There are a lot of perks to working at Welikeit.indie: listening to a heck-load of impressive touring bands; brainstorming sessions that include a bar, whiskey, and live music; getting to know people from across the globe who are trying to get their music heard; oh and, did I mention the whiskey thing? Of all the cool experiences we get to live, one of our favorites, way up there with sugar dumplings and the Christmas Spirit, is getting to know a down-to-earth musician with love and respect for the trade. And so enters David Ford.
UK based singer/songwriter, David Ford was kind enough to let us interview him a couple weeks ago. On April 1st, David released his second record, Songs for the Road, which is being received with open arms by fans from coast to coast.
This article isn't big on background info, you know, place of birth, childhood, all that good stuff. That information is pretty easy to find. Our intention is for you to get a sense of who he is and maybe feel compelled to explore him a bit more. That being said, we now invite you to get to know one very talented musician...David Ford.
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David is a busy man right now; he is diffusing his newest musical experience, Songs for the Road, to the masses while touring around the US with San Diego band, Augustana. Living on the road is certainly not new to David who has seen it as a way of life for at least seven years. We figured we’d ask him what he’s learned while touring the US and were pleasantly surprised to hear his response. He has a way of mixing mild hearted humor with much more profound concepts. Here's what David had to say.
What have you learned during touring that you did not expect to learn?
“American toasters and kettles are slower than English ones. I don’t know if that’s necessarily an important lesson but it is certainly something that I have picked up and it alarms me. Toasters and kettles are quicker in Europe but I know that that’s a rather silly lesson to take. More...
Unfortunately, something that we lose in transcribing this interview is David's English accent. You usually wouldn't picture a seasoned traveling musician sitting in his hotel room sipping on some tea while waiting for his bread to toast to perfection. However, you hear the accent on this guy and believe me, it all makes sense. So what else did he learn?
I learned the hard way to drive on the right side of the road. I got pulled over in Los Angeles for driving on the wrong side of the road just because I got in the car and wasn’t thinking about it.
We were enjoying the conversation with David but weren't sure how deep we'd be able to dig. We worried that we might have to make due with small talk. However, after some mild humor came quite a bit of substance, apparently he was just getting started.
As far as more spiritual and fundamental lessons that I’ve learned, one of the biggest things I’ve learned is that there are a lot of misconceptions in Britain and Europe about American society and the way that it works. America gets cast sort of as a big corporate, greedy superpower going around the world and screwing everyone else over. Coming over here and becoming engrossed in American culture I find that there are certain other truths which give a fuller picture.
I found Americans to be a little more hard working than Brits. I find the American music audience to be much more open minded and free willed and responsive to music they haven’t heard before. I found it a much more pleasant place to be a musician and a place where it seems like there is much more of a respect given to musical heritage which I think gets forgotten in Britain. I think that in Britain the people have forgotten that The Beatles were ever good and have forgotten that Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan wrote better songs than anyone is writing these days. And I think that in this country, people kind of remember and respect that."
So has touring and the lessons that you have learned impacted your music?
“Yeah, certainly. My new record is called Songs for the Road and a lot of the ideas for the songs were pulled together from the last time I was touring America; it was pretty much a full year of American touring. I spent a lot of time away from home and a lot of that experience resulted in the songs I ended up writing.
Although I don’t like to write songs specifically about myself, I always find that to genuinely write honestly you have to draw from experience.”
Our small talk quickly turned into big talk with a person who pays a lot of attention to his surroundings and incorporates them into his work. When you talk to David, you see that he picks up on the small details very easily but has an extraordinary ability to create greater concepts out of them. If you sit back and take a listen to his music, you will definitely see this process unfold. Simply, comfortably, and naturally leading to depth."
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We have just ventured behind some of David’s thought processes and how he is able to incorporate his life and experiences into his lyrics. However, he is a musician so, what about his music? What is it? Why does he do it? What does he expect to get from it? We were curious to know what his trade meant for him and enjoyed his answers.
What does music do for you, David?
“Music can instill so many thoughts and feelings in me and other people. It helps me in just having a balanced soundtrack to life. The opportunity to provide that to other people is one that I am very blessed to have.
Music is able to make me happy and just make me inspired and just kind of transmit pure unadulterated joy like some kind of crazy drug thing going on. And I love it. The feeling of playing a great show is like nothing in the world or the feeling of finishing a record and knowing that it’s right.”
How would you describe the feeling of playing a great show?
“A friend of mine that talks this way about tennis…says that some days you go out and play tennis and everything that comes off of your racket is perfect and everything is great. And you feel like you can do just about anything. It’s kind of like that. When a show has gone great I feel like Elvis or something and you feel a tendency to it and you feel that the entire world is your oyster. There are few feelings like it in the world. I haven’t known there to be any outside of music. It’s an unparalleled joy.”
Those were some pretty intense feelings that David had for his music. I mean, ‘unparalleled joy’, who can remember the last time they consistently had that strong of an emotion towards anything? Given the intense nature of his trade, a question came up that we just had to ask.
"Train" | download
Would you say then that your music is more musically or lyrically based?
To this, David expressed a very strong feeling that the music and the lyrics to a song must always go hand in hand.
“The two are completely inseparable and indivisible. Great lyrics with a bad melody will never be a good song and a great melody with bad lyrics won’t either.”
