“It’s going fine, actually. Really well.”
Sitting in a busy cafe in his beloved Bude, and pondering my questions over a cup of coffee on a particularly cold winter’s morning, a biting wind blowing in from a feisty grey Atlantic that crashes in and over a beach, deserted apart from a few hardy dog walkers and a couple of brave and hearty surfers, James sounds more experienced, more knowledgable, fresh and reinvigorated by his highly successful European tour supporting the iconic Seasick Steve. He is in something of a philosophical mood in which to reminisce on experiences shared and to now, at last, revel proudly in his brand new album, Good Ground, released on the 7th February.
“The last one,” 2017’s Trespassing Light, “I didn’t really release properly,” he reveals whilst nursing that coffee. “It was recorded in a studio, and it was, ‘Great! Let’s see what we can do’, and it does sound cool,” he says, proud of it, “but it’s unreproducible live on stage. Definitely what you’d call over-produced. It was all new to me. I was jumping into the unknown. And I had worked so long on it… I’d moved on, so…
“With this one though, with Good Ground, “the more I know about the music industry the more I realise how… how fixed it is,” he concludes after careful consideration. “It’s all about buying that ticket to join that club! About winning some sort of weird lottery! Playing the game,” as he puts it succinctly, if somewhat frustratingly.
James Dixon is to be found almost nightly on stages in local venues all over the South West, and particularly in and around Bude, and his is a story that is highly original, almost having written itself: “Local boy makes new album!”, the headlines should read, and it is a good new album, with reminders of early Waterboys, and Johnny Cash, and with more than a passing similarity towards Joe Cocker whilst and Led Zeppelin.
“This album is more about who I am now, especially playing live, whilst trying hard not to make it sound like a ‘live’ recording,” James adds, laughing, “and that was really hard. Some of the tracks I like to completely dial back when I play them, make them feel like they’re being played for the first time, but you can’t do that on an album, as it will just come out sounding like a demo again!”
“When I’m singing the title track I really feel it, I can really lean into the mic and feel it, and slam the guitar as hard as I can! It’s a song to my fiancé… I don’t write many love songs so it’s bit more of a growth song,” he explains, perhaps uncomfortable about the revealing, personal nature of Good Ground?
“I’m a really keen gardener,” he readily admits, “so it’s more about the good ground of my life at the moment… A religious thing,” and in many aspects this theme runs through the album, “If you sow on good ground what you reap will be good, hopefully?”
The album was especially made to take advantage of the recent resurgence in the vinyl format.
“You’re supposed to flip it,” he tells me, loving the idea of people taking it from their deck and physically flipping it over; audience participation, perhaps?
“It works as a C.D., but it just has that vinyl feel!” The listener is supposed to “flip it”, between the tracks Eve Of A Valentine and the searching Corey’s Song.
“The second side is brilliant,” James says proudly, “but that first side, when you sit and listen to it for 22 minutes, it flows, it’s got direction. Probably unlike anything I’ve done before,” he admits.
“Trespassing Light was probably more a compilation, whereas this feels like a naturally progressing story, I guess because of the process of first finding the songs? Lough Erne Shore might be my favourite?” and he ponders a minute on the traditional folk song first heard whilst mowing his lawn some years ago.
“Paul Brady’s version came on and it just hit me,” he explains. “What am I listening to, you know? I had to sit down, I was overwhelmed. I knew I just had to record it for this album… I feel if a song does that to you, you should pay great attention to it!
“It’s not in 4:4, it’s in a totally different time signature, and I almost always play 4:4… It took me a while to get my version right. Just trying to get my version off a solo guitar was hard. I was delighted, am delighted with how it came out.”
One of my favourite tracks from the album, Clyde’s Water is, as James explains, a traditional Scottish ballad, sometimes known as Drowned Lovers, and again lots of versions exist, although he decided to leave out the third verse where the doomed lovers in question, Willie and May Margaret drown. Along with the track Regardless of Ability, Clyde’s Water was recorded at St. Swithin’s Church in nearby Launcells, the atmospheric ambience lending itself perfectly to this story of doomed love.
“There’s no extra layering on it, or to it,” James tells me, “and they were both good enough, from that performance, on that day, to go straight on the record.
“Every Saint Every Sinner I played through once. It just flowed perfectly, and that first performance is on the album. It falls over itself,” he adds. “It falls over itself over the bridge part and stumbles over itself to get back to the last section, because I don’t know where it’s going, which was great fun,” he insists. “It’s completely out of control, but I like that, it’s natural, like we talked about before. It reminds me of Zeppelin’s, Black Country Woman,” when songs weren’t purposely airbrushed to someone’s idea of manufactured perfection.
“Like Cornwall My Home,” the album’s perfect closing track, and a song that sums up James’ music, even if he was unsure of it to begin with.
“My guitar’s out of tune and my vocal is terrible, maybe the worst I have ever sung?” But now he can laugh about it, albeit a nervous laugh, and he seems reassured when I tell him that I really like it, honestly! I like the way it’s intimacy brings Good Ground to its conclusion: the participation of the audience, and with that endearing feeling towards this place he calls home.
It was recorded, almost as an after-thought: “at the end of a very, very long day recording things to go on my You Tube channel,” James reveals. “I took the guys on the record to The Barrel to do the Open Mic Night, and at the end I am absolutely shattered, you know? ‘Guys, let’s just do this thing and go home’,” he laughs. “And it’s the second take we got,” he adds, almost incredulously. “Despite everything, the technical side of it and whatever, we got to the end of it. Just a pub full of people who love each other, just singing of those they love, of a place they love.”
Maybe he was just too close too it, as well as being shattered, but Cornwall My Home really is the perfect final act: a homage to the wild Atlantic ocean and the rugged, jutting coastline.
“It’s that last verse and chorus, where everything gets lifted. You get to the end… feeling like, Yeah, actually this really works.”
So, what of the successful European tour with Seasick Steve, and playing nightly to large expectant crowds all over Europe?
“Steve said that I was the best support act he’d ever had!” And James looks every part the traditional folk singer who’s reputation is rapidly spreading. Was he always into the Blues?
“Not really. I got given stuff like Led Zeppelin and Queen, Bob Dylan and Hendrix… And Genesis,” he recalls with a smile, “but I couldn’t get into that, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and all that… Maybe one day, you know,” he laughs.
“I really like iconic performers. People like Jeff Buckley, Neil Young, all the solo Blues guys. People who are technically brilliant but are just marrying who they are, what they perceive and see. And how they become more than the guitar they pick up. They become something brilliant!” he says, still with that sense of star-struck awe.
So, is that why he’s a solo artist? Happier when performing with just his guitar?
“I love what I do but I struggle sometimes to motivate myself… I’m not a great man-manager,” he admits. “If I get to the point where my finances stack up enough for me to employ professional musicians then great, but at the moment it suits me… And it’s all I know,” he adds.
“When I’m playing gigs now I’m increasingly using feet percussion kit: I sit on a bass drum with a pedal, and a tambourine on my left foot. I like performing like that, it’s freeing. It gets you closer to the audience. It’s more intimate.”
Good Ground was released on 7th February
