Interview with John Howard Number Two
John Howard talks more about his music and his life in a special electronic interview
John Howard's latest album Navigate Home is released on April 6th, 2009. At the same time a Best of compilation "These Fifty Years" is also being released. Here we look at how the albums came about and talk to John further about his work.
How did the new album Navigate Home come about?
"I had completed Barefoot With Angels in the October of 2006, just before my partner and I sold our house in Pembrokeshire and moved into a little rented cottage near Haverfordwest. We had made the decision to leave the UK and move to Spain, though at that stage we weren't sure just where in Spain we would end up. I started writing what would become Navigate Home in the December of 2006, just after we had returned from looking at properties and having decided we would resettle in the lovely orange grove region of Murcia. There was a cornucopia of emotions bouncing from Neil and I at that time, the excitement of finding a new home in a different country together, mixed with the fear and wariness of taking such a plunge into the unknown. The songs came out of my head and heart as I sat at the piano during those months spent in preparation for the move. They reflected what I felt. One minute I was telling myself it would all be fine, the next I was wondering what the hell we had done. Sometimes I welled up with joy at what we had planned, another day I shook with uncertainty at the prospect of leaving behind everything we'd built up together over our 20-odd year relationship. Songs poured out, and by the time we left the UK in the August of that year, I had an album's worth of material demo'd."
Tell Me a Little More About Your Move to Spain and How the New Album Came About
"Through the summer into the autumn of 2007, we settled into our new life in southern Spain in a rented house near Torrevieja, while we waited for our own home to be completed, setting up a home studio in one of the spare rooms: I would play the 'Pembrokeshire demos' to myself over those weeks, slowly building up mentally the structure of the album, how I wanted it to sound. I always work on an album as a whole project, rather than record a few tracks and suddenly realise I have enough for an album. I decided I wanted this one to be strings-driven, very orchestrated, with a panoramic lushness, piano-based with Big Vocals. Lots of layers of sound, which I worked out how to achieve technically in my home studio. Barefoot With Angels had been made just as I getting to grips with my new studio, it was my 'experimental album', if you like, trying out things as I went along. This time, the technicalities of what I wanted to achieve had to be grasped before I started work on Navigate Home. It was important that this album sounded exactly as I heard it in my head when I played back the demos. I wanted it to convey the high emotion of the songs. This one was to be my Romantic Album. By the autumn of 2007 I was ready to begin recording. I recorded about half the album between October 2007and early February 2008, and it was going swimmingly. But as 2008 dawned, the owner of the house we were staying in decided he wanted to come back to Spain so another move was necessary, which meant packing away the studio once again. Once settled in the second rental house, I set up in the upstairs bedroom, mattresses laid against the walls to give some sonic insulation in a fairly bare white-walled room and recording continued. But, in July 2008, the new house was finally ready and so once again boxes were packed and unpacked, the dream planned and readied for was finally coming true. This time, instead of spare rooms making do as a studio area, we set aside a room specially in the large basement area, something we had been planning for two years. I got down to the process of finishing off the tracks and then mixing the album, deciding on the final running order and finally sending everything off to SRT mastering studios in Cambridgeshire, to Ian Shepherd, who had mastered most of my previous releases. I wanted the album to reflect a sense of journey, of travel, of seeking out and finding, of upheaval and settlement, of loss and renewal, of where the past had brought us and what the future held. It should hopefully draw the listener in and let them flow on the feel, to paraphrase Carl Wilson. It's probably my most personal album since As I Was Saying. But whereas in 2004 that album reflected on my past which had recently become my future again with the rediscovery of my music through the reissue of Kid In A Big World, this time I was looking forward, full of expectation, new horizons ahead yet we were both thinking of what we had left behind. Laura Nyro once said she could draw what she heard in her head, the process of creating songs was that visual for her. I hope you can see my 'pictures' on this new album."
To Co-incide with the release of Navigate Home, you have also brought out a Best of Compilation. How did this come about and how did you chose the tracks?
2009 marks thirty-five years since ‘Kid In A Big World’ was recorded at Abbey Road and Apple Studios. It felt like a good a time to release a Best Of album. However, it is difficult not to become overly subjective, choosing tracks one likes personally rather than a reflection of what people seem to appreciate the most.
