One of the finest singer-songwriter records of the year so far has been made by a producer. Twenty years have passed since Ethan Johns (born in 1969) last shared his own songs with an audience. “But now I’ve got the taste for it, I am going to carry on combining it with my studio work,” he promised us.
Ethan Johns has just made a record with the folksinger Laura Marling; recently he did some guitar-playing for Ryan Adams; and when we rang him he was busy working on a Tom Jones album and spoke enthusiastically about new work by Paul McCartney. All of which underlines the fact that his career as a producer, engineer, and mixer has been an impressive one. It was his fellow musicians, indeed, who prodded him to finally step into the limelight with his own compositions. As Johns himself admits: “Laura liked a song I had played for her in the studio so much that she immediately invited me to make a guest appearance in the Royal Festival Hall. I got a taste for it there. Even though it had been almost two decades since I had sung my own songs onstage, I felt good about it straight away. I am a fan of live music anyway. Even in the studio I enjoy seeing musicians playing together.”
You have been writing songs since you were eleven. Why did it take so long before your public coming-out as a singer-songwriter?
Ethan Johns: I was too busy and I was having too much fun with other people’s records. When you can work with top artists, then you don’t just let that drop for a solo outing. Those old songs, anyway, weren’t meant for an audience. They were very personal.
Producer Ethan Johns takes to the stage
Was your background as a producer useful to make this record?
Johns: It made me realise that I couldn’t produce this record myself. The best thing I could do was to get out of my own way and to entrust the responsibility I usually take on to some musician friends. Each in their own way, all the people I work with are also looking for a certain truth or authenticity. I had confidence in them. That way, I can focus on “being a singer-songwriter”.
What was it like to work with your father, who recorded classic albums back in the 1970s, with the likes of the Steve Miller Band, The Who, and Eric Clapton – and has now mixed your album?
Johns: It was fantastic! He, too, was given carte blanche. It was a bit like as if I was asking him to make a painting. As a child, by the way, I was never conscious that there were people visiting us who were famous in other people’s eyes. They were just friends of my father – and they were all passionately involved in music. That was my great good fortune.
May I congratulate you on the splendid, medieval-looking illustrations that adorn the CD booklet of If Not Now Then When?
Johns: Thank you, I am just as proud of them as I am of my songs. They are by the Icelandic artist Erla María Árnadóttir and they add an extra dimension to the experience of listening. There is a lot of symbolism – and a lot of history, too – in my lyrics. Those pictures can help people to interpret the multi-layered songs, like tarot cards. They do indeed recall medieval wood carvings, like the illustrations for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but at the same time they are contemporary too. I wanted to bring out something timeless, something that could still be relevant for future generations – and for that you have to keep one eye on the past. Even though I spend a lot of time in state-of-the-art studios and make use of the latest technologies, I’m not going to kid myself that something is better because it is modern.
Ethan Johns • 8/4, 20.00, €12, Ancienne Belgique, boulevard Anspachlaan 110, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-548.24.24, info@abconcerts.be, www.abconcerts.be
Johns: It made me realise that I couldn’t produce this record myself. The best thing I could do was to get out of my own way and to entrust the responsibility I usually take on to some musician friends. Each in their own way, all the people I work with are also looking for a certain truth or authenticity. I had confidence in them. That way, I can focus on “being a singer-songwriter”.
What was it like to work with your father, who recorded classic albums back in the 1970s, with the likes of the Steve Miller Band, The Who, and Eric Clapton – and has now mixed your album?
Johns: It was fantastic! He, too, was given carte blanche. It was a bit like as if I was asking him to make a painting. As a child, by the way, I was never conscious that there were people visiting us who were famous in other people’s eyes. They were just friends of my father – and they were all passionately involved in music. That was my great good fortune.
May I congratulate you on the splendid, medieval-looking illustrations that adorn the CD booklet of If Not Now Then When?
Johns: Thank you, I am just as proud of them as I am of my songs. They are by the Icelandic artist Erla María Árnadóttir and they add an extra dimension to the experience of listening. There is a lot of symbolism – and a lot of history, too – in my lyrics. Those pictures can help people to interpret the multi-layered songs, like tarot cards. They do indeed recall medieval wood carvings, like the illustrations for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but at the same time they are contemporary too. I wanted to bring out something timeless, something that could still be relevant for future generations – and for that you have to keep one eye on the past. Even though I spend a lot of time in state-of-the-art studios and make use of the latest technologies, I’m not going to kid myself that something is better because it is modern.
Ethan Johns • 8/4, 20.00, €12, Ancienne Belgique, boulevard Anspachlaan 110, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-548.24.24, info@abconcerts.be, www.abconcerts.be
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