One of Say It With Garage Flowers’ favourite albums of 2022 is Leo – the third solo record by former Case Hardin frontman, Pete Gow.

The trademark orchestral sound he debuted on 2019’s Here There’s No Sirens and its follow-up, The Fragile Line – from 2020 – was bolstered by some impressive, rich and soulful horn arrangements courtesy of his producer, multi-instrumentalist, Joe Bennett (The Dreaming Spires, Bennett Wilson Poole, Co-Pilgrim, Saint Etienne).

Leo feels like the natural successor to Gow’s previous two solo records, which were also created with Bennett (bass, piano, organ, vocals, strings, horns) and drummer, Fin Kenny, who, like Gow, are both workhorses of the UK Americana scene.

Reviewing the album for Americana UK earlier this year – I gave it 9/10 – I said: ‘Leo is Gow’s most accomplished and ambitious album yet, with Bennett taking his collaborator’s wry story songs about barrooms, booze, rock ‘n’roll and record collections and turning them into widescreen epics – the orchestral and brass arrangements perfectly complement these lyrically deft tales and the lives of the characters that inhabit them.’

In an exclusive interview, I spoke to Pete to get the full story about the writing and recording of the album and, to tie-in with a lyric from Leo’s opening song, Where Else Would We Be Going, I asked him to choose some of his favourite albums from the year that he was born.

Q&A

You recorded the basics of the album in February 2020, just ahead of lockdown didn’t you?

Pete Gow: It was quite literally days before everything locked down. In the studio, Joe had these white sheets of paper up on the wall, that you write on with a Sharpie – song titles, album titles… Then he marks up what needs doing – backing vocals… then ticks them off.

When I went back and started doing other work on the album, we realised just how close to lockdown it was. In two days, myself, Fin and Joe worked through the songs – all the drums, the scratch guide vocals and guitar.

We had all sorts of plans for this record. We even talked about bringing in electric guitar – something that was different from the Here There’s No Sirens record – but then what happened happened… But it actually worked out in our favour, from the perspective that Joe’s studio is just down the road from his house, so he was able to work through lockdown and build the album up with nothing but the limits of his imagination.

You can hear that on songs like The City Is A Symphony – he went Brian Wilson nuts! I’m sure he was in a sandpit with a fireman’s helmet on when he did it.

It’s interesting that you said you had plans to do different stuff musically on this album, because the horns are more prominent this time around on some of the tracks, but there are still big string arrangements like on your first two solo albums. You’ve expanded the sound, but, apart from the guitar and drums, it’s Joe playing everything, isn’t it?

PG: Yes – everything.

It’s an even bigger sound on this album…

PG: Yes it is and that was a considered choice. We didn’t sit down before the album was recorded and say, ‘Let’s make this a horns record’, but we both knew we needed to do something different sonically.

The Fragile Line was a legitimate album, but it was never really intended as one, so, in my own mind, I don’t really count it as a proper record. It’s got a cover on it and a reworking of one of my own songs on it, so it’s kind of a companion piece to Here There’s No Sirens.

‘On The City Is A Symphony, Joe went Brian Wilson nuts! I’m sure he was in a sandpit with a fireman’s helmet on when he did it’

Horns were always part of the discussion – the tracks that I’d been writing just felt that they lent themselves to it.

Let’s Make War A Little Longer, off The Fragile Line, had some horns on it – Joe and I were thinking we could’ve really just done that as a horns track. Horns were definitely because of the necessity and there being no else to work on this record, so that took Joe down that road more firmly than we’ve previously discussed.

It’s a great sound, but I’ll avoid any ‘Pete Gow gets horny’ headlines…

PG: They’ve all been thrown around on various WhatsApp chats.

You’re a prolific songwriter, but were all the tracks on the record written for it, or do some date back from before your previous albums?

PG: It’s a mix.

