Feature

Richard Earnshaw: The Time is now

Following on from a sold out album launch at Jazz Café, Richard Earnshaw sat down for a quick chat with Blues J& Soul’s Richard ‘Ricardito’ Ashie. The world renowned DJ, has just released his debut album, and was only too happy to talk about his musical adventures, hopes and aspirations.

Having traded the fast pace of Stanmore in London for the sleepy little village of Bosham, West Sussex, he has not taken his foot off the accelerator in terms of work. He shared memories of his piano teacher, record labels, getting down to business with Jocelyn Brown in his bedroom, and why he likes Video Killed The Radio Star.

RIC: First things first, congratulations on the album

RE: Thank you.

RIC: Tell me a bit about 19th June 2010 at the Jazz Café, and your memories of that night

RE: All good memories. It was nice to have a particular gig set for the launch. We have all played in bands some of us together, some of us with other people, and it’s been a long time since we have got on stage and let rip. Rehearsals were difficult because my brother (Matthew Earnshaw, drummer) was training to do the Stockholm Marathon, so he was over there. Matt (bassist) was doing his thing, Tom (guitarist) was doing his thing, and I was desperately trying to get things sorted, so it when it got the actual day we were all… quite cool I think in that it would all sort itself out, because we have all played together in some respect or another. We have worked with each other in the studio as well, for at least 13 years, so we were not really bothered. It’s kind of weird, but we got on stage; we knew what we were doing because everyone had listened to the album, and we knew we were not going to deviate from it, we were not going to do some clever stuff. It’s just as it is, it’s an album launch, people don’t know the material so we don’t have to worry about people thinking “yeah we’ve heard it before”. So we got on stage and it was awesome. During the sound check was the first time we had all managed to have a proper thrash at it, we had had hotchpotch rehearsals in the studio or in someone’s house. We got there did the sound check and it was great, it was really good; we were vibing on it. Then the singers turned up; some of them we hadn’t rehearsed with at all like Kenny [Thomas]. He arrived at the same time we arrived and he was doing two tracks, but he knew exactly what he was doing and gave it full steam. I thought; this is kinda cool! It really gets under your skin, when goes very well, and you got a really good atmosphere going…. it’s just… I just want to go out and play live all the time now.

RIC: Well it was a very good show. It felt like a private concert, you guys made us feel like we were chilling in your front room, whilst you were playing having a good time.

RE: Well that’s the kind of musicians we are. I have a real thing about over rehearsing. I think if you rehearse so much, and I’m not only speaking from my own experience with other bands that I have played in or big bands and things like that. But some of my friends and colleagues who are in bands at the moment which are perhaps more commercial, and it is rehearsals upon rehearsals upon rehearsals. And I think if you over rehearse, guaranteed as sure as I am sitting in this chair, something will go wrong on the night. You never know what it’s gonna be; it may be a bum note, you may miss a section, a piece of equipment goes down, or could be anything. So if everything is so tightly ninja’ed that when that one goes wrong it can throw the whole thing goes into disarray. So when you just going with the flow, just let the music do its thing and everyone relies on each other as musicians to carry it off, it is so much more relaxing, and I think that comes across on stage. For example when we did Cry Me A River I happened to glance at my watch, and I knew that we had to be done by 10.30pm, and I thought bloody hell we literally have 5 minutes left, and the next track is quite a long track. So literally I was catching everyone’s eye, and a simple nod that we were going to end now, and it ended. And its great to watch on stage too, as you are not just zoned into your own thing, you really are communicating with all the other people on stage because you really don’t know what is going to happen next.

RIC: Yes I saw some of your expressions on stage.

RE: Yeah I know. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was wicked!

RIC: Why 7 years? Why did it take so long?

RE: Well the writing process took a long time. Basically the whole thing from start to finish was done very much on a part-time basis, because I was doing a lot of production, remixes for a lot of labels. I had my own labels to run and obviously provide material for. So it was just trying to get everything going at the same time, because at the end of the day you still have to put food on the table for your family. The album as a long term speculative project, there wasn’t just a magic cloud that appeared and threw a load of money on the table and said “there you go spend a year doing nothing but this”. In hindsight I think had I done it in a year, there [wouldn’t be] six years worth more of development and maturity in me as person and musician as I was going along. Apart from the fact that industry changed so much in that period as well. Had it had come out within a year or 18 months it might have been a very different story, because at the moment its been great that there is such a nice little buzz shimmering away. People are ready for a vocal, ready a for a song again, as opposed to heavily instrumental electro dance music that seemed to have been everywhere; even as a DJ I am playing a lot more soulful now. I think its almost like it had to take that long for it to be really ready; I think people are ready for it for it now... I hope anyway

RIC: Were you working on one song at a time?

