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Multi-faceted blues; genreless artistry
Muirsical Conversation with Adam Norsworthy
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Adam Norsworthy, front man of highly respected British blues rock outfit The Mustangs, went from the sublime to the ridiculously fun on his two non-Mustang releases of 2016.

With Rainbird Adam Norsworthy delivered a beautifully constructed and truly genre-less solo album that FabricationsHQ tagged as its singer-songwriter based album of 2016.

By contrast Full Phat, the debut album from The Milk Men, is a fun filled, Dr. Feelgood styled rhythm 'n' blues get-together featuring Adam Norsworthy on guitars, singer Jamie Smy, drummer Mike Roberts and bassist Lloyd Green.

2016 also saw the release of The Best Of The Mustangs, a comprehensive all bases covered compilation that celebrated the band’s first fifteen years.
The 18 track collection was a perfectly timed summation of The Mustangs story thus far, wrapping up the first phase of the band’s career as they embark on what Adam Norsworthy sees as the next part of the journey with the forthcoming Just Passing Through, a semi-conceptual release the talented singer songwriter believes to be both "a bit special" and the band’s best album yet.

Adam Norsworthy chatted with FabricationsHQ at the top of 2017 to discuss his three, very different 2016 releases as well as going in to detail about the story behind both The Best Of The Mustangs and Just Passing Through, the recording of Rainbird, his songwriting influences and just how The Milk Men got together to deliver their Full Phat product...  

Ross Muir: The Best Of The Mustangs is a fifteen year summation of The Mustangs story so far; it’s also nicely weighted, presenting the musical range of the band and covering all seven studio albums recorded thus far and a song from the live album. What prompted a Best Of?

Adam Norsworthy: Well it all came about because we realised it had been a long time since we had made any new music – various things were happening and we are all getting on with life, as you do!
We also knew we had a new album on the boil but that it was still a little bit away from being released; so we looked back and thought well, fifteen years of The Mustangs.
We also knew this new album was a bit different and a bit special
 – there really is something about it – and we thought this is just a really good time to wrap up the first fifteen years before we start on the next part of the journey, as it were.
The Best Of The Mustangs also fills in that gap between the last studio album and the new one in really neat way – it’s a bookend to a period we feel we have now moved on from.

RM: Yes, this is much more than a stop-gap release. To parallel your own comments it feels and sounds like the end of Chapter One as you open Chapter Two of The Mustangs story – and all the signs point to a new album that will be one of your strongest, if not the strongest, to date.

AN: That’s certainly how we feel about it; we were listening to the new album not long ago and we were all just buzzing.
You’re always going to say your new album is your best album but I do think people who know The Mustangs music are definitely going to hear something a bit different; t
here's a real soul, and depth of maturity, to this record.
We’ve tried to go back to our blues roots on this one – where we all started – but done in a Mustangs way; by that I mean we’ve tried to keep our lyrical concepts intact and keep plenty of melody in there.
I remember reading R2 magazine’s review of The Best Of album at the end of last year and they said we were an "almost punky" blues band.
A lot of our songs are short and sharp and we don’t do the long guitar solo number – we don’t go on and on [laughs]
– so it was fair comment for some of the music we were doing but this time we wanted to sit back, relax and let the music breath a bit. There’s a lot of space on this record and there are a lot of layers to it.
Lyrically, it’s a band that are clearly getting older together – we’re four men who are good friends, constantly in conversation with each other and asking questions of ourselves; I think that all comes out on the new record.

RM: That "getting older" comment is interesting. It leads to the conclusion that this is a real life album.
Just Passing Through is certainly not a "my baby left me" or "I woke up this morning" blues record; it is, as you say, about growing older and how real life affects you.

AN: That’s a very astute observation and funnily enough we’ve just made the decision to call Side One of the record Love and Side Two Life.
The idea behind it is that relationships, love affairs and life itself is something we are all just passing through; so it becomes a melancholic and bittersweet record in places but in some ways also life affirming.
These are big words or concepts I’m using here but hopefully the music will reinforce what I’m saying – although we may have missed the mark terribly [laughs]
– but that’s what we’ve tried to do with this record.

