Talking To... Clive Gregson
Welcome to the 7th of “Talking To” where FATEA editor, Neil King gets to chat to some of the artists that have impressed him through their work and releases. This occasional series continues with an interview with Clive Gregson
I first came across the work of Clive Gregson when he was performing with personal and professional partner, Christine Collister, as well, Gregson And Collister.
I was also aware of the band Any Trouble, but at the time not really interested enough to draw a link between the two, Gregson being a founder member of aforementioned band.
As I became more aware of Clive’s work with artists such as Richard Thompson and Nanci Griffith, both as a songwriter and guitarist, I started checking out a number of his other projects and Any Trouble very quickly bubbled to the surface. Unfortunately getting hold of the Any Trouble material was a bit problematic, involving checking out the second hand market.
That was until earlier this year when Stiff Records re-released the early Any Trouble album, “Where Are All The Nice Girls”. That was followed up by the news that Any Trouble were reforming for a tour and a new album of original material.
In the intervening years, Clive had become one of the few English stars to successfully locate their lives to Nashville and move successfully into the US country scene, again both as writer and guitarist.
A copy of the new Any Trouble album, “Life In Reverse”, found it’s way to me, as did a chance to have a talk to Clive. It had been a few years since we’d last spoken, a Gregson and Collister gig, back at the Cambridge Folk Festival, which dates both him and me, so I snapped up the opportunity to catch up with the man and his music.
#C=Clive Gregson #N=Neil King
#N First question, the obvious one I suppose, why put Any Trouble back together?
#C We’ve had it in mind quite a while. We were hoping to do it in 2005 because that would have been the 25th anniversary of our first record. For various reasons it went on the back boiler. We had an opportunity to do it earlier this year.
We went ahead because we’ve always stayed in touch, always remained friends. It was something that once in a while over the last ten years has just cropped up.
We thought should we, should we not, maybe, maybe not. We made the decision that it was going to be 2005.
Then real life got in the way, so here we are two years later.
#N Does your being based in the US add extra complications with that?
#C We’re all over the place really. One of the band’s in Northampton, one’s in Ramsgate. Martin, the drummer, lives in Portugal and I live in America. It takes a bit of planning to put this stuff together as you can imagine.
#N Rehearsals become a little bit of a problem
#C Well we haven’t had a rehearsal as such. We kinda just blew into it. We’re having our first rehearsal on Friday before the show. The record we rehearsed on the fly really.
#N Do you tend to plan the record or do it more as it comes.
#C Well three of us worked together quite a lot. We tend to work together and play together fairly regularly. We understand each other as we’ve been doing it a long time. Most of March and April on the road with a guy called Denis. Me, Mark and Martin did most of that, then it was just a case of dropping Chris, the guitar player, into the mix once we got into the studio.
Everyone had the demos and had heard the songs so it actually came together very quickly, it was very easy.
#N Was the intention always to go back to Stiff for it or was that just one of those ways that life works out?
#C That’s just how it panned out. We decided that we were going to make the record off our own bat. We thought about putting it out ourselves or doing our own label because music has changed so much and the whole record label thing can be as much of a curse as it is a blessing really.
Then well….The first three records came out on Stiff and we still deal with them on a regular basis, the back catalogue…they’ve just reissued the first album, back in February and we got a really good response for that.
#N Which for me was a bit of a circle closer. When I was younger, I got to play the album and then all these year’s later get to review it. Its well, going off at a bit of a tangent. There’s lots of good albums that you never get to review, because they’re not from a time when you’re doing that sort of thing. A reissue gives you a chance to do that review, praise an album without it looking like some creepy hero worship type thing.
#C An interesting perspective, I see what you mean. Anyway, we were talking to stiff quite regularly as part of that. Pete Gardner, mentioned that they were looking to get the album running again. So I asked if he meant new acts, as we had this project going. So he asked if they could release it, full circle.
#N You’re US based now. What do you get from being based out there, that you can’t get from living in Blighty?
#C Do you live in England ?
#N Yep.