RE: Well there are a lot of songs that never made it anyway. I do a lot of playing everyday even if just for an hour or so, I come up with ideas on the piano, little melodies and lyrical stuff that ends up on scraps of paper. I think In Time was actually the last one I did late on in the project, as I had done all of the other nine tracks more or less. So I took the last 6 months getting production on all ten so they were coming to scratch at the same time so there would be a consistency in the sound and the engineering. Obviously equipment changes, and I had changed equipment and acquired better boards and stuff, so that all got used in the process as opposed to some getting finished and then leaving it and then adding to it. In Time came quite on late as I felt I was still missing “that track” or the icing on the cake as it were. I’ve got a very weird geeky way of thinking about albums that not only does it have to work dynamically work from start to finish. Also lots of people have their CD players or ipods on a cycle, where as soon as it finishes it either moves onto another track or moves to the beginning again. I wanted the end of the album to work with the beginning of the album at the same time. So actually, funnily enough apart from the baseline groove, I had already written in my head exactly how I wanted the album to finish. So that when that last piano note dies away there’s a few seconds, which I think is important as a contemplation period for the listener to think, what did I think of that? I know its weird, maybe I am the only person in the world who thinks like that. When I listen to an album, I don’t flick through it and think: that’s nice and flick to the next one. I listen to it from start to finish, that’s why and how it was made. So at the very end of it that when it goes silent, that’s the period I take to think to myself: Do I want to listen to it again? Did I like that? Then if it starts, and if the end of the album and beginning of album work together, it almost makes your mind up and I’ll think: yeah I do want to listen to it again, and I will listen it again.

RIC: That’s a clever way of doing it.

RE: I don’t know… Yeah I am not sure; maybe I spent far too much time in my room as child (laughs). Well it was a great opportunity to do the album, what I didn’t want to do was just get a load of tracks and throw them all together and say there’s an album. That’s another reason why it took so long, as I wanted to demonstrate that there was more to my repertoire as a producer then just making house music. So even though there are house tempo tracks on there, there is a lot of live stuff on there too. My brother did all the live drums, yes there are programmed bits on there, but there is a lot of live work in there. I wanted to show people that I am a producer, and producers should be able to turn their hand to pretty much anything. You know I have been doing this for so long now, a good 10 or 12 years, and now is a good time for me to say, “You know what? I can make tracks that are not 125bpm”

RIC: Let’s talk about your musical journey.

RE: Well I was a distraught 7 year old sitting on the stairs of my parents’ house when my mum put in the phone call to my piano teacher, and I was told by her, “This will be the best thing I ever do for you”. Obviously I didn’t believe her at the time, I just wanted to go play football outside. That was the beginning; I was classically trained up until the age of 15.

RIC: Did you do all the piano grades?

RE: I think I did up to grade 6 I think, then my teacher… Well I had a weird spurt where I was a very average musician; I didn’t excel but I wasn’t crap [and] each year I did the grades. But it got to a stage where I got bored of this system, and I sort of moved and something happened, I think I just woke up one morning and said “I can play better than this” and I just started playing more difficult stuff. My piano teacher at the time couldn’t teach me this stuff; she couldn’t even play it herself. So I finished with her, I was having lessons with her for 8 years; she was a lovely lady Mrs Wilson., I never forget her. Then I had a teacher after that, that I won’t mention, who was like something out of Lord of The Rings, a right old dragon. She took me from where I was going, and pushed me really, really hard, so I was playing all sorts of insane music byRachmaninoff, Liszt and all kinds of crazy stuff, and I really hated it. I was taken out of my comfort zone, because I was still a young lad I was only 15, I just wasn’t ready to play this stuff. I mean technically it was ok I could get my fingers around all the notes and everything, but the performance aspect was not there. Certain presenters [would say] “Interpret them the way you want to interpret them”, I would interpret them the way I wanted to interpret them as an individual but then they’d say “no, no that’s not how you do it”, so that didn’t last too long and I knocked that on the head. Then I just started to concentrate on improvisation, and improvising my theory to take in more of the jazz influence that my father had; and I have never looked back. I started playing jazz, then I just got more soulful as time went on.

