July 2014, a hot day in London and the tarmac is melting on the city’s streets. In a bar in a plush hotel, Michael Stafford AKA Maverick Sabre and some of his band are performing tunes from his forthcoming second album to a bunch of media, record label and music business guests.
Like the weather outside, the songs sound sultry. The set is full of upbeat, fully-formed and robust tunes and it looks like another winner for the London-Irish singer.
September 2015 and Stafford is on the phone. The album which he was showing off and talking about more than a year ago is finally about to see the light of day. There can only be one question to ask on an occasion like this and Stafford knows it’s coming.
“What happened? I’m a perfectionist, that’s what happened,” he laughs. “The album just didn’t feel right, the songs didn’t feel right. At the end of last year, I went back into the studio and totally re-recorded three tunes and that was better.”
You can only imagine how his record label and management felt about these delays and re-recordings, which held up the release of Innerstanding. A high-profile new album requires a promotional campaign, a lengthy tour, and a myriad of other things to be planned in advance. When an album gets pushed back, all of this activity gets pushed back too, causing more headaches and problems.
Stafford knew this, but it’s his name on the album and he was determined to have the last word. “I’m always working to create the best I can as an artist. Obviously, you’ve got things about timings and commitments and tours in the back of your mind so you won’t take so long that it could pass the point of relevance. Record labels and management would prefer if records were out regularly. But the thing for me for this album was understanding myself and I didn’t want it out until I was happy that the record reflected that.”
Whirlwind adventure
In the singer's mind, Innerstanding was always going to take a bit of time to land. Stafford released his debut, Lonely Are the Brave, at the very start of 2012 and that took him off on a whirlwind adventure. When the touring ended, he took some time off to work out what he really wanted to talk about with his new songs.
"There's only so much you can write about when you're on a tour bus. I feel like I'd be cheating myself and cheating people if I'd gone straight into the studio because I'd had no inspiration and the tracks would all have sounded similar to Lonely Are the Brave. I needed to go away and be inspired by other music and come back fresh."
He visited India, South Africa, Jamaica and New York, sometimes for work and sometimes for pleasure. In South Africa, he recorded a track with Idris Elba. “That was eye-opening musically for me. The way South African musicians performed was so pure that it made me rethink what I do in the music. I like catching the moment because the moment is perfection.”
Inspiration
In Kingston, he worked with Stephen McGregor and found inspiration in the city. “I had been to Jamaica before, but you see another side of Jamaica in Kingston. When you go out there as a musician, you’re affected in a way I wasn’t expecting. I’ve found that Irish and Jamaican cultures are very similar. A lot has been abused about Jamaican culture and warped into a western agenda and people have forgotten about the honesty of the place. If you go there with respect and honesty, you’ll receive it back.”
All of these insights helped him formulate the album’s themes.
“The more I travelled and the more people I met, the more I forced myself to question myself and what I know and what I believe in. It made me grow in a very quick way because I had to force myself into it. There were other things going on in my personal life over the last two years that made me toughen myself, not so much in terms of a tough exterior but more to grow and deal with things and understand my inner self.”
Personal songs
One song in particular epitomises the album for Stafford. "The first song I wrote for the record was Breathe and it was the first time I was able to reflect on a negative situation in my life and end up with a positive, logical understanding of how I can get myself out of that. When I did that song, I stood back and thought I'd grown. The whole record is tied into that lyric. It's like a diary, a therapy session. It's the most personal set of songs I've ever written and it's the most vulnerable I've ever been lyrically."
After the delays and the introspection, Stafford is out the other side with an album he’s proud as punch of. He’s fought his battles and he’s still standing. And that, he says, is a good thing.
“Being disillusioned with the music industry comes from the minute you sign your first deal”, he believes. “The illusion is that the industry is a magical place that will make your dreams come true but the music industry can be a barrier to that. There’s a lot of pitfalls, a lot of invisible walls. It’s a business, which I understand, so you can’t come in blind expecting it to be purely about music and you have to be confident.
“I’ve had a confidence about what I want and what I do since I was a child. I know what I can do and what I need to do and you can never stop learning as a musician.”
Innerstanding is released on Virgin EMI next Friday. Maverick Sabre plays Dublin's Academy on November 21st
