singer/songwriter

‘I want to make nine studio records, then do a ‘best of’ and call it a day…’

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Picture of Luke in the studio by Scott Anthony

Carousel, the new album by UK singer-songwriter Luke Tuchscherer, is a stark, moody and intimate solo acoustic record – guitar, voice and harmonica – that was laid down in one day at a studio in New Jersey. It doesn’t shy away from addressing political and social issues and was inspired by Neil Young and Bob Dylan. We spoke to him about the making of the album, living in New York, Brexit and why the death of Tom Petty hit him hard…

When Say It With Garage Flowers last spoke to New York-based singer-songwriter Luke Tuchscherer, in late 2018, he outlined his plans to release a series of albums over the next few years – one of which, Carousel, a solo acoustic record influenced by Neil Young’s Hitchhiker and early Dylan, was pencilled in for 2023.

That plan has now drastically changed – Carousel is out in October this year. What hasn’t altered, though, is the sound – it’s a stripped-down, dark and sombre affair – just Luke and an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. Recorded live in one day at the Storybook Sound studio in New Jersey, it’s an intimate, and sometimes unsettling, listen.

Opener, My Darling England, deals with social issues, including class and national identity – the song was written 15 years ago, but, in these troubled times and with the spectre of Brexit looming over us,  it’s eerily prescient: ‘Now the streets are filled with shadows, every house has its own ghost. The people are growing restless – never getting what they want the most…’

Violets tackles domestic abuse, Potash was penned during the Iraq War and The Night Tom Petty Died  documents how one of Luke’s musical inspirations passed away just as he’d moved to New York from the UK: “Sitting at the bar in the Tribeca Tavern, on the jukebox was Learning To Fly – a beer cost more than I could spend. I wished that I was home…’

Luke cites Neil Young and Dylan, specifically The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album, as his reference points for the record, as well as Townes Van Zandt and Elliott Smith, but, at times, it also reminds us of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 masterpiece Nebraska – our favourite album by The Boss…

“Well, I don’t know about the Nebraska comparison, as that was really just demos for what became Born in the USA – and it’s also very lo-fi and there are overdubs… Mood-wise, it might be similar – but it’s more akin to those early Dylan records, or Hitchhiker”, says Luke, talking to us from his home in New York. “Plus, Carousel is recorded really well. You do hear some coughs and grunts and breathing and stuff, but that’s just the nature of the beast.”

He adds: “I’d always wanted to have one solo acoustic record in my back catalogue. One of my best friends, Johnny, said he was a little disappointed that my first solo album wasn’t just the sound of me playing in his living room. Well, this album is that for sure – so here you go, Johnny! But it dates back to before that, since university, when I started doing open mic nights.”

So is the new album a reaction to his last one, Pieces, a full-on, electric band record that was influenced by Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Tom Petty and Pearl Jam?

“It’s not really a reaction to it – we’ve talked before about the records I have planned. That plan has become a little more refined now,” he says. “I want to make nine studio records, then make a ‘best of’ and call it a day. I’m not saying I won’t write and play music in the future, but that might be the end of my album career. It’s expensive to do and no one buys albums anymore. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

“The plan for the albums is three cycles of three: a quiet one, a middle one and a loud one – three times. This is the start of the second cycle…”

Q & A

You recorded Carousel in one day – how was that? Was it intense?

Luke Tuchscherer: It wasn’t too long – maybe four or five hours. I played the album in order, and I remember it took me a while to get past the first couple of verses in My Darling England. I think that was just a bit of red light fever. But once I got that out of the way, the rest was pretty smooth sailing.

I seem to recall a bit of trouble on Violets and Road to Damascus, but that was more a tuning concern — they’re in drop D and DADGAD, respectively, and the low string kept going out. We just had to stop for a bit and let the temperature in the room go down, despite it being recorded in February… I was pretty focused on the idea that it should largely be an album of first and second takes, and I think, other than the aforementioned songs, it was.

Most of the songs on the album are old – My Darling England, the opening track, was written when you were 21 – you’re 36 now. Ironically, in these times of Brexit turmoil, small-minded attitudes and a harsh economic climate, it’s more relevant now than ever…

LT: When I wrote the song, I was at university in Falmouth, Cornwall. When I was on breaks from there, I would do removal work to earn a bit of cash. Some of the removal guys would light-heartedly take the piss out of me for being a student — especially during the one summer I worked in the office. They were calling me a pencil pusher and all that. It was all in good spirits, it has to be noted, but that kind of reverse snobbery, even if it was in jest, probably inspired the beginning of it.

It’s a song about class in England, snobbery and reverse snobbery, socialism and meritocracy – all those big words I was learning at university. I did change the first two lines in the last verse before recording it, to make it even more relevant to today, but other than that, it’s basically the same. I’m 36 now and it’s weird to think that a song like that makes more sense now than when I wrote it. We did record a full band version for The Whybirds’ Cold Blue Sky album, but it didn’t really fit. It’s a good rendition, though.