RIC: And when did the deejaying begin?

RE: Well I don’t count when I played records in the bedroom and had house parties. My first experience of deejaying professionally was probably around 1998 or 1999, and even then it was quite sketchy stuff just local gigs. Really it all kicked off around 2001 or 2002 when I got involved with Soulfuric, and Brian Tappert said to me “Man you have got to deejay more. You have got to get out there on the circuit”. So I did, and this whole deejaying world was literally there in front of me. I was flying all over world, playing massive clubs, little clubs. Playing to people who wanted to play the music and some who really didn’t give a s**t and were there to just get wasted on vodka, but the sponsors wanted an international DJ there. So I have literally had the rough with the smooth shall I say, a good balance diet of deejaying.

RIC: So coming back to the album, there are a good collection of artists on there.

RE: Yeah, literally it was my wish list really. It was a question of picking out some names, and Jeff Powell (Groovefinder Records owner) on the label got stuck-in making the calls and got people involved really. Very strangely it wasn’t a difficult process; everyone seemed to be more than happy to get involved; it was very bizarre. Jocelyn [Brown] came down to my flat where I was living at the time, and sang in my bedroom. Yes I had Jocelyn Brown in my bedroom! Roy Ayers, I mean that was the other end of the scale. We both came to London and hired a studio for a couple of hours; he was on tour at the time; so we had a nice studio and proper environment. For some [of the tracks] vocals were already recorded, so we managed to persuade those who had the say to allow to us to get involved in the tracks. Like for example My Door Is Open by Carleen Anderson from her Soul Providence album. We had started to work on a track, and I had the album on, and I really liked the song so I thought: I wonder if they’ll let us...? You know I had ideas for the song, which is ultimately what is now on the album. I called up and they said ok. Erik Dillard, he is based in the states, so that was all done over the internet. I know crazy, none of that “You must go to a studio”; it was done on the bedroom over the internet. Nina Jayne was a vocal I had originally remixed in 2004 for BMG, but she sadly got dropped when Song bought BMG. The track literally got stuck doing nothing, and it is a wicked song, she is a fantastic vocalist and lovely person. So I thought lets get her on the album, get that vocal, and re-produce it as an album version. That was great, and it was great have her at jazz café too as she hadn’t sang live for a while; I spoke to her the day later and she was still buzzing.

RIC: Is there any one of those tracks which you say is your favourite? Or one which you have very special memories of?

RE: That’s a tricky one. I think, I would probably say if I had a gun to my head I would choose In Time. It’s not just the personnel on there Erik on vocals and Roy Ayers on vibes; it’s just the song I love the song. I love the meaning of it, it is basically no matter how s**t things can get it will all work itself out in time. I think it’s a great message, you know we have been through a recession, and you are always hearing stories in the press or even friends of yours… a very good friend of mine committed suicide last year, and if only he had listened to the bloody song, you know what I mean? Things can get pretty bad, but there is always away around, and a way to resolve and solve things, and I think that’s the same for everything. Pretty much the same message in Rise the song with Ursula Rocker; we did that song literally the day after the 7/7 bombings. She was over in London and we managed to get her down for the day, but she wouldn’t use the train I had to drive London to pick her up. She had little boy with her, and it was a wicked day, just having him rumbling around the flat with my then girlfriend who is now my wife. Yet again the message in that is all about what a cruel world we are in, why does it have to be when it doesn’t need to be? So there are lot of poignant messages in the album, which hopefully people will listen to rather than get carried away with the music; actually take time to listen to listen to what to being said in some of the songs.

RIC: Let’s talk about your record labels. You have Duffnote, One51 Recordings, and Guess Records. Are they all still up and running?

RE: Yes all still up and running.

RIC: Does the tax man know?

RE: (Laughs) The tax man does know yes.

RIC: You are a very busy man.

RE: Duffnote was the first one in 2003; we started which was a straight vocal house label. One51 came on board a year later in 2004; we wanted another label to be a little more eclectic with our output. And then Guess started about 2005, because one of the other acts I am involved with Spiritchaser, we kinda found ourselves in limbo, we hadn’t put a record out in ages, but we had been writing loads. So we had all this material, and there was this whole digital label stuff knocking around, so we thought: Why not? Let’s give it a go, let’s see what happens, let’s see if the label can effectively support itself and give a profit margin however large or small, and sustain itself and its artists just by being digital and it does! That’s very much deep house, progressive type of stuff; although I do try hard not to pigeonhole things genre wise because there are so many. You go into a shop and it’s like, what an earth is this genre? What is wrong with just saying its house music or dance music? It’s very confusing. I understand what its there, because there is so much experimental stuff floating around you have to pigeonhole it somehow in order for people who want to buy it to know what it is; but it does my head in. I am very much a genre hater.

