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► Ivan Moult (May Band of the Month) Interview
An Interview with Cardiff singer-songwriter, and May's
UWIC Band of the Month, Ivan Moult
24th March 2010
By Jake May
We’ll start from the start, how did you first start getting into music?
I started getting into music when I was a kid, really, same as most people. I grew up in a house, my parents were both teachers, and for some reason they decided we weren’t gonna have a TV in the house when I was a kid, so we just listened to a lot of records. My mum was massively into folk and 60s pop and my dad liked blues and jazz, and my mum had a big thing for classical music as well so I had all of this music in the house, plus this weird obsession with The Beatles that my dad had as well. So I had all of that in the house, and I just listened to that all of the time. That’s the music that I listened to as a kid. And then I grew up and started listening to different things and I picked up a guitar that my Dad had left lying around and started teaching myself to play, started writing songs.
When did you write your first song?
I wrote my first song when I was 16 and it was about an ex. A girl that I was with for a while and it was a particularly frustrating song, but it’s not up on the MySpace. I put it up the other day, actually. I re-recorded it just for fun and then I listened back to it and I took it down again. I’m not quite sure about that one. It was a good song… It seemed like a good song at the time.
So you had no lessons as a child?
No. I got bass lessons when I was in college. I did a music course and did a little thing that was supposed to be an A-Level or a Btec or something. Anyway, I joined as a guitarist, but there were too many guitarists. So I bought my ex-girlfriend’s bass off of her and played bass in a couple of bands - and I got bass lessons which was good.
So you’ve been quite active as a kid in bands?
Yeah, yeah. We were in quite a few bands when we were younger which just seemed like a lot of fun. We had a band in secondary school, that was the first band for a ‘Battle of the Bands’, we had a ska-punk band called Pelican Skeleton. Because we were all listening to Less Than Jake and Reel Big Fish and all this ska punk, we were massively into that, and so we started a ska-punk band. We were… good. I played guitar. That was a good band. I think we had one good song, a couple of good songs maybe.
No revival in the future?
Well, just before we all went off to uni for the second year, we did a gig at a local pub, and me and the singer and one of the guitarists did a little acoustic set for one of the sonfs which was quite fun. But it was more just a self-serving thing really.
Is this your first interview as a musician?
No I’ve done a couple of interviews now. I’ve done some for local radio – I did one for Bethan Elfyn on her BBC Introducing show, and I did a live session for her on her show and she put the interview up so that was the first one, so this is the second.
How did that [the Bethan Elfyn session] come around?
A mate of mine from uni did work experience at BBC Wales and he heard my music. He was doing work experience with Bethan and she does BBC Introducing so he took one of my demos and said that he’d give it to her. He did, and she liked it, and she gave me a gig, and put me on her show and played my songs. I was pretty happy about that.
What are you up to other than music?
I’m playing with a band called The School, I play guitar for them, I joined about a month or two ago. After a gig, Liz, who’s the singer and the songwriter in the band – she’s also a promoter in Cardiff and she gave me a gig - said that she liked my stuff and said that she needed a guitarist and, because I’d deferred, I had the time on my hands so I joined them. We’ve just done a UK tour.
How did the tour go?
It went really well, it was a lot of fun. We started off at Cardiff, we did the launch at Clwb Ifor Bach and then we went to Sheffield, Newcastle, Leicester, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow, and that was good. We had this van and we had the support band Allo Darlin playing with us as well and it was really good fun staying in Travelodges, meeting people.
So was that your first tour as a musician?
Yeah it was the first tour I’ve ever done so it was really good experience. It was brilliant; I made a lot of good friends.
How did you join The School?
Like I said, Liz just mentioned that she needed a guitarist after a gig – she was the promoter that gave me the gig, so she’s a promoter and the singer in the band, so she’s quite active in the Cardiff music scene – and she just mentioned that they needed a guitarist. I was a bit drunk at the time so I just said “I’ll do it, pick me, I’ve got nothing to do!” and I woke up in the morning and thought “what have I signed myself up for?!”
What was it like joining a band that have a song on a Japanese fridge advert, is that right?
Yep, Japanese… oh, no, Korean! A Korean oven advert.
And they were recently featured as band of the day for the Guardian as well. Is it daunting joining a band that is starting to go places?
No, it’s just really exciting to be honest. I wouldn’t say it was daunting. Yeah band of the day, I think either yesterday or today we’re on the website. That’s pretty cool, seeing my picture on there and that. I’ve only been in [the band] for a little while so it’s been quite good for me, just kind of stepping in at the right moment.