‘I’d always wanted to have one solo acoustic record in my back catalogue. One of my best friends said he was disappointed that my first solo album wasn’t just the sound of me playing in his living room’

I’ve only written a couple of songs without a guitar — just the words and melody — and My Darling England was one of them. I wrote the whole tune one day during that summer I was working in the office. When I got home, I put the chords to it.  As a potentially interesting side note, the other two songs I wrote like that are Outside, Looking In, from Always Be True, and I Am The Child of An Immigrant, which will be on my Salvation Come album.

You now live in New York with your wife. Are you glad you got out of the UK? As an Englishman in New York – to quote Sting (!), how do you feel about the whole Brexit thing? Would you move back to the UK?

LT: Well, we’re not gonna be here forever. What will probably happen is that we’ll live in the US during Trump’s tenure, and then move back to a post-Brexit Britain. For fuck’s sake!

As anyone who’s friends with me on Facebook, or follows me on Twitter, will know, Brexit has been an obsession of mine since the referendum. It’s heartbreaking, needless and frustrating.

At the beginning, I was very much one of the shouty Remainers, who called all Brexiteers dumb and racist. But having seen The Great Hack and the Brexit film with Benedict Cumberbatch [Brexit: The Uncivil War] about Dominic Cummings, you realise how people were exploited. How they fell for this lie about the EU being the cause of all their problems, when it’s really not.

Most folks never had a problem with the EU, until a select group of millionaires — the ERG [European Research Group] and others – conspired to get us out in order to benefit financially. And look what they’ve done to the country. Even if we don’t leave – and I do still hold a small glimmer of hope that it won’t happen – the damage done to the collective psyche of the country is immeasurable and will take years to undo. And if it does happen, well, you can kiss Scotland goodbye – with good reason – and maybe you’ll be looking at a united Ireland, too.

‘Even if we don’t leave the EU, the damage done to the collective psyche of the country is immeasurable and will take years to undo’

There are plenty of Leavers who have seen the facts and have now changed their minds. That’s reason enough to call it off, or at the very least have another referendum. But the thing is, now it’s just become a tribal thing. The nuances have been completely lost. I’d rather just call it off and endure a couple of riots than have another referendum because I’m not sure I really believe in elections and referendums that much these days.

That’s not to say I don’t believe in democracy, but those processes are too open to populism, to trickery and to making it like a fucking game show. That’s when you get Brexit and Trump. We need something more akin to sortition. There’s a great book on that called Against Elections: The Case For Democracy.

I’m not an out-and-out angry Remainer now, as I have a bit more empathy with the folks who were duped. However, to those people who have seen all the new evidence but have just doubled down — out of greed or xenophobia or whatever — I would say to them that they’re either fucking dumb, or they’re a fucking c***! Or both!

Anyway – yeah, we’ll be moving back to the UK at some point. We just don’t know what state the place will be in when we do.

Do you like living in New York? Was it hard when you first moved there?

LT: We love it here. We miss our friends and family, and that’s why we’re not going to stay forever — not to mention the guns and shit healthcare — but it’s an amazing city.

My wife went vegan and I followed suit about a year later, and there are so many options here, but that’s barely scratching the surface. There’s an endless number of things to do and see, stuff that only happens in New York — like going to see Letterman or Fallon — not to mention it feels like you’re walking around on a movie set. In the summer you can go to the beach, in the winter you can huddle up in a cocktail bar… it’s awesome. Obviously, we’re working — we’re not going up the Statue of Liberty every day – and it’s not all partying all the time — but it’s cool as fuck.

Picture by Ben Oliver

One of my favourite songs on the album is The Night Tom Petty Died. How did his death affect you and why did he mean so much to you?

LT: Yeah, that song might make it sound like the opposite of what I just said about New York! But I’d just moved. My wife wasn’t due to move for two weeks. It was all feeling pretty scary and new, and there were a lot of unknowns. Where were we going to live? How was my wife going to get a job? How can we possibly afford all this? And the weekend I got to town there was the massacre in Las Vegas, then Tom Petty died.

A lot of people talked about 2016 — with Bowie and Prince and others, which were definitely tragic — but in 2017, we lost Chris Cornell and Tom Petty, which hit a bit closer to home for me.

Tom Petty’s not my favourite songwriter, in fact he’s probably only just in my top 10. There are too many filler tracks on later albums and, lyrically, he can be a bit clunky at times — look at Into The Great Wide Open: ‘A roadie named Bart’ and ‘chains that would jingle’ – oof! But he would often write an amazing lyric, and he knew his way around a chorus, that’s for sure.

One thing I like about Petty is how he can go from Honey Bee, which could basically be stoner rock, to Wildflowers, which is a really pretty, acoustic number, on the same album. Petty was just a very inspiring guy. Despite his success, there was still a punky, DIY quality to him.

Carousel is quite a political album at times –The Billions and Potash both reference war and suffering. What inspired those songs and when were they written?

LT: The Billions was written when I was single and feeling all ‘woe is me’ and writing loads of forlorn love songs. It’s a song about getting some fucking perspective and realising that my shit doesn’t even begin to compare to the suffering of billions of others around the world.

Potash is quite mental isn’t it? It’s a stream of consciousness. There are definite allusions to the second Gulf War in there, but that’s only a couple of lines. But it all creates a mood. The rest is up for debate.

What about Violets? You’ve said it was written in 2005, when you were working behind the counter of a petrol station, and it deals with domestic abuse…

LT: That’s right. I was on a post-grad course after my degree and worked in a petrol station while I studied. As I’m sure you can imagine, you’d see all sorts of characters come in. But occasionally you’d see something a little shadier. A few times I saw women come in with dark sunglasses, or black eyes, or the like. Could just be dark glasses, could just be an accident, but you always wondered…

‘The song Violets has got a kind of Elliott Smith vibe to the guitar, but, lyrically, it’s very direct’

Violets was inspired by a very specific incident when this girl – and she’d only have been a teenager, she was the little sister of a girl younger than me at school – came into the shop. Her boyfriend, who was a well-known local scumbag, was behind the wheel and he’d made her come in and pay. She had bruises all up and down her arms, which were plainly from being grabbed.

You want to say something, but you don’t know how. I guess the song is about that regret. It’s got a kind of Elliott Smith vibe to the guitar, but, lyrically, it’s very direct.

So, back to that plan you mentioned earlier… What’s on the horizon? When we spoke last year, you said you had plans for several albums, including Salvation Come, with acoustic guitar and violin, and Widows & Orphans – an acoustic album with guitarist Dave Banks. You also wanted to do another full band record – like Pieces – and a folky / bluegrass album, in the vein of Steve Earle. What’s the latest on that?

LT: That goes back to the three cycles of three I mentioned earlier. Quiet, middle, loud. You Get So Alone… [first solo album], Always Be True and Pieces were the first cycle. The next cycle starts with Carousel, then Salvation Come, then another rock album. Then it’ll be Widows & Orphans, then a folky/ bluegrass one, and then a final rock one.

Originally, Widows & Orphans was going to kick off the second cycle, as it’s basically ready to go. But My Darling England made me change my mind. I just felt that with Brexit, that song had to come out now, while it’s so relevant. Widows & Orphans will now start the third cycle.

As for Salvation Come, I’ve done my guitars, vocals and drums, the bass is nearly done, ditto the mandolin. Then it’ll be time to add the fiddle, steel and baritone guitars over here in the US. It’s sounding good already.

Picture of Luke in the studio by Scott Anthony

What music – new and old – are you enjoying? What have been your favourite albums of 2019?

LT: The best albums of 2019 have been David Banks’ Until The End and Pete Gow’s Here There’s No Sirens. Other than that, I’ve been listening to a lot of Wilco, as I read Jeff Tweedy’s book, and a lot of Supergrass, since they reformed. I also listen to a lot of ‘90s hip-hop and ‘80s rock at the gym.

Finally, when will you be back to play in the UK?

LT: I will be back with The Penny Dreadfuls in April. There will be a couple of normal shows and then a certain indoor roots festival that everyone should come to because it’s brilliant. I’ll keep everyone posted.

Carousel by Luke Tuchscherer is released on October 4 by Clubhouse Records. For more information, click here.

‘I hope this album will surprise people…’

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Photo of Pete Gow by David Cohen

Case Hardin frontman Pete Gow’s first solo album, Here There’s No Sirens, is a brilliant collection of stripped-down, intimate and very personal songs, with acoustic guitar, orchestral arrangements, brass, piano, drums and organ.

For his first interview to promote the record, Say It With Garage Flowers met him for a pint. Subjects on the agenda included string sections, tattoos, relationships, Stormy Daniels and Shane MacGowan…

Pete Gow is sat in Trinity bar in Harrow, North West London, nursing a pint of lager. The last time he was here was in late 2017, when he played a solo acoustic We Shall Overcome anti-austerity charity show for Say It With Garage Flowers.

At that gig, one of the songs he aired was the folky Some Old Jacobite King, which now features on his first solo album, Here There’s No Sirens – albeit in a radically different version.

In fact the new record that we’re here to talk about is a surprising departure for Pete, who fronts UK Americana / alt-country band Case Hardin. Sure, lyrically it’s sometimes dark and often left of centre – like the songs we know him for – but this is a deeply personal and confessional record, and, musically,  it explores new territory for Pete – gone are the big electric guitars, old fashioned rock and roll, Springsteen-like anthems and kicked-around country songs of Case Hardin’s 2015’s album Colours Simple. Instead, this is a record of stripped-down acoustic songs, with stirring string arrangements, fleshed out by piano, brass, organ and drums.

We’re reminded of when US Americana singer-songwriter Chris Mills  – who just so happens to be a friend of Pete’s – made his 2005 album The Wall To Wall Sessions – a masterpiece that featured lush orchestration and horns.

Opener One Last One Night Stand sets the tone for most of Here There’s No Sirens – it’s a big, honest, relationship ballad with a breathtaking cinematic backing, while the song Mikaela sounds like early Ryan Adams, but with mournful horns and sweeping violins.

