NORTHERN ROOTS: Justin Currie
Scottish singer songwriter Justin Currie has had a long band history with Del Amitri before releasing a string of solo albums and appearing in various line-ups including the soul and jazz covers band Button Up. From 2004 he was part of With Strings Attached with Blazin’ Fiddles, Eddi Reader and Colin MacIntyre (aka Mull Historical Society). On Saturday he will play as Justin Currie and The Pallbearers headlining Saturday’s Northern Roots festival at Bogbain Farm - back in MayJustin released his latest solo album This Is My Kingdom Now ...
1 I just wondered what your first memory was of playing in the Highlands? I had a vague memory that maybe even pre-Del Amitri you’d been up here recording?
JUSTIN: No, we never recorded in the Highlands. The first time we played north of Aberdeen was in 1989 when we did three "test" gigs away from metropolitan prying eyes. Ullapool is the one I remember. The Caledonian Hotel, I think. Folk had to walk through the "stage" to get to the toilet and we had a bonfire on the beach after the show. It was a beautiful night and a perfect setting for the calm before the ensuing storm of 1990.
2 Looking back on Del Amitri, what are the moments that now stand out for you? And for a band that soundtracked the lives of a generation do you feel keeping so many fans who appreciated your music might be a fair exchange for being what one person called being "perennially undervalued" as a band.
JUSTIN: Well, we never felt undervalued. We felt incredibly lucky that our little indie band ended up all over Radio 1 and pop radio in the US for 10 years. We made a lot of money and had a lot of fun. It never got too big, weird or unwieldy. The tabloids did not sniff around our bins, we were left to our own vices; it was the best of both worlds. Our record company, A&M, treated us very well until the inevitable dwindling. I can’t tell you how grateful we still are that we had it so easy compared to a great many of our contemporaries. So when folk argue we should have been bigger we just laugh. Even in the minor history of ‘90s UK guitar music we are a cultural irrelevance – there are hundreds of more significant bands from that time.
3 What was the first music you chose to put on a record player – and what is the last record you’ve played?
JUSTIN: My mum came back from a jumble sale in the mid-1970s with copies of Sgt. Pepper and Bringing It All Back Home. I took them both to heart at a tender age. The last album I played on vinyl was Dream River by Bill Callahan. I love Small Plane, it’s a killer metaphor.
4 You do a great tongue-in-cheek intro on YouTube to your latest album This Is My Kingdom Now. How would you describe the album in a sentence to someone who was new to it? And if you could choose anyone in the world to be an ambassador for it, who would you like?
JUSTIN: In a sentence? "These things mean something to me, maybe they’ll mean something to you".
As for my ambassador, I’ll need someone who can sell anything, no matter how grim. Some po-faced actor who fronts up charity drives would do. Or Fiona Bruce.
5 How did you find your band the Pallbearers – they seem quite mysterious, I can’t find much about them anywhere?
JUSTIN: It’s just a name for my three friends, Stuart Nisbet, Nick Clark and Jim McDermott that I had to come up with in a hurry last summer. I’d been touring as a duo for years so had to put something on the posters that let the audience know this was a group. They keep trying to dress in gay colours and I have to bribe them to wear black.
6 What is your most dangerous hope?
JUSTIN: That a benign world government or coalition of the intelligent will organise the mass replacement of fossil fuels with renewables in the immediate future.
7 What is your biggest indulgence?
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JUSTIN: Booze. I could have bought a nice house in Croatia with all the booze I’ve bought. But I enjoyed most of it. I think I had a bad pint in 2005.
8 When did you last write a song and what began it ( a line, a sky, a book, a card game)?
JUSTIN: I wrote a couple of dreadful things in March which I’ll never listen to again. There are two sparks for songs – trying too hard and not trying at all. The former produces songs that are invariably rubbish.
9 What’s your finest hour at a festival – what festival has made you emotional?
JUSTIN: Pulp doing Common People at T in the Park in 1996 was a collective emotional lift-off. All the complexity and irony of the chorus was lost and there was a great fusion of hope, joy and collective harmony. I kid you not. Oasis in a tent in 1994 were awesome too. Miserable sods doing heavy metal psychedelia. Boss. As for my own shows, I think we were OK at the Outsider back in the zeroes.
10 How did you first get to know Northern Roots’ Bruce MacGregor?
JUSTIN: I was an acquaintance of Aidan O’Rourke (of Lau, then in Blazing Fiddles) – he’d foolishly invited me and my girlfriend back to his flat after we’d met in a pub. Aiden asked me later to sing with the With Strings Attached project at Celtic Connections. We went on to do a little three date tour so I got to know Bruce through that. He’s super lovely but he can’t play violin, you know. He mimes. He has an iPod under his seat and he mimes along to that. Amazing, really.
Justin Currie and The Pallbearers headline the main stage (9pm) at Northern Roots Festival at Bogbain Farm on Saturday, June 24. for full details:
https://www.skiddle.com/festivals/northern-roots-festival/lineup.html
And for more on Justin and his album:
