Singer songwriter Dean Owens’ travels in recent years have transported him from rainy days in Leith, Edinburgh, to sunny days in Nashville, Tennessee, and further west to the scorching desert sun of Tucson, Arizona. Kicking off his musical journey in his late teens with the progressive pop band Smile and moving on to more roots-based music with The Felsons, Owens’ solo career has subsequently yielded ten albums, together with a number of collaborations. The title track of his 2018 album SOUTHERN WIND, earned him the accolade of UK Song of the Year at the UK Americana Awards in 2019. Its successor, the recently released SINNER’S SHRINE, is being hailed as a career highlight, with excellent reviews continuing to emerge from the U.K., America and Europe, including our own thoughts at Lonesome Highway. The album was recorded with Joey Burns and John Convertino of Calexico, a band Owens quotes as a firm favourite of his, way back to their early recordings. We spoke with Owens recently as he reflected on his early career days and ambitions, his love of American roots music and history, the recording of Sinner’s Shrine, and the three EPs titled THE DESERT TRILOGY, which he released in 2021.
With your Leith, Edinburgh grassroots and your love of football and boxing, I would have expected your record collection to be packed with Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed albums, rather than American roots music?
Actually, I have all of those in my collection. I love a bit of Iggy, big Bowie fan as well. I have a very eclectic taste and I think that is reflected in my own music. Over the years my albums have been quite different and I like artists that do that. Even going back to the Beatles, if you listen to all their albums, they are quite different, there are all genres going on with their albums. Put on Sergeant Peppers and you get everything from blues to jazz and even country influences.
Going back three decades to your early career as a late teenager with the band Smile, what were your musical ambitions at that time?
To be honest, I wanted to be on Top of the Pops like everybody else. That was the holy grail back then. Sadly, I never got there and Top of the Pops folded but I kept going. I’ve outlived Top of the Pops, that’s some claim to fame. Actually, it was never all about fame even back in those early days, I was always very interested in the song writing. Fame wasn’t something and it’s still not something that I have ever craved.
Your next venture was with The Felsons, who had a more roots sound. What marked the change in musical direction for you?
My old manager and friend ran a record shop and gave me some albums to listen to. They were pivotal records for me. One was Graham Parsons’ GREVIOUS ANGEL and GP, where you had both albums on one cd. I also got given an old vinyl record which was a Hank Williams’ collection. Those two records really opened my eyes to music I hadn’t heard previously. Up to that country music was, for me coming from Scotland anyway, a guy called Sydney Devine that my granny listened to. I guess Sydney Devine was a bit like your Daniel O’Donnell, very tame and not what I was interested in. When I heard Hank Williams, and especially the song Ramblin’ Man, that really hit me hard. I started to delve into that area and once you go down that rabbit hole it is hard to get out of it, there’s so much great music there. Through that, I discovered bluegrass and so many great artists and writers who heavily influenced the Felsons. The Americana genre did not exist when the Felsons were going. We were called everything from cowpunk to alt-country. When you mentioned boxing earlier, it’s like how many world titles there are now. Similarly, there seems to be a new genre each week related to roots music. I certainly don’t mind the Americana term because I am heavily influenced by that music and not only the music but also American landscape and American literature from my travels there over many years. Around that time there were also a number of bands being labelled alt-country that knocked my socks off. I was discovering bands like Wilco, Son Volt and eventually Calexico and Giant Sand.
Your next move was to venture on a solo career with your debut album THE DROMA TAPES.
We had been together and making music since I was about nineteen with Smile and The Felsons. We just got to the point where we had been living in each other’s pockets for a long time and decided to take a break, but not necessarily a permanent one. I headed off to a remote cottage on a Scottish island and started working on songs that were in my head and probably for another Felsons’ record. A number of them were quite stripped back and mellow and sounded really nice with me and just a guitar. That basically became the first solo album, THE DROMA TAPES. It was really an accidental album. I recorded it in the cottage and when it did come out people liked the vibe of it. It was very much based on and influenced by two old albums I had, THE TEXAS CAMPFIRE TAPES by Michelle Shocked and The Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers’ self-titled album.
Moving forward eighteen years and eight solo albums later and you recorded the Buffalo Blood album with Neilson Hubbard and his fellow Orphan Brigade members Joshua Britt and Audrey Spillman. Was the album and its recording location a result of a childhood romantic fascination of all things American for you, from spaghetti westerns to your love of Muhammed Ali?