‘I wrote Say It With Flowers specifically so I could get an interview with you’

There were a few songs written in the lead-up to making the album, but also included in that pile were Cheap and Shapeless Dress and Happy Hour At The Lobby Bar, which we decided to pluck from the pile and put out as a single during lockdown. That meant there were more songs needed writing, so the last two written for the project were the first two on the album, largely by coincidence – Where Else Would We Be Going and Say It With Flowers, which I wrote specifically so I could get an interview with you.

Thanks for that. Let’s talk about Where Else Would We Be Going, which was the first single from the album. It’s representative of the record – it’s a big song, with brass, strings and organ. It was a bold comeback statement…

PG: I know exactly what you mean. It was the last song written for the record and very quickly we knew it was the first song that we wanted everybody to hear, even before we’d finished putting it together.

‘Where Else Would We Be Going is reasonably joyous. It’s not often there’s that level of positivity in a Pete Gow lyric’

We’ve all gone through a lot of changes – there have been some fairly significant changes to my life, in what could be deemed as happening late in life, as I’m in my 50s now. Some of the song is about taking on those changes despite age, I guess – it’s a little Post-It Note of encouragement to my partner, and a note to self. It’s all of those things but I think it’s reasonably joyous. Where else would be going? What else have we got to do? We may as well do this. It’s not often there’s that level of positivity in a Pete Gow lyric.

That song is reprised at the end of the record, in a more sombre format, which is kind of the way it was written, then, before I got into the studio, it morphed into another version. We couldn’t decide between the two, but we’ve never bookended an album, so we thought we’d do that.

This record isn’t a concept album, but some of the songs share common themes, don’t they? You first solo album was very honest and personal, but this one has more character songs on it – albeit with your own personal touch. Leonard’s Bar, which is the centrepiece of the album and where the record takes its title from, reminds me of one of those Springsteen story songs, written about people and their small town lives, but with a hint of Nick Cave about it, too.

It’s about a former criminal who’s fallen on hard times and finds himself caught up in a difficult situation – one last job – thanks to his brother-in-law, Leo.

PG: That song was written about my first trip to the States with my partner and my first trip back to her hometown, which is Baltimore, or thereabouts. I had a notebook with me the whole time and I was jotting stuff down. At the time, her brother was going through a divorce and living at his mum’s – that’s where I met him.

The barman in the song with ‘This’ and ‘That’ tattooed on his knuckles was just a guy that served me, my partner and her cousin drinks one afternoon in a Baltimore bar. I saw it and wrote it down.

‘I can’t have too much positivity on my records – I need to bring it back down and appeal to base, with traumatised hitmen’

The narrative, the guy in the bar… it came together very organically and I just knew that it was going to be a reasonably big song. It took me a few weeks to pull it together – it’s quite long, but I think I edited it down. If I go through my notebook I’ll find verses that never quite made it – I wanted it to be expansive and to make a statement like Poets Corner, from previous albums, does. It has kind of movements to it – this one is telling a story, whereas Poets Corner doesn’t have a narrative. Leonard’s Bar has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Independent of each other, Joe and I realised it was a pivotal track. It’s the beginning of side two on the vinyl album, which is prime real estate for such a track.

There’s some great imagery in the song. I like the line: ‘I can still hear the screams and the smell of their fear, the piss in their pants and their hopeless tears.’  It has a dark twist, doesn’t it?

PG: Well, I can’t have too much positivity on my records – I need to bring it back down and appeal to base, with traumatised hitmen.

Know your audience…

PG: [laughs]

There are a lot of references to alcohol and music on the album. Say It With Flowers mentions getting drunk and playing the Derek and the Dominos song, Bell Bottom Blues, one of the tracks is called Side III of London Calling, and Where Else Would We Be Going references drinking while listening to your favourite albums that came out the year you were born. Was that a conscious thing?

PG: It wasn’t. It comes about because drinking and listening to music is fairly consistent throughout a lot of my work. These songs cover quite a long period of time, so without going in, editing and rewriting stuff, which I’m not really a huge fan of, that’s the consequence of that.