David is very particular about what gets put into the lyrical content of his songs but, at the same time, the music has to support the lyrics and enhance the meaning of the song. More...
It seems that David meticulously works in bringing his lyrics and melodies together in order to share that unparalleled joy he gets from his trade with others. That’s pretty powerful stuff.
David obviously feels a lot when he is writing his music. He is combining his life experiences and travels far from home; he is delicately mixing his words with melody; he is taking himself away from his friends and family to travel and share his art with countless others. It’s this forum that I now became interested in. What is David trying to give to these total strangers?
If through your tours and music you were to leave your listeners with a message or emotion, what would it be?
“I don’t think I want to go around necessarily giving messages. I think music is there for people to respond to how they’d like. All the things I have to say are in the songs and if I have any messages, essentially music is my form of communication. And that’s how I should get all my points across because that’s what I do." More...
So, to supply exterior stimulus to people to tell them what they should be getting from it would probably be doing an injustice to the music itself. If I’ve done my job properly, then through listening to the record you should get the right thing from it without being directed in any particular direction.
I’m not in the business of making concept albums and there isn’t necessarily an overriding objective…I write music as a human being to be listened to by other human beings and that’s about it really. I’m not interested in being fashionable or even being political. I just think from one human being to another human being. I want people to take whatever they can from it, or whatever they want from it or in some cases, whatever they need from it.”
"I Don't Care What You Call Me" | download
In that case, how do you gage the success of your music? How do you gage the success of Songs for the Road?
"The success of the music is determined when you make it. I knew that it (Songs for the Road) was a successful record when I had it played back from start to finish in the studio for the first time. That’s all I need for success because I feel that I have done my job well.
Whether anyone else likes it or whether anyone else buys it is for me no measure of success. It’s more a measure of how well your marketing department has done its job. It’s more a matter of industry related variables which have no bearing on the quality of the music.
I think that it would be incredibly naïve to think that the best record always gets #1, that the CDs that sell a million copies are better than the ones that don’t. That’s something I learned to discount a long time ago.
So to me, success or failure depends on how well I think I’ve done the job that I think I’ve done. I’m confident that I have a good record and at the time of doing it, it was the best work that I could have done in that respect in that time.”
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Before letting David go, we felt obliged to ask him his thoughts and feelings behind his song, ‘Go to Hell’, which you can find on his new album Songs for the Road. The lyrics are pretty intense and depending on past experiences, may hit a nerve for you. If you haven’t heard it, I suggest you give it a listen before reading on. Here’s what David had to say about his song.
“I wrote that song quite a long time ago; it predates my first album. I just didn’t have a recording of it that I liked enough to put on my first record (I Sincerely Apologize for All the Trouble I’ve Caused – 2005) but writing it, it was a time where I just left a band I was in for many years and the experiences were what I imagine going through a messy divorce, it’s a very unpleasant time of mud swinging and dissonance really.
So, I wrote a lot of songs that were kind of breakup songs. There are songs of breaking up that people can write without necessarily thinking of a specific breakup by just dragging out all the clichés. So, I want to avoid clichés wherever possible and see the actual reactions of people. There are essentially two characters in the song, one person is returning and asking for forgiveness after a long time away and the other person just tells them to ‘go to hell’ because they’ve moved on. More...
I like to use sort of a Spice Girls phrase of ‘Girl Power.’ I see it as a woman telling a philandering guy asking for another chance to go screw himself. And I think quite right too. You know, I’m all up for the Christian values of forgiveness and what have you but I think there comes a time where there should be a lack of forgiveness and sometimes people should be punished for the wrongs that they have done. Not necessarily talking about in a legal sense but certainly when it comes to messing with people’s feelings people should take responsibility and that’s kind of what I was thinking.
I think people should have consideration for others when they go about doing things. Accidental infidelity should be punishable by death. Now, I don’t actually believe that but do think that if someone is willing to place their trust in you, one of the worst things you can do is betray that trust.
I think that we generally live in an irresponsible age and people taking responsibility isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s not really exciting being responsible but it’s decent and honorable and I think decency and honor should be encouraged and respected in people.”
When we heard David’s high standards when it comes to relationships and trust, we gained more respect for him and were certain of something. His wife must be pretty happy to know that David is such a loyal guy. We said this to him and David responded, “well, if I ever betrayed my wife, she would have my balls.” Call it high moral standards or fear of losing very valuable body parts, the guy has his head in the right place.
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Verdict
David Ford is a down-to-earth person with love and respect for his trade. At welikeit.indie.com, we enjoyed getting to know him and wish him the best on his tour and musical exploration. If you have a chance, snag one of his CD’s, catch one of his shows, or at least look him up online…you won’t regret it.
Peace out.
Miguel de Zubeldia
Ruben Leal
www.welikeitindie.com
What drink gave you the worst hangover?
A mixture of lager, red wine, and tequila."
Longest you’ve ever gone without sleep?
"Managed 48 hours. Got to stage of hallucinating. Strange vacation in France with a few friends."
Who is your favorite Snow White dwarf?
"Not particularly passionate about any of them. One without a beard with the baby face with the big forehead thing going on."
If you were to be reincarnated as someone other than yourself, who would it be?
"The chief tasting person at the Capri chocolate factory in Birmingham, England.
That’s one of biggest and only problems I have in America is the chocolate. I don’t know how you people survive.
Don’t believe in reincarnation. Think that once you die, you’re a hole in the ground."
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