The Northumberland's critically acclaimed troubadour GARETH DAVIES-JONES talks us through the tracks on his 'Now But Not Yet' album

Gareth Davies-Jones

That the writing sessions for this my fifth solo album were intense was deliberate. I work best when I'm up against it. My focus is clearer, sharper and I tend to produce better work. So four to five weeks of sticking to task with a looming deadline of booked studio time in early August last year seemed the thing. The fact that those weeks coincided with an extraordinary heatwave was absolutely unintended and added to the sense of suffering for my art. The pain of self-inflicted hermitage - choosing to be stuck indoors inching towards the goal of allying melody and lyric while outside the warmth of the sun and the azure blue of a summer sky testified to the perfect atmospheric union. Creatively I came with a few basic ideas and some hooks to hang them on, but the bulk of the album was written from scratch during those five weeks as outside the temperature soared and my skin retained the pale hue of early Spring.

'Now But Not Yet' was initially just a working title. It started in the tension between grasping the present along with the past that has formed it, living with, embracing and cherishing it but at the same time not losing sight of what is to come - the future, its promise, its warning, caution and counsel. The phrase is used often by theologians as they explore the developing narrative of God's chosen people through the Old Testament and as they try and wrestle with the words of a Messiah in the New. The further up and further in I went the more I explored this through the songs, the more what had been a working title felt that it captured the essence of the music.

"Dawn"
I often arrive home in the very early hours of the morning after driving back from some far distant gig. In the early summer this finds me getting out of the car literally into the beginning of the next day as the sun slowly rises over our valley here in Northumberland. I had the phrase "I knew you'd wait for me" going round my head after one such drive just before the album sessions began and the song came quickly together after that. A small examination of faithfulness in the early morning light, "Dawn" was the first track I recorded for the album at The Foundry Music Lab in Motherwell. It was pretty much one take and I felt it was an appropriate set up for the rest of the recording sessions.

"Hundred Year Skin"
The advent of the smartphone was a real boon for musicians like me. Finally I had a convenient and easy way to capture lyrics and ideas in one place with the ability to search through them thematically. Gone the deep frustration of not being able to find the scribbled rhyming couplet that I'd written on the back of the crumpled double glazing leaflet or whatever came to hand. "Hundred Year Skin" was purposefully forged from trawling through about three years worth of captured lyrics dreamed up at motorway services, before and after gigs, on the road, at home, out on walks and so forth. Mostly a response to where I found myself at times the song hints at this marvellous meandering journey that it is to be a "troubadour". This was also the first of five tracks that featured my daughter Bronwen on backing vocals. To say I was proud of how she took to the studio environment is vastly understating things. She was a complete natural and I won't be surprised if I soon find myself managing instead of performing.

"Montsoreau"
This is the one track on the album that had been written prior to the creative sessions in June and July 2013. Back in 2012 we visited the Loire Valley for a short family holiday and my wife and I managed to carve out a little time one afternoon to watch the world go by at a beautiful riverside cafe in the village that gives its name to the title. It was one of those moments that will stay with me for many years to come - an oasis of peace and tranquillity in a world that seems increasingly unable to stop and rest. The lyrics were written back at our campsite that evening and the melody when we arrived back home. I sang the song at nearly every gig through the winter of 2012/2013 and it seemed to connect with a lot of people. In the studio I wanted to capture something of the simplicity of the sentiment in the lyric hence the very basic acoustic arrangement and the space to let the words breathe.

"Elusive"
Containing the title of the album as a lyric in the first verse this is something of a pivotal track. It's one of two songs that contain parts of lyrics written in response to an artist project I was invited to by Tearfund in 2010. We were encouraged to go back to our communities and explore through our art where we experienced "the Kingdom" inspired by the "Kingdom" sayings of Jesus in the Gospels. For me these sayings go way beyond the cerebral - they are there to be worked out through the longings, regrets, hopes and fears of everyday life. Yet rather than something mundane there is the sense of the epic and mysterious in them - we are supposed to wrestle with them and work them out. It became obvious quite quickly that the recording would need to be more produced than most of the others and it certainly took the most attention in the studio to get the balance right. I even dug out my long retired falsetto for the bridge.

