On Gary Lightbody's side project Tired Pony – a bunch of rough'n'ready songs recorded quickly in Portland, Oregon, with a cast including Peter Buck, She & Him and Editors – the Snow Patrol perfectionist learned to let go, he tells TONY CLAYTON-LEA
AS AN RAF helicopter rushes through the bright London summer sky, Gary Lightbody – frontman of Snow Patrol and, in the context of this chat, lead singer and frontman of ensemble Tired Pony – has lost his train of thought.
"What was I saying?" The Ticket brings Lightbody back on track, reminding him that Tired Pony's debut album, The Place We Ran From, sounds like a batch of well-known buskers playing music not for the need or want of money but just for the sake of it.
“We most certainly were busking it. I would play a song and sing some of the lyrics, and then everyone would pick up an instrument, play along, do a take. If take one didn’t work, then we’d do a second one, but we did no more than three.”
Isn’t it refreshing that things didn’t have to be oh-so-perfect? You get the distinct impression with, say, a Snow Patrol album, that rough edges are smoothed off during the production process in order to make it fit into the so-called sonic parameters of daytime radio. With Tired Pony, a view of the knacker’s yard seems apt.
“We didn’t go in to make a pristine record,” says Lightbody, ever so slightly out of breath as he walks along the streets. “It was always planned to make a record that was rough around the edges, and by the very nature of even the music styles we were playing around with, it was always going to be a little ramshackle, a little rough. That was perfect really. In its own way, perfectly imperfect.
“That’s what the album was for us – not to undermine or devalue it in any way, but it was supposed to be fun, a record on the side. There was no point in making a record that would have taken two months to do, with you pulling your hair out. It needs to be fun, it needs to be quick, full of mistakes, things sticking out. We didn’t use computers to change anything, to fix things.”
For someone as commercially successful as Lightbody, Tired Pony represents a retreat into something of a hinterland. Recorded in Portland, Oregon, the album contains songs influenced by the darker side of Americana, the musical equivalent, say, of a Willy Vlautin novel.
Yet Lightbody is Lightbody, and while the lyrics reference grime beneath shine, the superb melodies act as steely ballast. How does he differentiate between songs that fit his day job and songs that match side projects?
“As far as Tired Pony goes, I’d written a bunch of songs that all felt as if they were for a different record, a different band, a different sense, so there was never a doubt in my mind that they were for something other than Snow Patrol. In that way, it was easy. Snow Patrol is my everyday life, so there was never any question of what comes first – I write a whole bunch of different things, and I don’t write the same thing every day. Some songs don’t fit into Snow Patrol, but most do. My priorities are clear, I think, in that regard.”
The album benefits from a wide range of guest musicians, but again there is the impression that their presence was a casual thing unencumbered by a flurry of activity from personal assistants. The likes of REM’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey, She Him’s M Ward and Zooey Deschanel, Tom Smith of Editors, and longtime Irish friends Iain Archer and Garret “Jacknife” Lee contribute. The result is, as Lightbody says, something of an egoless buskers’ convention.
“Every person that ended up on the record,” says Lightbody, “was either the first person we thought of for a particular song or was just passing through. There was no list of names that we went through and ticked off. M Ward came into the studio and within five minutes was playing. And then Zooey came in, as did Tom Smith, who was passing through the week we were mixing it.
“It was all very natural, there were no desperate phone calls searching for people to grace the record. It was almost as if they found us. But, you know, I’m aware that every album needs a central point, a distinctive focus, and in this case it was my voice.” For the first time in almost 10 years, commercial success for a Gary Lightbody album doesn’t really matter. Born of a need to get off the mainstream treadmill, Tired Pony sees the songwriter drift a bit left field without disregarding his innate skills. And it might not just be a one-off: there are already talks underway for Tired Pony to make their Irish debut before the year’s end. Also under discussion is the recording of a follow-up in early 2011.
“We’re going to choose a different American city, a city with lots of musicians, a traditional music city, so to speak. Portland was amazing – it was a place that we didn’t have to look at all for musicians, as they were everywhere. So we want to go to a city where that will happen very easily and very naturally. There’s no point making a record out in the middle of nowhere, either, otherwise it’ll just be us waiting for people to get flown in, which is the antithesis of what the record is all about.”
In the meantime, there is the small matter of the next Snow Patrol album, for which songs are already being prepared and shaped. But lessons have been learnt with Tired Pony. Energised by the break away from the mainstream, and benefiting from working with other musicians, Lightbody has emerged from the process a little less precious than when he entered it.
“I’m kind of a perfectionist,” he says, surprising no one, “where everything has to be in control. I wanted to be in control a little too much. So, learning to let go was the big thing here. I’ve learned to take my foot off the gas a bit, to be less hard on myself, and less manic. Some people will be glad to know that this record had a calming influence on me.”
The Place We Ran From is on release through Fiction/Universal