There are also character songs  – the majestic Some Old Jacobite King is steeped in the storytelling tradition and was inspired by a trip to the remote Isle of Skye, while Strip For Me centres on a guy who treats women in a thoroughly unpleasant way – and it name checks porn actress and stripper Stormy Daniels, who has been involved in a scandal with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Produced by multi-instrumentalist Joe Bennett, (Dreaming Spires, Co-Pilgrim, Raving Beauties / Paul McClure) at Farm Music Studios in Oxfordshire and out in April on Clubhouse Records, Here There’s No Sirens is a stunning record that’s both beautiful and unsettling.

At times, it can be uncomfortable to listen to, as Pete shares raw emotions and intimate relationship details over dramatic orchestral backing. Does he think it will surprise people who are used to hearing Case Hardin?

“I hope it will,” he tells Say It With Garage Flowers, sipping his pint. “So often when you hear a solo record by people who front bands where the lead singer is the creative force behind them – like the manner in which I front Case Hardin – the differences are quite marginal and it’s just a little bit more acoustic. I really put a lot of thought into how I wanted this album to be different. Even if people don’t like it, nobody can say that it’s just a Case Hardin-lite record…”

Q & A

This is your first solo album. What prompted the move to make a record on your own?

Pete Gow: I was trying to get Case Hardin to make a record last year. It was written – it was even overwritten – I had 15 or 16 songs, but we just weren’t able to make it happen for a whole world of reasons. Sometimes five grown men just can’t get their shit together to make a record happen.

So I started about thinking what I should do – the concept of making a solo record had never occurred to me. I thought about us doing an EP – something that would tide Case Hardin over, as it had been two years since we released our Colours Simple album. Bands like us live or die on new products – not to mention the fact that I’d been writing for a long time and needed to find an outlet for it.

When I realised that the Case Hardin thing wasn’t going to happen, there were three or four songs in that pile that I’d always wondered what the hell Case Hardin would do with them anyway?

The whole thing just came about in almost 24 hours. I spoke to Joe and he was into it, and I spoke to Clubhouse Records, who were expecting a new Case Hardin record, and they said that if I could turn the three or four tracks into an album, they’d be interested in it. So then I wrote the rest of the album in a couple of weeks.

This record is a big departure from the Case Hardin sound – it’s stripped-down ballads, with acoustic guitar, orchestral arrangements, piano, trumpet, piano, organ and drums…

PG: I’m the main songwriter in Case Hardin and we have a sound that’s reasonably distinctive, so I had to find a way of making the album a proper solo project.

I went to Joe and said, ‘here’s what I want to do’ – I didn’t want any guitars on it, but I wanted strings and piano and drums, with everything else stripped-out. Joe was brilliant – he listened to the demos and said, ‘I’ll meet you halfway’.

‘I didn’t want people who came to my solo record to find that it was just like a Case Hardin album, but with different musicians playing on it… I didn’t want to make a Case Hardin record’

He wanted to keep the acoustic guitar, because that’s how the songs were written and it’s what drives them along, but there’s no lead guitar on the record.

I didn’t want to short-change anybody – I didn’t want people who came to my solo record to find that it was just like a Case Hardin album, but with different musicians playing on it… I didn’t want to make a Case Hardin record and I knew that Joe could do strings – he’s done some wonderful work on albums that I’m familiar with. I play all the acoustic guitars on the record, the drums are by Fin Kenny and Joe plays everything else.

Even the backing vocals? I thought they were female…

PG: I’ll tell him that!

You made the record last year. How was the recording process?

PG: There were two short sessions of four or five days each in the middle of last year. We did it slightly differently to the way in which records are usually made – I laid down the guitar and then I’d put a guide vocal over the top of it. Then we brought Fin in, who had two days to work through the tracks. Joe wrote melody parts on a violin and then recorded the strings – it was all real instruments. He also wrote the various harmony parts.

The whole experience was very different – when we make a Case Hardin record, it always sounds like a 100 per cent better version of what I knew it was going to sound like in my head – a beautiful, shining, brilliant and more fully realised version.

With this record, I handed the acoustic guitar, vocals and drum tracks over to Joe and he then built the string arrangements. There are a few songs – One Last One Night Stand and TV Reruns – which have big, long, instrumental sections. If I were writing those for a Case Hardin record, I wouldn’t have made them so repetitive and so long.

‘I told Joe that I wanted this record to sound like Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call and most of Ryan Adams’ 29’

One Last One Night Stand was the first track Joe sent back to me and I knew then that it was going to be a great project. Joe has produced this album in the fullest and most traditional sense. He understood the content and took all of the songs to a place that was beyond my comprehension. That’s what he brought to this record. When Joe sent the tracks back to me, I was blindsided – they almost sounded like other people’s songs.

What were you listening to when you made this album? What were the musical influences?

PG: I told Joe that I wanted this record to sound like Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call and most of Ryan Adams’ 29. He said, ‘I’ve heard neither of those records and I’m not going to listen to them!’ It sounds nothing like either of them.

