20 minute read
Dean Hutchinson
In Yer Face!
Interview by Paul Foden Photography (this page) by MarthaFPhoto.
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I have known Dean “Fuckin’” Hutchinson for just a couple of years now and he’s one of the nicest chaps you’ll ever meet, both a charismatic and engaging blurk, always willing to have a chat with, well, just about anybody, luckily for me.
But beneath all that, his lyrics and onstage projection are angsty, delivered with both gusto and sincerity, bashing through a swathe of socio-political subject material, eg. injustice, inequality, racism, bigotry, capitalism ... i.e. the things that very much matter, and are worth making a stand upon.
Originally from County Durham, he now resides in Plymouth and he’s been a recognised cog in the town’s vibrant live DIY original-music community for a few years, as witnessed at 2019’s Plymouth Punx Picnic (Issue Thirteen, October 2019) where, as well as performing his own solo set, he joined headliners No-Robell onstage for a few raucous numbers, proceeding to gaffer-tape the drummer’s mouth and WILLY!!, mid-set.
As well as writing and recording his solo acoustic music, Dean holds down a job at The Pit and the Pendulum music pub, on Plymouth’s slightly hipsterish Ebrington Street, which was a last-minute co-host venue of the 2019 edition of Plymouth Punx Picnic. He’s a busy lad. Dean’s latest EP, which is his third since he moved to Plymouth, but only his first online, according to his Bandcamp blurb, was written and recorded by himself.
There are three tracks on the EP. ‘Crash and Burn’ is song about realising that something is wrong and collectively changing things for the better, but not in a preachy way; just get off your arse and rise up (after the pub closes); ‘Drink Beer’ is a song about forgetting your troubles and just having a few drinks with your friends (nothing wrong with that) and ‘Almost Famous’ is my personal favourite of the EP as it deals with solving your own shortcomings, and is a bit of an ego-kicker.
Overall, and this isn’t a mates rates review, I’m giving this EP four stars out of five; it’s ballsy, plucky, it’s shouty, yet refined, and flicks the V’s at the establishment, whilst remembering to enjoy yourself (it’s later than you think!) So, it hits the spot, and is a great remedy if you’ve had that kind of day.
Greetings and thanks etc. out of the way, we took a socially-distanced seat each in Plymouth’s Skiving Scholar pub, opposite the university, in early August last year and chewed the cud over a few cold ones. Pour yourself a long drink and strap yourself in, as it was a lengthy interview ...
So, how did this kid from the North East happen to move to Plymouth?
That was over six years ago, this September [2020], and I’d been in a touring band and I’d done loads of solo acoustic gigs in the North East, but the problem with there is that everything is so spread out, so it was really difficult to get gigs or get established, and even the smaller gigs were a pain in the arse. So, I slowly stopped doing it and worked in a factory instead, but I’ve got an education in music and it’s what I’m passionate about, but I was sat about not doing anything and I needed to do something about this, I needed to move as far away from the region as I could, without leaving the country, and actually go and do something. I applied for Plymouth University and packed my bags, jumped in my dad’s car and drove down here. I just kicked-on from there, and it’s been pretty solid ever since. Unfortunately, I got kicked off the course because I was doing more gigging than coursework and the course wasn’t exactly what it said it was, as it was more the academic side than actual music. Even the performance side was all just essays, which wasn’t really my cup of tea, so I got shifted out for reasons that are far and few detailed. When I was kicked off the course, I nearly packed my bags and headed back home, but then we opened The Pit and the Pendulum, so I had a more valid reason to stay here. I was in student accommodation at the time, and started-off the new contract, then I found I was off the course, so I had no student loans coming in and, even though I was working full-time, it just didn’t cover the cost. So, when The Pit came along, I thought, ‘Oh, I can start putting gigs on myself, and make another venue in Plymouth, and it’s been going strong ever since, until COVID-19.
What’s your role at The Pit and the Pendulum?
I’m the Assistant Manager and I book the bands. There’s me and my mate Adrian, he’s the Manager. The entire point behind The Pit is we wanted to create a pub that we wanted to drink in,
so we did. We put in a juke box, with plenty of rock music, a pool table, a massive selection of drinks at reasonable prices, and a good atmosphere, independent, making a community, rather than a random pub that you’d have one drink and leave, with all the Goths, Punks, Rockers, Metalheads, and everyone gets on with each other. The one rule of The Pit is ‘Don’t be a dick’, but I suppose everyone is, at some point.
