Ben Watt Has Been Doing It Better Than You for 30 Years

Ben Watt has destroyed his bucket list. He’s put out countless records—including one with Massive Attack—as half of the new wave alt-pop duo Everything But The Girl with his wife Tracey Thorn. He’s done time as a celebrated club DJ, where he proliferated the gospel of deep house and remixed the likes of Sade and Zero 7. Logically, he then moved into a cushy position as a BBC radio DJ, where he hand-melded far-reaching mixes of folk and electronica, mixing Nick Drake alongside Groove Armada.

Hell, he even contracted an insanely rare form of an already rare auto-immune disease and then penned a tell-all about it. This all happened while running two award-winning indie labels—the deep house and techno label Buzzin’ Fly and the alternative rock oriented Strange Feeling. Not to mention he's also launched two successful night clubs.

Few artists can pull off that kind of track record without getting a bunch of flak for having their fingers in too many pies and stretching themselves too thin. But Watt navigates the demands of his various pursuits with such sincerity and stoicism that it just seems effortless. On the other hand, his penchant for artistic eclecticism may not be so much of a surprise when you realize he’s the son of a jazz musician and a trained Shakespearian actor.

He also doesn’t seem content to rest on the laurels of an already ridiculously stacked career. After getting out of the club scene, tired of the stress of running two labels, he’s going back to the simpler things in life and has just released his first solo album in over 30 years. Oh, yeah, and he roped in Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, Suede’s Bernard Butler, and a ton of other celebrated artists to collaborate with him on it, too. So, appeasing our interest to see how he juggles it all, Watt granted us some time out of his always hectic schedule via email to talk about his newest album Hendra, working with David Gilmour, writing a memoir about his parents, and dealing with the recent death of his half sister.

Noisey: Thirty years is a long time. What was the main decision behind releasing another solo album now?
Ben Watt: It is a voice that has been in the back of mind for years. On and off. Sometimes loud sometimes quiet. I parked an emerging solo career in the early '80s to go in with Tracey in Everything But The Girl. It lasted for 20 years. Lately that voice has got louder, and coincided with my sense that I need to get out of DJing and running the label, at least for a while. I wanted to get back to words, to my own creativity. That said, my main intention was to write my book, Romany and Tom. The album came after that, somewhat unexpectedly.

Were the songs that made up this album all written around the same time, or had you been carrying a lot of them with you for a while?
All the songs were written in the wake of my half-sister Jennie’s death in late 2012. They were written from a compulsion. A taking stock. A desire to write about the blows we take in life and how we survive them. Apart from "Matthew Arnold’s Field," which I wrote in 2007 after my dad’s death, they were all largely new. A couple of the lyrics had been unfinished in notebooks, and the thrust of the album seemed to chime with their sentiments, so I finished them off and wrote melodies for them.

I’m curious as to how you feel about your first solo album, considering the 30 year gap. Does it still feel like a solo album in the way that this new album does, or more like the solo album of a different person at this point?
I am proud of that early period. Not all of it, of course. There is a naivety to a lot of it that is hard to listen to sometimes. But the spiritedness of it is admirable, the desire to find a unique sound, to do something different, against the grain—I admire that. And some of the songs from that time still stand up—"Walter and John," "North Marine Drive." I look back on them now as ‘songs of innocence’. And perhaps now I write ‘songs of experience.’

How did you come to work with Suede’s Bernard Butler and David Gilmour on this record?
I met Bernard at a barbecue in the rain two years ago. We tiptoed round each other. We seemed, however, to be in a similar space. Each of us had spent ten years away from guitar-playing—me as a DJ and label boss, him as producer and songwriter. We each seemed to want to play guitar again. We then met at my place and jammed one afternoon, but it didn’t quite gel. And then I wrote the songs for Hendra, and we met again, and this time I had a strong idea of how it could work. My open suspended folk tunings against his bluesy overdriven guitar—and that was when it really clicked.