Joe and I was a wonderful juxtaposition – I had these ideas of what I didn’t want it to sound like, and the influences I did want to draw on, but all he wanted to do was to make the best record possible. Sometimes that fell into line and sometimes it didn’t – sometimes I managed to persuade him to make changes and sometimes change for change’s sake wasn’t the right thing to do. It was a very fulfilling relationship.

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Photo of Pete Gow by David Cohen

It’s a very personal album – emotionally raw and confessional. It’s naked Pete Gow – often in more than one sense of the word, but we’ll come to that later…

Let’s talk about some of the songs. The opener, One Last One Night Stand, features the lines, ‘We don’t need to die here on this beach – we don’t need this sand to wipe blood off our hands…’ This is dark territory, isn’t it?

PG: It’s just my way into relationship songs. I’ve always tried to find that slightly left of centre way into any situation. If there’s anybody who likes the way I write, then I’m guessing it tends to be because of stuff like that.

One Last One Night Stand – like a lot of the album – shows that I’m in a relationship and a place that I never expected myself to be in. I’m certainly in a place that I never expected to be in so comfortably that it would reflect in the music that I’m making.

One Last One Night Stand is just a slightly left of centre way of realising that that’s where I am. It was one of the songs that I wrote for the record – it hadn’t been written previously and it was one of the last ones I wrote. I realised where the record was going and it sets the tone for the project, which I why I put it at the beginning. ‘Here’s where I am – now go and listen to the rest of the record and you’ll realise…’

‘A lot of the album shows that I’m in a relationship and a place that I never expected myself to be in’

It’s an album that’s very relationship-heavy, isn’t it? Some of your Case Hardin songs feature characters, and, although there are characters on this record, most of the songs are personal, aren’t they? They’re about you and the relationship you’re in…

PG: Yes. Apart from possibly Some Old Jacobite King, which is a story song, this album is self-contained and doesn’t really stray from its mandate or remit. Over the course of 40 minutes you need something like Some Old Jacobite King to pull you away… nobody wants to just sit and listen to me and my relationship! [he laughs].

The second song on the album, Mikaela, is my favourite track, largely for the great line: ‘Songs are like tattoos – you should think before you name one after a girl…’ That’s a rare moment of humour in one of your songs…

PG: It is – if you listen to my records, you’ll know that.

Have you got any tattoos of girls’ names?

PG: I haven’t, but it’s that famous thing, isn’t it? Get a tattoo of a girl’s name that been spelt wrong…

That song was never intended to be put on a record, but it suddenly became indicative of this whole album, which is relationship-based, more than anything else I’ve ever done. The song was written for her [Mikaela]. There are references in it that you might think shouldn’t be put on an album for people to hear…

The sexual stuff? Well, I did say it was a naked record…

PG: Literally and figuratively. That’s why that song sits so beautifully next to One Last One Night Stand… ‘Hold on, what’s he saying here? Oh – OK, this is why…’

That was a song that was written for the Case Hardin record, but when I sent it to the band I thought, ‘what the hell are we going to do with this?’ I just didn’t want to throw a load of guitars over the top of it and turn it into alt-country by numbers.

I really like the brass on it – it’s mournful, like a New Orleans funeral band…

 PG: Yes, but slightly Mariachi as well – the trumpet was slightly buried in the string section originally, but it got pulled out and pushed front and centre in the final mix.

‘Nobody wants to just sit and listen to me and my relationship!’

From one sexual song to another… Next up we have Strip For Me, which could possibly be the first song to name check Stormy Daniels…

PG: It could well be. The song is nothing to do with her, but it’s about the underbelly of the male perspective of relationships – something I’ve written about at other points in my career.

It’s a character song, isn’t it?

PG: Absolutely.

The opening lines are very uncomfortable. There’s a fictional male protagonist who says to a woman: ‘Do you think you’re one of those girls too beautiful to hurt, too beautiful to cheat on? There’s no girl too beautiful for that’…

 PG: That horrible guy would quite easily just see a porn star and remember her name – ‘Strip for me, like Stormy Daniels’ – without really realising who this woman is.

It’s a pop culture reference – it’s had an odd reception already. It’s one of the few songs I’ve played live – I did some acoustic shows with Jason McNiff and I road tested some songs. Whenever I played Strip For Me, people burst out laughing… I was like, ‘shit!’

I obviously don’t think through the consequences of these things when I’m writing, but it will be interesting to see if people can peel back the layers, rather than just hearing that woman’s name. I wouldn’t want it to turn into some kind of joke or parody song – it’s not. I used her name to underline the stupidity of the guy in the first verse.

‘I hope history will be a lot kinder to Stormy Daniels and realise that she’s quite a significant character in the theatre that is the Trump presidency’

I guess the reason I left the reference in is because I hope history will be a lot kinder to people like Stormy Daniels and realise that she’s quite a significant character in the theatre that is the Trump presidency. The second verse is supposed to be the woman talking about the guy…

Strip For Me is going to be the preview digital single from the album, so let’s really see what people make of it…

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The title track, Here There’s No Sirens, contains a lyrical reference to the Pogues song, A Rainy Night In Soho, playing on the radio, and there’s also a snippet of the song in the outro…

PG: It’s a song about just finding yourself in the kitchen, with a radio playing your favourite song. I’ve given Shane MacGowan a co-writing credit – the song was originally intended for the Case Hardin record and I think they could’ve done something with it.

