriter as well as a musician and singer. You’re most likely these days to hear him playing with Scottish singer Eddi Reader but he plays and records with several other artists and does lots of solo shows too (well, in Scotland anyway, he’s always played here regularly but he moved here from England a couple of years ago). I first heard this song Geography performed by Scottish-based Irish singer Heidi Talbot at Montrose Folk Club in September 2006 and it is on her 2004 CD (that I probably bought that night) called Distant Future (you can hear that version of today’s song here). I played that CD a great deal and saw her again in Montrose in 2009 (with Boo and John McCusker). I also love her album In Love and Light (2008) as both of those albums have such a great mixture of songs (they are the albums of hers I know best but she has several more and a new one out this year). Heidi has the kind of whispery, pure voice that you might describe as the voice of an angel if you were that kind of writer (luckily for you, I’m not). She makes beautiful sounds though!

As for today’s songwriter, I have seen Boo Hewerdine perform many times in Montrose and Dundee. I’ve seen him solo, with Eddi Reader (at Montrose Music Festival in 2012), with Chris Difford (from Squeeze) in Clarks in Dundee in 2018, in the duo State of the Union (with Brooks Williams) in 2012 and 2013, and probably more times I can’t even remember – he turns up all over the place. He has many, many albums and EPs and singles (and as we will see from the interview, some he’s even forgotten he recorded). You can read his whole musical history and discography elsewhere but for now let’s just talk about that song, Geography. It is a wistful love song with a difference and I think that’s quite a hard thing to achieve. Boo wanted to chat on the phone and as he’s a funny guy who everyone seems to like I said ‘yes, please’ (his solo gigs are worth the ticket price for the gentle self-deprecating banter alone). Here’s an edited version of our conversation from October last year (he’s quite chatty, and so am I, so editing was essential).

(Phone rings)

RF: Is that Boo?

Boo: I hope so!

RF: I’ve seen you many times live …

Boo: And you keep thinking ‘perhaps he’ll be better this time …’

RF: Can you tell me about the song Geography?

Boo: It’s about … my wife … I met her in Australia so it’s about … when the person you care about is on the other side of the world. I wrote it in Sydney. 

Geography and Muddy Water are sort of about the situation I was in then. 

RF: When was it first recorded?

Boo: There’s an album which only came out recently (2015). It was in my garage for a very long time, forgotten about, and somebody reminded me of it. It’s an album called Open which I made and then I just forgot about it. Somebody asked ‘you know that song, blah, blah, blah’ and I went ‘I think there’s a thing in the garage … oh my god, there’s a whole album I’d forgotten about …’ So I gave that to the record company and he put it out. It got the best reviews I’ve ever had and it sold pretty well. I don’t have a garage any more but if I did …

I think that’s the first version of it (Geography). I tried to make a very simple acoustic record and then for some reason, I can’t remember, it didn’t come out … and I rerecorded it …

There’s also my version on God Bless the Pretty Things (2009, rereleased 2012). I can’t remember if Heidi recorded it before me or not. I’m seeing her tomorrow but she won’t remember either. I’m touring with her at the moment (October, 2021) to celebrate the fact that we’ve known each other for 20 years.

I met Heidi at Celtic Connections, it was when we were recording Eddi’s Burns album (Sings the Songs of Robert Burns, released 2003) and we lived at the Central Hotel which was also the main party place for Celtic Connections. It cured me of wanting to drink, I’ll tell you that, because it’s just so full on. I was at the bar and she came up to me and she said ‘I’ve recorded your song Patience of Angels on my album’ which she did on her first album (Heidi Talbot 2002) and then she said ‘would you write me some songs?’ so I did. That night, or shortly after that, I wrote a song and sent it to her … a song called Invisible (that song is on In Love and Light * 2008).

RF: I’ve been a bit confused about the lyrics to Geography because versions online differ from the lyrics on the sleeve notes for Heidi’s Distant Future. For example is it ‘Grace in Play’ or ‘Graceland play’? 

Boo: It’s ‘Graceland play’. Graceland (1986) was my first single with my band The Bible. One morning I was listening to the radio … Radio One … a long time ago when you used to do that kind of thing … I was in my 20s … and my song came on the radio …

When you start making records one of the things you learn is that sleeve notes are always wrong. I really try hard, for example, one of my friends Findlay Napier’s got a record out and he had proofread it four times, including getting a professional proofreader to read it, and he said can you just check it and I found 30 mistakes. Some of the mistakes it was just unbelievable that no one had spotted them, such enormous errors.

RF: And is it Comfort downtown motel (as on the sleeve notes) or Camperdown (online)?

Boo: It might be Camperdown actually … a really grotty chain … The playing card bit, that was true ... I was outside the place where I met Audrey, my wife.

The song is in a weird time signature (6/4) or something ... and I remember when I was recording it I had an amazing set of musicians playing on it but they were all completely baffled by it. I recorded it in Glasgow. There are many reasons I come to Glasgow but my favourite recording studio was one run by a man called Mark Freegard and amazingly he decided to give up being a recording engineer, he’s a mixing engineer now. I’ve taken over his space so that’s now a space that belongs to me, Kris Drever, Findlay Napier, a new guy I haven’t met yet and that’s our writing space.

RF: I’m going to be writing about the Kris Drever song I Haven’t Tried Hard Enough and the Findlay Napier song The Blue Lagoon (a song co-written with Boo Hewerdine, as it turns out so Boo will be reappearing here later in the month) partly because I like folk songs with modern subject matter.