RM: That does indeed point to the start of a new chapter for The Mustangs but if I can take you all the way back to how it all started more than a decade and half ago – am I right in saying the seeds were sown by you and blues harp player Derek Kingaby getting together for an impromptu jam session in a pub?

AN: That’s it exactly! What happened was my cousin had moved in to the village of Rowland’s Castle in Hampshire, near the Fountain Inn pub owned by Herbie Armstrong, who had been guitarist with Van Morrison.
Herbie was a big supporter of live music; he would put live music on at the Fountain Inn all the time and my cousin kept asking me to come down and join in. Eventually I did! [laughs]
I got up with the guys who were already on stage, including Derek, and said "let’s just rip through some Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and a little John Lee Hooker" but we ended up doing a whole shows worth, an hour and a half, just jamming, and it brought the house down!
All the guys said to me "come back next week!" so I did; then that week they said "you have to come next week too!" [laughs].
By then of course people were asking "what are you guys called?" and I blurted out "we’re The Mustangs!"
From that point on we were The Mustangs and the core of those jam guys became the band that played on the first record, Let It Roll – me, Derek, Dave Bulbeck, Brian Iredale and Mark Hobbs.

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​RM: Dave and Brian left shortly after the first album and Mark would depart after the second; with the addition of Ben McKeown and Jon Bartley you became the definitive Mustangs four-piece that’s been so successful on the circuit and such a draw at blues festivals.

AN: Yes. Dave and Brian were also in a band called The Cheese Doctors and eventually they decided there was more cash in the covers.
I'd been playing with Jon for years though, from our school days, and I’d also been playing with Ben a little, so it was just the most natural thing in the world to get them in and as soon as they were we knew that was it; it was perfect.
And here we are all these years later and nary a cross word said between us; we’re very close and we’re very proud that we’ve being going for so long, with so many albums.
Many bands have split up for, and with, far less but we’re just motoring on because we love it!

RM: There’s an obvious camaraderie and clear musical chemistry within this quartet 
– and a recording career built on solely self-penned material; that's unusual in a blues rock world peppered with covers.

AN: I’ve driven that from day one; I’ve always written songs and I’ve always loved writing songs.
In all the bands I’ve ever been in I’ve been writing songs, honing the craft and trying to get better and better. When it came to The Mustangs the other guys hadn’t really written songs but I knew they were intelligent guys, and very musical guys, so I said "go away and write me some songs – it doesn’t matter how bad they are, we will knock them into shape together."
And lo and behold they came back with great songs that didn’t need that much work; I thought to myself "this is just perfect!" and ever since it’s become, as you said, this lovely chemistry.
Although I’m clearly the front man and the one who drive things everybody has an important role to pay and the band is absolutely a democracy; we don’t do anything that the four of us don’t want to do and we don’t even play anything we don’t all want to play.
But it’s great – I’ll take ideas to the band and they’ll make them better and they’ll bring their ideas to me and I’ll make them worse! [laughter].

RM: Joking aside, that songwriting strength is showcased wonderfully well on The Best Of The Mustangs.
You are the primary songwriter in the band but the majority of the eighteen songs are co-writes; Ben also contributed two self-penned numbers.

AN: Yes and they’re all great songs; we didn’t have to shoehorn anything in.
Ben wrote a beautiful song called Over Too Soon; that's a lovely little ballad that sounds like it’s about a day by the seaside but if you listen to it there’s actually a lot more in there.
It's also one of the first things Ben ever wrote and it’s definitely in there on merit.
And then there’s Derek’s contribution. Derek is a beautiful lyricist and on the new album he’s surpassed himself; he’s written some great lyrics for the new record.

RM: The other thing to note is the variation within The Mustangs blues rock stylings.
As you mentioned earlier the band tends to be "short and sharp" and that, along with the fact you run the gamut from punky R&B to poppified melodic blues helps separate you from the pack.

