James Blunt: Travelin’ Man
Jul 2nd, 2010 | By admin | Category: Feature ArticlesBy Adam St. James
It started in Austin. From there it went to L.A., then back across the pond to U.K. Now just about everywhere you go, on radio stations and TV shows from coast to coast, you’re likely hearing the high-strung guitar sounds of one 1966 Gibson J-45 and the plaintive vocals of one James Blunt, Londoner.
The twenty-something Blunt seemingly came out of nowhere in 2005 to score one of the biggest acoustic-based hits in years with “You’re Beautiful,” and BANG! A career was launched. Now, here in ‘06, Blunt’s debut album, Back To Bedlam is toying with the top of the charts – its already certified eight times platinum in his native England – and we’re all learning his name. And he makes it seem so easy.
Blunt’s story is particularly inspiring for this reason: It could have been any of us, perhaps, if you’ve got the songs, even you. For all those who have ever considered showcasing their musical talents at the annual music industry mega-party in Austin, Texas, known as SXSW, James Blunt proves that the trip South by Southwest can pay off big-time.
It was in that melee of musical mastication and beer-swilling during one unruly week in March, 2003, at which Blunt was “discovered” by producer and former Four Non-Blondes frontwoman Linda Perry. Perry quickly signed him to her Custard Records label (with distribution by Atlantic), and the rest is simply platinum-coated history.
He’d been playing piano and guitar since his early teens, but it wasn’t until after a stint in the Army and duty on a lengthy and eye-opening peacekeeping tour of Kosovo that Blunt truly applied himself to songwriting. Favoring the music of early-’70s singer/songwriters, the young Londoner has fashioned himself, in a sense, after musical idols such as Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and Elliott Smith. And it’s working brilliantly.
James Blunt: Hi Adam, how are you doing?
St. James: Fine James, and you.
Blunt: Pretty good. I’m just backstage and going to go onstage in a bit.
St. James: A daytime gig?
Blunt: No, I’m in Europe. I’m in Brussels.
St. James: I’m with Guitar Life Magazine. Do you like talking about guitar?
Blunt: Well, I’ve got one.
St. James: One, is that it?
Blunt: I had one for a long time, but now that the tour has grown and everything, I’ve got myself a spare. I’ve got two acoustic Gibsons, and I also borrowed a 12-string from Gibson.
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St. James: What model guitars do you have?
Blunt: My standard guitar that I use is a 1966 Gibson J-45. I bought myself a spare, a 1958 LG-1. A couple of vintage acoustics. I like the vintage stuff because they have a bit of character. Obviously they have an issue and a problem along the way, but that’s the nature of the beast. They have great tone.
St. James: Where do you shop for your vintage instruments? Stores, Internet?
Blunt: The States of course. The States are a great place to get guitars, because there are a lot of them around, and they have a much better price than the inflated prices we have in over here in the U.K.
St. James: I know a lot of the vintage dealers around the country. Do you know where you got them?
Blunt: Actually I got mine through a friend. The LG I got from a very cool little shop – let me think… It was during a AAA (radio) convention in Boulder, Colorado.
St. James: What brand and gauge strings do you use?
Blunt: I’m using pretty light gauge strings just so I don’t strain the guitars too much. I don’t want to put too much pressure on them. I use D’Addario strings.
St. James: What got you started with guitar? Did you always play original music?
Blunt: I started playing original music when I was 14 years old. And I saved up and bought myself a kind of High Street electric guitar for around $200. And I got myself a new Peavey amplifier, and I just made a racket. And then I started refining my gear and I got myself a Fender Telecaster and a Fender Twin Amp, and I started to make something that was slightly more tuneful.
But I was moving around a lot and traveling from place to place. I would be at boarding school and I’d travel out to my parents on the holidays, and they would be in different countries because they traveled a lot. And so it was hard to have a band. And with traveling and not having a band, it didn’t make sense to play the electric guitar, with a heavy amplifier, and all the bits that were needed for it.
So I found myself leaning toward starting to play acoustic guitar. And that way I could travel with my guitar, and that could be the medium behind songwriting. And that’s how my development in playing acoustic guitar more or less came about.
St. James: How old were you when you made that move to acoustic?
Blunt: I would say about 19 or 20 years old.
St. James: Is that when you got the J-45?
Blunt: No, I got that some three years ago.
St. James: So you had some less expensive acoustics before that.
Blunt: Yeah, I did. And they’d broken at some stage or another.
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St. James: So what kind of music were you playing at that point? Original, cover?
Blunt: Yeah, I was writing my own stuff, but at the same time I was covering things like Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin, Supertramp, the Pixies. And then I really started taking up the acoustic. I then I continued to make my own music and wasn’t really listening to that much, because I never had a chance to carry a big music collection with me.
In recent years, since the iPod, I’ve obviously been able to carry around and investigate a whole lot of the early 70s singer/songwriters, like Lou Reed, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Cat Stevens, Paul Simon, Elton John – to name just a few. And among contemporaries, I really enjoy people like Cat Power and Elliott Smith – which is why I worked with (producer) Tom Rothrock.
