Singer songwriter and former Apollo 440 frontman Ewan MacFarlane returns for live Mad Hatters date in Inverness on Saturday with songs including story of fall out with his wife on their way to a Snuts gig!
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On Saturday (October 1), singer songwriter Ewan MacFarlane returns to Inverness for a Mad Hatters gig that will showcase his latest album Milk.
His solo album is just the latest work from a musician who knows the city well from his days leading The Grim Northern Social – and a couple of those songs will be featured in his set, he has promised.
Ewan last played here supporting Astrid at Eden Court last year and his set then included his latest single Won’t Stop Burnin’ which tells the frank, funny story of a couple’s massive falling out on the way to a Snuts gig!
That couple was Ewan and his wife Jo …
Ewan laughed: “As far as I’ve been told, the guys from The Snuts came and watched a couple of my gigs a long time ago. The guy who is their manager came to see The Grim Northern Social a long time ago with his dad when he was a kid, so he invited us along and got us on the guestlist for this particular gig, which was lovely. Those boys are doing great so fair play to them!”
But on their way to the gig, Ewan and Jo got into a row, and she jumped out of the car and headed for the subway in Glasgow, Ewan having to park the car and chase after her.
“I suppose it is one of those songs where word for word, that is actually what happened!” Ewan laughed.
“It doesn’t happen often where you are telling a story exactly as it is. Quite often you will drift away to make it more interesting. But it was so interesting anyway that I didn’t have to drift away. So it worked really well.”
Ewan chats about the differences of releasing a single these days, though essentially it seems that for him the thrill of getting it out there is the same.
Also, he doesn’t have a choice …
“For me it is about releasing songs. I am quite an obsessive songwriter and it is about releasing the music and getting it out in the universe and people can access it.
“You just have to keep on being relentless. I’m doing it because I need to do it. I have to get out there and get the songs off my chest.”
Ewan has been a musician his whole life – but some might not know that as well as his years with Scottish band The Grim Northern Social, he became involved with dance producers Apollo 440 – and was their frontman.
“I was involved with Apollo 440 long before I was in the Grim Northern Social,” Ewan laughed. “I lived in London in the 1990s and used to be with one of the biggest rock n roll managers of the time, Bill Curbishley, he managed The Who, Plant & Page and I was just a young boy who had moved down from Scotland and was getting taken out to dinner with all these absolute superstars – I was like ‘Oh my goodness, what is going on!’.
“But through that I was fortunate enough to make a lot of contacts. So there was one night in 1993 or 94 I went up to the Apollo’s studio at the time – they had already released an album and were working on their second one. I went up for a listen.
“It was a Friday night and I was well-lubricated – I’d had a few pints! – and I went up and they let me hear this instrumental piece – and I was blown away! It was incredible. They were really original producers, but being a young Scottish cocky guy at the time, I said about the instrumental ‘That is brilliant, but it is missing me singing on it!’.
"They looked at me as if to say ‘Oh yeah? Well let’s see what you can do?’ I remember writing down some lyrics and just singing it in one take.
“And do you know it was just one of those moments that happens very rarely? That one take, they took it and that particular song became the name of the album, Electroglide In Blue and it was quite a seminal song back then because it was one of the first songs to mix drum n bass with rock n roll so it was very interesting at the time
“They wanted to release it as a single back then but because it was so long – they tried to cut it down to single length, but that took away the essence and the beauty of it, so it never got released as a single. But it is still one of my favourite tracks that I’ve done, to this day.”
Ewan later returned to Scotland and ended up forming The Grim Northern Social.
He explained: “I had moved back up from London in 2000. It was starting to get the better of me and I was being a wee bit excessive and my only thought at the time was ‘God, I need my mammy!’. I was always good at recognising when it was time to move on. And I would stop and change my life. So I came back home. And on my way back up on the train, I thought ‘Right, I’m going to start a band!’ and I came up with the band name even before I had any band members! When I got home, I proceeded to seek out different players and the first guy I found – fortunately for me – was the incredibly talented Andy Cowan who was the keyboard-player at the time.
“I think we were seen as a rock n roll band. I was a flamboyant young man with a point to prove at the time.”
Music had been important to Ewan since he was a youngster – he was the kid that got to sing the solos at primary school. Well, most of the time…
“There were a couple of times I wasn’t allowed because I had been a naughty child! My headmistress stopped me doing the Easter Service once, I remember, and another time my old papa came to see me probably in Primary 5 at the time and I wasn’t onstage and I had to say ‘Sorry, Papa but I got myself into a bit of trouble!’
“I think as you do I was 13 and in high school when I picked up the guitar. I joined a band of mates but the guy that was the main guy in the band – it was a covers band at the time and that’s not really my thing – he didn’t let me sing. I think because he maybe thought I was better than him or something. And from there I just decided I would leave them to it and do my own thing."
That turned out to be moving a continent away.
“I moved to Canada! I was 14 and went to high school in Toronto, just outside Toronto. My father had moved there when I was a wee boy, him and mum had split up and I went over there to experience new things because at that particular time I wasn’t getting on so well with my stepfather – just me, not wanting to conform to another man’s rules, I suppose.