What were your earliest musical influences, and how and when did you become quite angsty (not that you shouldn’t be, of course)?
[Laughs] My dad likes everything that he can. He listened to folk-artists, metalheads, progs; so much variety. I was spoilt for choice, but my personal influences were the Lefty folk side, artists like John Arberson and Robb Johnson, especially, who I’ve done quite a few gigs with, that was my insight into political music, without being too heavy-punk, writing stories of what you want to get across. Then I got into heavier stuff, like Rise Against and bands like that, which started to influence myself, then to the point of seeing all these acoustic artists that have songs with meaning behind them but they don’t have that aggression. So, that’s how I became a shouty Northerner, which has worked quite well. Everyone’s got something to shout about and, if you’re given a stage, you’ve gotta talk about stuff. I have been known to rant, but do my best to keep to the music and the socialist idealisms because, if we can all agree on something, then we can all be happy on that, whereas, if it’s all ‘Listen to me! Listen to me!’, then that’s a kind of Leftist fascism, which shouldn’t be a thing, but people are hard to convince these days.
With your onstage charisma and projection, and if you do make an album, do you intend touring with it, eg a mini-tour or a weekend tour, or maybe obtaining spots as support for touring bands/artists?
Weirdly, I did have a lot of plans for
2020. I do have an album in the works, but it just keeps getting delayed. We’re about half the way done with it now, in the recording process, with a mix of songs people know and new material, and I did have a plan to do a southwest tour, like Exeter, Bristol, staying at mate’s houses and seeing bands while I’m there. I was supposed to be doing Two-Thousand Trees this year and I’ve been in talks with Tim Holehouse to do a UK tour with him because we get on really well, and he’s done several UK, European and US tours. He’s a fantastic musician, so maybe next year, once the album is done, we might do a joint-tour. We’ll have to see what happens, because I know he’s got a lot of new material in the works, too. I think that’s what all musicians have been doing, right through Lockdown, writing new material. There’s always been ifs and buts, in plans, tours and stuff, but this was going to be my gig year, my make or break year, especially falling the high-profile gigs that I did the year before, but it totally didn’t happen, everything’s at a standstill, but it’s going to give me more time for rehearsal and recording, getting merch together, as you can’t travel much without the merch, as that’s what pays your train tickets, or your petrol, to get to the next gigs. It’s a double-edged sword, as I don’t necessarily want to make profit on my music, but I need to profit to get about and do it.
The plans are there, which is obviously a good thing, as you can then implement it when the gig ban is finally lifted?
There are plans, but nothing in writing. As soon as gigs open up again, I’m right on it. In fact, I was possibly the first musician to play in Plymouth as I did the Café Kiss gig, and I had planned to play the following Friday at the Underground, but that was when we found out that all indoor gigs were getting postponed again.
What was the Café Kiss in aid of, and how did it come about?
For the past couple of years, when Pog [folk-punk band] visited from Brighton
to do either Philfest or Punx Picnic, and because they like to stay a couple of days in Plymouth, we needed something like a tick-over, to keep them in Plymouth, and maybe sell a few extra CDs. Thankfully, Mary who runs Café Kiss is more than happy to accommodate an afternoon or an evening gig, and because they’ve got a kitchen and a bar, and a licence inside and outside, they can put music on.
Was it all Acoustic? I missed it as I was up north for a non-COVID funeral.
It ran through a small vocal amp, but everyone was an acoustic artist. I didn’t even need a microphone, although the microphone was there. We’re trying to make it a more regular thing there, until gigs start up properly, as there’s nowhere really.
What, all acoustic?
Well, even just stripped-down versions of bands in Plymouth to come down as we’ve got the PA, and Mary will accommodate for us. We’ll just see who’s up for it and make it a fortnightly thing, just so everyone can get their foot back in the door. The difference between playing a room and playing a live gig is that, if no one’s played a live gig in six months, even in practice, everyone’s going to be rusty. It’s not easy to get people even back into the practice rooms as they’re not one hundred per cent comfy with that yet.
When’s The Pit reopening?
That’s another thing we’re not sure about yet. We were hoping for early September [2020], but there might be another change of guidelines, so we’re basically holding out until we have it confirmed that it’s alright for us to reopen because, as we’re independent, we have no [financial] backing.
