JEB LOY NICHOLS

THE JEB LOY NICHOLS SPECIAL

Sat in a central London bar that’s rapidly filling with after work drinkers and lingering afternoon barflies, Jeb Loy Nichols is some way out of his comfort zone. For just over a decade, the American country soul musician has been living on a ten-acre farm in mid-Wales. Over the whirr of the jukebox, Jeb explains his very different way of life.

“I’ve been in there for eleven years. I grew up in Missouri – that’s the American equivalent of mid-Wales really. Small rolling hills, fairly enclosed, very familiar to the world I live in now. What’s great about living here is it’s very beautiful. Wales is fairly untouched, so it’s also fairly unspoilt. It works for somebody like myself - maintaining a pretty militant, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist stance. But then, at a weak moment, someone asks you to do something insane and you say yes…”

That offer he couldn’t refuse? To release his ninth solo album through a new label - City Country City / Decca Records. It is the quietly prolific musician’s first release via a major label since1997.

If soul music – truly righteous soul music - acts as a telegraph of the times, then the headlines coming across loud and clear on The Jeb Loy Nichols Special aren’t hugely positive. We consume too much, we’re screwed by a system that’s determined to keep us screwed, who’s the real criminal – the bank robber or the banker? That is takes a 49 year old American living fifty miles west of the back of beyond to address the issues affecting the Western world rather than an oikish inner-city teenager or a Crass-esque East End squat punk is incredible. And that said messages are set to a timeless, exquisite country roll is even more jaw dropping.

Musically, The Jeb Loy Nichols Special twists the radio dial gracefully through the very best in Southern soul, reggae, folk and blues. Recorded in an analogue studio in Dollis Hill with producer Benedic Lamdin and Nostalgia 77, a band of jazz musicians, the goal was to make a record that captured the rawness of the performance on the day.

“I wanted the record to have a freshness, a spontaneity. Never more than two takes. I didn’t want to be pragmatic like I’ve been on past records. I wanted the record to be twelve tracks that just are what they are. What I’m interested in is purely the sounds we made in the studio on that day. When you listen to Archie Shepp or you listen to Coltrane, you never think, “What was Coltrane’s whole life like? What would he have blogged?” Its the sounds he made on the day he hit the studio. Living within that exact moment. That’s what I wanted this record to be – not a trawl through my life for six months.”

The Jeb Loy Nichols Special is Jeb’s ninth solo album, his first release on a major label since Lover’s Knot on Capitol in 1997. Of that period, he says now, “I was less than the maximum. I had a chance and didn’t, for a number of reasons, rise to it.” In the years since then, he has made records with the likes of Adrian Sherwood, Dan Penn and Dennis Bovell. The original vinyl release of …Special was conceived as a collaboration with his friend, the respected illustrator Rob Ryan, who provided cover artwork for the album.

On …Special, Jeb’s places his own songs alongside a clutch of covers from the likes of long time musical inspirations such as Larry Jon Wilson (Things Ain’t What They Used To Be (And Probably Never Was)), Merle Haggard (Going Where The Lonely Go), George Jackson (Ain’t It Funny) and Townes Van Zandt (Waiting Round To Die). One of the most affecting songs on the LP is a truly striking version of reggae classic Pablo Gad’s 1980 single Hard Times. Three decades on, the song is effortlessly transplanted from Thatcher-era British to the brutal and austere present. It’s far from a straight take on the original though.

“You take a song like Hard Times. It’s a reggae song that I’ve always loved and even better, its an English reggae record. When I came to do it, I rewrote about eighty percent of the song. The line “What’s the crime of robbing a bank compared to the crime of owning one?” was something I took from Bertolt Bretch (from the Threepenny Opera). It’s important for me to always looking outside of the immediate influences we have all around us, not to just continue the excesses of this junk culture that we’re stuck in.
At the heart of the record is the remarkable Countrymusicdisco45. As perfect a piece of funkified country soul as you’ll ever find, it could be an end of the night classic played in a David Mancuso DJ set at the Grand Ole Opry or Gene Page doing string arrangements on a George Jones session. It’s also possibly the single piece of music that forced Jeb to make a decision in a weak moment. The day after Jeb’s manager and …Special’s A&R mentor Ross Allen aired the track on his Ministry of Sound radio show, Decca hit the phone to find out who the hell the record was by. They picked up the LP for release shortly afterwards.

While the union of sounds should be incongruous, here they blend together utterly naturally. Jeb is quick to point out that it’s by no means an innovation.

“They were making disco records in Nashville in the ’70s, it wasn’t an alien concept for country and disco to mix. Tony Joe White made a disco record in 1980 called The Real Thang; speak to Dan Penn, he loved disco music. For me personally, disco was a great high water mark in 20th century music. It was the one music that took liberation as its core on every level. It became horrible like everything does but at the beginning it was an amazing thing. The sound on that track is very much a direction I’d like to head in – a whole new country soul music that isn’t the country soul of the late 60s and 70s. Certainly that’s what I’m looking towards next.”

And those headlines? While it might seem that many of the lyrics …Special (whether the carefully chosen covers or the Nichols originals) may be direct comment on this country right now, Jeb is quick to point out that there was no intention to make a ‘state of the nation address’.

“I’m not sure politics with a capital P was influential, but certainly the way I live was. One of the things that I’ve always hated about ‘rock’ music is the pointless excess; the excess of emotion, of lyrics, of music, of everything. That’s what I always loved about reggae and about soul. There’s such a notion of restraint. With this record – and with my life in general – I just wanted to keep things as simple as possible. There was a book called Ringolevio by one of the original San Francisco Diggers, Emmett Grogan that was inspirational in the making of this record. His mantra was always, “It’s the song not the singer”. That was such a big thing for me during this record. I kept thinking we have to get away from this notion. One of my favourite bands of all time, The Sex Pistols, they aren’t interesting. What’s interesting is the stuff they make. The thing I’m interested in is the 3 minutes 30 seconds of Anarchy In The UK.”.

With that, he makes his excuses to leave the excesses of a Soho bar on a rainy Thursday evening. Wales is calling, The Jeb Loy Nichols Special is leaving the station right about now.

The people ordering the cocktails may not notice his departure, Emmett Grogan’s inspirational words still resonating.

The singer, not the song.

This time next year, it’s a good bet a fair few people in the room will certainly know the song.