“But not realising at the time, I broke my mother’s heart.
“I had a very up and down relationship with my father. Musically he was doing the circuit in Toronto and had been doing it for years – he was a folk singer, if you like, and used to play a lot of Jim Croce and Cat Stevens, people like that.
"But I certainly got into the guitar more when I moved over there. And I started writing songs over there, writing properly from when I was about 14, I reckon.
“I came back to Scotland just as I was turning 18 and had met a Scottish guy over there who I played football with at weekends – it was quite a big social gathering, all the UK guys, and the Irish guys, we would all get together. And there was this one particular guy who had been over all summer and his name was Kenneth King. He was from Wishaw and he was really talented, he was a great songwriter. I learned an awful lot from him.
"We moved back home and we started a proper first band. At the time the band was called The Real McCoy and we were doing all right. We would support bands like The River Detectives and that's really where my proper music journey starts.”
Though Ewan says he started songwriting at 14, was that his earliest memory of writing songs or trying to?
“Interesting you say that because when I was wee, me and my mum would be sitting in the kitchen singing and we used to harmonise to the Beatles and The Everly Brothers and stuff like that.
“I always remember hearing Beatles' songs and thinking ‘This is amazing!’, but even when I was young, if the song would go somewhere, or if it went to a bridge, I might think ‘Hmm, I don’t think I would have taken that there!’.
“I mean, who the hell did I think I was,” Ewan laughs.
“But even as far back as that I was writing songs in my head without actually putting them on to pen and paper.”
It is likely listening to Ewan talk about songwriting, that it is something of a compulsion.
“I’ve been up since 6.45 this morning, but I was in the studio till 3am writing another new song because I went to go to bed at midnight last night and a song came into my head and I thought ‘Oh God!’ and that happens!
“This is Thursday, and that is the third time this week, so I need to get some serious sleep!
“But I remember reading a quote from John Lennon saying ‘If a song comes into your head, you have to get it down and as close to finishing it as you possibly can because if not it is gone forever’. And I have always stood by that.
“I've made that one of my rules as a writer. So I make a point of going into my home studio, getting a coffee and just going for it!
“I am completely obsessive about that.
“I spent a lot of years making electronic music with Apollo 440 and on my own.
“I never released a lot of it and I thought ‘You know what, this time I’m going to try to be as prolific as I can possibly be and release everything that I think is of a decent standard’.
“I’d already started working on my next album when Milk wasn’t even released yet!
“Without exaggerating, I’ve probably got enough songs to release albums for the rest of my life and would never need to write again! But it’s the nature of what you do.
“Songwriters – we’re storytellers, aren’t we? And we probably just write on a daily basis, I would say.”
After a final gig appearing as frontman with Apollo 440 in 2018, Ewan returned to his roots to bring out first solo album Always Everlong, MILK is the second, inspired by his partner Jo?
“It is more inspired by our relationship over the past 20-odd year, really,” Ewan said.
“I'm extremely fortunate that we are still genuinely best friends. We work together every day and we try and spend as much time with the kids as we can and on our own.
“So it is more about the passion, the compassion, the ups and downs, everything about relationships.
“I think essentially it is probably a concept album about two people and what they have been through.
“One minute you have a song like Won’t Stop Burnin’ which has got comedic value and then Tangled which is an absolute love song. People might get fed up of me writing songs about Jo, but I will continue to do so!”
The title track, All Those Years, starts with what sounds like a first, naïve love that fast forwards through the song into a more mature, deeper relationship.
“It was supposed to sound a bit naïve and as it moves on the sound takes shape and chorus kicks in ‘She is all for me …’
"All of a sudden, it’s got you on a journey because the sound is much more distinguished and almost high fidelity, if you like,” Ewan explains. “I love that song and I’m really proud of it.”
It goes ‘21 years and it just got better’ and you ask Ewan if that is as special – and unique – as it sounds?
“We are aware of that, we know what we have is pretty special,” he said. “ I don’t know many people who fancy the pants off their wife after 22 years and I think it is important we always try to do our best for each other, and to look our best for the person we love.”
Al Green songs – music to fall in love to – are celebrated by Ewan with his song When Al Green Sings, with echoes of the artist’s sounds running through it.
“That was completely deliberate,” Ewan said. “If I was going to write a song about one of my favourite singers on the planet, it had to have that kind of flavour about it. There are wee ‘Al Greenisms’ in there and even at the end when it has a big string outro. I’m enjoying that song live – we started rehearsing it and it has been coming together really well.
“At the Inverness gig we will play a lot of the songs that are on the Milk album – I think it’s probably the best piece of work I have ever done. I’m really proud of it. There will be a couple of Grim Northern Social songs in there and a couple from Always Everlong as well.”
And it seems that Ewan is enjoying presenting his solo music to the world.
“It’s like being a new artist all over again when you go solo, you have got to prove yourself all over again and try and build a new fanbase and so on. But that’s just part of it!”
Ewan MacFarlane and his band plays Mad Hatters, Inverness, on Saturday, October 1 from 8pm, with support. More: ewanmacfarlanemusic.com