When I was finishing writing it and demoing it, I thought, ‘what key am I in? This is almost A Rainy Night In Soho’, so I slightly changed the guitar pattern and the style of the strum. I put a little bit of swing into it and changed the key.

The original demo was me playing it into my phone, with the last verse of A Rainy Night In Soho playing on my stereo. I’m a huge Pogues fan – that song is the one to slap people around the face with when they say the Pogues are just a bunch of drunks and that MacGowan is not a good writer…

Why is Here There’s No Sirens the title track?

PG: On this album I deliberately set out to do a few subtle things that I wouldn’t have done on a Case Hardin album – never titling a record after a song and never having our images on the front cover. I wanted to name the record after a song and the cover art is a picture of me by an artist from Edinburgh called Veronica Casey – she painted it many years ago. This album is a case of me unticking a lot of boxes for reasons only known to myself…

‘On this album I deliberately set out to do a few subtle things that I wouldn’t have done on a Case Hardin album’

You’re launching the album at a special London show in the Network Theatre, Waterloo on April 6, where you’ll be joined by The Siren Strinqs quartet…

PG: It’s a community theatre and it’s a beautiful space. Clubhouse Records and Joe wanted people to realise that this album is something different, so we have the Siren Strings – it’s not just me and a guitar. The show will be me, Joe, Tristan Tipping [Clubhouse Records and Paul McClure and The Local Heroes] on bass, Fin on drums, and the string quartet.

There are two supports – Lucy Kitt and Tony Poole [Starry Eyed and Laughing and Bennett Wilson Poole]. Tony mastered my record. We’re going to play the album and there will be one or two little surprises on the night.We’re also going to play at the Ramblin’ Roots Revue [April 12-14, Bucks Student Union, High Wycombe].

Finally, let’s talk about Case Hardin. Any plans for a new album?

PG: It’s written – we’re going into the studio as soon as we can. I think we’re going to start recording it in June and then get it out by June the following year.

What can we expect it to sound like?

PG: Looking at the solo project and knowing that I didn’t want electric guitars on it – and looking at the songs I’ve taken away from Case Hardin for my record – you’re left with something that will quite organically be a collection of much shorter, punchier, louder songs.

There won’t be anything on there as expansive as Poets Corner [the eight-minute album opener from Colours Simple], and I also won’t feel the need to put on tracks like High Rollers and Cheap Streaks From A Bottle [also from Colours Simple].

I think the next Case Hardin album, will, by default, be louder and punchier, and we can zone in on what many people think Case Hardin do best.

Pete Gow’s Here There’s No Sirens will be released on April 5 on Clubhouse Records. There will be an album launch show with The Siren Strings quartet on April 6 at The Network Theatre, London Waterloo, with support from Lucy Kitt and Tony Poole. Tickets are available here. 

Pete Gow and The Siren Strings will also be playing at the Ramblin’ Roots Revue festival (April 12-14, Bucks Student Union, High Wycombe).

 

‘I wanted to get back to that rock sound…’

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Luke Tuchscherer – photo by Amanda Tuchscherer.

There’s a song on Pieces, the latest album by Americana singer-songwriter Luke Tuchscherer, called Batten Down The Hatches. It sums up the record perfectly – this time around, on his third – and best – solo album, Luke, former drummer with Bedford alt-country band The Whybirds, isn’t pulling any punches – he’s made an angry, heavy, often political album that rocks like Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Batten down the hatches, indeed, for it’s like a hurricane out there… There’s even a nine-minute, epic rallying call (Requiem), which attacks social injustice in the UK and comes across like Luke’s very own Rockin’ In The Free World…

It’s not all big guitar anthems, though – there are some quieter moments in the eye of the storm, like the apologetic ballad Charing Cross and the gorgeous, Springsteen-like country-rock song Ghosts, which sees Luke revisiting his childhood haunts.

In an exclusive, in-depth interview, Luke, who now lives in New York, gives me the inside story on the making of Pieces and reveals that he’s already got his next five albums planned out…

Q & A

The last time we spoke was in the summer of 2017, for the release of your second solo album Always Be True.

You told me then that you’d already got the next four albums planned – track listings and all…. So I guess Pieces, which came out earlier this year, is the first of those albums. Is everything going to plan?

Luke Tuchscherer: Yeah – it’s going well. Pieces is the first of those albums. There’s another one, which will be called Widows & Orphans, that’s already been recorded. That just features Dave Banks and me on acoustic guitars, and is a really intimate, autumnal record and, as such, will be out in October 2019.

I have recorded my acoustic guitar and vocal parts for another record, provisionally titled Salvation Come, in Maplewood, New Jersey. We’re going to be adding some violin parts soon, with a Brooklyn musician I met called Steve May, then I’ll add the drums in the spring back home [in the UK], before adding the other parts as and when, including a baritone guitar player I met here [in New York] called Chris Tarrow. Widows & Orphans should buy us a bit of time before that one comes out, but I’d imagine it would be 2020.

