Three decades into a career that has yielded fifteen albums, Peter Bruntnell remains one of the standout U.K. songwriters. Coupled with that writing flair is his ability to transform those words into exquisitely hook-filled and melodic pieces of music that bring to mind the classic sounds of The Beatles, REM and The Byrds. His latest album, and arguably a career-best, HOUDINI AND THE SUCKER PUNCH, is a testament to his capacity to combine, side by side, breezy and upbeat anthems alongside painful and mournful ballads. Backed by some exceptionally talented players, contributors include Son Volt members Jay Farrar and Mark Spencer, pedal steel supremo Eric Heywood, James Walbourne of The Pretenders, composer, multi-instrumentalist Peter Linnane and regular members of Peter's band, Peter Noone, Mick Clews and David Little. We spoke recently with the ever-engaging artist about the album's origins and the exciting journey of its creation.
You are regularly placed in the Americana genre, which, for me, does not necessarily fit your profile. Does that bother you?
No. It did about twelve years ago, but I did a tour with a band on the Loose label who weren't considered Americana, and I saw how difficult it was to tour in the U.K. if you're not in the Americana bracket. So, I suddenly realised that the Americana label and tag, even though everything is now called Americana, is not all that bad. Richard Thompson is called Americana today; they would call Planxty Americana these days. I really don't mind; I just want to sell more records.
Tell me the background to your recently released album HOUDINI AND THE SUCKER PUNCH?
The biggest influence on the writing for the record was me having a bouzouki. I wrote The Flying Monk, Yellow Gold, Houdini and The Sucker Punch and Sharks on the bouzouki. Those songs are initially slightly folky but ended up differently. Houdini and The Sucker Punch is more of a jangly pop song, and adding the pedal steel on it was a really good addition even though it's not a country song. To have Eric Heywood play pedal steel on it was a joy; he can play any music genre and is one of the most talented musicians I have ever come across.
Your relationship with Eric Heywood goes back over twenty-five years when he played on your album NORMAL FOR BRIDGEWATER.
He did, I had met him when he was playing with Son Volt. For this album, I asked Eric if he was up to putting pedal steel on a few songs from his home. He was up for it, and I had to decide how many songs to send him and which songs to send. I got him to play on three songs. Because I don't have a pedal steel player in London that I can use, I wanted pedal steel on only some of the tracks because I could never replicate that, and I needed to be careful not to overegg it.
That Son Volt connection also resulted in Jay Farrar and Mark Spencer contributing to the new record.
Yes. To get Jay Farrar on the album was great, especially because he doesn't do much of that. And, of course, Mark Spencer from Son Volt also plays on the album.
Peter Linnane, who mastered the new album, also worked on NORMAL FOR BRIDGEWATER.
Yes, he was the engineer on NORMAL FOR BRIDGEWATER. When I realised Peter had mastering skills and the facilities to master albums; I started using him on my records. On my last record, JOURNEY TO THE SUN, I was home on my own during lockdown and had recorded some songs. I wanted to send them to someone whose ears I trusted and who could tell me whether I had over-compressed the songs. I sent one of the songs to him, and he was happy with it. I mastered it and added some keyboards, which sounded great. That became the pattern for that album. I sent him all the songs, and he added some Mellotron, pump organ and organic-sounding instruments.
That continuity with artists and your band members suggests a relationship much more than just professional
Yes, I have mostly had the same people around me; they are great and more like family to me.
That also includes your writing partner Bill Ritchie. Is he a sounding board for you?
Yes. Sometimes I've got an idea or a title for a song, like Houdini and The Sucker Punch, which I thought of as a title. I sent him that tune, which originally was a different tune than the one I ended up with. At times, I may not have any lyrical idea and might send him something where I'm basically mumbling over the tune, and we go back and forth with ideas and eventually will get on the phone to fine-tune the song. He is great and often comes up with lyrics I couldn't possibly think of.
