I still think of you as an acoustic artist, because that’s what you were when I first saw you, and that was in 1975, when you were on tour supporting Supertramp.
I do get told that a lot, people who remember me when I was first starting out do tend to think that I was only an acoustic artist, even though I was playing electric guitar on my albums at that time.
Your new album does have some dense and complex instrumentation on it, all of which you have provided. So, you have obviously mastered a number of styles and techniques in your career. But if you are writing and playing everything, and producing as well, what is your quality control, who confirms that a song is as good as it can be, for inclusion on an album?
I do make my own decisions and choices about whether or not something it good enough. I’ve always been very independent as a writer and as an artist, I have never felt the need to get approval from anyone else about what I do. At the end of the day, everyone has an opinion, and I have an opinion as well, and since it’s my name on the song, and on the record, it’s my opinion that counts, so I don’t really need to take anyone else’s view. If it pleases me, then that’s all I need to know.
Most acoustic musicians play because there is a guitar at home, or they get one as a present. Which was the start for you?
My dad played a guitar, but he would never show me how to play anything. And he used to hide the guitar from me so I couldn’t play it. And as usual, when you hide something from a child, it instantly becomes highly desirable, and I always wanted to be able to play the guitar. So, I found a guitar in a pawn shop that cost three pounds, and I asked my mum if she would buy it for me. My mum said that if the shop would take two old prams that she had, as a trade-in, I could have the guitar I wanted, and I’ve still got it. My dad then showed me how to tune it, nothing else just how to tune it, but that’s the most important part about learning the play the guitar. If it’s not in tune, you are never going to be able to play anything properly anyway.
Did your dad show you the proper way to tune?
I’m not sure if it was strictly the correct way to tune, but it worked for me. From then on, I was on my own, and I taught myself. In fact, just recently, someone pointed out that our generation teaching themselves was a whole different way from the way young people learn to play an instrument today. Now, there is YouTube, which will teach you how to do absolutely anything, including how to play an acoustic guitar, but back in my day, you just figured it all out by trial and error, and learned as you went along.
Did you pick it up quickly?
Well, I started to ask various guitarists that I met, how to play certain things. In those days, you didn’t sit at your computer and whistle up a video of your favourite player, you went and found out where they were playing, and watched them play, and then hopefully had a word with them afterwards, and asked your questions about how they played the bit you were interested in. I have to say, I stopped asking because of some of the responses I got when I asked about things.
Responses like what?
Well, they’d say, ‘You can’t learn to play this, until you’ve learned to play that, and some male guitar players don’t even get past that bit …’, so they wouldn’t show me, me being a girl, and all that! So, I decided just to get on with it and figure it all out for myself. I was already figuring things out anyway, I started writing songs when I was about thirteen or fourteen, and I recorded my first album when I was twenty-two. Once I recorded my first album, I was then able to meet other guitar players who would answer the questions I could never get answered before I became a recording musician.
I guess that back in those days, there was still a large element of male chauvinism affecting things, especially in the music business. As a woman you were probably not taken seriously as a credible musician, so people wouldn’t talk to you on that level.
That’s right, they would talk to me, they just wouldn’t tell me the things I needed to know in order to improve my playing, or learn a specific piece of technique, or whatever it was I was looking for. It may have been because I was a woman, it may just have been that men like to keep their secrets for playing from other people, whatever gender they are. I don’t really know, I didn’t think too much about it, I knew I could get on with things, and I just went my own way, which is what I’ve done throughout my life and throughout my career. I’ve been writing and arranging my material since I started out as a musician. I would never roll up to the studio and say, I’ve got a verse, can you work out a chorus for me, and put it all together? That would never happen. I always knew exactly what I wanted. I wrote the songs, I had them ready to go, and I always knew exactly how I wanted them to sound, so I didn’t need anyone to help me with arranging or producing. It’s my job as a songwriter to write the song. The name kind of gives it away!
Going back to that first guitar, what make and model was it?
(Laughs) I don’t think it had a make and model; it wasn’t that good a guitar! There was certainly no name or model written on it, I know that. I do remember that the action was super-high, I really had to press down hard to get a chord, and that’s given me a physical strength as a player to be able to deal with any action on any guitar, always a good thing to have. Lots of musicians make the leap from a really gnarly first guitar to something better, and they realise that it’s not that hard all the time.
What was your first branded acoustic guitar?
It was a Yamaha, and interestingly, my first guitar cost me three pounds, and my first real guitar cost me thirty-three pounds, I find that an interesting coincidence. Was it eleven times better? Oh, much more than that! (laughs).
Do you still write on an acoustic?
I do yes, I write on acoustic guitar, or piano. Because it is still the craft of songwriting, I never rely in everything else that may make it sound interesting on an album, or when I am playing with other musicians. I know that if it comes down to it, I can play that song, on my acoustic, on my own, and that’s the place everything starts from, You can’t shortcut that.
Does it get harder, to find those hew ideas, those new sounds, when you are as experienced a writer and musician as you are?
It’s not harder for me, because I think the acoustic guitar is quite a hard instrument to master anyway. What I find is, while I’m figuring out how to get from this bit here to that bit there, I will discover something I wasn’t actually looking for, but I can file it away and come back to it and use it another time. I do also try to actively seek out new sounds and ideas and ways of doing things. It keeps my interest up as well; it keeps me motivated to write.