What have the gig attendances been like?
They’ve been good actually. I didn’t really know what to expect; the second gig I ever played with them was the first gig of the tour so I wasn’t sure what to expect. They were good. The Welsh Club [Clwb Ifor Bach] gig was brilliant, it was absolutely packed, you couldn’t move in there.
Is it not scary playing to big crowds?
That was intense. I’m not gonna lie, I was shaking for a bit and I made a couple of mistakes but nothing big, I did quite well with it. Yeah, that was intimidating. Apart from that it’s been between 30 to 50 people per night on the tour which, for the size of the venues we were playing, was quite good. I was happy with it. It was nice playing to that many people that came just to see us, didn’t just happen to be sitting about, but actually made the journey, and come up and spoke to us afterwards, asked us to sign CD’s which was quite fun. That was a novelty!
Have you written any songs with them yet?
No we haven’t written anything together yet, but I think they have a two album deal so there will be some writing going on for the next album so that should be cool.
Let’s move on to your music. How would you personally describe, for the UWIC students, your songs?
[Pause] They’re pretty… [pause]. There are some clear influences in there. I’ve listened to a lot of acoustic blues and folk music and a lot of alternative modern day acoustic singer-songwriters that have gone for that sort of thing. I dunno, I always find it quite difficult to describe it. It’s quite chilled out, they’re pretty intimate songs, some nice melodies, some nice rhythms. It’s not the sort of thing you’d hear normally. People ask me what it sounds like and sometimes I don’t really know what to say but because I play guitar in a different tuning and stuff I mess around with things to try and make them sound as original as I can, but it still comes across as sounding like somebody else. I don’t know, have you listened to it?
Yeah, I’ve listened to a lot of it. It’s obviously got a lot of folk influences and it’s just you and your acoustic, but as you say it is quite difficult to classify.
They’re just open, honest, basic songs. There’s nothing hidden, there’s no cryptic lyrics. It’s just honest folk songs, really.
You record in your bedroom, is that right?
Yeah, I do it all in my bedroom.
Would you rather be doing it somewhere bigger?
I’ve actually done a couple of tracks over Llandaff studios at UWIC, because a guy called Stuart Cummings does a music course there and he’s recorded some of my tracks for me for an EP that I’m trying to make. Two of the tracks are on MySpace at the moment that I did at UWIC; “I Might Get Cold” and “Travels”.
Speaking of UWIC, what course are you doing; what is the UWIC situation?
History and Politics. The situation is that I did my first year, enjoyed it, and I started the second year. I was still enjoying it but there were bits that I wasn’t getting along with, and then I had a couple of personal issues as well back home and stuff. It distracted me for a while, so my attendance dropped and I decided that it was probably best to just defer because I couldn’t catch up with the work that I’d missed. So I’ll be back next year.
Your song “Fix Me”, on MySpace, has got over 1000 plays.
Has it?
It has. Is it a weird feeling that one thousand people have listened to you singing a song that you’ve written in your bedroom?
Yeah. I noticed it was getting close to one thousand, that’s quite fun. Yeah, it’s been up there for a while – for about 6 months.
Does it have more plays than the others because it’s been there longer or is it just a popular song?
I think it’s just been quite a popular song. I’ve left a couple of them that have been up there for a while, but that’s definitely the most plays that I’ve ever had for a song. Yeah, it’s a good feeling; it’s nice to know that people like it.
On your MySpace you cite older acts such as Jeff Buckley as well as newer acts like Bon Iver. How do you think the newer stuff compares to the past greats of folk?
I think a lot of the acts of today can relate easily back to those songs. The really classic type of songwriter for me is, like you say, people like Jeff Buckley, Cat Stevens and Nick Drake and Bob Dylan and all of thee cool characters, these pretty famous guys that have been doing what they’ve been doing. But then the new stuff I’m listening to, like Bon Iver, like Jeremy Warmsley, I think they’ve taken parts of the song-writing skills and the melodies but they’ve made it different. I mean, Bon Iver has done obviously all of this roots acoustic stuff, but then he does a track like “Woods” which is just a massive piece of vocoder work [an instrument].I like that they can do both. It’s like John Martyn actually; he did loads of acoustic stuff and then started doing all of this ambient stuff with layers and guitars. It’s nice to see a cross-over between the two.
I’ve done a bit of Facebook stalking, – a bit of research, shall we say – saw you had a girlfriend and just wondered if you wrote songs from a personal perspective, about relationships and past experience or do you try to take a step back to avoid any awkward situations?