Back to the EP, what can you tell the readers about how the songs came about, what influenced them, your writing process and, also, your projection when you play your live solo set?
Performing with No-Robell
Well, the songs ‘Crash and Burn’ and ‘Drink Beer’ are nearly a year old now, and I’ve always been meaning to get them both down on an EP, but last year I moved house a few times, so had no time to settle down. But, weirdly, at the start of [the first] lockdown, I had time and space with my girlfriend to organise a home studio and turn the spare room into an office, but then all my music equipment broke down, and I had to re-buy all that, then I had to sit-in and learn all the new software. Then I said, ‘Right, I’m going to record an EP, here and now. I need to record something because I hadn’t done in ages!’ So, it’s been all over the place, with nowhere to just sit down and record, and I’ve been with Maker View [Plymouth PopPunk band] doing a side project, the vocal takes on that, but we couldn’t get into the studios for that. So I had all this new gear, I’ve got reasons to sit down and write and record, and the first one was ‘Crash and Burn’, as I open the majority of my sets with that. It’s political, but not too on the nose political, it’s an interpretation of what I talk about. Then I thought of sticking a sing-along in there too. For a short EP, you need a good atmosphere, and ‘Drink Beer’ is a happy song, it’s jaunty, it makes you want to move and dance a bit, and sing along, but it’s a song about dealing with your mental health through alcohol; ‘Have a drink and it’ll be alright’. As long as you’re with mates and they’re musical, everything’s good. And ‘Almost Famous’ had been in my head for a little bit, but I hadn’t penned it down, so after a day recording, I started playing around with chords I thought that I had something good, worth writing down. The entire idea behind ‘Almost Famous’ is towards a disappointment in myself, about how slow I am to do things, like my EPs and merch. Gigs are no problem at all, but it’s the other, business side of being a musician that I really struggle with, like advertising, getting further out to play gigs, because I do them far and few. The EP came about as a self-evaluation and self-analysation, that I can be better than what I’ve done, so why haven’t I? But I put their all into it, for whatever reason, or if you don’t have enough
faith in yourself. A lot of my material is about dealing with mental health, and about understanding that you can do what you want to do. If I had as much faith in myself as other people have in me, I’d be much further down the line but, you know, I’m getting there. The writing process is a funny one because I don’t really have a writing process. Some songs are when I have an idea in my head and I just sit down and write them, about a subject that jumps out of my head, and those are the songs that take the longest, for me, because I don’t want the songs to be too structured. Some of my best song ideas are just when I’ve had a few beers and something comes into my head, and I’ll grab the guitar and start bashing some chords out, then I’ll start talking absolute bollocks to myself, out loud, and there’ll be something that works. With my ADHD I really struggle to focus sometimes, and a lot of stuff just falls out, and I can’t remember half of it, so I keep it in that Fall-Out format and, eventually, it just falls out similarly enough that I can glue it back together. Like ‘A Little to the Left’, that’ll follow me to the grave.
‘A Little to the Left’ is on an earlier EP?
It’s on the EP which is no longer available, because that was a hungover day in university, where I had eight songs, plus one I did ad-lib, recorded it all in a day in the studio, when I was supposed to be doing uni work, and I just couldn’t be arsed with it. I just mixed it in the full-access music suite there. It was really easy and I ripped about fifty copies of ‘Dean Hutchinson - Return to Roots’ and I’d sold it all few later, by my 23rd birthday, and donated some to Punx Picnic. I wrote on them “Dean Hutchinson. You can’t find this anywhere. It’ll make a really nice beer coaster”. I think Jack Hopkins found about five copies behind the Nowhere Inn couch, upstairs, in the flat. I don’t even have the master file any more, because it was on my university account. It’s going to be re-recorded, maybe under a different title.
As you say, you started very young. So when did you first play live and record your own material?