RIC: Given all your musical knowledge, will we ever hear you sing in the future?

RE: (Laughs) you know what? I am actually singing on the album.

RIC: No way! Which track?

RE: On Green Room

RIC: Really?

RE: Yes on the “oohs”. My pipes are on the album. Richard Earnshaw additional backing vocals.

RIC: Are you going to sing a whole song?

RE: I don’t think I am good enough to be honest. I can hold a tune but… I just don’t think… I did a vocals on a track we put on Duffnote called Everytime, but it’s not really a verse/chorus thing it was just a hook. That did really well for us, that re-appeared on Hollyoaks and all sorts with that track.

RIC: There you go.

RE: Yeah so maybe if we fancy getting a track on a crap soap then I’ll do the vocals and we may strike lucky again. (laughs) Honestly Richard I can’t sing, I wish I could it would make life so much easier for certain. Maybe I will just give it a go and see what happens (laughs)

RIC: As a producer are there other producers that you admire?

RE: Oh loads. I was recently reading an article in POS magazine about Trevor Horn, and how the term Record Producer was pretty much invented for him. He did The Buggles; you know Video Killed The Radio Star that was his first [hit] in the music industry. He’s gone on to do so much since then, he created Frankie Goes To Hollywood sound, he’s worked with George Michael, Seal… that’s what a producer does, he can pretty much turn his hand to anything. I can point out the obvious like Quincy Jones, Peter Gabriel… I could go on for hours. I don’t have a particular favourite; I like such an eclectic variety of musicians/producers.

RIC: Using Quincy as an example, and how he has done different things; could you see yourself doing a film score or conducting a full orchestra?

RE: I love to do a film score! Part of when I did my degree involved a lot of orchestration. So if somebody said to me now they want me to make some film music with an orchestra, I would literally get the old quill out, a bit of manuscript paper and away I go; I’d love to. But one step at a time, if you think about how long it took Hans Zimmer for example, who is now Mr Favourite for all Hollywood films, it took a long time to build that reputation in film. But we’ll see how that goes, I do know some film makers as it goes… then I will definitely turn my hand to it. Even if I have to make my own bloody film to score the music to I’ll do it.

RIC: What keeps you active besides music?

RE; My child; my little boy who is nearly a year old, he keeps me busy. He scales the furniture, so walking is imminent. I am up to my eyeballs in poo and nappies, but then within minutes I am in the studio just seeing what happens. I’m a dedicated husband… I do a lot of mountain biking, paddle boarding, surfing, cooking, and of course frequenting local pubs for a pint or ten of its finest ale. I like being outside; if I could be outside with a studio that would be amazing but the acoustics would be rubbish, and there would be bird crap everywhere.

RIC: Ok final three questions are ones I ask everybody
Name your three buckwild songs?

RE: (Laughs) Ok one of my favourites is Jody Watley and Roy Ayers- I Love To Love (Masters at Work remix), awesome record, its just spanking! Sugarloaf Mountain by George Duke is just awesome, off his A Brazilian Love Affair album. I would say probably Testify (The UBP Sunday Vocal Mix) by Urban blues Project featuring Jay Williams, awesome! Brilliant record!

RIC: If you could choose 3 artists dead or alive to work with, produce or write for who they be?

RE: Stevie Wonder would be amazing; I would literally sell my legs to do a record with him. We share the same birthday so I am hoping that would stand me in good stead. George Benson would be awesome, that would be quite something. You know I would quite fancy something with Gwen McCrae. I did the remix of the cover in 2004, but Gwen has just a fantastic voice on the original.

RIC: Five years from now you are on the cover of Billboard or Variety magazine, what would you like the headline to say?

RE: Lucky Bastard! (Laughs) I think that’s what it should say. I don’t know; it’s an inconceivable prospect. Oh have no idea, oh how about “Why Not?” because I am a very unlikely person to be on the cover of a magazine like that.

Post interview I went and listened to the track Green Room, there was not a vocal to be heard on that track. *Ricardito walks away very disappointed* Maybe it will appear on the re-packaged deluxe version of the album
Words Richard 'Ricardito' Ashie