Talking To Johnny Steinberg
Nic Rigby catches up with Norfolk's adoptee
Americana and folk singer songwriter Johnny Steinberg has been gathering a reputation for finely crafted songs around the country and folk scene. With his first album, produced with The Bible's Boo Hewerdine, already winning praise, Fatea writer Nic Rigby took an opportunity to talk to him in his adopted county of Norfolk.
With fans of his songs including Squeeze songwriter Chris Difford and acclaimed folk singer Karine Polwart, Johnny Steinberg's first album Shadowlands is a work people are already taking notice of.
Despite the depth and craftsmanship of his song, Johnny only started writing in 2011 as austerity bit.
"I was in the process of being made redundant from my long-term job, I was given £1,000 to do some re-training. I had ideas for songs but no clear technique as to how to turn them into the finalised article," he said.
"Luckily, I discovered that two of my song writing heroes, Ray Davies (Kinks) and Chris Difford (Squeeze) took a few budding writers under their wings and ran an intensive mentoring/writing week in an ancient farmhouse in the depths of the Devon countryside so I used my retraining money for that.
"I was surrounded with really amazing people who had been in Travis, Goldfrapp, etc or were the up and coming cohort of artists, so it was a steep learning curve but Chris and Ray were brilliant."
Since then he went on a number of courses including one with the country star Gretchen Peters in Nashville in the US.
Nashville was "turning point" he said, and it is where he started recording him.
He described Shadowland as "an accidental album".
"In 2016 I had only been writing properly for a few years and did not think I was a good enough writer or player to make a record.
"However, I discovered that Blackbird Studios was right around the corner from where I was staying in Nashville and they had a spot available at a bargain price, for the best studios in America.
"So I could only afford two days to do four songs so we had to work fast.
"I didn't do anything with the rough mixes when I got home full of self-doubt, but in 2018 I played some songs to Boo Hewerdine and he said these songs are special you need to get them out there. I said Ok, why don't you produce it? So that's how it started."
Boo helped produce the album with multi-instrumentalist Chris Pepper.
"Boo and Chris go together like peas and carrots," said Johnny.
"They make it all seem so easy but their attention to detail and ability to spot what does and doesn't work is uncanny.
"For example the track Hey Now Pamela was about six minutes long but they did what I thought was impossible and shortened it to three and a half minutes without losing the meaning and including an instrumental break."
One of the stand-out songs of the album is Shadow of a Man.
"I was sitting next to the river at a pub in the lovely city of Norwich in the summer sunshine when a Scots guy sat next to me and we got chatting.
"He had been in the army and told me of a friend of his who committed suicide after returning from Afghanistan. By coincidence that night I watched a documentary about the impact of the war on the mental health of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I ended up doing some fund raising for a charity called Combat Stress that works with veterans who suffer from mental health issues and wrote a performance piece called I Shot a Kid Last Night.
"The song Shadow of a Man stemmed from that. It was a hard song to write but Boo liked the idea of the refrain in the song being exactly the same in each verse but each time meaning something different to the listener."
The song Set Sail and Go was inspired following the death of a friend who "died of a heart in the toilet of our local pub at his birthday party with his friends and family upstairs".
"He never got to follow his dreams. I remember seeing his guitars around his coffin at his funeral. I was moved to tears by the eulogies and words about him. This was the moment I decided I was going to make my dream of becoming a performing songwriter happen."
He said in the song, one of "two characters doesn't get to do that. Maybe it's a plea for people to remember that none of us knows how much sand we have left in that big egg timer in the sky that determines how long we live".
"We need to crack on with things that matter just in case there is less sand than we bargained for," he said.
Johnny said he was in the US when he wrote the song England when he was feeling "a bit homesick and missing England".
He was writing the tune in a piano room in a bar in Nashville when a man walked into the bar.
"The guy says 'Hi. Lovely Tune'.
"He introduced himself as Even Stevens (real name).
"He explained he had written "When You Are in Love with a Beautiful Woman" for Dr Hook on that very piano and had given John and Kathleen (who run the bar) the Steinway to them as a gift.
"Wow. 'Finish that song' Even said 'it's a great tune'."
With the great reception for his first album, Johnny is looking forwards to his second.
"The lockdown has given me more time to explore song writing and I am about to start writing songs for my next music album (songs) and another spoken-word/instrumental album called Edgelands, inspired by the work of Robert MacFarlane.
"I have done one piece for Edgelands so far with the amazing Scots songwriter poet Tom Houston from Dave's New Bike so hope to write another nine or 10 pieces. Fishfingerland and Foreignland are nearly finished."
For the future he added: "I am hoping to go back to America, I miss Hattie B's Fried Chicken and the real beating musical heart of Nashville."
Hey Pamela
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