Fabulist!

David Ford is a wondrous gem of evocative, soul-wrenching music-- and last week, we sent the illustrious Belinda over to check him out at the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, while we interviewed him from London. Here's what Bel had to say about his show:

David Ford is an artist. I don't heft those words around carelessly, I liked his stuff recorded but being at his live show is like watching Picasso paint. If Picasso could pull pigments from thin air and weave them in and around your heart. At Cafe Hotel, Hollywood, David had a jaded room full of So Cal industry peeps screaming for more. I mean it, size zeros (who get excited about nothing... except maybe Pinkberry) and a hand full of aging industry dudes, who earned their street cred writing for Rolling Stone back in the "Almost Famous Days", were literally screaming for more. He brought the all too brief evening to a crescendo with his Song for the Road. As he sang the lyrics " I'll choose this, I'll choose this, I'll choose this" the space thrummed like a revival meeting. Here's what you should do... check his touring schedule --and drive or run or crawl on bloodied knees and then heal yourself by listening to David Ford live.

Earlier the same day in London, after doing a parody of a mobile phone commercial ("Can you hear me now?") and discussing the wonders of Pink's in Los Angeles, David Ford and I sat down to a lovely phone interview to discuss his music, collaborations and self-inflicted cruelty.

FAB: So I absolutely adore your music--

DAVID FORD: Oh, thank you!

FAB: You're welcome! A friend of mine gave me your first album when I was going through a rough patch, and I love how there's so much delicateness and emotional excavation in your songs. How did you first get involved with music?

D: Just kind of as an enthusiast, really. For very similar reasons, I was amazed at how music seemed to tap into thoughts and feelings. It seemed to make a lot of sense of things that maybe were quite difficult, or abstract thoughts seemed to be fairly eloquently nailed by a good song in a way that other kinds of art forms never really worked for me. When I was a teenager I just found that music and song in particular just meant so much more to me than many other things that were going on in the entire world. Because I found music and song resonated with me so much I thought I could probably give it a go, and try to convey the same way I felt about it, and try to put that forward to other people as well. That's kind of the ongoing challenge for me.

FAB: Your songs seem very confessional. How do you feel it helps you process the stuff that's going on in your life?

D: Not at all, really. That's not what I do it for. I consider that to be very self-indulgent behavior. I don't write songs as any kind of helpful process to me, to deal with things. I'm a pretty well balanced individual and I'm actually quite good at dealing with things as they come up. Songwriting for me is not-- I'm not the guy in the songs who maybe is a little emotionally fraught. I occasionally am emotionally fraught, and I like to think I have a certain understanding of the concept of emotional fraughtism. But that's not to say that's where I am, or where I as an individual am writing from. I prefer to consider myself a student of human behavior rather than a specimen.

FAB: Got it. So the songs are more about fictional characters, or things you've seen out in the world.

D: Yeah, I mean it's kind of that. There are always elements I can draw. I would hope to never write about something that was entirely out of my element. I always try to have something that I have at least an understanding of in some small measure or another. Sometimes it will be observations about people I know, and other times I'll write things that will at least be based on myself and my own experiences. But mostly, it's like if you spoke to someone who writes novels, you wouldn't assume that every character in the novels is themselves. You always have to put a whole lot of yourself into whatever you do creatively in order to make it really true, but I think there's a lot more to it than that. I think there's a lot more dramatic technique in songwriting than people maybe imagine there is.

FAB: I just saw your video for your single [Go To Hell] with the woman burying you in the ground. Can you tell me a little bit more about where the idea for that came from?

D: Essentially when it comes to making films the first consideration is what's the most horrible thing that we can do to me. We have one video that's me being slapped in the face over and over again, which was very fun to do. We thought we'd step it up this time and bury me alive, and I think next time there's going to be some kind of drowning involved. A feat of cruelty is our go-to stock video idea.

FAB: [laughs] Are these your ideas, or are people inflicting this cruelty on you?

D: It's generally self-inflicted cruelty. The cool thing about how I've been doing things up to now is I've been able to maintain a level of autonomy. Things like making videos or hiring people to work in a creative area have very much been left up to me. All the videos have been made by myself and friends rather than inviting treatments from directors and paying a fortune in studio costs. I kind of like to keep it creative rather than business, and making videos becomes a fun thing I do with friends that we put some thought and no money into.

FAB: The song, Of Whoredom And Falconry, that you did with Duke Special, is one of my favorite songs of all time.

D: Is it now? Good grief. If you knew where it came from you probably wouldn't think that. It was written in about five minutes and it was recorded in about an hour and a half. We kind of did it and forgot about it instantly. It showed up on this little charity record we did it for, and people seemed to really like it. It was never a big build for the two of us, it was just something we did for some fun.

FAB: I'm guessing the title was random.

D: The title was a mistake. That was a working title before the songs had any words or idea behind anything. On the original musical track we were collecting these silly words about ancient English practices of heraldry and falconry and coats of arms-- I don't know where the whoredom came from. It was just kind of a silly joke title, but when we actually finished the track that was still what was written on the file. When it went off to be processed and mastered and put on the record that was still the title that it had and we never thought to change it. The first we knew of it having that title was when the record actually came out, and it was a mild embarrassment, but quite some humor.

FAB: It kind of seems to fit. Some of the best stuff comes out of the smallest amount of time, because I can listen to that song for days on repeat.

D: Really? It's funny, sometimes, you can just get it right the first time. Sometimes you can pore over things for days, weeks, years, months. That's one of the great things about music, there's no right or wrong way of doing things. Anything that works is what works.

FAB: How do you like the collaborating process compared to doing stuff on your own? How was doing stuff with Duke Special different than doing stuff for your own albums?

D: I hate collaboration. I kind of don't do them and won't do them. Duke Special's a little different because I know him very well and he's a good friend. But the collaborative process in that was essentially-- I can't co-write. I don't co-write at all. So the writing on that track is pretty much entirely his work. I suggested a couple of geographical inputs-- the basis of the song is Lewes and Belfast, our respective hometowns. My writing contribution to that song was utterly minimal. Co-writing a song, I just can't do, it feels like diluting to me. When it comes to songwriting other people's input would make me a bit uncomfortable. I kind of always feel like I know how it should be and if somebody else puts their slant on it I probably won't think that's how it should be. I love songs that other people write, I'm not saying that I think I'm better than everyone else. Other people write great songs and occasionally I write great songs, I just don't think I can do that in partnership with someone else. I wouldn't know how to do it.

FAB: Well, when you work with other people there has to be a lot of compromise, which is a different process.

D: That's the whole point. If you have to compromise to get something done, there's no way you can be uncompromised. Because I'm a very compromising individual, I'd end up just doing everything they wanted to do.

FAB: So it's self-preservation.

D: The only way I can avoid completely compromising and doing it someone else's way is to have absolutely no one else involved, which is kind of why I write alone, and often record alone. It's not because I'm a control freak-- it's because if I let other people be involved I would shrink and have no involvement at all.

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Beautiful things are coming out of that solo process, and you should check out David's tour schedule and pick up his new album Songs For The Road so you don't miss out.

David Ford - Go To Hell

David Ford & Duke Special - Of Whoredom And Falconry