’Round table: (l-r) Butler, Blake and Grant
TEENAGE Fanclub’s Norman Blake is awaiting a delivery of logs to his cottage in the Clyde Valley when Uncut catches up with him. “There’s no gas supply here,” he says. “Last year I had storage heaters, and they were really, really expensive. Hence the logs.” On the upside, Blake’s move to the countryside a year ago has yielded an album of glorious autumnal songwriting in collaboration with Love And Money frontman James Grant and former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. “Norman’s place is really lovely,” says Butler. “Every time I go there it’s just a peaceful few days.”
Now settled under the moniker Butler Blake & Grant – “I think I’d like to be Steven Stills,” jokes Grant – the group have done everything in the wrong order. They went on tour before they had any new songs, after being thrown together for their initial shows by Creeping Bent label boss Douglas MacIntyre, who also curates live events in Scotland under the Frets banner. “Me and James had tentatively talked about doing something together,” says Blake. “And I’ve known Bernard from way back.”
“Bandwagonesque
was my courting record with my wife,” reveals Butler. “We’ve always kept in touch with
Norman. James I didn’t know until recently, but I knew what a fantastic songwriter he was.”
The live shows were a success, but the album arrived almost by accident after Blake invited Butler and Grant to his cottage. “We didn’t plan to record it,” says Butler. “We were just sitting in Norman’s living room in front of the fire. There’s a couple of sofas and we were facing each other. James had a song. Norman wrote and finished something really quickly, and then I wrote something. As the first song came out, I said to Norman, ‘Have you got any gear? You know, recording equipment?’ He appeared with some mics and a computer and we set it up on the table. We weren’t really listening back to anything. We just thought, ‘We’ll record everything that happens.’”