Formula Indie Sessions _ Interview with Mr Magpie
Questions answered by Matthew Ross (vocals, 12 string guitar, songwriter)
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What is your earliest memory connected to music?
Music filtered into my consciousness early on, in the usual childhood places: my parents’ cassettes on rainy car journeys around the north of England (motown, soul and 60s pop); hymns in school assemblies; nursery rhymes.
How did your passion for creating music begin?
When I was nine years old, two songs made me jump up and think “I want to write songs too!”. The first was Help by The Beatles, which was the first song on our cassette copy of the ‘1962-66’ greatest hits collection. The second was Papa Gene’s Blues by The Monkees, which I saw them performing on a re-run of their TV show. The joyous melodies, urgency and jangly sugar rush of these two songs got right to me. Imagine being to able create something like that! I was hooked. By the age of ten, I was making up little ditties of my own, although it took another decade for me to learn some guitar chords and begin writing actual songs. My musical tastes have become much more diverse over the years, to encompass folk, post-punk, jazz, country and more, but I still feel that same spark of excitement when I hear a classic 60s pop song.
What’s the story behind your current music project?
Mr Magpie is a time-travelling, talking bird who collects all things glittering and strange, and turns them into jangling pop tunes… Or so the legend goes. Behind this fictitious figurehead, the project is a vehicle for two songwriters: myself and Luke Foster. We write songs inspired by nature, landscape, folklore and eccentric characters. Musically, it’s 60s psychedelia and folk-rock meets jangling 80s indie.
Luke and I met eight years ago when we were both slogging round the open mic/pub gig circuits in Sheffield. We got chatting, and realised that we shared a passion for many of the same artists, and -crucially – for trying to follow an authentic, less-trodden path through music. We have a DIY ethos to everything we do: we record our music ourselves, at home. We favour gigs in people’s houses and other unconventional spaces; we even toured the North of England by bicycle, towing our guitars behind us from gig to gig!
Our first album – ‘The Magical World of Mr Magpie’ – was recorded in 2019. After a hiatus, we regrouped with a full band lineup, adding bassist Daniel Wildey and drummer Rob Kenning, who have added so much depth to our sound. We’ve recorded a second album, ‘The Fever Dreams of Mr Magpie’, which we are going to release on vinyl, thanks to a crowdfunding campaign!
How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard your music before?
Like silver raindrops falling on autumn leaves, or the half-whispered hums of a far-away bird. Like radio waves drifting over a deserted country railway station.
What is one thing you’ve learned that completely changed the way you make music?
Learning that you could record music yourself, at home, with a simple set-up, was revolutionary to me. Realising that it didn’t have to sound perfectly professional – if the songs were strong and played with conviction – changed everything.
What tools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process?
All our music is recorded at home, in glorious lo-fi. We use a simple 8-track Zoom recorder, and a couple of condenser mics. Our current album, ‘The Fever Dreams of Mr Magpie’, presented a new challenge, as it’s the first time we’ve had a full-band sound to record. It was important to us to capture that live band energy, without losing the nuance of multi-tracking. So, we recorded the best band take of each song, and captured the drums from that. The basic track of one song – ‘Fire Away!’ – was even recorded at a gig. Then, we rebuilt each song by overdubbing vocals, guitars, bass, etc on top of the live track. Perhaps an unorthodox way to do it, but we think it managed to catch the flavour of what this Mr Magpie line-up is all about. For mixing, we use Reaper. I should add that Luke and I are generally the least technically skilled people in the world, so the process involves a lot of tangling ourselves in wires and cursing the laptop, but we get there in the end.
Which indie artist or song are you loving right now?
Right now, I’m drawn to the gloriously melodic fuzz of Sharp Pins’ ‘I Wanna Be your Girl’, and the droning folk instrumentals of Gwennifer Raymond.
How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?
Enormously. Our music isn’t in-your-face-personal in a ‘John Lennon-Plastic Ono Band’ sort of way, but the lyrics are very much our own skewed perspectives on the world. My songs also feature a lot of landscapes and places that have been important in my life: ‘Ghost Trains of Old England’ is centred around echoes of my childhood in Liverpool; ‘Amanita’ is a hymn to Autumn, set in one of my favourite woodlands. Some of my other songs like ‘Half of a Blue Sky’ or ‘Meet Me By The Lighthouse’ are sort of short stories. They’re fictional, but take place in places that mean a lot to me, so in that sense they’re quite personal and real. More generally, the subjects that Luke and I are drawn to write about are often slightly eccentric, unusual subjects for songs; they reflect both our interest in the off-kilter and our disinterest in platitude. If you listen to the lyrics and join some dots, you’ll probably find out a lot about us.
What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?
A friend once said that she pictured my songs as an image of me standing in a middle of a woodland. I think she sensed that there are a lot of nature references in my songs, and a sense of awe and wonder that comes with that. I hope that comes across. More generally, Mr Magpie is all about acting and creating with authenticity. It’s about embracing playfulness, and the odd things that inspire us, rather than trying to fit in desperately with the herd.
What’s the most important lesson music has taught you so far?
That making music creates more than just sound; it creates a chemistry and bond that is very special.
What is a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at?
Somewhere with big skies, and a view to where the sea meets the sky. A stone circle on a Scottish Island as the sun goes down, or perhaps the Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?
It would be easy to pick a musical artist who has been a big influence on my particular style. But I think a much more interesting collaboration would be to work with a different kind of artist. Writing melodies for words by a poet or short story writer would encourage me to approach composition differently. I’d maybe pick the Scottish poet Norman McCaig, or nature writer Jim Crumley. Another interesting idea would be to write songs for a female songwriter with a much greater vocal range than mine; I think that would inspire some new and unique melodies. Bobbie Gentry, perhaps?
Where can our listeners follow and support your music? (Website,Spotify, IG, links)
You can stream our music at mrmagpieband.bandcamp.com
We’re currently crowdfunding the release of our second album on vinyl! Get your copy on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mrmagpieband/the-fever-dreams-of-mr-magpie-on-vinyl
We’re also – begrudgingly – on Spotify… Mr Magpie | Spotify
Looking toward the future, what’s your dream for the next chapter of your musical journey?
To continue to developing as songwriters; to find new dimensions to the Mr Magpie sound, and to play the songs in new places to new people. I’d love to add some strings to the sound, and we’d like to play more gigs in outdoor spaces. As for new music, I’ve always felt that there should be a trilogy of Mr Magpie albums. Whether the third album will happen next year, or in thirty years’ time is anybody’s guess. But we have some new songs already. Watch this space…
What do you hope listeners will discover about you along the way?
Some of our enthusiasms, quirks, passions, and the things that make us tick. Our first album was called ‘The Magical World of Mr Magpie’; we’d like to bring people into that world…