The second verse of Say It With Flowers is based on when Jim Maving and I got together to do some writing and, as what normally happens, we ended up drinking and pissing around on guitars. I sent my partner away for the weekend because I told her I needed some time with Jim to do some writing and then the two of just got drunk and ended up messing around with Clapton’s Bell Bottom Blues. It’s a true story.

And Side III of London Calling – where did that song come from? I need to refamiliarise myself with that album, as I can’t remember what’s on Side III…

PG: Death or Glory, Koka Kola… When I was a teenager and I bought that album a couple of years after it came out, they were the songs. I can’t remember where that line came from – I’d probably put the album on for the first time in 10 years and thought, ‘That’s a fucking great side of music’ – and it is. There are four songs that haven’t really been bettered with regards to a side of vinyl. So, I related that to finding the perfect woman – my partner. It probably happened after a load of gin one night. See, drinking and music…

Casino is one of my favourite songs on the record – it sounds like a classic Pete Gow, late-night ballad. The organ gives it a soul feel…

PG: It’s a good song to talk about because it’s definitely a transitional one between Here There’s No Sirens, The Fragile Line and the new album. It still has the strings on it and it could’ve easily fitted on either of those first two records. It dates back to the Case Hardin days, but it had a slightly more country feel then. When I realised that I wanted to use it for this project, I went back to it but it didn’t feel big enough.

Since I’ve been working with Joe, I write with him in mind. It needed a section where it could suck the air out of your chest. The middle bit used to be a verse, so I looked at how I could make it something that Joe could work with. I rewrote it specifically for the recording. Jim Maving came up with the riff.

As you said earlier, on The City Is A Symphony, Joe embraces his inner Brian Wilson. There’s a surprising Beach Boys-style mid-section. I guess Joe took that song in a completely different direction to what you would’ve done with it…

PG: Very much so. I found the original demo of it the other day. Every time I hear The City Is A Symphony, I’m surprised at what he did with it, but that was renewed when I heard what I had originally given him.

If you go back to the raw product, the thought that he saw potential in it and took it there was quite staggering, but that’s what he does.

In Case Hardin I was pretty controlling – band leader and producer of records. I knew what I wanted. I would listen to other people, but I kind of got things the way I wanted them. I knew that by going with Joe, I was going to have to surrender some of that control – and that’s what I wanted.

‘In Case Hardin I was pretty controlling – band leader and producer. I knew that by going with Joe, I was going to have to surrender some of that control’

I wanted someone else’s input. Over the course of the three records we’ve done together, there’s stuff where I thought, ‘Oh – I wouldn’t have done it like that,’ but, most of the time I’m blown away by what Joe brings to the project. That’s why you’ll always see his name, ‘Produced by Joe Bennett’ prominently on my records. He really does have as much input to the material and the albums as mine – his contribution is just as important. I always refer to them as ‘our albums,’ even though it’s my name above the door.

And Fin Kenny played drums on the record, and Tony Poole (Starry Eyed and Laughing and Bennett, Wilson, Poole) mastered it…

PG: Yeah – Fin is the only other musician on it. The first voice anyone hears on the record is Fin’s – at the start of Where Else Would We Be Going. The amount of time in any one eight-hour period or in a rehearsal room where he goes ‘OK?’ – to hear it every time you put that record on was essential to us. We’re glad that everything fell together and it worked out nicely that we could have it to be the first thing on the album.

Tony Poole masters most of Joe’s productions – those two are very much in tune with each other. Mastering is a dark art and I wouldn’t profess to understanding it or knowing the science of it, but you can just hear when something has been mastered well. Tony takes care and works his way through the tracks. He works in passages and frequencies – he’s a master of that.

In Where Else Would We Be Going, you mention albums from the year you were born. You were born in 1970 – do you have some favourite records from that year?