AN: That’s exactly it; you’ve put it in a nutshell.
When we first came on to the circuit what we saw and heard was so many bands doing the same thing – the same covers, the same guitar solos, saying the same things between the songs – all copping the same attitude as each other.
So we immediately thought "let’s not be another band doing those long guitar solos, let’s do songs."
We take our inspiration from the blues but turn it in to three and four minute songs that you can sing, that have definable melodies and are not necessarily twelve-bar 
– and if they are twelve-bar let’s lyrically do something interesting with them.

That’s always been our USP; that’s what we’ve done. People have told us time and time again there will always be a place on a festival bill for us because we help to break up the day; you put us in there to break up the twelve-bar bands because we are that little bit different.
That’s lovely, but, as we were saying earlier about the compilation, we’ve done that for the last fifteen years, now let’s see what else we can do.
Now that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll go and do those fifteen minute guitar solos [laughs] but it does mean we’ll let the music breathe a little bit more.
We’re a little bit older now so let’s have that pace and tempo but with space; it’s about the space, really.

RM: It’s really interesting how many conversations I have with those "little bit older" musicians, to use your own words, whether in formal interview or just chewing the musical fat, where the discussion leads to the importance of space. It seems to be something that comes with experience but it’s so, so true.

AN: Yes, and the other thing you’ll hear – which has become a bit of a cliché but is also true – is how it’s about the notes you don't play.

RM: To expand on something I mentioned earlier, about the breadth of styles employed by The Mustangs, your influences are also wide and varied 
– there’s a clear nod to British blues of the sixties and later R&B rock as championed by Dr. Feelgood, but there’s also the influence of more traditional American blues mixed with your soul-blues and melodic pop sensibilities.
You seem to have this melting pot of influences and ideas to dip into as a songwriter.

AN: Yeah, I think it is all that; I think you’re right; I grew up in the States so was listening to a lot of American mainstream radio, where you have such a choice of music to listen to, all the time.
And my mum’s a musician; she used to sing all those different song styles so I was influenced by all kinds of music while still very young.
Like you said about the melting pot, I think you just absorb it all – you hear all this different music and subconsciously take it all in, so when you are writing songs you take a little bit of an influence off a particular shelf and think to yourself "that’s a really nice idea for a song."
But hopefully, as you continue to write, you start to bring more of your own style to your songwriting.

Also, I don’t like writing a song and then being put in a box – where someone can say "well, this is this so we’ll label it with that" – I’d much rather people just listen to it as a song.
I wrote a little thing on my FaceBook page back in November of last year about Freddie Mercury, twenty-five years on from his death, and that reminded me of just how interesting a band Queen were.
Their influences were vast and they would take those influences from anywhere; you couldn’t say they were a rock band and you couldn’t say they were a pop band.
I’d really like The Mustangs to be the Queen of the blues! [laughs]

RM: Well The Best Of certainly covers the various facets of The Mustangs wide ranging blues rock and blues pop repertoire and this is a perfect time to feature another Mustangs song, which I’d like you to choose...

AN: My favourite Mustangs song is actually Precious Time; it’s just such a lovely song and one that I think is very sweet.
It hits a lot of spots and, for anyone who thinks we’re just a blues band, take a listen to it and you’ll see that we’re not!

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RM: How you’ve just described your varied songwriting influences leads perfectly to Adam Norsworthy the solo artist and your second solo album for the Trapeze label, Rainbird.
Rainbird was given the nod on FabricationsHQ as singer songwriter based album of 2016, a major reason for which was, as I made mention of in review, that it "delivers reflection, melancholy, story-telling, uplifting melodies and up-beat rhythms in equal measure."
It’s also truly genre-less, reinforcing your comment about not wanting to be "put in a box."