So the collection was put together by choosing first of all what have become the most downloaded tracks on iTunes; next we researched those that have received special mention in r
John Howard's latest album Navigate Home is released on April 6th, 2009. At the same time a Best of compilation "These Fifty Years" is also being released. Here we look at how the albums came about and talk to John further about his work.
How did the new album Navigate Home come about?
"I had completed Barefoot With Angels in the October of 2006, just before my partner and I sold our house in Pembrokeshire and moved into a little rented cottage near Haverfordwest. We had made the decision to leave the UK and move to Spain, though at that stage we weren't sure just where in Spain we would end up. I started writing what would become Navigate Home in the December of 2006, just after we had returned from looking at properties and having decided we would resettle in the lovely orange grove region of Murcia. There was a cornucopia of emotions bouncing from Neil and I at that time, the excitement of finding a new home in a different country together, mixed with the fear and wariness of taking such a plunge into the unknown. The songs came out of my head and heart as I sat at the piano during those months spent in preparation for the move. They reflected what I felt. One minute I was telling myself it would all be fine, the next I was wondering what the hell we had done. Sometimes I welled up with joy at what we had planned, another day I shook with uncertainty at the prospect of leaving behind everything we'd built up together over our 20-odd year relationship. Songs poured out, and by the time we left the UK in the August of that year, I had an album's worth of material demo'd."
Tell Me a Little More About Your Move to Spain and How the New Album Came About
"Through the summer into the autumn of 2007, we settled into our new life in southern Spain in a rented house near Torrevieja, while we waited for our own home to be completed, setting up a home studio in one of the spare rooms: I would play the 'Pembrokeshire demos' to myself over those weeks, slowly building up mentally the structure of the album, how I wanted it to sound. I always work on an album as a whole project, rather than record a few tracks and suddenly realise I have enough for an album. I decided I wanted this one to be strings-driven, very orchestrated, with a panoramic lushness, piano-based with Big Vocals. Lots of layers of sound, which I worked out how to achieve technically in my home studio. Barefoot With Angels had been made just as I getting to grips with my new studio, it was my 'experimental album', if you like, trying out things as I went along. This time, the technicalities of what I wanted to achieve had to be grasped before I started work on Navigate Home. It was important that this album sounded exactly as I heard it in my head when I played back the demos. I wanted it to convey the high emotion of the songs. This one was to be my Romantic Album. By the autumn of 2007 I was ready to begin recording. I recorded about half the album between October 2007and early February 2008, and it was going swimmingly. But as 2008 dawned, the owner of the house we were staying in decided he wanted to come back to Spain so another move was necessary, which meant packing away the studio once again. Once settled in the second rental house, I set up in the upstairs bedroom, mattresses laid against the walls to give some sonic insulation in a fairly bare white-walled room and recording continued. But, in July 2008, the new house was finally ready and so once again boxes were packed and unpacked, the dream planned and readied for was finally coming true. This time, instead of spare rooms making do as a studio area, we set aside a room specially in the large basement area, something we had been planning for two years. I got down to the process of finishing off the tracks and then mixing the album, deciding on the final running order and finally sending everything off to SRT mastering studios in Cambridgeshire, to Ian Shepherd, who had mastered most of my previous releases. I wanted the album to reflect a sense of journey, of travel, of seeking out and finding, of upheaval and settlement, of loss and renewal, of where the past had brought us and what the future held. It should hopefully draw the listener in and let them flow on the feel, to paraphrase Carl Wilson. It's probably my most personal album since As I Was Saying. But whereas in 2004 that album reflected on my past which had recently become my future again with the rediscovery of my music through the reissue of Kid In A Big World, this time I was looking forward, full of expectation, new horizons ahead yet we were both thinking of what we had left behind. Laura Nyro once said she could draw what she heard in her head, the process of creating songs was that visual for her. I hope you can see my 'pictures' on this new album."
To Co-incide with the release of Navigate Home, you have also brought out a Best of Compilation. How did this come about and how did you chose the tracks?
2009 marks thirty-five years since ‘Kid In A Big World’ was recorded at Abbey Road and Apple Studios. It felt like a good a time to release a Best Of album. However, it is difficult not to become overly subjective, choosing tracks one likes personally rather than a reflection of what people seem to appreciate the most.
So the collection was put together by choosing first of all what have become the most downloaded tracks on iTunes; next we researched those that have received special mention in r