The recording process for HOUDINI AND THE SUCKER PUNCH was a combination of studio sessions and remote recordings, which is standard procedure these days. Do you miss the dynamic of having everyone in the studio to record?
You can't beat the band being all together and capturing those performances, which is quite magical. Still, it can also work remotely when you have people like Peter Linnane, Jay Farrar, Eric Heywood, Mark Spencer, and James Walbourne, who can all work from their studios.
Are the lyrics to the title track autobiographical in any way or simply a Houdini tale?
It's all metaphoric and not necessarily just about someone punching Houdini in the stomach. There is also random stuff in there that isn't self-explanatory to create an atmosphere. It's not necessarily autobiographical. We also had this notion or idea that a sucker punch didn't kill Houdini but might have died of a broken heart which seemed more romantic, and we liked the idea that a woman's rejection slew the great Houdini.
For me, the absolute standout track on the record is the breakup song, Stamps Of The World.
That song was actually on an album I recorded on my own in my house about ten or twelve years ago. I played drums on it, and it was called RINGO WAS HERE. It was a bunch of misfit songs which was never officially released, I just made some copies at home and sold them. Stamps Of The World was on that record and the last song chosen for the new album. I needed one more song and didn't have one written at the time; I was thinking of including a cover version of That Lucky Old Son, which I had recorded with a guitar player called Robbie McIntosh, who is absolutely amazing. I didn't include that song on the record because I didn't want to get into copyright complications. A couple of songs from the RINGO WAS HERE album were possible options to use, but once I heard back from Eric Heywood that he would play on the record, I knew that Stamps Of The World would work. When I was recording and mixing the album, I nearly left that song off, and since then, a couple of people have said that they love it, and I'm like…Really?'
If that song is a heartbreaker, the love song Sharks is the other end of the scale.
It is a love song; I don't do many. I did a tour about ten years ago with Jay Farrar and Garry Hunt, who was playing with Jay, and we played in Rocky Mountain, Virginia. We were driving in Jay's Mercedes van and played in Rocky Mount, Virginia, and Tennessee Johnson City. I wrote down the names of those two towns when I was on that tour, and I managed to get them into the lyrics of Sharks without sounding too cliched. Because I had played in both of those towns, it was okay for me as an English person to namecheck those towns without sounding like I was singing about trucks and whiskey. I was so pleased about that.
I gather that the song Yellow Gold was also born in The States.
After I finished the tour with Son Volt in September 2022, I drove up to Montana with my girlfriend. We drove through Wyoming, where I had never seen a landscape in America like that before. There is literally nothing for a hundred miles, no farms or settlements, and absolutely nothing but the Rocky Mountains on your left; it was very atmospheric. When I got to Montana, I bought a book about that part of the West in a bookshop. I read the book, and when I got back to the U.K. I also listened to some podcasts about the West, and that song almost wrote itself after that. It's the perfect song for James Walbourne to play on with his fast, ripping guitar style.
I'm hearing a lot of psychedelic era The Beatles and The Byrds in the song, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.
That was completely my intention. I basically thought that I wanted to rewrite The Beatles' song Rain. I had that in my head, sat in the studio, got a drum beat going, and wrote the bass lines.
And is Out Of The Pines mirror gazing by Peter Bruntnell, warts and all?
Yes, I was terrible at getting up and going to work when I was young and left school; work can be antisocial anyway. I really like Ron Sexsmith and wanted to write a song that sounded like his work. It probably doesn't sound at all like him, but that was as close as I could get. It is slightly different from all the other songs.
Where did the idea for the album's cover artwork come from?
It's very simple. We were playing the last show of the 2022 tour in Colorado and were in a pub called Lulu's Downtown in Colorado Springs, and that picture of the cock was on the wall in the dressing room. I saw the photo, liked it and thought it would be the album cover. Mark Spencer actually took a picture of it on his phone and sent it to me. I just thought it was a beautiful image.
Interview by Declan Culliton