KB Bayley’s last album ‘Little Thunderstorms’ was recorded during lockdown and had a very definite UK feel with a hint of COVID claustrophobia. ‘Flatlands’ is a very different album. It’s almost a solo performance with KB underpinning his intimate vocals with some widely varied Weissenborn arrangements and a smattering of haunting harmonica from Gavin Thomas on a couple of tracks. ‘Flatlands’ has also shifted its focus to the other side of the Atlantic with four covers of American songwriters and many American references in KB’s 6 self-penned songs.

So, ten songs played almost solo by KB with just the Weissenborn. If you wanted to choose a stringed instrument that gave a varied range of backing options, the Weissenborn would be near the top of the list – open tuning and the horizontal lap playing position make it a formidable backing instrument in the hands of a good player and KB Bayley is a very good player, creating a wide variety of soundscapes to enhance the narratives. Both the vocal and the Weissenborn are close-miked; you can hear tiny string noise and KB keeps the vocal intimate and slightly raw without having to push too hard.

A sense of loss runs through the album, the damage to communities caused by progress and the yearning for those little but important moments from the past that went by almost unnoticed at the time but take on importance as time passes. Part of the American feel comes from the well-chosen covers, Jean Ritchie’s ‘The L&N Don’t Stop Here No More’, Tom Waits’ beautifully-crafted ‘Johnsburg, Illinois’, Kelly Joe Phelps’ ‘The Black Crow Keeps on Flying’ and Jason Isbell’s ‘Maybe This Time’ seems to cut across the nostalgia theme by saying we should get rid of old faiths and superstitions, echoing the starting afresh theme of KB’s own ‘Year Zero’. KB has very cleverly pulled together six of his own songs and four favourites by other artists to create a unified piece with strands of nostalgia, regret and religious references running through it. His own song ‘Driftwood Avenue’, with Gavin Thomas’ haunting harmonica contains the line “Look for what’s been lost” and the first two verses reference the loss of Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon’s friendship.

It’s not easy to create a solo album with voice and instrument (apart from the harmonica contributions) but the versatility of the Weissenborn and KB’s fingerstyle mastery create a variety of textures for the songs that make a very satisfying album.

‘Flatlands’ is released on Friday November 4th.

At the start of this year Allan reviewed KB Bayley’s album “Little Thunderstorms”; he loved it. We’re a bit hesitant to give his ego any additional boosts but KB has been very flattering about the review and he’s put together a really interesting and moving contribution to High Fives 2021.

Photo by Rob Blackham

2021 was a strange old year. The complex and confused younger brother of 2020, who had made no secret of his cruel intentions. But amidst a sea of uncertainty, a real 2021 highlight for me was when Allan McKay reviewed my new album ‘Little Thunderstorms’ – to receive praise from someone who knows and loves music like Allan does was a shining light in a post-lockdown wasteland… so I was very chuffed to be asked to offer up my High Fives for the year.

There are recurring themes: lockdowns, live music, Weissenborns, albums.

Best Virtual Gig

Who remembers the first lockdown of Spring 2020? Hot sun, deserted roads. It seemed like the whole world was taking a breath, doing yoga, learning Ukrainian. I recorded my ‘Little Thunderstorms’ album in a back room at home, in between rediscovering long-forgotten records and learning about 1950s valve mics. By early 2021 and the third lockdown all that had changed. If you were like me, you were inhaling family packs of Hula Hoops and bingeing Line of Duty (“Jesus, Mary and The Wee Donkey, can we just move this thing along?”)  Spring arrived, but London remained empty and freezing, a dystopian gig-less wasteland. It was one Sunday afternoon in early spring when I stumbled across the two hours that restarted my year. I got an alert about a livestream show from Nashville, performed by Gretchen Peters – one of my favourite songwriters on this exhausted virus-ridden little planet. More than that, she was being joined by Ben Glover; a wonderful human being and another songwriting hero of mine. Ben had done me the honour of singing on track 4 of ‘Little Thunderstorms’, a song called ‘Blood Red Lullaby.’  I poured a beer, logged on and suddenly the world just tilted back into place. With the inimitable Barry Walsh on piano, Gretchen’s beautifully self-deprecating reminders that they hadn’t performed in front of an audience for some while reminded us all where we’d been. Then the opening chords of another classic would come chiming out of her guitar (accompanied by Ben’s Hummingbird), and I remembered why I loved songs and songwriting so much.

The Towpath Album For reasons I’ll explain in No. 5, I walked a lot at the start of 2021. I normally work in London, where the roar of the traffic fights daily with the rumble of the trains. In early 2021 I had rediscovered a towpath near my home where I could walk for four hours with only the canal boats and magpies for company; a time for reflection and emotion. I first saw Kelly Joe Phelps in Camden in 2000, and it remains one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen; emotional intensity, authenticity, humility, virtuosity and humour right there.  (“I’m gonna take a break now, get high, then come back on and play the same songs to you again”.) I knew every note and syllable of ‘Shine-Eyed Mr Zen.’ Shamefully, ‘Lead Me On’ had slipped under my radar.