What about tunings, are you pretty traditional, or do you look at different tunings as a way of finding new sounds?
I do tend to stick pretty much to standard tunings, although I have had had people suggest to me that they think I use more different tunings than I actually do. I’ll work in Open D, and maybe tune the E string down a tone, things like that. I think you can get some nice sounds with standard tunings. Part of the pleasure of crafting songs is making them sound more complex than they actually are, if you break them down and look at them, I quite like that aspect of songwriting.
When you were learning to play, and hearing other artists, was there anyone that influenced you, that you thought, I’d like to be able to play like that, or write songs like that?
No. Not at all. Ever.
That’s interesting, because, even though any musician with any kind of lengthy career, has something unique that sets them apart, you could only ever be you, there is no-one out there who sounds anything like you. Is that what you were aiming for?
No, I wasn’t aiming for anything! (laughs) I was just writing songs. I never thought there was a gap in the market that I could fill. When I was growing up, I never had pictures of pop stars on the inside lid of my school desk, I didn’t buy loads of singles, I didn’t go to concerts. They reason I started, I believe, is because I was born to write. No-one ever said to me, OK Joan, this is how you write a song, this is how you arrange it, and so on, I just did it. I often hear artists who say that they started out learning this song that they liked, or following that musician that they admired. I never did that. I never learned anyone else’s songs, ever. I just wrote my songs, and figured out how to play the songs I wrote.
Do you listen to other artists now?
I do, but never from the point of view of trying to figure out what they do so I can do it myself. I just enjoy music that other people write, but it doesn’t impact or influence anything that I do, it never has, and it’s not going to start now. I can listen to someone and really admire what they do, but not want to do it myself in that way. I think ‘influence’ is a strange concept, because it implies that you are looking to imitate another writer or singer. That said, we are affected by everything we see, hear, touch, smell, taste, but that’s art. Only the artist knows how those aspects of life affect the songs that they write. I like that, only me knowing what made something happen and sound the way it does.
You mentioned that you have your original guitar, what’s your guitar of choice now?
I play an Ovation, and I have some Martins of different sizes. The sound from the individual size of a guitar is what influences me about which one I will use to play which song. The smaller bodied guitars have a lovely crisp clear sound which I really like. I’m a very rhythmic player on acoustic, and I like the snap of the rhythm when I play a small bodied Martin guitar. You get a very different sound with a Martin. The Ovation has a synthetic bowl in its construction, but the Martin is all wood, and that has a different sound and feel.
You have had a couple of Signature models made, what did you ask for?
I wanted something that was somewhat tricky, I wanted to ring and tone of the Ovation, with the snap and punch of the Martin. I’m not too bothered what a guitar looks like, as long as it gives me the sound that I want. I am pretty good at getting that snapping sound I like, because of the way I play. I hit hard, and it sounds loud.
Have you retired from live performances now?
More or less. I made a decision in 2014, that 2018 would be the last year I would do a major tour, I’m getting old! I do love touring, but I wanted to not tour as extensively as I did. I wanted to get to the stage where I was still excited, and then stop. I wanted it to be Yeah, Sheffield! Not, Oh no, Sheffield! I think if you get to that stage before you stop touring, you can’t hide it, and it shows. I didn’t want to disappoint myself, so I decided to wind it down while it was still the best thing I could do. I don’t miss it at all.
Have you got a favourite song from your new album?
I think they are all favourites for different reasons to be honest. I love the instrumental Back And Forth. That came about because I woke up one morning and just really fancied playing the guitar. I didn’t want to write a song; I just wanted to play. So, I wrote this really long piece and then edited it down to fit on the album. I was just having a good time; I hope that comes across.
Do you have a structure to the way you write songs?
I don’t think so. I am very lucky, I feel like writing very often. There probably wouldn’t be as many albums if I didn’t feel like writing. If I don’t feel like writing, no problem, I never think I have writer’s block, I know it will come back, and I will always be able to write a song. The only thing I always do is, if I start a song, I finish it. Even if I think it’s no good, I will finish it, and then bin it. I always think if I don’t finish this one, I may not be able to finish the next one, and I don’t want loads of unfinished ideas lying around so finish it, move on.
If a fan of yours was an acoustic player, and wanted to learn one of your songs, which would be the tricky one to learn?
I think Love And Affection would be quite tricky to learn, Show Some Emotion is quite hard as well. I do sometimes write songs that are deceptive, they appear easy, because the chords themselves are not difficult, but the order may throw you when you come to work them out, so I write chord sequence that goes ECD, then CED, then DEC, then DCC, very simple chords, but the progression and the meter can be a lot trickier to put together. I would never set out to write a song that is tricky like that on purpose, it’s just how they work out.
Do you stretch yourself as a musician when you write, looking for new sounds and chords?
I do yes, I think you have to, to be able to produce something that is genuinely new and different. This is my twenty-somthingth album, twenty-second or twenty-third something like that, and I would hate to think that there had been no change, and no progression from the first one to this one, and they all sounded essentially the same. That would be terrible. If you compose everything in E, it’s going to sound the same eventually. You have to explore different chords, different rhythms, different keys, different instrumentation, otherwise, what’s the point? You are constantly learning as a composer, if you are doing it right.
Andy Hughes – Acoustic Review
