Project Description
WILLIAM CRIGHTON
Smith’s Alternative
30/04/19
+ Interview with
WILLIAM CRIGHTON
JASON WALKER
BEANS ON TOAST
Reviewer – Benjamin Smith
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William Crighton is an artist whose time has come. It’s been a phenomenal year since the release of sophomore album The Empire, concluding with a tour supporting Lukas Nelson and the Promise of the Real and his very first solo tour, without the security of the full band that usually accompany him onstage.
On April 30 he played Smith’s Alternative in the heart of Canberra, as he has done several times before. This time accompanied by two support acts, Jason Walker and Beans on Toast. Walker opens the show and sets something of a sombre tone with the extraordinarily frank admissions about a recent stroke, an attempted suicide and the death of his father. Rather than alienating the audience, however, the artist’s willingness to lay bare his own vulnerabilities endeared him to the room and created a sense of intimacy that might otherwise have been impossible to manufacture.
When he is replaced by Jay McAllister better known as Beans on Toast, or Beano, things take a lighter turn. He’s a man who lives for the affirmation an audience provides and on this, his first Australian tour, he is clearly enjoying immersing himself in all things Australian.
When Crighton begins, he does so as he’s wont to do of late- acapella and unmiked, singing the revenge murder ballad, Priest. As is always the case with shows like this at Smith’s, the pokey, rambling, curio feel of the place makes for an intimacy which brings the performer and the audience together in an almost conspiratorial way. As he has also been doing a bit of late, Crighton plays with an old tin Gretsch resonator that might be the most beat up guitar in the world still functioning as a working instrument. It has dents and scratches and looks as if it might once have been blue, but the bulk of that colouring has long since chipped off. Crighton’s fans are taken with him and many seem to know the words to everything he plays. Some call and response where the audience are invited to vent frustrations with repeated chants of “I want my money back” and then invited to reflect a little more positively with the refrain “the meaning of life is happiness” bring in the last few who might not have been overly familiar with his work. At the end of the set Beans and Walker join him onstage for a Neil Young cover and the room fills with the kind of joy that can only exist inside the rarefied air of shared experience.
I sat down with William at his hotel the morning after the show and was joined by both Beano and Jason Walker to talk about the show, touring, recording in general and anything else that came up.
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AMN: how did you guys think the show went last night?
WC: I thought it went well you know? I enjoyed it very much for a Tuesday night in Canberra. Everyone seemed to be into it.
BoT: Yeah, I loved it. It was one of the highlights of the tour for me.
WC: totally.
BoT: Nice room, lovely atmosphere. It really bought the best out of all three acts.
WC: It did. Everyone really performed well last night
AMN: It can be sometimes hard to get a crowd in Canberra and it can also be hard to get some interaction from what are known to be very polite, sometimes slightly staid audiences.
BoT: I think that’s kind of essential for the gigs we’ve been on. The people and the communication between.
AMN: Having Jason open the show and his willingness to be so open about some of his personal struggles was an extraordinary way to build a sense of community in the room right from the beginning was really important to overcoming some of those barriers that can exist.
WC: I think the interesting thing about that is that, as Jay mentioned before, honesty is free. With the three of us, the pillar of our art is honesty; honesty about what we say, honesty about what we feel. I think it always cuts straight to the bone when somebody is honest not matter how dark its perceived as being. It’s like throwing a lifeline to somebody else in the audience, because you’re human and everyone goes through similar things and similar emotions and similar struggles. And Jason is a wonderful artist. He’s been around for a long time and he’s got four albums out and he’s continually evolving. He’ll be around for a lot longer yet.
I take this opportunity to ask William about the old Gretsch resonator, keen to get some sense of the history of the instrument and how it happened to come into his possession. He laughs to himself and says:
WC: The resonator? Well… I can’t tell you. It’s a secret. Everyone always asks me about it and it has suffered some blows but it’s one of those things that I can’t get into because… well its got me out of some trouble and its gotten some other people out of some trouble. But that’s all I can say.
AMN: maybe that’s a question for the next interview (this will be AMNplify’s fourth interview with Crighton in as many years). But thinking about the Lukas Nelson tour, I was struck by the fact that he came out and played with you during your set. It isn’t that unusual for a headliner to call the support out to do a few numbers, but to join the opening act is a pretty rare move for a headliner. Is that a testament to the relationship that you have with Lukas and his band, Promise of the Real?
WC: I would say it’s a testament to his openness as well; his openness as a performer. He’s a very honest, very giving fella. We got along very well from the moment we met. But he’s not a dude with a huge ego or anything like that, who puts himself above everybody else. I think I can be confident in speaking for him when I say that the general ethos around his whole thing, and my whole thing with my band, is that we’re all in this together. Everybody’s in it together. It was an absolute honour for me having him on stage, it felt like having another brother up there. It was pretty natural. I guess I didn’t get caught up in the hierarchy of it too much cos it felt very natural when it was happening.
AMN: Continuing on with that for just a moment, I know what a huge Neil Young fan you are. Was there a bit of pressure that comes from knowing that you’re on stage playing with Neil Young’s band?
WC: Well when you say that, those words, it adds a weight bigger than there is actually doing it. When he first asked me to do it, yeah I was excited, because I love Neil Young and I love those guys and they plat with Neil and I was like “fuck, I’m doing a Neil Young song with Neil Young’ band.” And Neil’s presence lives with those guys and you can tell straight away that they’ve been around someone of that greatness, by how open and how humble they are. Everyone in the crew and band were all completely humble and they’re all just really good people and so, that affected me and it just felt natural getting out on stage with them. It felt like we’d been doing it for ages. But I was a little bit nervous because you know, you’re playing Rocking in the Free World with Neil Young’s band. But it didn’t feel like the last time, playing with those guys.
AMN: You’re building a pretty good network of artists and musicians that you’ve played with over the last few years. Do you consider them to have passed through and let them go or do you think of it more as collecting a network of colleagues upon whom you can call for collaboration?
WC: I see them as more friends and brother and sisters than professional partners. Obviously, there’s that element of that, we all exist within those parameters to some degree. But I think that with Jay and Terra (Lightfoot, with whom Crighton has toured both Australia and Canada) and Lukas we’re all in it together and we’re doing it, so its building a team so now I know Jay, and it felt like we’d known each other for quite a while and it was the same with Lukas and with Terra. So, its about building a community of like-minded people.
BoT: I think its almost like a right of passage for musicians as well. Everyone gets help along the way and in turn everyone helps new musicians out along the way.
WC: ‘Cos there only ever is along the way. There is no destination. We’re all just along the way, accumulating community along this journey. We’re helping each other through.
AMN-Beano, I know this is your first tour in Australia. How are you finding it and are there any differences that you’ve noticed between here and performing in Europe?
BoT- In some ways its exactly the same. Once you get up on stage and start a gig…I’ve been doing it so long that once I get up there it always feels like home. But its also very different but culture and climate and history. I think the history of Australia seems more understood. People are more aware of it than ever. I don’t want to talk too much about it and come across as ignorant but, people doing the indigenous acknowledgment of country is fascinating. We don’t have anything like that before gigs at home
AMN (to Jason)- We were talking about how those very personal admissions that you made throughout your set working as something of a bonding agent, really bringing the audience together as a room. Is there some trepidation when you’re thinking about discussing those things on stage? As it happens, they were remarkably well received, but is there a moment of hesitation when you aren’t certain they will be?
JW- yeah, I’m definitely trepidatious about the process because over the last 25 years I’ve been pretty uncomfortable with audiences and so I’ve tried to erect these barriers a bit… not in any conscious way, but I’ve noticed now that I used to do that. Now that I’m forced to communicate that I’ve had a stroke as a way of explaining to people why I’m playing songs the way I am. The first time I did a gig was about four weeks after I had a stroke, I completely lost my nerve, but I felt the need to explain what was happening. I told them I’d has a stroke and I’ve lost my memory and my songs just aren’t happening anymore. So now I’ve been forced to communicate that to people to make myself feel comfortable, which I always a good reason to do anything, but the amazing thing is that it also makes them feel really comfortable with me. They come up and talk to me now in a completely new way.