AN: I was hugely flattered Rainbird was given that honour and it was lovely to hear those words in review.
The backstory to that record is my mother had been very ill and in hospital for a year and a half; I had been caring for her and running back and forward to the hospital so I knew I would have only a short, very concentrated time to record the songs I had been writing for a solo record.
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But that did refocus everything for me
– it really crystallised things – and when I came out of that short recording time I thought "wow, these are pretty good; these songs could really come to life."
I also thought things fitted very well together, as a collection of songs.

Now, Wayne Proctor was meant to be recording The Mustangs record but in the end we couldn’t do it with him because Ben fell very ill with hepatitis; that was one of a number of things that held us back on recording Just Passing Through.
But Wayne said "have you got anything else?" and I of course replied "well, I have these solo songs I’ve just been recording and demoing" and I let him hear them.
When Wayne heard the songs he was blown away; he said "you must let me work on these!"
So I went to Trapeze with the songs, they loved them, they okayed the budget and we got Wayne in.
Trapeze doing that was brilliant; that was the next step that took Rainbird to another level because, as you well know, Wayne is the man at the moment.

RM: I pull his leg about that from time to time – "not another bloody House of Tone production" [laughter].
But I agree. Wayne can, and does, bring something a little special to the overall sound of an album.

AN: He really does. With Wayne it’s all about the music and all about the songs; he’s great to get along with too and is just a lovely guy.
He’s been involved in the mixing and co-production of the new Mustangs record as well.

RM: That leads to an obvious follow-on question. What’s the difference for you as a songwriter and a recording artist, between working with someone like Wayne and working independently, as you did on your previous album Love and Wine, which was a solo album in every sense.

AN: The change, or difference, with Rainbird, was sonically.
On Rainbird we had other musicians come in and lay down parts I had already played on the demos – what they brought in was an opportunity to lay down the same parts but sounding much better.
There was also a much higher bit rate in the recording which led to more depth to the music.
I have a small home studio which is great, perfect for doing things like Love and Wine, but we felt that Rainbird deserved a broader canvas
– Wayne got on the phone to me once he had heard the songs and said "look, I’d really like to play the drums on this and get Mat Beable in to play bass."
We also had Bob Fridzema from King King on keyboards and violinist Anna Brigham guesting on a few of the songs; the other musicians rerecorded the same parts I had laid down on the demos but they sounded so much better recorded in the bigger studio.

RM: I think it was also a case of all the pieces fitting, including your musical relationship with Wayne; it all just works so wonderfully well…

AN: Yeah, we knew it was good and then it got fantastic reviews – I mean I couldn’t have written better reviews myself [laughs] – but unfortunately it didn’t really take off like we felt it should have done.

RM: But then you are not the first nor will you be the last with quality product that will get the critical acclaim it deserves but not the wider recognition 
– certainly in terms of larger mainstream success and airplay.
The Bottom line? It’s a marketable commodity over musical creativity world, but we'll leave it there before I get a rant on…

AN: Me too! Let's not get started! [laughter]. It’s true though, the windows of opportunity are narrower than ever; very few people in the industry would be willing to put their heads on the line for music like mine. Thank God there are writers with passion and integrity like yourself who help spread the word for us all.

RM: Thank you for the compliment but it’s easy, and a privilege, to write about music when it's this good. And I’m already looking forward to the next one which I believe Wayne will again be involved in?

AN: Yes and in fact I’ve already written the next one
– I’ve just got a lot of music in me and it keeps coming out! [laughs].
I’ve sent the songs over to Wayne and he’s been listening to them; the next step is for us to pick a bunch of them, get together and start recording.
So we’ll try again but it won't be Rainbird Part Two
– it will be a different sounding record with some personal lyrics but it will have all those different melodies, all that lovely instrumentation and a soul.
It has to have a soul too, that’s very important.