I’ve done probably about thirty EPs now, and my very first EP I recorded age thirteen, and there’s two songs from that EP that I still play. I’m just taking it really, really slow. I’ve been gigging live since I was ten, and my very first gig was at Saltburn Folk Festival, and that was because I’d written a song at school and, when we were at the festival, I wanted to sing my song, so I did it and everyone was really impressed. This same weekend, Jon Harvinson took my dad and found a guitar for us, an acoustic, and that’s when I started learning guitar but, because of my attitude, I got kicked out of lesson, so everything I do is self-taught, and learning from bands around the north-east. When it comes to musical instruments, I really piss my dad off. One year, either my 19th birthday or Christmas, he bought me a new guitar and an electric mandolin, on top of it, with the course book. So, he says ‘That’s a challenge, for you. Try and learn that.’ So, I went up to my room, then, a few hours later, I got shouted down for my dinner, and I came down with my mandolin and said ‘Dad, check this out!’ and I bashed out three songs on it, and my dad’s going ‘Fuck off. You’re supposed to take weeks over that; not just run up into your room, and come down after bashing out a load of songs three hours later.’
So, your current live set; do you plan it all out before, or have some sort of outline, or just play it all off the cuff?
Well, some people say ‘Drop ‘Drink Beer’, you don’t want to be remembered for that song.’ I’ll never be remembered for ‘Drink Beer’; I’ll be remembered for ‘A Little to the Left, and some of the more controversial songs that I do. ‘Drink Beer’ is just that one that I do, the drinky, shouty one, where everyone has a sip or two of their beer and join in. It’s not a comedy song, but it is a more light-hearted song. That’s why I bunged it onto the EP, as it’s an enjoyable song
that people want to join-in with, live. Usually though, the set depends on the venue. I tend to put at least a guideline down so that I know where I’m going, and have a feel for the set, but also to save my voice, where I’ll put a less demanding one in, just to break it down and have a bit of a rest between songs, because it does take its toll on my vocals. Towards the end of the set is where I’m really shouting, especially with ‘A Little to the Left’, as there’s been so many times that I’ve been pissed singing it that, at the back end of it, I’ve nearly passed-out from holding out the ‘We’ll be aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalriiiiiiiiiiight!’ ending. My head just started spinning. Most sets start off with ‘Crash and Burn’, which is usually done slowly, but sometimes, depending on the length of the set, I’ll do it faster to get into stuff that I know people really want to hear, and get more punkier, and that leads into ‘Born to Die’ as ‘Crash and Burn’ finishes on the same note as Born to Die’ begins, and it means that I don’t have to stop in between; straight in. During afternoon gigs, I tend to remove the more sweary numbers and keep the more sort of PC ones, but the problem is that most of my songs have some swearing in them because they need it. I try to make an effort to include ‘This Hurts’ [a very emotive ballad] in every set, that people tell me is well-written song that draws people’s emotions, and they really connect with, sometimes to the point of crying. It’s because of losing my mates [to suicide] left, right and centre, and that’s not supposed to happen to someone only in their mid-twenties, and the song is the only way that I could put across those feelings adequately. It’s fucking shit that they’re not here anymore, we survived that but they didn’t, so you should always raise a drink and remember who they were to you, especially when they were core members of your circle of friends. I played ‘This Hurts’ at a festival gig in Richmond, near Harrogate, in North Yorkshire, with a broken hand, my arm in a sling and a plectrum taped to my hand. And this giant of a dude, Kingsley, who became a great mate of mine, stood at the front, with piercings
all over, Mohawk all spiked up, and his battle-jacket and huge boots on, and he was completely out of place with all the other people, but he stood there and was going ‘Yes, mate! Yeah!’, really getting into it. It was the end of my set, but he starts shouting for an encore, and then the crowd joined in, so I did ‘Separate Ways’, which is a fast, punky song, and he lost his shit to it, he’s gone mental. So, I finished up and he’s gone ‘I’m getting you a beer, right now!’, and I spent the rest of the day just drinking with him, and then I spent all the next day drinking with him, and every time we met-up we had a few beers. I only knew him for a year, and music was Life to him. I moved down here and, not long after, I heard that he had died, so the next gig, I did ‘Separate Ways’, but much slower, and it had more power and impact. I put that slower version on the ‘Remember the Good Times’ EP, which was recorded on a battery-powered Tascam 800B eight-track, which was time consuming, and I’ve still got the master for it somewhere, but I don’t think it’s digitally-transferable. I put it on MySpace. Remember that? That’s how long ago it was. It was all a learning curve, with being on the university course at the same time, and I didn’t even have a laptop; couldn’t afford one at the time.
Despite COVID-19 putting mockers on the gigging and recording scene, how has it affected you?
Mostly, I don’t know how to shut up now when I’m with someone because of working behind bars and being a musician, at the same time.