Boo: It’s difficult with subject matter, I was thinking about that this morning, it’s like the whole point of folk is that it was contemporary recording of events or a reflection of events … and it feels to me like it’s in aspic sometimes. One of my favourite songs is Hollow Point (by Chris Wood), that’s what I think folk songs are about. It’s a particular skill to take modern or contemporary things and make it work. If it doesn’t work it’s so clunky. Hollow Point’s amazing.

RF: Are there any other covers of Geography?

Boo: I don’t know. Possibly. It’s not easy to play. If you write a song that’s easy to play it’s more likely that people will cover it. 

RF: I’m no musician but I feel like it sounds a bit Spanish…

Boo: Around that time I wrote nearly everything in a tuning called DADGAD … there’s a note in it that is an unlikely note that might make it sound … Spanishy.

RF: Do you have a good feeling about the song now?

Boo: Yes, that period … the songs that are on Open ... it’s a really honest ... it was a really special period of writing so, yes. I don’t do that song very often (I get asked to do it all the time). I don’t know why I don’t do it. I do like it. 

RF: Playing things again and again (in live shows), is that hard?

Boo: What you do is you explore it more, find things to love. Working with Eddi, one thing she does is we go on stage but we don’t have a set list and we have no idea what she’s going to ask us to play. She might want us to play something we haven’t played for 5 years or something and I thought this is fun so I do the same. I never play anything unless I want to.

RF: She can stay on stage all night…

Boo: Yes, we have a clock on stage. It’s not to stop her but she knows that’s possible (playing for hours). The spontaneity that she creates … most people have a set list but when you do you might think I don’t really want to play this but I have to now. She doesn’t do that. So when she says a song … it’s my gig in the band to remember how things go.

RF: In the recent Ricky Ross radio interview with Eddi she talked about you (and said very nice things about you). Did you hear it?

Boo: No. Did she talk about me?

She’s so funny. We’re incredibly close, we’ve known each other for nearly 30 years. She does funny things like I sometimes think, and I mean this in a really good way, I’m just part of her surroundings. She said to me about a year ago ‘you’ve got a beard!’ – I’ve had a beard the whole time I’ve known her. I like it, she relies on me and I like that. The tour we’ve just done, and I know people will say this often, and I must have done a hundred tours with her, but it was the best one we’ve ever done because of the sense of camaraderie and adventure on this tour, it was mind-blowing! We did the last one 2 nights ago. I feel very privileged to be part of that because most bands are rehearsed I guess.

RF: I can’t remember the exact words but I think she said you turned her life around or something …**

Boo: That’s one of the services I offer.

RF: Can you tell me about one of my other favourite song of yours, Slow Learner?

Boo: That’s a brilliant song for me because I was sent by my publisher twice to Nashville because they thought ‘you’ll be able to write Nashville songs’ but it was kind of like being in hell. I wrote it with a man called Tom Littlefield who I met in a bar. All the other songwriting things I did were by appointment. I got incredibly homesick and I ended up writing two albums. There was Baptist Hospital (1996) because all I could see out of my hotel window was a big sign that said ‘Baptist Hospital’. And the second time I went I went on Thanksgiving so I’ve got an album called Thanksgiving (1999) because of course nobody wants to write songs with a guy from England on Thanksgiving, they were all with their families. I experienced tremendous loneliness and I met Tom and we just wrote it and then the really thrilling thing was it (Slow Learner) was recorded by Nashville Bluegrass Band who are the best bluegrass players in the world and it was on their album American Beauty. It’s a fantastic version, absolutely fantastic. 

RF: What do you think can be helpful to a new songwriter?

Boo: I’ve led workshops and the thing with songwriting can be … people are like ‘finished!’ and that’s not it, it all happens in the second draft. The big idea’s in the first draft, the beauty is in the second draft. 

RF: Is there a song by someone else you wish you’d written?

Boo: There’s millions of them. The first one in my head is I’m still here by Tom Waits (written by Waits and Kathleen Brennan). It’s only about a minute long, like a whole life story in a minute. It breaks your heart. It’s on the album Alice (2002). I think the interesting thing about his later work, especially the ballads, is that his wife writes the lyrics and she’s, I think, one of the best lyricists ever. The song Alice is beautiful. It’s about this guy who’s missing a person and he goes out skating in the middle of the night and skates her name on the ice. Beautiful things. She creates amazing visual things, I like her very much.  

RF: I’ve got reams of stuff already so that’s enough for now, I think. 

Boo: I’ve only just got going. Is it over? 

Boo Hewerdine has a lot of music for you to enjoy but his most recent release is the mini album Singularities (2021).

*There is also a song called Invisible on Heidi’s debut album but it is not the same song and was not written by Boo. 

** I went back and found the interview on BBC Sounds. Eddi said of the early collaborative work with Boo in the 1990: “He sort of turns up very quietly, he sits in the corner, you don’t really get to know what’s on his mind a lot of the time. And that was probably good for me. He just sits there and everything that I came up with, good or bad, in my own head, he would think was the most amazing thing he’d ever heard. So he gave me such confidence. It’s almost making me cry because it was so needed, if you know what I mean. I was on a limb and I thought, I’m just gonna fall off this, go get another job in a knitwear factory and this has all been a big waste of time … It was just a really beautiful, supportive songwriter role.”

This post is part of my Songs That Stick project for 2022's Fun A Day Dundee (a community arts project that takes place every January). Anyone can take part (you don’t even have to be local to Dundee) and much of the work can be found on Instagram during January (use #FADD2022). There is usually a real-life exhibition later in the year (though this has been online for the past 2 years). The full list of songs I am writing about this year is here. My first post about why I picked this project this time is here.

If you are interested in my Fun A Day Dundee projects for 2020 and 2021 you can start here and here. They are quite different to this one (a short poem and drawings in 2020 and lots of poems and writing in 2021).