A Northumberland Musician Reveals a Secret in His Debut Solo Album
Northumberland songwriter and I Am Kloot bass guitarist and keyboard player Peter Jobson is releasing his debut solo album in November, revealing how he nearly set his home village of Alnmouth on fire
Peter was born in Ashington in 1971, lived in Alnmouth until he was around 11, then moved to a farm near Longframlington where his family still live and work. He says he ‘meandered’ through different jobs until he studied music at Newcastle College, ending up at Salford Technical College. It was in Manchester that Peter formed the band I Am Kloot with Andy Hargreaves and John Bramwell. ‘This band took me around the world from America to Australia; releasing records and touring for close to 20 years,’ Peter says.
Throughout that time, he enjoyed countless career highlights. ‘I Am Kloot being nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2010 was something I am (and all of the band are) very proud of,’ he says. ‘After 10 years of touring, recording and releasing albums Kloot found ourselves back in the position that we started; with no record label, no manager and no money. This ironically, we realised, was an advantage. As it was in the beginning, we had no distractions and no obligations, all we had was a love of what we did and the will to continue. We had once again that rare thing: a clear horizon, something to prove and something to strive for. We took stock of all we had learnt; the good things and the bad. We put all of that into a cohesive album. The album title, subject matter of all the songs and the visual representation were all there before we started writing and recording.’
The 2010 album Sky At Night was recorded and produced by their longtime friends Elbow. ‘Without their help it would not have happened,’ Peter says. ‘Guy and Craig from Elbow gave their time and expertise as well as their recording facility for free.’
Manager Ian Mcandrew helped the band by putting a bespoke team together – Emma Greengrass (who worked on marketing for Oasis), Kevin McCabe (radio plugger for Radiohead) and Michael Roe at EMI Records. ‘It was with the album we had made and this team of passionate music industry experts that we found ourselves being regarded in a way we had never been previously,’ Peter says. ‘The culmination of all this was to be nominated for the 2010 Mercury Music Prize.’ When their manager revealed they had been nominated, Peter recalls John saying ‘well, they can’t take that away from us’. ‘That humble and honest statement tells you a lot about I Am Kloot’s trials and tribulations as a band.’
Peter had written and performed his own songs before I Am Kloot formed and had always had a desire to make an album of his own. The band’s last gig was at Meltdown [festival] in 2016 and it was around this time that Peter worked on the musical score for a BBC drama called From There To Here. He later supported Nadine Shah and Guy Garvey on tour, which encouraged him to record and release his own album.
Burn The Ration Books of Love reflects on Peter’s life choices, and it’s this album in which he reveals a secret. ‘I was 11 or 12, out cycling with an older kid I grew up with, and we’d gone to the shop to buy fags,’ Peter begins. ‘We went to the sand dunes to smoke and were playing with matches. Next thing the dunes caught fire – then the golf course, and about two miles of the coast, a massive conflagration heading towards the village. We jumped on our bikes and pedalled as far as we could and as fast as we could to get away. Then we hid on the top of the hill overlooking the village and watched as half the village came to help put it out. We waited until it got dark fearing the worst – that we would be locked up or beaten by our parents. We almost burned the village down! And I’ve never told anyone before – not even my parents.’
To make this album, Peter invested in recording equipment and spent time finding his own voice. ‘Singing my own songs was something I thought about and worked at for a long time. I believe that an artist needs to be authentic, and in doing so becomes unique. I settled on a vocal approach that was very conversational and when you listen to my album it is like sitting next to me [while I’m] telling you a story. From hearing my music, to meeting me in person, to seeing me perform live; the person and the message is the same. The line of communication is clear. The message is dressed with melody, harmony and instrumentation but the character at the essence is recognisably me through and through.
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I am 52 years old now and I find that the music I produce is equally as valuable to me as the people I work and spend time with. Trust, friendship and shared history allows for an almost telepathic relationship to exist. This is very precious to me and when there are many decisions to make that will dictate the course of your life for the foreseeable future it is invaluable to have the assurance and confidence that these relationships bring with them. We talk to each other and we listen to each other; a surprisingly rare phenomena but crucial in a creative arena. It has been a lengthy path to get to where I am but for [these] reasons I recognise in myself that now is the right time to do what I’m doing. It is also healthy to have a challenge relatively late in life, and especially when you find yourself with something to say.’
Peter wrote and recorded what he calls ‘the bones’ of the songs himself, and played all the instruments, then sent all the songs to Guy Garvey, then worked with producer Ben Christophers. ‘Between the two of them they played and sang many parts on my album, and more than that, they helped me put my authentic stamp on myself and the record,’ Peter says. ‘Like I Am Kloot’s Sky At Night I had the title and the visuals of the album before I started writing the songs. This framework was important to make the album cohesive and stand as a document on its own like a novel. It is very much a collection of stories and runs through the songs to expand the over arching story.
‘The title of the album is taken from a poem by a friend and poet called Michael Conroy Harris. We were at a mutual friend’s wedding many years ago and as part of the ceremony Michael read a poem with a line in it “Burn The Ration Books Of Love”. These words and the image it conjured hit me like a sledge hammer and inspired me to write a song with that as the title and later I knew the album had to be of the same name, as it summed up everything I was saying in every song.
‘Reading and studying Malcolm Bradbury’s dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 when I was at school had always stayed with me. I found the idea of burning books and stifling the freedom of thought, speech and expression very provocative and matched with Michael’s counterpoint of destroying a mechanism that limited love was remarkable to me. This whole mixture was jam-packed with ideas that inspired me endlessly. There were so many ways to express the this idea through song and they were all a power for good. Burning The Ration Books Of Love was and continues to be for me a rich source of motivation and inspiration.’
Burn The Ration Books Of Love will be released on 15th November.