No, they’re all horrible honest and real and introspective and thought-out. They are written about relationships that I’ve had and it’s all stuff that’s happened to me. I don’t see the point in writing about stuff that I haven’t experienced or else, for me, I don’t feel comfortable singing about it. I just don’t see the point really, you know? If you’re going to sing about something and you’re going to put all that effort into writing a song and playing it to people, it’s got to be something that you actually care about. Otherwise it’s just a waste of time.
Have you had any awkward situations when writing a song about an ex, or a current girlfriend and then them becoming an ex?
Yeah… She might not read this. I had a little fall-out, actually I don’t know if I should say [laughs]…
…So you have had awkward situations.
Yeah, there have been awkward situations when I’ve written songs and the songs that I’ve written for the people I have written them for have known that it’s about them and said “what’s going on there, then?” There are things you have to explain. Just because you write a song about something, it doesn’t mean that’s the way I always think about it. It’s just a moment, just a particular emotion or feeling.
On to live stuff… I’ve not seen you live yet, as you know. You play a lot of open mic’s as well as formal gigs. What’s the advantage of open mic sessions?
I think it’s good just to keep yourself playing live. The way the music scene is in Cardiff, it’s really good, but because everything’s quite close together sometimes it can be hard to get a string of gigs. There’s so much good stuff in Cardiff, it all gets spread out. I’ve been doing gigs at Buffalo Bar and Ten Feet Tall, but I’ll d one a month for, say, Bethan. I’m just about t do my third one, and that’s on 22nd of April with The Gentle Good and someone else whose name I’ve forgotten.
Have you played any gigs as a solo artist outside of Cardiff?
Yeah, I did a gig in Newport the other day, in Karma Lounge. It’s not very far from Cardiff, but it is still outside of Cardiff! The open mic’s are a good chance to try out songs. It’s just practise really and a good chance to try out new material, to get an audience response and stuff.
Are you always exclusively a solo artist live or are you sometimes joined onstage?
I’ve done a couple of gigs with bands, but we didn’t really rehearse enough and there were a couple of mistakes and it didn’t really quite work out. The songs that I’ve written I think tend to sound better stripped down acoustically. Some of them might work with a whole band behind them, but we’ve not quite got it right.
So very possibly for the future?
Yeah, possibly for the future. I would love to do it. I’m having a lot of fun jamming w hen we sound-check on tour with The School. I’ll just play around with the drummer for a while before we go on and it’s nice just playing with a whole band.
So has anybody else appeared on any of your recordings or is that so far exclusively you?
The recording’s so far… it’s all me. There’s no one else recording on any of them.
You’ve got an EP out, is that right?
Yeah. I’m still waiting to get a couple of tracks mastered at the moment, I eed to get in touch with Stuart. Actually, he’ll probably read this before I get to sorting it out. No, that’s not true. I’ve got to give him a call because we’ve got tracks recorded but we’ve just got to master them, and because I’ve been away on tour we’ve not had a chance to do it yet.
So that’s one plan for the future. What else is going on for your solo work?
I’m just tryng to get a decent collection of songs at the moment and then I’m planning on sending it out to labels. I was talking to a friend the other day that send he might be able to help me out. He’s got a little label and they put out singles for their own bands and he said that he might be able to help me distribute and get some nice, proper, press CD’s and digi-packs and get it on Spotify and iTunes and stuff. So that’d be good. I might try and get a website done and then, if I can get the EP finished in time, I’m going to try and send it off to some festivals for the little, unsigned stages and see if they have any last minute spots.
So hopefully a lot going on?
Yeah, hopefully. I’m just trying to balance it with The School really.
What’s planned for The School. You mentioned the possibility of the second album?
We’ve got the first album coming out now and that’s going to be hopefully out by the end of May. We got the vinyl the other day. We played a gig the The Hidden Cameras and we have this see-through red vinyl out for the LP, it’s real nice. We’ve got the album launch planned and we’ve got more gigs coming up. We’re playing in London and Brighton on the weekend and then we’re going to Chelmsford on Wednesday I think. Then we’ve got a break for a bit, but hopefully we’re going to America and Europe and all over the place just at the end of the summer holidays and over the winter. We’ve been offered a gig in Korea.
Because of the advert?
Yeah, I think so.
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You can find out more about Ivan on his MySpace page, at myspace.com/sayhiivan, or you can find him at Buffalo Bar on April 22nd.