AMN-Will, you play with your family a lot, your wife Julieanne being in the band. Do you play the song Julieanne when she is on stage with you and if so is there anything unusual about playing a song with the person you wrote it about standing a few feet away from you onstage?
WC – Yeah, I play it when she’s with me. She generally isn’t on stage when I play it, I usually play that when the band go off and I do a solo thing. She usually gets a bit… not embarrassed, but Jules doesn’t like all the attention. She likes to fly under the radar, which is funny because as soon as she gets out there everyone looks at her. But that song, Beano and I were talking about it because we both have songs about our wives, about our connection with our wives. But when you’re on the road and you’re away from the person you love like that, its almost like you’re keying in to that connection every time you play that song. Making a direct beeline to that person. Its interesting how that works.
BoT- My wife gets quite eye-rolly about the whole thing. She’s heard it so many times and been to so many gigs. And also, because people turn around looking for her whenever I play it, like “Lizzy’s here!”
AMN- Will you were saying that Julieann wrote some of the lyrics on the last record, Empire. Are you still collaborating in that same way? Is she still part of that creative process?
WC- Absolutely, we’re all still playing and working and writing and being creative together. My brother and Jules and I think that’ll always be the case. I write with Jules like I write with no one else. There’s an honesty there, there’s no garbage.
AMN- what are you working on at the moment? Is there a new record in the works?
WC- I’m just gradually writing and accumulating material and then once it starts to congeal and become something then it’ll become a record eventually, but for now I’m just seeing what comes out.
AMN- A lot of people talk about that 3rdalbum being a problem because by that stage you’ve spent a lot of time on the road and all your experiences have been associated with the road. Some people say that the road is great fodder for song writing, but a lot say that the distance from reality and from the more human side of life can be very challenging creatively. There are a lot of albums all about “the road” and they are not all completely successful artistically.
WC- I see everything goes into everything. So its more about just being open to the experience that you’re having in the present. And you’ll always have a human experience, because there’s always humans around you. If you take the time to interact with people and with the environment around you, you’re going to absorb stuff and you’ll have plenty to write about. You have no choice, its going to be real. You have no choice if you’re open to it. If you close yourself off then, I don’t know, maybe you don’t.
BoT- The travel is always going to be inspirational. It doesn’t need to be singing about gigs it cane be about the things in between. I’m working an album 11, so album 3 seems like a long time ago. There’s always stuff to write about. It doesn’t need to be all about touring, but the odd song about the road is fine but a lot of people can’t relate to that. We all have families outside that, and people can relate to that and just because you’re touring doesn’t mean you forget about what’s going on at home. You know, you might fall over and hurt your leg or whatever. Real life happens to you all the time and that’s where the songs come from.
AMN- so for you Beano, being on album 11, does that mean you’re no longer worried about the process because you always know you have an album in you, like if you make 11 records, you know you’ll never go blank?
BoT- yeah, and I’ve been releasing the records one a year, and it feels like my natural output. There’s no pressure to do that and if I didn’t have an album in me, I wouldn’t release one. It’s just what I do, it’s worked out that way and I’ve booked the studio for September. I have about 6 or 7 songs and I know by then I’ll have six or seven more. You can write a song about anything.
AMN- and how about the book? (in May of 2018 Beans on Toast released a collection of tales from around the globe called Drunk Folk Stories) How did that come about?