St. James: And have you actually learned any of these peoples’ songs?
Blunt: I just listen.
St. James: Did you have guitar lessons, do you sight read?
Blunt: I can sight read, purely because of playing the piano – but I’m much better at sight reading on the piano. I had a lot of training in piano from when I was seven years old, so some of the skills of that translate straight on to the guitar.
St. James: Did you play the piano parts on Back to Bedlam?
Blunt: As many as I could. Obviously sometimes we got other people. We got a guy called Mr. Nau, but I played as many as I could.
St. James: What else do you play on the album?
Blunt: I played as much as I possibly could, from acoustic to electric guitar, bass, 12-string, nylon-stringed, piano, organs of all kinds, marimbas – everything I could. But other times I’d reach the limit of my own playing ability and then decided to get some professionals in who were recommended by producer Tom Rothrock.
And we got four or five other musicians who were experts in their own field – obviously the drums, there was a great bass player who did the majority of the bass playing. We had a great keyboard player, John Nau. And we had another guitarist come in. When I reached the limit of my own ability, they came in and just added there own magic.
St. James: But it must have been a lot of fun playing all those instruments on the album.
Blunt: It was great fun doing it. We tracked it as a band, with these guys, and then I just started doing overdubs, and worked with Tom and added all these different sounds and instruments that I wanted to add. We built it up from the drums and bass, then added all that, then brought those other musicians back in if I felt they needed to be there.
But yeah it is great to have something in your head that you can hear, and build it from nothing, and play all the instruments. And then also nice to bring in those other guys at a later point, and for them to take it beyond your expectation, and for them to add something that was better than I imagined. That was a thrill in itself.
St. James: What was your recording experience prior to that? Was it mostly home demos?
Blunt: I had been in a couple studios working with different producers, trying to find which producers might work. And so I was comfortable in the studio, and I knew that I didn’t necessarily want to learn about the mechanics of recording – although obviously it’s useful to have a basis of knowledge, without getting bogged down in it. I was trying to get as much into the instruments rather than too much of the current technology.
St. James: What is your primary instrument when you’re doing your songwriting?
Blunt: It changes between piano and guitar. If I’m traveling it’s a guitar, but if I can get to a piano, I’d love to. I’d say it was about 50-50 on this album.
St. James: Do you record your ideas?
Blunt: I don’t record actually. I just think if an idea is good, then I should remember it. The only thing I’ll write down are lyrics. And then later on when I’ve ran it through with a band, I might get a demo done.
St. James: About half the people I speak with say they have to record their ideas or they’ll forget them, and the other half say exactly what you said: “If it’s good enough, I should remember it.” I’m wondering if those of you who say that, have a better memory than the rest of us, or if you focus on the idea more?
Blunt: I think that’s exactly right: I think it’s focusing on the idea. You might get back to your idea, so maybe recording it is a good idea to keep a beautiful idea for the future. But yeah, I guess if there’s 10 ideas in a day, and one of them stands out, that’s the one I’ll focus on, and forget the others, I suppose.
St. James: And so you will go ahead and put the work in on it to complete the song over the next few days, rather than moving on with the assumption that you’ll come back for it.
Blunt: Yeah, absolutely. And I can almost only run with five ideas in my memory at one time.
St. James: Well, I think I’ve been doing it the wrong way all my life! (laughs) I ought to be focusing a little more. I think you’ve proven that to be the case. So when you write on guitar, do you do anything special to get the creative juices flowing? Do you say to yourself, ‘I’m going to throw it into some weird open tuning and see what comes out’?
Blunt: No, not really. But I do change between playing an idea on one instrument, and then taking it over to another instrument to see if that makes something fall out of it. But often it just comes from trying different things, and sometimes even making mistakes. I find that one of the greatest ways of doing things is just being open to hearing mistakes and seeing how they might develop from there.
St. James: And when you write, are you thinking of a full production?
Blunt: Almost never. I think almost always my idea is, ‘Can I play this on my own?’ And if I can play it on my own, then it should hopefully be a good song, totally un-reliant on other musicians around me.
St. James: You said you listen to people, as everyone does. Do you ever find yourself saying, ‘I want to make this song sound like an early ’70s Neil Young or Leonard Cohen tune?’
Blunt: I definitely find that I’ll run into something that sounds like something else, something I recognize. And then I’ll go and have a listen to it and think, ‘Damn it, someone’s written this before!’ But that almost happens with everything nowadays, doesn’t it. So I guess you have a listen to that track and work out where you’ve got to steer clear of certain things in order not to repeat what they’ve done. But that can still be a learning process, learning what worked for them, and not necessarily incorporate the idea then, but throwing it in at another time.
St. James: Are you studied or knowledgeable in song arrangement, as in verse-chorus-bridge – AB, ABC song formats – or in common chord progressions, or any of that type of thing?
