When a musician leaves the UK behind to write and record, the climate is often a factor, sunnier climes often sparking the creative spirit.
However, when Dominic Harris headed for the Bible Belt – that notoriously religious area of the southern USA – the weather was less than welcoming.
Harris – aka Dominic Waxing Lyrical – went to meet up with old pal Ricky White, formerly of Edinburgh punks Oi Polloi and now based in Bloomington, Indiana, as well as work on new material.
The harshness of the winter in that part of the USA in is reflected in the album’s title, referring to the “diminishing” of the climate.
And the austere climate wasn’t the only less-than-pleasant part of the his working holiday. “Ricky and I saw a man who had hung himself from a tree on one of our forest walks. I think that set the tone for us.”
And the choice of the Bible Belt as location and inspiration has another, perhaps surprising significance.
“I was studying for the Anglican priesthood at the time,” Harris reveals, “so I did go to church whilst there. It was one of ‘those’ moments however, as I entered the church, took an order of service and sat down.
“I looked at the pamphlet and there was a grainy photograph of an elderly lady. I immediately stood up to leave, but felt the firm hand of the Church Warden on my shoulder pushing me back down into my seat.
“And so I stayed for the whole funeral whilst everyone kept turning round to look at me – trying to work out which part of the family I came from.
“I didn’t stay for the wake.”
Whether either of these experiences had an effect on the feel of the finished album is in the ear of the listener, but Harris felt that the trip, for all its highs and lows, was essential in creative terms.
“I figured that my songwriting rate of half a song per year would mean that I might just die before I had enough material to release another album,” he smiles. “My basic idea was to do a Captain Beefheart on myself and force myself under lock and key to write an album.”
Quite literally, White locking him in the basement, “where I would screech and scrawl ‘Diminuet’ – knowing I had just two weeks.”
Moreover, his pal’s wooden cabin wasn’t the most hospitable – or safe. “All I had to do was keep the electrical equipment away from the pools of melted snow and write an album.
“Ricky would of course come back from work in the afternoon and work his magic on my morning’s efforts. He plays wonderful acoustic guitar, Rhodes piano and pedal steel on the record.”
However, that pedal steel aside, Harris “realised by this point that none of my songs were vaguely American,” as well as realising that “the Firth of Forth rather than Walmart was my backdrop and that I would be singing partly in Anglo-Saxon.”
And, despite completing his diploma in Theology in Edinburgh, Harris decided against joining the church. “At the end of the day we all have gifts and I realised mine was the gift of poetry and music and that the collar would just cause me to lose sight of that.”
So instead, the record’s final flourishes were added at Idlewild’s Rod Jones’s studio in Leith, helped by The Leg and Aberfeldy and produced by George McFall and Ricky White himself, with McFalls Chamber (a highly-respected classical ensemble) enlisted to give the album a less wintry – and more European – feel.
However, with the release date having moved into December, at least the title of ‘Gute Nacht’ seems a little festive? Well, no. The song is about “a failed love affair” from when Harris – who lived in Berlin for six years during the collapse of the Wall and made a living as a musician touring Eastern Europe – “passing the hat round on the Berlin metro… Two minute bursts of song from carriage to carriage.”
But the track does sum up the creation of the album in wintry Indiana – the fields outside his makeshift studio a snowscape and “the jilted writer… confronted with a blank piece of paper.”
This article originally appeared in the Edinburgh News. More info at www.dominicwaxinglyrical.com
Also chief newshound at Jockrock
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