PG: I’m obsessed with anything that was released that year. There are some fairly obvious ones – Bridge Over Troubled Water, Déjà Vu, Loaded –  there are some huge records from 1970. Bitches Brew by Miles Davis came out that year  – there’s a great double album of his sets from Fillmore West, when he was opening for The Band. It’s just called Miles Davis at Fillmore – I picked that up. I bought it just because it came out in 1970. I spent a few weeks with that – it’s the peak of his avant-garde, with that John McLaughlin guitar sound.

‘I’m obsessed with anything that was released in 1970’

I know Eric Clapton has almost talked himself into being cancelled, but Layla and Assorted Other Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos is a fantastic record.  If you can make a record like that, with alcohol and drug abuse… It’s less cool than it’s made out to be, but sometimes it just comes together and works.

From beginning to end, it’s a terrific record – and I reference Bell Bottom Blues in Casino because, despite everything Clapton’s done to completely damage and destroy his reputation, I can’t get away from the fact that it’s one of my favourite songs ever.

Leo by Pete Gow is out now on Clubhouse Records – vinyl, CD and digital.

https://www.petegow.com/

http://www.clubhouserecords.co.uk/

https://petegow.bandcamp.com/

When Say It With Garage Flowers last spoke to singer-songwriter Pete Gow, it was in a North West London pub in early 2019, ahead of the release of his first solo album, the brilliant Here There’s No Sirens.

The record was a surprising departure for Gow, who, at the time, was the frontman of UK Americana / alt-country band Case Hardin. As we wrote last year, it was deeply personal and confessional and, musically, it saw Gow exploring new territory. Gone were the big electric guitars, old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, Springsteen-like anthems and raw, kicked-around country songs of Case Hardin. Instead, it was an album of stripped-down acoustic tunes, with stirring string arrangements, fleshed out by piano, brass, organ and drums.

Talking about his solo side project, Gow assured us that everything was hunky dory in the Case Hardin camp and that the band were due to start work on their next album – the follow-up to 2015’s Colours Simple. However, things didn’t go as planned – the group split up last year.

Since then, Gow has established himself as a solo artist and followed up Here There’s No Sirens with a mini-album, The Fragile Line – another fine collection of orchestrally-aided songs, which, like its predecessor, saw him collaborate with producer and multi-instrumentalist Joe Bennett (Dreaming Spires, Co-Pilgrim, Raving Beauties and Paul McClure).

This month sees the release of Gow’s brand new single – a double A-side, Cheap and Shapeless Dress / Happy Hour At The Lobby Bar.

Coming out on Clubhouse Records as a limited edition, 7in heavyweight vinyl single – sorry, there’s no digital or CD version, folks – it sees Gow reuniting with Bennett, who plays bass and keyboards and arranges the strings and horns.

The two songs act as a teaser for Gow’s third album, which is due out sometime in early 2021. They contrast each other nicely – the former, which is described as ‘a ramshackle celebration of the bacchanalia of youth’, is a rollicking, full-band country-rock track, with Mariachi horns on it, while the latter, which documents the meeting of two estranged friends after decades apart – “we moved the rug back to hide the drugs and found the dust we’d swept inside” – is another of Gow’s downbeat and reflective, drinking-themed songs.

In an exclusive interview, we talk to Gow about his new single and get the lowdown on his next album, but first we have to ask him to set the record straight about the demise of Case Hardin. During our last chat, it really didn’t seem like things were well and truly over for the band – they had a new album in the pipeline… So what happened?

“Well, when we last chatted I also didn’t feel it was over for Case Hardin,” he says. “It wasn’t over, like you say – we had firm plans for a new album, but it just didn’t work out the way I hoped those next few months would.

“For the longest time, I was equal parts saddened and angered at the unsatisfying manner in which we closed the book, but now I can look back on our four albums with an immense pride and am occasionally reminded how much love there was for the band, our records and our live sets.”

