The Beat Surrender

In the last issue Smartie reviewed an album by (for now at least) little known singer-songwriter David Bradley, she was so taken with the album that we sent her along for a quick chat with the man himself to find out a little bit more about the man behind the music.

What pushed you to give up your career for the unstable life of a musician?

The song Tumble Town came about from a big open air concert we did out in Kazakhstan. We drove into an old run down town. The local people we passed on the way in look on at us like.. like we were from another planet. You could see in their stand-off manner that they were not comfortable with us, we erected a big stage in the centre of town, to crowds of curious onlookers. By the time we did a quick sound check there must have been a couple of thousand people, mainly kids sitting watching, mouths open. We jumped into the bus, shot back to our digs to get washed and changed. When we tried to get back to the stage we couldn’t get anywhere near it for people. We abandoned the bus, grabbed our instruments and pushed our way through the crowd. 20,000 people had shed their caution. We played our hearts out and they partied so hard. I felt that night that we’d really made a difference. We turned the lights on half way through. I grabbed my camera and took 3 photos, left, middle and right. And that was the moment I knew this is was I wanted to do. Now the odd times I get despondent, and think it’s maybe not worth the knocks, I get those 3 photos out.. It’s all worth it again.

As an artist, what do you think about how technology like mobile ringtones, iPods, video iPods, etc. makes music so portable and easily transferred.

As an artist, lol. I’m still a person and a music lover. I try to do the right thing and buy all my music legit. I’ve never really got into downloading ringtones but I can’t be without my iPod. I think it’s a great, if you want to make loads of money… rob a bank or get off you’re a*se and graft. If you want to make music, get it to as many people as you can and hopefully bring love, light, support, advice, strength, inspiration.. whatever, to as many people as possible then all this new technology is great. It’s not the money industry is it? It’s still the Music Industry as far as I know.

How does your song writing process work?

Normally a tag line, an idea. Sometimes it’s something someone says, sometimes it just a line rolling round in my head. Eventually I roll it into the creative bit of the grey sponge. Sometimes words just stick to it, ideas start to flow.

I read an interview once (can’t remember who with) but they said that many of the songs they wrote may have seemed autobiographical and were written in the first-person but were actually based more on a concept or a feeling than on events in there personal life. Your songs seem to have a personal tone… how much of your music is autobiographical, and how much is just sort of “fictional” song writing??

99.9% is biographical or autobiographical. I can only write about something I’ve lived for the lyrics to mean anything at all to me. Trying To Get Home was written together with a good mate of mine who was guitarist in an early band. He was breaking up with his wife, it’s his story so it’s not autobiographical but I lived that piece of his life with him. When I sing the words I remember the day we sat in a wooden hut in Kazakhstan together with a guitar and a laptop and it all came out. Life On A Dirt Road, is about a soldier fighting in a war, which thankfully I’ve never done. I was lying in a bath in Siberia. I’d read an article about the guys and girls coming home and struggling to re-integrate back into society after all they had been through. I’ve always worked away from home, so I know what it’s like to be miles away from home, sometimes in dangerous situations. The rest of the album is me, being away from home. Your last morning at home, you’re lying in a warm bed next to a warm body watching the clock tick round until that cab arrives to take you away, somewhere you don’t want to be, sometimes you don’t even know where you’re going. The emotions that brings is strong enough to make me write. Conversely I worked one job at home, in my capital city, and I felt so out of place, so caught in the rat race, I realized I had changed. I was more used to living in the middle of a Siberian oil field than the big city and the people in it drove me crazy. Urban Refugee was born.

Are the personal lyrics at all uncomfortable for you? Or is it more cathartic for you to just get those emotions out into a song?

They used to be, and its not the fact that millions may listen to it. The worst part is introducing it to the band for the first time. For me that was 5 people, in the world. Once I realized that those 5 people listened to the words and sang along with me, then everything else was easy. I didn’t buy the ‘let the song go, de-personalise yourself with the lyrics’ theory. When I’m singing them they must mean everything to me, as they did the day they came out.

Do you ever find yourself censoring what you put into a song, or is pretty much anything fair game? Are your family/friends/girlfriend ever unhappy with their portrayal in your songs?

What a question! No I don’t censor. Songs are very personal and yeah I’ve had the odd comment. But they’re my words, it’s me standing on the stage opening my life to strangers. Family/friends and girlfriends are not in the spotlight. So if I can handle the… nakedness of pouring my heart out, then they will have to also.

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