Having made his name producing albums for the likes of Kings of Leon, Ryan Adams, Paulo Nutini and Tom Jones, and touring as a multi-instrumentalist with Ray LaMontagne and Emmylou Harris among others, Brit Award winner Ethan Johns is stepping out from behind his mixing desk into the spotlight with a solo tour and album.
Born in 1969, Ethan has been in the music business for a long time but ‘If Not Now Then When?’ is his first solo record. His style seems to fit in with a vibrant folk-influenced scene spearheaded by acts like Fleet Foxes, Ben Howard and Laura Marling (who he has also produced albums for), but he doesn’t see that style of music as something that is affected by the changing times. “I think pop music changes, the style and fashion changes, but the kind of music that I make, it may come in and out of fashion, but the people who are into this kind of music are always into this kind of music, it has nothing to do with fashion. It’s the kind of music you have to listen to, pay attention to.”
His real push into the limelight came when he played a few of his songs for Laura and she suggested he take them onto the stage. When he survived that ordeal he decided to head into the studio. Grabbing whatever musicians he could find and giving them all producer status (i.e. letting them do what they wanted on the songs), he recorded his first album of original material. But the switch in roles didn’t faze him at all. “It’s all music based, whether I’m collaborating with another artist or working on my own music it’s all the same to me really. I give it the same attention, the same care, and I’m engaged the same way.”
In November of last year he began his solo outing with a tour of independent record shops across the UK. His album was released on vinyl around this time, with the digital version not on release until February. He certainly chose an interesting time for music to release his first album. “I think we’ve just about turned a corner as far as music retail is concerned. I know HMV’s gone down, but they haven’t really been selling music for years. We talk about HMV in terms of music sales but they’ve been selling video games and DVDs for a decade… I think it’s terrible that HMV’s gone, but people are saying ‘well, there’s nowhere to buy music’. There are places to buy music, there are a lot of independent record shops that are owned and run by people that really love music. That’s why they opened the shop. That’s where you can go to find music. They’re around and they will always be around. All you need to do is go find it.”
“It was a record-buying trip for me,” he laughs, referring to his tour. “It was an amazing trip, I got to meet people, and it was fantastic to see the independent retailers are still alive and well in the UK. I mean, they’re the ones struggling a bit, but y’know what, there’s a ray of sunshine. I think we’re about to head into a really good time.”
Ethan is not the only record producer in the family. His father Glyn Johns, a recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, has produced albums for some of the most important rock acts of all time, including ‘Who’s Next’ for The Who and ‘Slowhand’ for Eric Clapton. Last year, they worked together for the first time as co-producers on The Staves’ album ‘Dead & Born & Grown’. “We both found them independently of each other, was why we decided to do it together. I found them on a Tom Jones record, they were recommended to me by an A&R guy…and my dad saw them perform and thought they were amazing, we both thought they were great so we decided to do it together.”
After this collaboration, Ethan also recruited his father to mix his album for him. “I said ‘do it how you want to do it.’ I mean with a guy like that, [making suggestions] would be like hiring Picasso to do a painting and then showing him how to do it. You’d be an idiot. So I just let him do it how he wanted to do it, I mean that was the whole point of getting him to do it…it was easy for me to trust what he was doing.”
With a music history like Glyn’s he is certainly not a man who would be easily impressed. “He liked it a lot actually. I remember quite clearly about two days in – he’s so fast, he literally mixes an album in four days – we’re about half way through it and he turns to me and says ‘this is really good’. And I went ‘oh, well thanks’. So yeah he really enjoyed it, he really likes the record, he listens to it a lot apparently, he told me a few weeks ago he’s been listening to it a lot which is great.”
On the process of writing songs he says “it’s almost like you go into a bit of a trance, in a way, it’s like a white-out experience almost. When they come they come. It could last anywhere from between half an hour to three hours, and you wake up at the end of it with a song, it’s really weird. It’s a pretty bizarre experience and I couldn’t begin to explain it.”
Ethan Johns will be performing in the Sugar Club in Dublin on the 22nd of February, and in the true folk tradition “it’s just me and a guitar and the songs, and it’s going to be a really good evening.” Support on the night comes from SOAK. His album “If Not Now Then When?” is currently available for purchase on vinyl and will be available on CD and download in February.