“When I started making records,” David Ford grins, “I said I wanted to them to be emotionally fraught processes, like I’d survived a war. Now I can safely say, I want to make a really easy one!” And he grins again. Or was that a grimace?
Nobody said it was going to be easy but nothing ventured, nothing gained. Songs For The Road (out March 2008 on Original Signal Recordings), Ford’s successor to his 2006 debut I Sincerely Apologise For All The Trouble I’ve Caused (Columbia), is so good it’s worth all the pain. It’s another deftly contained nine-song package, short in time (running at 37 minutes) but epic in content. All human emotions are here – fear and loathing, love and loneliness, anxiety and release – creating a record radiating resilience and hope even if it ends with “probably the saddest song I’ve ever written.”
“Shit happens but if it doesn’t kill you, get up and keep moving forward.” That’s how Ford sees it, and this struggle informs both his ongoing troubadour-style existence and the process of knocking Songs For The Road into shape. He sculpted I Sincerely Apologise… in the cellar of his Sussex flat over a period of 18 months. Upon its release, the album was critically lauded across the board for its utterly persuasive tunes, searing honesty, occasional politico-social protest (“State Of The Union”), and generous dose of self-lacerating wit: “Cheer Up (You Miserable Fuck)” wasn’t just a contender for song title of the year, but an emotion we can all identify with – but may not like to admit.
Following the release of I Sincerely Apologise…, Ford toured Britain, Australia, Canada, and America for most of 2005 and 2006. He ventured forth with tour-de-force performances of defiant melodies and words, equipped only with guitars and a loop-generating machine to build up layers beneath him as if a whole charged band was backing him, unseen in the wings.
His experience of playing American shows was especially poignant. He played SXSW four times in March 2006, during which he was asked by Elliot Roberts (Neil Young’s long-standing manager) for another copy of the album “for Neil;” after his NYC debut, Ford was invited by Springsteen’s manager to the Boss’ own rehearsal room; and, following an East coast tour with KT Tunstall, he was invited by Robert de Niro to play his Tribeca Film Festival launch party alongside Elvis Costello and New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint.
After a four-week stint with Gomez, Ford made his television debut on NBC’s nationwide show Last Call with Carson Daly and taped a tong song performance. More sold out shows and an appearance at the prestigious Bonnaroo Festival followed, as did dates in Australia and again in North America. At Canada’s first V Festival, the Toronto Star described Ford as, “sounding like a hurricane in a nursery…we witnessed the greatest performance of the whole weekend.” After tours with Aimee Mann and Ray Lamontagne, Ford’s second song aired on an episode of Carson Daly, debuting a tune called “Song For the Road” to immediate acclaim from the viewers.
The song epitomizes the troubadour’s dilemma: acclaim and reward followed by an empty hotel room. “Travelling around and singing songs,” Ford declares, “I absolutely love it with all my being, and in many ways I wouldn’t have it any other way. But you can get lonesome and melancholic. I got married a couple of years ago, and almost instantly had to spend so much time away from home. I’m prone to bouts of homesickness, missing home and my loved ones.”
Coming back to Eastbourne with the task of making a second album, Ford worked alone again in his cellar, but slowly realized that some of his new songs required more than DIY magic. So he brought in highly regarded record maker James Brown (Nine Inch Nails, The Killers, Ash) to co-produce five of the tracks. After Brown went back to the States, Ford recruited the production team of Kevin Bacon and Jonathan Quarmby (Plan B, Get Cape, Ian Brown) to bring their mixing skills to the final four tracks.
“My first album was basically bedroom demos with ideas way above their station,” he says. “This one sounds more like a record.”
Songs For The Road broadens the sound of I Sincerely Apologise… without diluting the grit and character that shaped that first album. But for all its range, the new album won’t overwhelm the listener. “I don’t like long records,” says Ford. “It’s the same with live shows, I don’t like anyone playing for over an hour. I always want my records to be looked at as a complete body of work, with a beginning and an end and movement between, like you’ve experienced a journey.”
Though he is never less than forthright about his views and his feelings, Songs For The Road is by no means a catalogue of confessionals: Ford is a storyteller too. “A lot of the time, I get accused of writing very personal songs and laying my heart bare, when in actual fact, it’s not always me. I’d hate to think I was as whiny as the character of these songs! If I only wrote about me, I’d probably end up with a massive spew of clichés, which would be massively uninteresting, so sometimes you have to empathise, to put yourself in another’s position.”
Soon Ford will be hitting the road again, either solo or with a band made up of his local friends The Late Greats, with whom he’s played before. Either way, he’ll be taking himself and his characters for another walk along the line between elation and despair, pain and gain. But if anyone is going to sing about these truisms, let it be David Ford.
