The Interview
Who inspired you to make music?
I genuinely do not know anymore, I come from a background where everyone either had an interest in music or made music, so I suppose it was inevitable. I have made very little music of my own in the last few months. I have been busy helping others make theirs. I am currently producing the new Fades records so helping them achieve their goal is my current inspiration.
What or who inspired you to "I hate shop"?
Hmmmm, that’s a strange question. What you hear in the words of a song I have written is always something that is true, something that either happened or was doing battle in my head. I am almost embarrassed about this song as it reflected my brief sojourn into the world of retail employment when my, till that point, successful career as a musician came to an abrupt halt. It sounds like a petulant child ranting but more than anything I think it’s about being a fish out of water. I thought I’d be great at that job and I wasn’t. I was cynical and miserable but it was worth working there for 2 years to be able to get a song out of it.
What is your creative process like?
Pure happiness. There is nowhere I would rather be and nothing I would rather be doing. I am constantly trying to find a way of scamming the Protestant work ethic to find away of supporting myself so I can spend as much time as possible in a windowless room with a bunch of microphones , a few instruments and a recorder of some description.
Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Gosh, I don’t know. I think most the people I would like to collaborate with are either out of my league or dead. Or dead and out of my league. Wendy Carlos or Harry Escott perhaps. But I do not know what I would have to offer them. Hey, I’d be happy just to tape-op or make tea or fetch sandwiches.
What is the most useful talent you have?
By the looks of this interview self deprecation.
...and of course your most useless talent is?
The list is endless. Where would you like me to start? Organisation of my personal life and my professional life for that matter. Avoiding things that involved a lot of maths & accounting. Getting out of bed when the alarm goes off. Do you really want to know this stuff? Is this like a job interview when I should have said “If I have a failing it’s that I’m a perfectionist?” If so, did I get the job? What does it pay? Can I have the day off a week on Thursday?
If you could change anything in the past, what would it be?
There are lots of things I would have done differently, certain people I would have told to go away a lot sooner and I perhaps would have made a few more brave decisions or leaps of faith. But this is life and it’s not perfect. You can’t go back so I’m not going to think on it any further. I’m going to carry on as I am and see if I can get it right in the end.
If I don’t get it right? Doesn’t really matter, does it?
How do you feel the Internet (especially Social Media platforms) has impacted the music business?
I do not care for the music business, it has nothing to do with me. I work in music in every aspect of my day to day life but my contact with what I perceive to be the “music business” is thankfully quite limited. In terms of the Internet as a tool for the creatives, I do not think there is anything I can add that has not been added before by somebody with far greater insight than I. The fact that you can send your music around the world at the touch of a button is still pretty amazing.
I think Bandcamp is a great thing and I would hope that develops it’s reach a little further and that their model survives or mutates into something where musicians can sustain themselves adequately. Social media platforms are an ever changing universe, I’m on all the things I am told I should be on. It’s all different channels of communication and communication is good…isn’t it?
Stephen EvEns is...?
Your friendly local songwriter. He is here to entertain you, be that with a kick-ass pop group behind him at a rock venue or in a damp basement with his casiotone and beaten up old electric guitar. He does not know how best to promote what he does, but he does pay great care and attention to crafting his music so that it may be pleasing to your ears. So if you enjoy what you have heard, please explore further and please tell your friends. Stephen EvEns will now stop talking in the third person.
What’s next for you?
Just before lockdown we met up with Steve Albini in France and recorded a handful of songs that have become a mini-album called “Smoking Is Cool”. 3 of us went over and recorded for a couple of days and enjoyed some wonderful French repast and countryside. We are doing 50 copies of this on clear vinyl only, each with a different colour combination sleeve. It won’t be available digitally for the foreseeable. A little experiment to see what happens to this little collection with a tongue in cheek controversial title on an obscure format when we release it into the wild. Be nice to see if there are 50 people who like my noise enough to have something that only they will be privy to. Not sure when that will be out but definitely this year and probably only through Bandcamp.
After that the follow up/3rd album proper “Here Come The Lights” is to be released. Haven’t got a clue when as I still have a few more mixes to do and I need to capture a vocal performance from an elusive character….but it has to be them so I can’t finish it until I entice them up for a recording hour.
Got a couple of shows coming up too; 31st Just, The Rossi Bar, Brighton and 1st August The Windmill, Brixton, London both with The Scaramanga Six