This 1994 record became my towpath soundtrack. The breathtakingly fluid lap style playing, the raw intimate vocals, the themes of confession and redemption. Kelly Joe was my saviour and my travelling companion on that muddy path past the canal boats and their straggle-haired inhabitants.

One day I was lost in ‘I’d Be A Rich Man’ and a frantic woman told me her boyfriend was trying to kill her;  the next day it was ‘Black Crow Flying’ and she waved at me from their boat as they danced together clutching a bottle of red wine, their raggedy little dog snapping at my heels.

Best Guitar Workshop

By early summer my ‘Little Thunderstorms’ album had made its way into the world, like a baby crawling towards a shaft of sunlight through a door. I talked about the record online and on radio, to a variety of passionate and patient commentators. I read the reviews too – positive words brought a warm grateful glow, the occasional challenge always raised a smile. (This from Italy: “KB says he’s inspired by Kelly Joe Phelps, but he sounds nothing like him.” Hard to argue…  Making a record is fun; so is talking about it. But it was time to get back to the musical lathe and actually play some stuff.  

A brief origin story: I’ve been playing acoustic fingerstyle guitar since I could walk. I got into slide blues in my teens – a tough call on the punk-dominated 70s South Coast – then played in a series of badly-behaved electric blues bands. Weissenborn playing came much later in life – discovering in enthusiastic middle age the unique joy of a guitar that sits on your lap while the steel bar in your left hand slides out the melody. I tell myself my innocent lack of virtuosity allows my songs to thrive, unfettered by too much performance (but we’ll let the audience decide).  With the album out in the world and a few years of lap slide apprenticeship under my belt, in July 2021 I drove from Watford to Bradford and back in a day. Only one thing would truly coax me to do that; a Thomas Buchanan Koa Weissenborn. I walked into Tom’s Cleckheaton workshop and for a passionate guitar nerd like me – a truth since the age of 4 –  it was a magical grotto of delights. Beautiful woods were everywhere, shaped into different stages of instrumental evolution. Tom has the quiet confidence of a master craftsman; an alchemist who combines wood, steel and bone to create gold. I walked out of his workshop with a Koa Style 4, and I know that instrument will be with me until I check out. His words rang in my ears as I left: “I think you’ll find the instrument will tell you how it wants to be played.”

First Gig Back

So you’ve got an album out, twin Weissenborns sitting in a guitar rack and a folder full of solid reviews. Can you still play live?

I consoled myself with the thought that I probably wasn’t the only muso thinking that in 2021. But there were still butterflies as I arrived at The Star in Guildford on August 3rd 2021. I’d been invited to join a bill with two shining young southern talents, Leoni Jane Kennedy and Lifelike Charlie; those two plus a bloke older than the Prime Minister playing guitars designed in the 1920s.  

It was a glorious night. It was strange at first to stand at the back as the crowd filtered in and assembled in front of the stage; there were beautifully familiar faces from the the thriving local live music community, all engaged in that strange clumsy dance of ‘do we hug, punch or knock elbows?’ Even stranger to sit on stage for the first time since February 2020; surrounded by cables, monitors, mic stands; the soft glow of my kitchen at home replaced by the burn of stage lights on my hands. Could I still play and sing? Yup, it seemed so. (In truth, once Line of Duty had ended I’d been practising every night.) Could I remember the titles of my own songs? Not a chance. “This next one is called…. Sh*t no it isn’t, sorry.”  I could still play songs. I’d forgotten how to talk to other people.

Favourite Album Cover

‘Little Thunderstorms’ was a record all about stuff that happens to us; small, seismic, tragic, mundane. At the start of 2020 it was a scratchy collection of phone demos, with just a rough idea of how it would sound. As a family, we had been battling our own Event. My wonderful nephew Will – then 19 – had been fighting a rare cancer since 2017. He had stared it in the face, beaten it back, taken all it could throw it at him and come out standing tall. He’d given radio interviews where the DJ had been rendered speechless by his courage and honesty. Will was a scientist, a poet, and a gifted artist. I needed an album cover, and I asked him to create one for me at the start of 2020. All I had was the title – Little Thunderstorms – and a rough idea that the record was going to sound acoustic and homemade (if only I’d known just how much…..) He made me the first draft of a cover. It was beautiful – but it was too ‘big’; more like something for a stadium band, not an introspective troubadour questioning the world. With a maturity that I still don’t have, he called me and asked me to describe exactly what I wanted; the next day I received the original artwork for the album. It never changed throughout all the development of the record. Like his courage and his beautiful soul, Will’s art remained constant.

The album came out and the original cover artwork received so much love. In early 2021 I gave Will his vinyl copy of the record; his beaming smile was a tiny shard of joy amongst the sea of pain that came from knowing his time with us would soon end. In the final few weeks of his life I hope and believe that Will got some happiness from knowing that his uncle’s record had gone to all corners of the world, with his beautiful artwork on it. For every glowing review from a Music Riot or Americana UK, there was an Italian critic slagging off KB’s singing. He loved that.

Will left us in February 2021. Whenever I talked to people about the album I never mentioned his story. His contribution to it wasn’t about being a cancer patient, or a hero, or someone who finally ‘lost a battle.’ He was an artist.