So is there a lost Case Hardin album in the vaults? What happened to the songs you’d written for it?

“Oh – there’s no lost album, sadly. Most of the songs have been reworked, or reimagined for the subsequent Pete Gow albums. I’m just not prolific enough to let an album’s worth of songs go to waste!”

Q&A

How are you? What’s lockdown and the past few months been like for you?

Pete Gow: Well… personally, I’ve been okay. I’ve been able to keep my day job and I’ve been able to largely do it from home. I’ve managed to keep my health etc., so, given the experience of so many others during these past few months, I feel largely unscathed.

How has the crisis affected your musical plans? Have you adapted and performed online? What challenges have you faced?

PG: To be honest, as a performer, I haven’t really embraced the online shows, but, as a fan, I’ve seen some great ones! In the early days, I couldn’t figure out my way past the limitations of a live broadcast on a platform like Facebook. I had neither the hardware, nor the knowhow, to establish a robust, sustainable signal, so I made the decision to try other ways to communicate musically.

We had a ‘watch party’ for our 2019 concert film, One Live One-Night Stand, very early on in lockdown, then a month or so later I pre-recorded an acoustic set that we played out as an event – Almost Live in Acton – but, other than that, I have done one guest appearance on a friend’s Instagram Live – the fantastic Hannah Scott – and my first proper live online show will be this Friday (October 23) – the same day as the single comes out. I’ll be doing a ‘Virtual Green Note’ set in the company of Sam Coe and fellow Clubhouse dweller, Luke Tuchscherer.

The new single is a double A-side and it’s only available on vinyl – there’s no digital version. What prompted it?

PG: It was pretty organic. Since March, there have been several discussions with Clubhouse Records, brainstorming what can be done to keep our music out there, but trying to do something a little different every time and a little different from everyone else. It came from those discussions – over Zoom, naturally.

Let’s talk about the new songs: Cheap and Shapeless Dress and Happy Hour At The Lobby Bar. What can you tell us about them? They’re both observational songs…

PG: I think the best way to frame the new songs is through the new album. Until we decided to take these particular tracks away and call them a single, they were part of the larger story of the new record.

I wouldn’t say age is a preoccupation on the next album, but it does colour some of the songs. I turned 50 this year. That’s hardly old age, but I have allowed it to be marked, both in my thinking and in my songwriting, in ways that surprised me. I am increasingly aware that I don’t have an infinite window in which to right some of the wrongs I have chalked up in my life. I have one eye on the clock and the clocks of those around me.

I think the narrator in Cheap and Shapeless Dress is how the fantasy me takes life in his stride, but I probably handle conflict closer to the two old friends awkwardly meeting up after decades, in Happy Hour At The Lobby Bar, than I’d care to admit.

‘I wouldn’t say age is a preoccupation on the next album, but it does colour some of the songs. I turned 50 this year’

They’re very contrasting songs musically, and, interestingly, both tracks feature hotels in the lyrics. Is that a coincidence? It’s a double A-side with a double room…

PG: Hah! Well, I never noticed the hotel connection until now – an oversight made moderately worse by the fact we originally had a different track to pair with Happy Hour At The Lobby Bar, but at the eleventh hour, Joe spotted that song also had a bar in the title. Clearly we didn’t look closely enough at the replacement….

The song choice was very much motivated by the point you raise in your question. It’s a single – a stand-alone project – but it also has a job to do, previewing the next record. We had seven or eight tracks to choose from, so the pairing for the single was a legitimate consideration.

The new songs see you reunited with Joe Bennett, whom you worked with on your last two records – your solo debut, Here There’s No Sirens and the mini-album, The Fragile Line. He’s provided bass and keys, and arranged the strings and horns. Prior to lockdown, you and drummer, Fin Kenny, went to Farm Music Studios, in Oxford, with Joe, to record drums, guitar and guide vocals for your next album. How was that? How much did you get done?