"Guide"
Based on the William Williams hymn "Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer" I suppose this is my attempt to front up and engage with the ideas contained within it and plunge them deep into my own experience. You could call it a deconstructed hymn to borrow a concept from the odd contemporary TV chef or two.

"One Girl Among Many"
Being a player of most anything with strings on I have stridently neglected to use the three or four years of piano tuition I received in my youth on any of my albums to date. Of course I've had piano as part of the mix, but never played by yours truly. The piano ballad was a form I'd always wanted to tackle but up until this album I'd never felt I had the right subject matter. Not long into the writing sessions Malala Yousafzai bravely stood up in front of the United Nations and spoke about girls' education rights and the rights of young people in general. She was the young girl who had been shot by the Taliban for daring to go to school in her native Afghanistan and assert that she and others like her had a right to learn. She's now a living proof that the pen is far mightier than the sword and after reading her truly inspiring UN speech I knew that I finally had my piano ballad sorted.

"Rua Reidh"
My accommodation during May 2013 on a trip to the North West Highlands to sing for the Arctic Convoy veterans of the Second World War (another story for another time) was this stunning and beautifully located lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula that runs directly North West of Gairloch. The views from the lighthouse are so captivating they could hardly be imagined. As I was writing the lyrics for this song I found myself intensely studying the photographs I'd taken when I was there - sometimes for very long periods. I supposed myself inhabiting the contours and shapes of the coastline and tried to take on a sense of the dynamism and power of the forces at work around it. For the recording I used the evocatively resonant mandocello to help transport the listener away with me to this very special place. Bronwen also contributed with a haunting melody line on the whistle.

"New Deal"
I think this song largely speaks for itself - a treatise on the state in which we find ourselves in contemporary Britain. It sees my banjo recording debut which seemed the right "voice" for the song.

"Lindisfarne"
In the summer of 2013 the Lindisfarne Gospels came back to North East England for the public to view them. The story of the creativity and dedication that led to the making of this iconic book caught my own imagination. Allegedly written by the monk Eadfrith on the islands of the same name just off the Northumberland coast, it's an inspiring tale of invention, solitude and perseverance. Set to the impressive DADGAD tuning that I've been using for many years the guitar picks out a haunting progression that hopefully suggests something of the isolation of the writer's experience. I felt a certain amount of empathy with Eadfrith as I wrote the words from my own self-imposed retreat in Northumberland.

"Messines"
It's 100 years since the start of the First World War. The story of how a 22 tonne British mine from the battle of Messines Ridge in 1917 remains to this day buried and unexploded under a Belgian farm intrigued me. The song contrasts the conditions then and the dilemma of living with it now. Last I heard the family that owns the farm still live and work there - in the full knowledge that at any moment their world could literally explode underneath them. The track features my beautiful little Martin Tenor Guitar. For such a small instrument it packs a lot of gravitas and along with overtones from the mandocello it conjured up the right soundscape for the song.

"From Castlereagh"
Ever since I was a small child I've been inspired and engaged by the writings of C S Lewis. He grew up in the Castlereagh Hills just above Belfast and less than five miles from my own place of birth. I continue to be challenged by and discover new things in his books every time I turn the page.

"Tear It All Down"
The album closer and the second song containing elements of lyrics written in response to the Tearfund project ties together a few different strands of thought. I'm reminded of the transience of earthly powers and empires in contrast with the enduring Kingdom of God, that one day even the strongest will fall and the weak and the marginalised will rise. I'm inspired by the extraordinary in the ordinary and in the small but beautifully significant acts of those that many consider to be insignificant. So many of us in the Church and outside of it chase after the spectacular and the high impact. I'd venture to suggest that we should tear it all down and get back to the start.