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​RM: I mentioned Love and Wine, Rainbird’s predecessor, earlier. That’s a very breezy, folk and melodic pop meets Americana kind of record but the one song that keeps jumping out is Still Life, with its early Bowie vibe and Space Oddified theme.
Was that intentional and were you aware of just what a stand-out song that would become?
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AN: I didn’t know it was going to be any sort of stand-out song until a mate called me up just after that album came out.
He phoned one day saying "Adam, I’m on the motorway but I’ve just had to pull over to the side of the road!"
Of course I said "what’s up? Are you OK? Do you need some help?" but he replied "No, no I’m fine; I’ve just played Still Life for the third or fourth time and I can’t stop listening to it; so now I’ve had to stop to really listen to it because there’s just something about it!"
And I thought "well that’s interesting" because I have to be honest with you for me it was just another one of the songs on the record.
But it did have the vibe I wanted and yes, you’re right, there’s a big Bowie influence on it, musically. I think everyone knows I’m an enormous David Bowie fan!

RM: And lyrically?

AN: The lyrical content came about because I’d been watching a lot of Horizon type Space documentaries and started to get really interested in the whole "who are we?" and "what’s our place in the universe?" thing.
So I thought it would be interesting to compare the timelessness of space to the timelessness of a deep relationship. That’s all in there if you want to look for it 
– or you can just listen to a nice song!

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RM: We’ve covered two sides of Adam Norsworthy in your role as front man of The Mustangs and as a solo, singer songwriter artist, but 2016 was actually a three sided musical affair for you.
You also featured on Full Phat, the R&B driven debut from side project The Milk Men featuring your good self on guitars, Jamie Smy on vocals and a rhythm section of Mike Roberts and Lloyd Green.
I have to say, more than anything, that album just radiates fun and the sheer love of playing…

AN: That’s exactly it Ross, it was done for the fun of it. Jamie and I are best mates – we grew up together and spent our whole time in the music building at school just writing songs.
We’ve probably written thousands of songs together over the years and I have to say most of them were... well, pretty terrible [laughter]; it took us a long time to get good at it [laughs].
When we left school we always seemed to be in bands together and at one point we got a deal with a record label to record an album; but we were about half way through making the record when the label dropped us. That knocked the wind out of our sails a little bit and we went our separate ways, musically, for a long while; Jamie did other things and I ended up in what became The Mustangs.

But then one night, over a beer at his house, Jamie said "let’s put a band together just for the fun of it. Every time we’ve been in bands we’ve been chasing record deals and that just ended up creating pressure 
– why don’t we just write some songs we think people will like and put a blues band together for fun?"

We’re both mad Dr. Feelgood fans so we said to each other "let’s use that as a template" and then added a little bit more melody, a little bit more dynamics and a bit more of ourselves.
And that’s exactly what happened; that’s how the band came about.

RM: And it started with some live shows?

AN: Yeah, we did some shows playing covers and they were really ragged [laughs] but we all enjoyed it.
And, as is always the case with me, I said "we can be better – we can be much better – let’s write some songs, make a record and have some fun with it."
So it started with the covers shows but became the record Full Phat; we had time to do it because this was when Ben became ill with hepatitis, as I mentioned earlier.
We went in, Jamie and I wrote some songs, we threw in a couple of old ones we had from way back, added a few choice covers we had been playing live and it all came together very quickly.
We loved doing it and I think it’s a really good, fun record.

RM: It absolutely is and this has been a fun, and informative, conversation.
It only remains for me to play out with a song from Rainbird to help compensate for the airplay it deserved but didn’t get and thank you, Adam, for taking the time to chat with FabricationsHQ.

AN: Well thank you for inviting me on, Ross, and thanks for all your, and FabricationsHQ’s, support – it’s really appreciated.

Ross Muir
Muirsical Conversation with Adam Norsworthy
January 2017

Adam Norsworthy official website: http://www.adamnorsworthy.co.uk
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The Mustangs official website: http://www.themustangs.co.uk

The Milk Men official website: 
http://www.themilkmenmusic.com/

Adam Norsworthy photo credit: Christine Jansen

Audio tracks presented to accompany the above article and to promote the work of the artists.
No infringement of copyright is intended. 
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