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► Meilir (March Band of the Month) Interview
An Interview with Meilir Tomos
We at Retro love Meilir and his unusual take on folk music. So much so that the singer-songwriter was featured as Band of the Month for March. Our Music Editor, Jake May, caught up with Meilir to quiz him on his musical tastes, the future, and his fascination with owl ornaments.
Hello Meilir. Would you mind introducing yourself, your influences and your sound briefly to the UWIC student readers?
I am a music maker based in Cardiff, but originally from the hills of North Wales. I moved to Cardiff about 7 years ago with the band I was in at the time, Manchuko. For the past year and a bit I have been performing music as Meilir, and released my debut EP ‘Bydd Wych’. I create music and songs from different instruments such as the piano, guitar and other traditional instruments as well as creating my own sounds and noises from many different sources. I draw influence from musicians such as Tom Waits, Nick Drake, Bjork, Radiohead, Broadcast and Can
The Bydd Wych EP has been out a little while now and is in Spiller’s Records. How has it been doing?
It’s been doing OK, the first pressing of 300 have all but gone now. I am very happy about this; I did not think they would all be gone by now so this is good, it’s a strange but very warming feeling to know that people are listening to the record in their homes. I have a handful left so I am in the process of arranging a new pressing and worldwide digital release… I also have plans to release ‘Bydd Wych’ in Japan and Germany - I really hope this can happen.
What have you been up to since the Bydd Wych release? I see a new song has popped up on MySpace recently, so writing, presumably?
I have been writing new material recently, this is always lots and lots of fun for me. The new songs that have been added to the MySpace page are from a bunch of songs that I was working on that could have been a part of the Ep ‘Bydd Wych’, but were far from ready at the time of the recording but I have played a few of these songs live from time to time. I have been working on these songs with the view of releasing a second Ep called ‘Cellar Songs’ before a full album. I feel these songs are closer to the sound of ‘Bydd Wych’ than some of the songs I am working on for the album, so I decided that it would be best to release a second Ep before an album. I also have very, very high hopes for the album and think it could take a long time to finish it so releasing a second Ep will give me a little more time to complete the album. There will be a few brand new songs on the Ep ‘Cellar Songs’ and it should be released by the last week in April 2010. Live shows are a regular part of my life now since the release of the first record, I love playing live at the moment, I have in the past gone through periods where I was not enjoying playing live so much, but at the moment it is a real pleasure. I can’t really explain it but it is very powerful feeling. I am hoping to confirm more live performances soon that will mean I will be very busy this year.
What are the processes that go into your song-writing? Do you lock yourself in solitary confinement for weeks, or is it a more laid back affair of strumming some notes of an evening?
Maybe a little of both. I don’t have a formula for writing songs, I try to play the Piano and Guitar for a few hours a day, and lots of ideas seem to come from this. I have a massive bank of parts of songs, melodies, guitar and piano parts on my computer in my studio at home; I try not to throw anything away. I see these ideas like spare parts, you never know when they will come in handy and be the perfect fit for a new musical piece.
The beginning of the song writing process for me is always very relaxed, from improvising ideas on various instruments. I will record the original ideas and then move on to try other things over this. It is a very different scenario than being in a band as it is impossible to jam with myself so I need to record parts and then play along with them, I do sometimes miss the interaction with other humans in the song writing period. But working in this way I do seem to open up a world of infinity in music that interests me very much. I get the opportunity to try any amount of ideas and re-work the songs in many was, this sometimes makes getting to the finished song a longer process but there is a lot of fun to be had along the way. Having said that there are a few songs that I have about 10 different versions of so then it becomes a challenge to select the correct version for release. Things probably get a bit more intense towards the end of the song writing process, this is the time when I will spend hours or days and nights in the studio at home pulling songs apart and reworking them…this can make me a little crazy and at these times I am probably not the easiest of people to live with… making lots of loud strange noises and thinking of nothing but music at this time.
You record in a small studio in your basement. Tell us a little about it.
I record all of my ideas for songs and pre-production versions of songs at home in a small studio space in my flat; it’s great to have a space that is just for me to create music in. This gives me the opportunity to try out as many ideas as I want. I am not very good with computers and such things so I am limited in my ability to make the overall sounds of my songs exactly what I want at home. So once the songs at a certain stage, when I am happy with them I then usually as happened with ‘Bydd Wych’ record for release at the Music Box in Cardiff.
You seem a man that might prefer the more traditional aspects of life, yet your music is a combination of traditional sounds and electro beats. What inspired you to go down this route and try a few different things?
I very much like the experimental side of things not only in music but in other things in life as well. I am a first language Welsh speaker so I think that means I do also hold strong beliefs about tradition I suppose. But I am very tired with some modern music; it’s the repetitive things going on within modern music today that I don’t like. I wish more musicians would try to be at least a little more creative and innovative with the music that they make, rather than repeating something that has been done many times before and been done very well before. I think this is why I do try to make some aspects of what I do musically, either on a recording or in a live performance different in some way. I don’t have an interest in creating music exactly the same as someone who has done before me, I do want to create something new and something that is interesting to music listeners.
How do you rate the music scene today, both locally and nationally?
To be honest I think there are a lot of really good things going on musically in Cardiff at the moment, and in Wales…in my opinion the music scene in Wales is a lot stronger than it was when I first started doing live shows with Manchuko years ago. There is a lot of good music out there if you go and look for it…The problem is that it can be hard to find good new music sometimes, thank god for Spillers Records!!!
I like The Gentle Good, and very much like Fredrick Stanley Star - both these are making very good music in my opinion. I got both of these to play in the launch shows for the ‘Bydd Wych’ Ep last year…
I hear you’re a man who likes owl ornaments… No plans to feature these in your live shows at all?
I have played a few shows at Gwdihw in Cardiff over the past few months, I did intend on taking some down to these shows, Gwdihw being the Welsh word for Owl, but as I can be very forgetful, you can guess that I forgot to take them down… No real plans to include them on a regular basis though…Some people are scared of some of my owls… The Owls are not what they seem…
Your live shows are sometimes quite unusual. You use both a tray of gravel at your feet and sometimes you get people to play the rim of glasses. What made you think of gravel?
The idea for the gravel came from a need for me to create some kind of percussive sound that I could maybe achieve when playing shows on my own and it was a sound experiment. I had the idea but was not sure if it would work; after all there is no point using gravel if it does not sound good. It is not the intention to use a gimmick or to do something strange just to draw attention to it. I love experimental music but it also needs to work for that piece of music and sound good for me. I love the idea of using any item like on this occasion a box of gravel to create sounds that I can then use as a texture or a layer in a musical piece. It is also not very easy to get hold of that much gravel for free so it took me a while to put the idea into practice, I had been talking about the idea with friends for a while before I had the courage to steal two full carrier bags of gravel from what was my place of work at the time. I had horrible visions of being fired for stealing gravel…But I got a way with it. I was later given the sack for poor attendance in that job anyway, some of that gravel is still in the box today… The gravel in a box is one of many strange ideas I have tried, a lot do not work. The gravel works very well indeed and now has a few different uses in a full live performance, a box full of gravel has become like a friend to me now…
What do you feel the advantages are of Welsh spoken songs?
I don’t really know about the advantages or disadvantages of Welsh or English language songs… I don’t think about it at all. That might seem strange but, when I write a song I don’t sit and listen to it and think ‘oh this will make a good Welsh language song’… It is just a natural process for me, being bi-lingual is part of who I am as a person, so as a result of this it is natural that I would have songs in both languages that I speak The language that I use for a particular song is random, it is whatever I start to sing over the idea that I have had or if the song comes from a lyric then it is obvious what language that song will be in.
And finally, what are the plans for the future. Many gigs booked or any official releases upcoming?
I have many, many plans for the future… trying to find the time and more importantly in this day the funds to make everything happen is the biggest problem… I am going to be playing lots of live shows over the next 10 months or so trying to get to lots of places I have not so far…I am awaiting responses from festivals for this summer and hope to be at some special festivals this summer.
’Cellar Songs’ will be out to purchase and listen to some time during April 2010, and I plan to start recording sessions for the album in September 2010 at the latest, I hope. The ground work for a European tour is under way but this is not likely to take place until April of 2011…I have lots of exiting things planned and hope they will all be achieved over the next few years…
Meilir’s debut EP, Bydd Wych, can be purchased from Spiller’s Records. You can catch him live on 26th April at Ten Feet Tall, or on 15th May at Buffalo Bar. Check his MySpace page here for more live dates and general info.