BoT- I was travelling in Germany by myself for about 3 or 4 hours a day on the train and I just needed a project to get stuck in to basically, so I didn’t get lonely. I’d been telling the stories on stage for years basically or down the pub or to mates and I just thought about writing them down. I found putting them down on paper quite easy really because it wasn’t like writing a song, I wasn’t coming up with anything new. I already knew the words and it was just like telling them out loud. Once I got about half way through I thought I’ve got something here. I self-published it and it did really well cos it’s something different. Historically touring musicians made a living selling CDs, that’s how I started out. But as gradually cds have started to decline its nice to have something that costs a tenner that durable and that you can carry around en masse. I learned a lot from the book, especially from self-publishing. There was no middle man involved in the book and I realised that sometimes that’s the best way.
AMN- I’ve noticed Will that you often start your sets now with an unmiked acapella number. That’s a reasonably manageable thing in a tiny intimate space like Smith’s, but in a room like The Factory, which is a huge space and when its full sound like that can easily get lost. Your voice doesn’t, but is there a reason you’ve been starting shows like that? Is it the feeling of intensity it creates that you’re looking for there?
WC- I start the shows differently a lot, and it isn’t always Priest that I start with, and that’s the tone I’m looking to set at the start of the show. I love there not being anything between me and the audience in that sense. It also gets me into the mood of the whole thing. I remember we were at the Forum theatre in Melbourne. I did that song off mike and everybody could hear me but then I got to the chorus and my voice broke and I was about 6 feet from the mike and I remember trying to hit the higher notes…my voice was just… but that’s what I like about it, you know? Not one of my shows will ever be the same and I just like being on that trail and keeping it fresh because otherwise I get complacent and I don’t take risks and that probably means is going to be a boring show.
AMN- Is that also the thinking between introducing some newer elements into the show as well? I’ve noticed that you’ve started playing with keys on stage which I’d never seen you do until recently.
WC- I’m just trying to get better at it, trying to explore and hear new things. You can hear different things on a piano or when you do things acapella. Just a different space to let the song exist in and it keeps me on the edge because I’m still getting my head around the piano. When I was a kid, I played the piano a bit. I remember getting up at church and playing with the organ. Not for the congregation, just afterwards and the lady let me get up and have a tinkle. My dad always had a piano and I played that, but then I didn’t play for years and then in the last 18 months or so I’ve been getting back into it.
AMN- so what next? You’ve got a bit to go on this tour and then what’s on the horizon after that?
WC- this tour will see us through until mid-May. We’ll go down to Victoria and then up to Queensland, and then northern NSW. And then after that I’m off to the UK and then Canada and then
Europe and then home for a few shows at the end of the year and then working on the 3rdalbum.
BoT- I get straight back from this tour and then tap into the UK festival season, which is where I come from, really. So, I think I’ve got, maybe, 29 festivals this summer. Generally, 2 or 3 a weekend which’ll take me through to September, when I’ll go into the studio.
JW- My band recorded an album at the beginning of the year, doing the last tracks for the songs and we’re going to release that which we had a gofundme campaign to raise some money to get it mastered, which was the first time I’d ever used a crowdfunding platform. It actually worked really well and we raised more money than we initially needed, which is really great. And we’ll be touring that record which we’ll release digitally. I come from an old school world where we used to release everything physically, so I’m getting used to that new paradigm.
BoT- the streaming sites are great because they open up opportunities for promotion way beyond anything else that ever existed really, most people who come to my gigs have solely heard of me through Spotify because its suggested it. I think that a lot of the old industry are stuck to the old paradigm and they’re still trying to take their piece of the pie and there probably isn’t enough for that, but the audience now is so much bigger and you can release anything at the drop of the button so it balances it out. The future is in playlisting, which takes a bit away from the album, but the format of the album which is guided ultimately by the physical constraints of what could fit on vinyl and that time frame of about 45 minutes still survives, even though there’s no longer any real reason to be bound by that. In the digital world people are still making albums of about 45 minutes to an hour and there seems to be something special about that, something that works.
AMN- well thank you very much for taking time out of your morning when I know you’re got to get on the road and get to Melbourne tonight. Good luck with the rest of the tour. We can’t wait to see where the music takes you all next.
WC, BoT, JW- thank you, thanks a lot.
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