All Maps Welcome

An extract from my work-in-progress memoir, on the day I release All Maps Welcome for the first time on vinyl.

“Tip the world on its side and everything loose will end up in Los Angeles”.

 In 2004 many things in my life felt loose, not least my grip on my sanity. I knew the Frank Lloyd Wright quote long before I, too, found myself sliding towards the west coast of America.

My first two albums had come and gone in a blur; the world remained unmoved. I could feel the pressure from the label to write some hits. To write a hit. I wasn’t interested. The relationship was strained.

The best plan I could come up with was to run thousands of miles away and make a record, hidden from prying eyes and judgmental ears. I meant to go to New York. I ended up in LA. The direct route has never appealed. Sony knew it. I knew it. 

There was a storm brewing in the clear blue skies of California.

 My first experience of LA was on one of the many promo trips for my debut album. In those days, before the internet took the maverick thrill of musical discovery and reduced it to brutal data, labels sent acts to play to anyone and everyone, at any level of the business. The theory being that in an already crowded market, the personal touch could give you an edge. It was like running for office.

One day you’d be playing to L.A Reid or Clive Davis in some plush board room fifty floors up in Manhattan, the next you’d be serving pizza to tired packers at a CD shipping plant in Sacramento. I got used to singing to rapidly emptying canteens.

The next time I touched down in LA I was on tour, opening for The Waterboys in 2001, shortly after 9/11. We played the El Rey theatre, and due to technical difficulties (a monitor engineer who felt doing sound for the support act was beneath him) I leapt off stage, followed more carefully by Oli, cradling his cello.

We walked down the aisle into the middle of the auditorium and played unplugged to a suddenly silent room. A few people edged closer from the back, some came and sat at our feet. When the last cello note of Language of Fools faded (which it did rapidly in that plush theatre) the crowd went crazy. It felt like a moment. Something to learn from.

After the show, Erika, one of the hardworking promo team in LA, took us on a late night drive around town, to a cocktail bar in Los Feliz. Something about the post-gig buzz, the excitement of playing in the states (a feeling I’ve never lost) and the boho chic of East Hollywood must have sparked an idea in me. Maybe I could record an album here?

Erika drove us back to Sunset strip, to our hotel, and by the time we arrived I’d made up my mind. It took three years — and an album in between — but I would eventually make the idea a reality.

Somehow, after the commercial failure of my second album, I’d persuaded the label that making a record in LA would produce the hits they were hoping for. Maybe the sun, ridiculous blue skies, and relentless upbeat nature of the place would inspire a sea change in me, and somehow summon up the radio songs everyone kept telling me I needed

Perhaps, in order for them to foot the bill, I’d been guilty of letting them think that in California I’d be more Dennis Wilson, and less Denis Nilsen. Whether they believed me or not, there was still the feeling I was rapidly running out of road, and that like the pioneers of the wild west, once I hit the Californian coast I’d realise there was nowhere left to go. Next stop the Pacific Ocean.

* * *

This is a brief extract from my work-in-progress memoir, a chapter that details the making of All Maps Welcome, my years in LA, the Hotel Cafe scene, and my general attempt to set my life on fire and make poetry from the ash… apologies, Leonard.

I’m posting it here now as I’ve just released the album on vinyl. Sony refused at the time.  Also worth noting—or not— is that I was only allowed to finish the album if I tried to write some radio songs. Those songs were Packing For The Crash and Only Thing I Know. 

The latter I refused to allow on the album, the former I was told I could “take the master tapes and throw them in the ocean” if I didn’t include it. I reluctantly agreed—never having been good at upbeat songs—but the record ended up in bargain bins on the day of release anyway. To be fair to Sony they had promised me this would happen. In this instance, they kept their word.

For this LP release of the album I have removed Packing For The Crash, to preserve the audio quality of the vinyl,  and perhaps also for artistic reasons. But looking back now, I was too precious about everything. The record was made album of the week on BBC Radio 2 — a big deal at the time— I recorded the show with DJ Simon Mayo, and for a second I felt slightly vindicated in my approach.

News came before the show aired that my album had been dropped in favour of my friend, KT Tunstall’s second album. After all, she had actual radio songs. A few months later, the MD of Sony invited me to his office and said he would give me one more chance. He handed me £120 in cash and told me to go to HMV and buy the top ten albums, figure out why they were successful, and copy them. I took the money, went to the store and bought The West Wing, Seasons 1-7 on DVD. I never made another album for Sony.)