So, the fourth of those records would actually be another full-band Penny Dreadfuls effort, akin to Pieces, which will have to wait until I’m back home [in the UK] again…
But, on top of that, I’ll be recording a solo Neil Young Hitchhiker/early Dylan-type album in New Jersey early next year, and I’ve had a folky/bluegrass album planned for years, akin to Steve Earle’s Train a Comin’ or something, but I just need to find the players for it.

The first thing that strikes me about your latest album, Pieces, is that it’s a much heavier sound than your last two records – quite frankly, it rocks, in a Neil Young and Crazy Horse style. What was your intention with this album? It has a big sound! 

LT: I’d already started moving things that way with the Shadows EP, which came out earlier this year and was mainly rockers. The reason is because I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as an acoustic artist. The first record was only that way because The Whybirds were still going, so my “electric” side was satisfied. You Get So Alone… [first solo album] was made up of songs that didn’t fit the band. But now the band is done, I wanted to get back to that rock sound.

‘I’ve actually written quite a few political songs, but they’ve never made it on to any albums before – I can see myself writing more about the wider world now, because my personal life is stable’ 

In 2017, you told me that classic ‘70s rock records like Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness On The Edge of Town and Tom Petty’s Damn The Torpedoes informed your last album, Always Be True. What were you listening to when you made this album? A lot of Neil Young, I guess…

LT: Neil Young has always been an influence, and for sure, it comes out the most on this album compared with my others. But for anyone who heard The Whybirds’ Cold Blue Sky, it shouldn’t be too much of a shock.

I think there’s a bit of Pearl Jam on this album, too – and in fact the Neil Young/Pearl Jam album Mirror Ball was an influence in terms of how quickly they recorded it – and the Petty stuff is still there.

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Your song Requiem is a Neil Young-like protest anthem that bemoans the current state of the UK – high taxes, the challenges faced by the NHS and how the rich are getting richer and the poor are worse off… It sounds like your very own Rockin’ In The Free World, crossed with Like A Hurricane…

It’s great to hear a modern protest song. Considering the dire situation the world’s in, doesn’t it surprise you that more artists don’t write protest songs? You’re not afraid to tackle issues head-on, are you?

LT: I’ve actually written quite a few political songs, but they’ve never made it on to any albums before. The thing about them is that they tend to date quite quickly. If the NHS goes tits up, then so does Requiem – ha ha! A truly great political song, like Masters of War [by Bob Dylan] is always relevant, sadly enough. Some other reactionary songs are redundant as soon as whatever event they’re responding to is over. Requiem was written after watching the Noam Chomsky film Requiem For The American Dream and applying it to the UK.
As for other people not writing them… I dunno. Maybe they’re wimps. Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they just don’t like political music. Personally, I can see myself writing more about the wider world now – though not strictly protest songs – because my personal life is stable. It’s kind of weird singing old break-up songs when I’m happily married, whereas I can see myself still feeling the things in Sudden Getaway or Ain’t That What They Say? in the future.

The first four tracks on the album don’t mess around – they rock out. Things don’t calm down until we’re halfway through, with the song Charing Cross. It’s quite an angry album in places, too. What frame of mind where you in when you wrote the songs and recorded them? Requiem, The MF Blues and Company Girl are angry songs – the latter is very vicious. It’s a put-down song. What inspired it? It sounds like a dig at the music industry…

LT: The only songs that were written shortly before recording were Requiem and Ghosts, but, because I have such a big backlog of songs, I basically choose the best batch to make a cohesive album, along with any new stuff I’ve got that fits. It’ll probably take me to the mid-2020s to clear my backlog!  The MF Blues was pretty old, probably 2007, but it fitted the theme of the record.

Company Girl was probably written in 2012 or so. And yeah, it’s angry. It’s about a lot of people, not just one, and they don’t have to be female at all… It’s just I was writing from the ‘company man’ perspective, so it made sense for the other part to be female, but it could’ve been Company Boy easily enough.

‘I have such a big backlog of songs – it will probably take me to the mid-2020s to clear it!’

I guess it’s a bit high horsey, but it’s a dig at the people who aren’t really artists – they’re just after fame. The kind of people who don’t love “Americana” or whatever, and would happily do an RnB album if they thought it would make them more successful. I won’t name names, but they’re not hard to spot. But they’re all doing better than me, so, what do I know?

Let’s talk about the recording sessions for Pieces… How was it making the album? You recorded the seven ‘rock’ songs live in one day, with a band – in June 2017, at The Music Centre, in Bedford. That must’ve been a long day? Talk me through it… 

LT: I had limited time before I moved to New York to get the album done. We knew the move was coming, so I wanted to maximise my minutes, so to speak. Between April and September 2017, we recorded Pieces, Widows & Orphans and my hard rock side-project Herd Behaviour’s debut, which is called Animal Habitual, and I played drums on David Banks’ forthcoming solo debut. All were recorded by Chris Corney.

