BIG INTERVIEW Matt Owens takes us behind the scenes of recording an album during lockdown

Matt’s current look is somewhat spiky-topped; his hair was much longer in Noah and the Whale

This is Matt Owens, once bassist for festival-headlining indie folk band Noah and the Whale, now Bath-based solo artist with a penchant for Americana (contemporary music that wears its roots – folk, country, bluegrass – proudly on its sleeve), and for helping up-and-comers with their careers. While the rest of us spent lockdown watching box sets and making banana bread, Matt was recording a new album, Scorched Earth, helped by local talent throughout. “Being forced to use Bathbased musicians and studios transformed the sound and balance of the record,” he says, “and all for the better…”

Words by Matt Bielby Images by Charlie Adams

Noah and the Whale – the British indie rock-folk band who headlined Wilderness and the Royal Albert Hall (and played

Glastonbury, Coachella and Lollapalooza) in their early 2010s heyday – have been split up for five aears now but individual members have hardly been silent.

Frontman Charlie Fink has worked in the theatre, producing music for the Old

Vic’s production of Dr. Seuss classic The

Lorax and the recent Bath Theatre Royal production of The Man in the White Suit.

And, even closer to home, there’s the band’s Bath-based bassist, Matt Owens, who’s become a leading light of the local music scene. Matt’s already produced one solo album, and regularly encourages local talent through Livewired, a live music night on Chelsea Road. Always full of energy and ideas, he’s used the unexpected free time of these last few months to finish recording a second solo album, Scorched Earth as well as find time to put together a workbook for budding songwriters. )s with so mana of us the first few weeSs of locSdown proved to be the hardest. ¹I¼d been gigging sometimes five nights a weeS and didn’t appreciate just how much writing and organising

I’d been getting through on the way to venues or waiting in dressing rooms,” he says. “That had been my time, away from the kids. I had 30 festivals lined up this year, from Glastonbury to Wilderness, and all that went out the window. It didn’t take long to throw myself into other projects, though, and I soon stopped worrying about everything I was missing out on.”

It didn’t hurt, of course, that – with two little girls, aged three and one when lockdown started – Matt was able to take plenty of family time this summer, being around for more bedtimes and stories. “My wife, Abs, and I somehow managed to work out a routine where I could fit in all I needed to do while still enRoaing a nice worS life balance. It was a real logistical battle to get there, but so worth it.”

Since Noah and the Whale split, Matt has been helping budding musicians on his non-gig days, teaching songwriting, guitar, piano and bass. When lockdown hit, the natural thing was to concentrate on this, throwing himself into education in a way he never had before. “It’s one of the most rewarding things I do,” he says, “and – as

I was already doing so much of it online – I transitioned into more of it quite smoothly. With everybody housebound, my pupils went from strength to strength.”

There were digital gigs to play too, everywhere from the legendary The Packhorse in South Stoke to Kenny’s

Bar in Lahinch on the West Coast of Ireland. “The online gigging world is a strange but wonderful one,”

Looking soulful in Vicky Park’s Botanical Gardens

“Working with strictly Bath-based musicians transformed the record, and all for the better”

Matt says, “and having toured a lot of places, people know who I am; they’d log on to watch me play in my front room, from New Zealand to Dallas. I certainly sold more CDs online during lockdown than ever before.”

He also took the time to set up his home studio properly, getting heavily into synths and spending more time on the production side of his new album, which benefitted it no end. +alled Scorched Earth, it was already 50 per cent done before Covid hit, and had always been intended as an autumn release.

“I’d started Scorched Earth in Manchester at the excellent Airtight Studios, where I’d recorded my solo debut, Whiskey and Orchids,” Matt says. “That’s where I’d worked on Thea Gilmore’s No.1 Americana album, Small World Turning, too. The obvious problem now was that I couldn’t return there for months. It meant I was forced to look at new studios closer to home, but that actually turned into one of those strange positives that came out of lockdown. Working with strictly Bathbased musicians and studios transformed the sound and balance of the record, and all for the better.”

Did it matter whether you made your autumn deadline or not? After all, the world has completely changed – and not least the world of music… It’s amazing how missing deadlines can make a huge diٺerence. If a record doesn¼t come out in late autumn for instance, it gets sucked into a Christmas no-go zone, where – from a radio perspective, particularly – everything’s completely taken up by Christmas songs. Then the whole industry goes quiet throughout January, so be a week late and you can essentially miss almost three months. Festivals want new records for acts to play too, and as some start booking in September you’ve really got no choice but to record any new record you’ve been working on over the summer.

