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| Foto: New Normal Photography |
Jag fastnade verkligen för David Newboulds förra singel Dead On The Ground. Singeln släpptes i slutet av augusti och nu är efterföljande All I've Got In Front Of Me Is The Past här. Det är en låt där han rörande sjunger "Well I left home at 17 and got old way too fast. Now all I’ve got in front of me is the past" över ett vackert och svängigt americana-landskap. Båda singlarna är hämtade från det kommande albumet Average Fidelity Vol. II som släpps nästa år.
30 oktober når han Stockholm och Stampen i Gamla stan. Idag pratar jag med David om det förflutna och om låtar vars betydelse förändras i takt med att man blir äldre.
All I’ve Got In Front Of Me Is The Past is a fascinating title. Do you feel that we sometimes carry our past with us more than we realise?
- I can only speak for myself, but I find it impossible to shake. I live very much with the current version of myself, but I always feel that all the chapters of our lives matter just as much, because they were once current too. So I’m always trying to gather them under a big blanket and carry them around with me. A bit like the old cartoon image of the wandering guy with the bag on a stick over his shoulder.
You originally wrote this song years ago, imagining a worn-down country character. How much of that character was actually you at the time?
- Hmmm. I would say the verses are very true to life for me. Then the chorus is where I might blow the whole thing up a little bit, take it to Gary Stewart territory. Gary’s my favorite country singer, by the way. I love that man.
Some songs seem to wait for the right moment to be finished.
What do you think made this the right time for this particular song?
- I think I wasn’t sure if I could take the song seriously, or if I’d exaggerated it too much. Then at one point I stumbled upon my work tape of it and was a little pissed off that I hadn’t done anything with it yet. And when I started recording my songs at home and playing all the instruments, I thought I could do this one without having to be a very good drummer!
- But I do also remember feeling strongly about the song when I wrote it, and waiting for a good moment to do something with it. My band is a little more rock and roll, so it never seemed like the most natural song to put in our set. We’ll be doing it now, though, of course. The head of my label heard the song and said it really affected her, so that’s probably when I started taking it more seriously.
You played every instrument on the recording yourself. Did working alone allow you to discover something in the song that might have been lost in a full-band setting?
- Yes, precisely. I really wanted to just focus on the bones of the song, the lonely guy working through his demons and broken dreams. I played the instruments straight to the lyrics and the story, and it was satisfying.
The song draws inspiration from artists like Waylon Jennings and the film Crazy Heart. What is it about flawed, worn-down characters that you find so compelling?
- I just find that type of character study very interesting, very real and grown up. It takes something to allow oneself to be that honest and vulnerable. Not in an "I love you, do you love me?" way, but in a "Here’s what I’ve done, here are my flaws, I’m done trying to hide them, think whatever you think, come what may" way. No bullshit.
The song will open your upcoming album, Average Fidelity Vol. II. Did returning to this old song influence the direction of the album, or did it simply find its way into the perfect place?
- It found a home amongst some of the other one-offs, outtakes, and new songs that were all clamoring for a roof and a hot bowl of soup. And I felt it made a nice "Hello, how are you?" note to start the album.
Is there a song of yours that has changed meaning for you over the years, simply because you have changed as a person?
- I’m not sure about that. There’s a song on this album called Dancin’ In The Mirror that I wrote thinking about my son when he was young - most kids in general, actually - but now he’s 12 and is a little too cool these days for goofy things like dancing in front of a mirror. So maybe that one?
You’re about to return to Europe for another tour. What is it about playing your music for people in a different country, perhaps people with very different lives from your own, that still fascinates you?
- Oh… I just feel music is something to travel around with and share with people. It all starts with taking it out of the bedroom or garage, and it goes from there. I’d like to take it as many places as I possibly can. Music all comes from the same origins, no matter what country you’re in. As a kid, seeing bands from places all over the world come to my town to play, it just meant the world to me.
Do you think songwriting is more about understanding your own life or trying to understand the lives of other people?
- Maybe it’s about trying to identify common threads. And those aren’t always comfortable discoveries. I suspect people mostly start with similar sets of values, though. Then life takes everyone on different paths, those values are put to all kinds of tests, and different things start happening.
And before you know it, people are acting in radically different ways from one another.
- We end up trying to recognize where the divergences happened, or where we can see some of ourselves in their lives. Hopefully, anyway.
Like a lot of songwriters, I started out writing from an "inward looking out" position almost exclusively. At a certain point it became more interesting to embody other characters and see where I could fit myself into them. I guess I’m interested in that.
If you could sit down with the person you were when you first started writing this song, what do you think the two of you would talk about?
- I would tell him that his beloved New York Knicks finally won the NBA championship, after 53 years.
Lyssna på singeln här nedan!