I met David Gilmour at a party the week before I started my album. By chance. He invited me to hear his demos. I was a bit stunned but got on the train to see him a few days later. We got on really well. Sat around, chatted, listened to music. Two weeks later I was recording "The Levels" and pictured him playing on it. I asked him. He said yes. Very straightforward really.

Your recently published book, Romany and Tom, is kind of an examination of your family set against the backdrop of the cultural identity of Britain. Did any of these concepts or sentiments make their way into the album?

Obviously my head was full of family stuff at that time, how my parents had dealt with the blows of life, thwarted ambition, loss, change. And then, as I said, when Jennie died, it all seemed to conflate in my mind and move onto a level beyond the book where I could write other stories about other people too in similar situations.

In 2013 you stopped putting out new music with Buzzing Fly and Strange Feeling, but you released your solo album on a new label you’ve started, Unmade Road. Are you planning to pursue other projects with that label, or is it purely just for this release?
I could have released on Buzzin’ Fly or Strange Feeling of course, but that would have entailed a lot more grunt work. Licensing, being a label. I just wanted to be an artist on this one. So I sought out another solution. I launched Unmade Road to own the copyrights and make the decisions, but went to Caroline for their wide-ranging label services. They offer not just traditional sales and distribution, but marketing, promo and global reach. But, no, nothing else is planned on Unmade Road at the moment.

How do you think your career as a DJ has influenced the way you approach music now?
I think have always approached music in the same way. I am interested in the boundary between beauty and pathos, euphoria and melancholy. I think my approach to DJing and my approach to songwriting are the same in that sense; they just use different tools.

You recently uploaded a “Deep Folk mixtape” to Soundcloud. Can you explain the idea behind that, and where that came from?
I still love mixing, the relationship between songs, the role of the DJ, and I just wanted to apply it to stuff I was listening at the moment. It is the second in a series. I hope there will be a third one soon.

In what ways is curating sets on the radio different from DJing in clubs, and in what ways are they similar?

You can be gentler at times. You can make sudden moves more easily. You can make a point through contrast, rather than similarity. Clubland needs waves, 15-minute cresting moments that then break and move on with a new lurking power. That kind of stuff is hard on radio.

Which do you prefer?
I love both.

How do you reconcile seemingly disparate musical influences like deep house music and artists like Nick Drake? Do you find they have any commonality, or is it just a product of a wide range of tastes?
I actually think there is big connection between folk music and clubland. They are both about the communal experience and about ritual. In traditional folk clubs, the band is often unseen, in a corner somewhere, and the experience is about the dancers or the communal singing. Not unlike clubs. When they diverge is when the sentiments in the songs become more about the individual, more subjective.

What do you think about people saying that America really doesn’t get British electronic music, that they just generally end up cannibalizing and bastardizing it?
That is a huge generalization. America is responsible for some of the best electronic music ever made, proper ground-breaking stuff. We would be nowhere without pioneers in Detroit or Chicago or New York. And the disrespectful approach to music is also essential for progress.

Who do you think are some of the electronic acts creating music right now that are still pushing boundaries?
You are asking the wrong person at the moment.

In May you’re going to be playing some shows with the “Hendra Band,” what can you tell me about that lineup?
Yes. I have managed to get almost the whole band that played on the record, on one stage for the first time. Should be a lot of fun.

You’re playing New York and LA this summer with Bernard Butler, what kind of material are you going to be playing at those shows – will it be mostly pulled from the album, or are you going to delve into some other compositions as well?

We play songs from ‘Hendra’, a couple of unreleased tracks that didn’t make the album, and I dip into the past and play a few songs from the early Cherry Red days, from before my time with Everything But The Girl.

What does the future hold in for Ben Watt?
I never try and predict it. I just let it arrive. And use my instinct.

Nick Laugher is still working on his bucket list. He's on Twitter - @largiantribune

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