I don’t remember it being a long, or even particularly stressful, day. We’d rehearsed the songs in the weeks leading up to the date – with me on drums, Dave on guitar and Simon Wilson on bass. We set up the night before to get all that out of the way. Then we went in and did it.

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Luke in the studio – photo by Tom Peters

Requiem was one take – we didn’t complete a second one. Sudden Getaway was like second take or something. It was all easy as I recall. I think Batten Down The Hatches was the only one that was a slight struggle, but even then it wasn’t too hard. Dave’s an amazing guitarist – every single note he plays on those seven rockers is live – Simon’s a great bassist, and I’m more comfortable behind the kit than anywhere, apart from singing, I suppose.

Then I added my guitars, vocals and percussion in a couple of additional sessions. Chris did almost all the harmonies and did a great job on the vocal arrangements, and Tom Collison added his keys from his home studio – I’d already moved by that time. Done!

When we last spoke, you were gearing up to move to New York. Does the opening song on the album, Sudden Getaway, reference that?

LT: Sudden Getaway was written in 2015, I think, maybe 2014, when NYC wasn’t even on the horizon. It’s really about an existential crisis, I guess. About struggling to be happy with your lot and wondering when that struggle might end.

Why did you move to New York and how is it working out?

LT: Essentially my day job got us to NYC, but I’d never have gone if the band was still going. But once the writing was on the wall with The Whybirds, I felt like I’d given up all of my twenties to the band and had nothing to show for it.

All my holidays were used up touring and recording, as were my weekends and a lot of my evenings. And I felt like I’d never really done anything for myself, or – since I was married by then – for my wife and I as a couple.

A lot of people asked if the New York thing was a music career move, but it was the complete opposite. It was to do something that wasn’t music-related, so I could feel like I’d actually done something with my life. That sounds pretty negative, but if you listen to Waiting For My Day to Come or Outside, Looking In on Always Be True, you can tell that I wasn’t very happy with music anyway! That said, See You When I See You is a fond look back at the ‘birds days, with just a tinge of regret that things didn’t turn out better.

‘A lot of people asked if the New York thing was a music career move, but it was the complete opposite. It was to do something that wasn’t music-related, so I could feel like I’d actually done something with my life’

I was basically working two full-time jobs and it was slowly eroding my passion for music. Since moving to New York, it’s been like starting at the bottom again, and the gigs have been half good and half soul suckers. But it’s made me miss playing music just for the fun of it, and that’s just about the most positive thing that could’ve happened. When I went back [to the UK] for the Pieces gigs in the summer, they were the best and most fun solo shows I’ve ever played. Bar none. I’m already massively excited about coming back next year and firing up the Penny Dreadfuls again.

Let’s talk about one of the ballads on the album – Charing Cross. It’s a sad song – an apology to a loved one. Demons and drink are involved. What’s the story behind it? Is it set in Charing Cross? Surely that must be a first for a song… 

LT: Yeah, that was an old song – 2010. It was written after a night at The Borderline, which is obviously just off Charing Cross Road. Anyway… I’d had my wallet and phone stolen, I was in a terrible mood, I got very drunk and I was an arsehole. The song was the apology. I can’t actually remember what the original chorus line was, but it was more positive, as the relationship lasted a few months more. But since that particular relationship is long gone, I turned the lyric into “I know I’ve really blown it now”, to make the song make sense on its own, and give it some finality.

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Photo of Luke by Jez Brown

Ghosts is another quieter moment on the record – a gorgeous country-rock song about going back to where you grew up. What can you tell me about that song? 

LT: That’s probably my favourite on the album and one of my best ever songs lyrically. It was inspired by something quite personal that I won’t go into, but, hopefully, it was written in a fairly universal way, so that people can get their own meanings from it.

What music are you currently listening to – new and old? Any recommendations?

LT: Even though I was a year late to it, I can’t get enough of Phoebe Bridgers’ Stranger in the Alps. It’s one of the best albums I’ve ever heard, let alone recently. Again, I was late to the party, but I finally watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston and I find his stuff pretty addictive. The latest Mudhoney album, Digital Garbage, is really good, too. I discovered a band on Spotify called Arliss Nancy, who have broken up now, I think, but I thought they had some good stuff.

So, finally, what’s next for you? There are all those albums to get out…

LT: I’d expect something like this:

2019: Widows & Orphans – stripped back acoustic album akin to Time (The Revelator) [by Gillian Welch].

2020: Salvation Come (Country-ish Southern Gothic album, with fiddle as the lead instrument.

2022: Luke Tuchscherer & The Penny Dreadfuls – another rock effort.

2023: Carousel – completely solo “session” album.

20??: Untitled folk/bluegrass album.

But I’m back for a solo show at the Green Note in London on April 11, then I’ve got full-band shows in Leicester, Bedford and London on July 18, 19 and 20, respectively. There’s also a European festival, but I don’t know if I can announce that yet, but I’m super-excited about that!

Pieces by Luke Tuchscherer is out now on Clubhouse Records.  For more information, go to: https://www.luketuchscherer.co.uk/