Sitting in a busy cafe in his beloved Bude, and pondering questions over a cup of coffee, singer-songwriter James Dixon sounds more experienced, more knowledgable, and surprisingly fresh and reinvigorated from his highly successful European tour supporting Seasick Steve, writes Simon Gale.
“Steve said that I was the best support act he’d ever had!” he reveals, looking every part the folk singer who’s reputation is rapidly spreading. Now, he is ready to talk about his new album, Good Ground, reminiscent of early Waterboys, and Johnny Cash, and with a passing similarity towards Led Zeppelin.
Available to download and buy on CD or Vinyl, the south-west’s rising star of folk music is quite rightly proud of his new offering, a perfect blend of Folk, Blues and traditional Country, with self-penned tracks paying homage to his fiancé and this beautiful, rugged part of Cornwall, sitting alongside endearingly crafted covers of traditional classics.
“This album is more about who I am now, especially playing live, whilst trying hard not to make it sound like a ‘live’ recording, 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. I’m a keen gardener, so it’s more about the good ground of my life at the moment. It’s also a religious thing: 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 adds, loving the idea of people taking it from their deck and physically flipping it over. “It works as a C.D. but it just has that vinyl feel.”
“The second side is brilliant, 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. It feels like a naturally progressing story, I guess because of the process of finding the songs? Lough Erne Shore might be my favourite.”
After pondering a minute on the traditional folk song he first heard whilst mowing his lawn years ago, James adds: “Paul Brady’s version came on and it just hit me. 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 took me a while to get my version right, 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 song’s doomed lovers drown. Along with the track Regardless of Ability, Clyde’s Water was recorded at St. Swithin’s Church in Launcells, and the atmospheric ambience lends itself perfectly to this story of doomed love.
“There’s no extra layering on it, or to it, 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 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.
“It’s completely out of control, but I like that, it’s natural. It reminds me of Zeppelin’s, Black Country Woman,” when songs weren’t airbrushed to someone’s idea of manufactured perfection, encouraging those emotions of vulnerability. Like Cornwall My Home, the album’s intimate conclusion, is a song Dixon was unsure of at first.
“Even when I was choosing the songs to go on the album I was thinking, that’s not going anywhere near this record. My guitar’s out of tune and my vocal is terrible, maybe the worst I have ever sung?” It was almost an after-thought: “at the end of a very, very long day recording things to go on my YouTube channel.”
“I took the guys on the record to The Barrel, to their 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. “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… singing of a place they love.”
Maybe he was too close too it but Cornwall My Home is the perfect final act, a homage to the wild Atlantic and the rugged coastline. “It’s that last verse and chorus, where everything gets lifted. You get to the end… feeling like, Yeah, actually this really works.”
Was he always into the Blues?
“Not really. I got given stuff like Led Zeppelin and Queen, Bob Dylan and Hendrix… And Genesis,” he remembers, “but I couldn’t get into that, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and all that… I really like iconic performers. People who are technically brilliant but are just marrying who they are, what they perceive and see… how they become more than the guitar they pick up… something brilliant!” he says, still with that star-struck awe.
So, is that why he’s a solo artist?
“I love what I do but I struggle sometimes to motivate myself… I’m not a great man-manager. 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 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.”