PG: Well, if this was a regular cycle for recording a new record, we’d say we didn’t achieve much – album-ready drum tracks, guide vocals and guitars. Then all the rules changed… Suddenly what we left Joe with was all he really needed to start building an album when no one else was able to record and to give him a project when most other studios were shuttered. In late February, it really wasn’t much at all, but by early March, it was everything.

‘I am increasingly aware that I don’t have an infinite window in which to right some of the wrongs I have chalked up in my life’

So what can you tell us about the next album and when will it be coming out?

PG: It’s in a reasonably advanced state, for all the reasons we just discussed, and we were even able to pull the two tracks for the single from our stockpile and still get back in to Farm Music Studios last week and replenish it.

As to when it will come out, it’s too early to tell. There’s certainly no reason from my end that it couldn’t come out in early 2021, but there are a few stars that will need to align before we can fix a date… not to mention figuring out what releasing an album even looks like for someone who has historically relied on merchandise sales at live shows.

Are the songs on the single representative of the new album?

PG: I think the single does point the way…

Are you still sticking with the orchestral backing you debuted on Here There’s No Sirens and also used on The Fragile Line?

PG: There is a move from the emphasis on strings to favouring horns. In the main it’s also a ‘livelier’ collection of songs as regards tempos, arrangements etc., but let’s not get carried away, or try to fool the people – it’s never going to go down as my party album…

The lyrics of Happy Hour At The Lobby Bar reference the traditional end of year sing-along Auld Lang Syne. On that note, what are your plans for the rest of 2020, and your hopes and fears for 2021? How will you remember 2020?

PG: I’m genuinely not sure how safe it might be yet to start making plans, certainly not musical ones. I’m still trying to take the wider view on that. I want to get back to being a working musician, but I want it to be right – not to mention safe – for everyone. It’s good that people are start to figure out how all this might look going forward. The folks at the Ramblin’ Roots Revue festival – Tristan Tipping and Noel Cornford – are putting their heads above the parapet, with some live shows later this year, as are others.

But listen; honestly, 2020 in review will actually be quite conflicted for me. Outside of all the crazy stuff, a number of significant, positive things have happened to me this year – things that rightly refuse to allow them to be wholly overshadowed by the bigger picture. There’s a line in Auld Lang Syne that translates as: “There’s seas between us broad have roared.” That’s been my 2020.

Any current musical recommendations – old and new? What’s been your 2020 soundtrack?

PG: Thank you for asking. In no particular order, the new Michael Kiwanuka album is as good a record as I have heard this year. Danger Mouse produced it and it’s so, so good – brilliantly put together. Courtney Marie Andrews’s Old Flowers is a break-up album to rank alongside the very best. Looking backwards, I discovered two albums by Eugene McDaniels from the early ‘70s: Outlaw and Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse. The musical range of both those records is amazing – it’s like Gil Scott-Heron by Lloyd Webber in places, but in a good way!

Finally, it’s happy hour at the lobby bar and Say It With Garage Flowers is buying. What are you having?

PG: I actually miss being in pubs less than I thought, or presumed I would, but the thought of never again seeing a well-poured pint of Guinness settle before me, then marvel at the perfect cream circles as I savour it, depresses me immensely. So mine’s a stout. Slainte.

Pete Gow’s new, limited edition double A-side single, Cheap and Shapeless Dress / Happy Hour At The Lobby Bar, is out on October 23 (Clubhouse Records). 

To order one, click here. 

On the same day, he will be performing a virtual gig for The Green Note, with Clubhouse labelmate Luke Tuchscherer, and Sam Coe. The show will be live streamed from 8pm. For more information, click here. 

You can also see Gow play two, special, socially-distanced shows for the Ramblin’ Roots Revue with Joe Bennett, plus Danny Wilson and Robin Bennett (Bennett Wilson Poole) on Dec 11-12, at Bucks Student Union, High Wycombe. Info here.