Not to mention that you were already in the creative zone… Oh, yes. You want to make your record when you’re ready to go!

These days, of course, it is possible to travel up to Manchester again… And eventually I did. I went up for a second bout of recording two months ago – and then, the day after I left, the city went into lockdown again. The whole record felt like that right up until completion – like the whole thing could get taken away from me at any point. There were many setbacks along the way, and I was constantly having to work around them. You default to believing in fate.

So what changed about Scorched Earth, and how much can you put down to the Covid experience? 7h it¼s definitela a stronger set of songs because of the lockdown – better played, more upbeat, and sonically wider. <he best feeling aou can have after finishing a record, is that you couldn’t have done it any better. )s ever inÆuences taSe in some of ma favourites" the country-folk singer John Prine, who won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy this year but also sadly died of Covid-19 complications, plus Warren Zevon, James McMurtry, Neil Young. Once I had the songs down, I didn’t want to do the easy thing – just go into a studio with my drummer, Jimmy, and make a record I could pretty much hear in my head before we’d even started. That didn’t excite me. Instead, I started pursuing the sound of the record, not really knowing what it was.

So you had nothing particular in mind to emulate or reference sonically…? No – which, it turned out, wasn’t the most calming of approaches for my neuroses! But it was very rewarding,

Matt, on the far left, back in 2008, with former band members, Noah and the Whale, at the Cambridge Folk Festival after having produced other people these last few aears to selfproduce ma own record. I was suٻcientla confident in the songs that we could taSe them out of ma usual comfort zone.

Which means what, exactly? Ultimately, that I started chasing sounds that I’d distrusted, even loathed – however unfairly! – in the past, to see if I could find a use for them. I wanted to see if thea¼d fit into ma music so started e`perimenting with synthesisers, drum loops, synthetic beats, crazy guitar eٺects organ bass pedals even turntables · things I genuinely didn’t like, but I found myself falling in love with all of them! Bath legend Olly Love, a.k.a. Asian Hawk – who’s won so many awards for his turntablism it’s just nuts – did a cracking job helping on a track called Strip It Back, for instance, so it sounds a lot like ’90s Beck or Eels; he contributed some backing vocals too.

Anyone else involved? Bristol-based Elles Bailey sung on the record – she was winner of the 2020 Song of the Year at The AMAUK awards, organised by Britain’s Americana Music Association – as did Noah and the Whale guitarist (and displaced Bathonian) Fred Abbott, who played some cracking slide. I recorded two of the tracks at Mizpah Studios, under Bath Forum; these were engineered by Marc MacNab-Jack, who also played drums. Marc’s actually drummed for The Heavy, Reef and Band of Skulls, amongst others, and went deep with some crazy drum loops and distorted eٺects.

So, the album’s done now. How can people get to hear or own it? It’ll come out on all the major digital platforms – Spotify and so on – and it’ll be stocked at choice boutique record stores around the country too. Plus, of course, you’ll be able to buy it directly from me at gigs, and pre-order it at www.mattowensmusic.com.

And what does 2021 hold? I have complete belief that it will be epic for music. Yes, we’ll all need to be more proactive and think outside the box. There’ll have to be new ways of gigging, new spaces used instead of shut down venues · and most definitela a greater need for pulling together. But graft, unity and blind optimism will out.

And for you personally? All I know – or hope I know! – is that I’ll be touring the record, taking it to the festivals next summer, and will continue to produce, write, lecture and teach as much as possible. And I’m very excited that Livewired, our live music night, will resume as soon as we’re given the go-ahead. We’ll once again be booking our own Livewired stage at The Love Fields at Glastonbury Festival too. Then there’s my instructional workbook, which I’m still in the midst of writing. It bridges the gap between the classical world – with all its notation and rules – and the more modern rock ’n’ roll, singersongwriter era. It focuses tightly on what you actually need to know to play all your favourite music, whether that be Bowie or the Blues, Tom Waits or Nick Drake. Having started out as a doomed classical violinist, I always felt the two worlds never seem to make the most of each other – and now, perhaps, they will. n For more, www.mattowensmusic.com