I think so, you are right about the westerns okay. When I first went to the States on a long road trip, I wanted to see all those big John Ford landscapes. I got very interested in the old days of American culture and history, and their story because growing up in Scotland we were only given one side of the story. I started to read a lot and study American native history, and go to a lot of places where events took place. That became a very big part of my life, travelling and studying history over there. My wife and I at one point bought an old airstream trailer and put it on a friend’s property at Joshua Tree. I’ve always loved the time spent out in the desert, I don’t know whether it’s the contrast in weather from Scotland where we have to suffer a lot of rain. For the Buffalo Blood project. I started writing a number of songs based on the Native American Story and their trail of tears. I was also thinking of what was going on in the world around me at that time and the number of displaced people in the world. I had these seeds of ideas for songs and I mentioned to Neilson Hubbard and Joshua Britt that I was interested in recording songs based on American history and the American native experience. Neilson really liked the idea as he has just done the first Orphan Brigade with Joshua and Ben Glover. They had done that on location and Neilson, in his crazy wisdom, suggested that we make the record and go out to the desert to record it, rather than doing it in the comfort of a studio. We drove from Nashville out to New Mexico and based ourselves around the Georgia O’Keefe Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, set up our gear in various locations, strange rock formations, caves, and canyons, and made the record. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of.
Did that lead to the connection with the Calexico guys for THE DESERT TRILOGY EPs and SINNER’s SHRINE?
Funnily it didn’t, although I do see the strong connection between Buffalo Blood and the new record SINNER’S SHRINE for sure. My whistling for one. During the process of being in these canyons, Neilson and others remarked that they hadn’t heard anyone whistle like me before. I started coming up with all these Ennio Morricone-inspired tunes and melodies. The hook-up with Joey Burns and John Convertino happened later. I was on tour in America in the spring of 2019 and had a week off. I wanted to go somewhere for that week and relax and soak up some local music. I had been in Tucson, Arizona once before with my wife, but only for a few days, and hadn’t really got a flavour for it, though I’d always loved the music coming out of there, Calexico and Giant Sand, in particular. I love mariachi music as well. So, I went down there to soak up the atmosphere and eat some good Mexican food. I got invited to a benefit show for a local guy called Tom Hagerman, who is in a band called Devotchka, who have a great desert vibe. There was a mariachi band playing and Joey from Calexico was also performing. Long story short, but during the concert, I had gone indoors to the air-conditioned hotel where the outdoor gig was playing as I was suffering a bit in the Tucson heat. When I was coming out, I bumped into Joey and we just started talking about music as he was interested in Celtic music and I was interested in mariachi. We kept in touch after that and out of the blue he contacted me and said I should come back to Tucson and make a record with him and Jim Convertino, his partner in Calexico. I was blown away and it was an invitation that I wasn’t going to turn down. It was like being asked to play centre forward for my beloved football team Hearts, and scoring the winning goal. That was May of 2019 and I spent the next few months just getting songs together and the following January I went out to Tucson and recorded SINNER’S SHRINE with the boys from Calexico.
Tell me about the recording sequence from THE DESERT TRILOGY EPs and SINNER’S SHRINE?
As always, I had recorded too many songs. The songs on the EPs were ones, for one reason or another, that didn’t make the album. They simply didn’t make the album because I thought I had a nice sequence and flow to the album with the songs that are on it. I had four or five left over from the recording session and during lockdown, I recorded the remaining songs for the EPs long distance with the guys. The EPs were released by necessity in a way. It didn’t make sense to put the album out when I couldn’t tour but I also wanted to pave the way for the album coming out. It also gave me the chance to use those songs that I really liked from the sessions. It was really pandemic driven but also a blessing because I got a much bigger reaction to the EPs than I had expected.
I’m hugely impressed by the artwork on the EPs and the album.
It came about through James Morrison, who has done a lot of my artwork over the years. His partner Luisa Carmela Casasanta is also a great artist so I gave them a basic idea of what I wanted and they ran with it. They came up with some really beautiful work, with a really nice thread through the EPs, the album, and also through to the merchandise.
Unfortunately, touring the albums has been disrupted. What are your plans going forward?
I was scheduled to launch the album at Celtic Connections in Glasgow in January with a full band, which didn’t happen because of Covid. I played a few shows last month in Scotland with an ensemble called The Sinners, and the plan is to do more of that along with solo shows, duo shows, and some more band shows later in the year. Thankfully, the press I have been getting for the album is the best I’ve ever got, which is a relief because it’s a slight step away from what I’ve done previously and a different flavour from my last album SOUTHERN WIND. I’m also aware that by taking a musical departure you risk alienating some of your original fans as well as getting new ones. I have to stay really focused on SINNER’S SHRINE in the short term as I put so much work into it. I think the album deserves a good life and I intend to give it one.
Interview by Declan Culliton