Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake is awaiting a delivery of logs to his cottage in the Clyde Valley when Uncut catches up with him. “There’s no gas supply here,” he says. “Last year I had storage heaters, and they were really, really expensive. Hence the logs.” On the upside, Blake’s move to the countryside a year ago has yielded an album of glorious autumnal songwriting in collaboration with Love And Money frontman James Grant and former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. “Norman’s place is really lovely,” says Butler. “Every time I go there it’s just a peaceful few days.”
Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake is awaiting a delivery of logs to his cottage in the Clyde Valley when Uncut catches up with him. “There’s no gas supply here,” he says. “Last year I had storage heaters, and they were really, really expensive. Hence the logs.” On the upside, Blake’s move to the countryside a year ago has yielded an album of glorious autumnal songwriting in collaboration with Love And Money frontman James Grant and former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. “Norman’s place is really lovely,” says Butler. “Every time I go there it’s just a peaceful few days.”
Now settled under the moniker Butler, Blake & Grant – “I think I’d like to be Steven Stills,” jokes Grant – the group have done everything in the wrong order. They went on tour before they had any new songs, after being thrown together for their initial shows by Creeping Bent label boss Douglas MacIntyre, who also curates live events in Scotland under the Frets banner. “Me and James had tentatively talked about doing something together,” says Blake. “And I’ve known Bernard from way back.”
“Bandwagonesque was my courting record with my wife,” reveals Butler. “We’ve always kept in touch with Norman. James I didn’t know until recently, but I knew what a fantastic songwriter he was.”
The live shows were a success, but the album arrived almost by accident after Blake invited Butler and Grant to his cottage. “We didn’t plan to record it,” says Butler. “We were just sitting in Norman’s living room in front of the fire. There’s a couple of sofas and we were facing each other. James had a song. Norman wrote and finished something really quickly, and then I wrote something. As the first song came out, I said to Norman, ‘Have you got any gear? You know, recording equipment?’ He appeared with some mics and a computer and we set it up on the table. We weren’t really listening back to anything. We just thought, ‘We’ll record everything that happens.’”
“We all had fragments,” adds Blake. “I have loads of little fragments on my phone. A lot of these ideas wouldn’t work for the Fanclub, so it’s a great opportunity to be creative.”
“Some of the songs were written and recorded four hours later,” enthuses Grant. “For me, working like that was brilliant. It’s the antithesis of what my records have been about. It was like, ‘Yeah, sounds good. Let’s move on.’”
The cosy, collaborative fireside ethos might suggest Butler Blake & Grant have made a folk record, but Butler urges caution. “It’s not really about woolly jumpers and acoustic guitars. I’m not influenced by the type of songwriting, the style or format, I’m influenced by the fact that Norman and James are brilliant. They’re so talented and clever.”
On the other hand, “James has played with Capercaillie,” says Blake. “I’ve played with [fiddler] John McCusker a few times. And Bernard has his association with Bert Jansch. If you take all of our interests in music and the fact that it’s an acoustic record, it’s in the folk area.” “It’s definitely a 1970s-type sketch,” decides Grant. “There’s a track called ‘Bring An End’ – Bernard played a solo and he was like, ‘I think I’ve gone a bit Brian May here.’ There’s fuck all wrong with that! When you’re working with Norman and Bernard, it’s like having Ray Davies and David Gilmour in your band. They just do things that you like.”
Butler, Blake & Grant is released by 355 Records on March 28