Blunt: No, not at all. But what I think I have learned over the past few years is watching what other people suggest, and therefore understanding where they’re coming from. I started off writing ideas, and then working with a couple of other people, they helped those ideas become fully rounded songs. And in the same process then I recognized the art of songcrafting. If you ask a 14-year-old who has a musical idea to add a middle eight, he’s naturally going to say, ‘What the hell is a middle eight?’
And no one was ever telling me those things, but as I was recording my demos, people just say, ‘Hey, have you ever just considered chopping those four chords out and just switching them around?’ And that’s a middle eight (or “bridge”). And that was a real learning process. And I think I got that from just working with a couple of people, and two people who helped me a lot in recording my demos, and those kind of final tweaks on a couple of songs: Jimmy Hogarth, and Sacha Skarbek.
St. James: And the thing you just mentioned about the middle eight is a great tip for songwriters: grab some of the chords of the song and just switch them around a little bit.
Blunt: Totally. And it just doesn’t occur to you sometimes.
St. James: I’ve never thought of it in such obvious terms. And when I think back to songs I’ve taught guitar students, that’s exactly what most bridges are – the artist just took a few chords from the song and switched them around a bit, put them to a slightly different rhythm, and there’s your middle eight.
Blunt: Yeah, it’s strange about that. And when someone does it, it seems so obvious. And sometimes it wouldn’t even occur to me where it was actually happening. But when it happens you go, ‘Yeah, of course. That all makes sense.’
St. James: What do you practice, if you have a chance?
Blunt: I have no chance. I don’t practice my guitar playing, but I do write. I take those five ideas that I might have in my mind, and I work on them. And in the process of doing that I should hopefully be experimenting, or watching other musicians, or throwing out an idea to members of the band that I tour with and see how they play something. And from that I can actually learn something new myself.
St. James: And you’re not always strumming with a pick, right? Do you do a little bit of fingerpicking?
Blunt: A little bit. Again, those kind of ideas, when you’ve done a lot of one thing, you might say, ‘OK, it’s time to move the other way.’ So I’ve been developing and balancing as I go.
St. James: Well, fingerpicking sometimes takes a bit of extra work, so do you try to fit that in?
Blunt: Not to practice, but if I hear something that I like the sound of, I’ll be repeating it often enough just out of interest and enjoying the sound. And that’ll be practice in itself. So I guess I don’t ever approach it as practice, I just see it as part of the songwriting process and developing an idea. And in doing so, hopefully I’ll turn a skill at the same time.
St. James: Do you plug your acoustic into anything?
Blunt: No I don’t.
St. James: You’ve done a lot of TV appearances lately. What have you learned about performing live on television and getting a good sound?
Blunt: It’s a bit stranger than a gig because you’ve got just one song. So you’re on stage and away you go. And it’s just cameras and no audience. It doesn’t necessarily come very naturally to me.
St. James: How do you feel about the sound you get at these performances?
Blunt: I always use monitors; I never use in-ear monitors. I feel detached when I’m using in-ears.
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St. James: And when you’re playing a regular gig, do you want to hear more vocals in the monitors, or guitars – or half and half?
Blunt: I probably have a little bit more vocal, because the acoustic tends to feed back quite quickly. So I think it’s better to make sure the front of the house doesn’t get affected, so I keep it quite quiet. Which, at times, I can’t even hear it. I have to kind of trust what I’ve been doing.
St. James: What do you do to fight feedback? Do you have one of those feedback busters in the soundhole of your guitar?
Blunt: No, I don’t. I think they’re really bad for sound quality. So I’ve got a double pickup, which has both a pickup and a microphone. It’s a Fishman. I can’t remember the model, but it works really well. It has a stereo output, one output for the pickup and one for the microphone.
St. James: So you run this straight into the PA?
Blunt: Yep. I DI it.
St. James: And what about microphones: Do you ever mike the guitar? Do you have a favorite mike, or a preference? Do you have a preference as to mike placement?
Blunt: I have no knowledge or preference. But if I could mike it, for smaller venues, I would go with that option. At larger venues I’m moving around the stage, so I usually can’t mike the guitar. If it’s me on my own with a microphone, then yeah, I can do that. I’m going to have to go soon because I’m playing on stage very shortly.
St. James: OK James, thanks for your time, and have a great show in Brussels today.
Blunt: Yeah, I’m just going to jump up in front of 6,000 people in the Forest Nacionale.
St. James: All right! Is this a band gig or a solo gig?
Blunt: It’s a band gig.
St. James: Is that what you’re doing mostly these days: band gigs?
Blunt: Yeah, it is. We’re on a nine-month world tour.
St. James: Great. Thank you for your time, and congratulations on the success of the album.
Blunt: Thank you, you’re very kind. Take care.
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Parts of this interview may have previously appeared on or in the following publications: Guitar.com, Musician.com, Guitar World, Guitar Edge, Guitar, Guitar Shop, Guitar World Acoustic, Frets, Bass Player, Maximum Guitar, Los Angeles Daily News, Fender Frontline Magazine, MusiciansFriend.com or any of the other 50 or 60 publications I’ve written for since the mid-’80s. But hey, I wrote it, and this is my archive — Adam
