With Merchants of Light, we thought we’d try to make it
a bit more of a grand statement like those 70’s albums.
An Interview with Greg Spawton of Big Big Train concerning the live album Merchants of Light
By Steve Blomerth DC, Music Editor, Coreopsis Journal
Gregory Spawton is a founding member of the band Big Big Train and has helped shape and guide the band’s musical direction since its beginning in 1990. Greg is one of the main songwriters for Big Big Train and plays bass and bass pedals in their studio and live performances. On a day-to-day basis Mr. Spawton is part of the team responsible for managing the business affairs of Big Big Train as well. We were able to spend some time recently discussing the Big Big Train Merchants of Light live album recorded at Cadogan Hall in 2017. This moment in time is auspicious for Big Big Train’s further success as they are coming from two well-received headlining performances and have released a live album which is charting at number 2 in the UK rock charts. Although Mr. Spawton was in the midst of writing lyrics for Big Big Train’s new studio album to be released in May 2019, he had time to share a few thoughts about the live Merchants of Light album and Big Big Train’s growing international recognition.
CJMT: The intro to “Folklore” featuring Rachel and the keyboards is so well done I sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between her violin and what must be the keyboard strings. The harmony’s evoked in this section remind of turn of the 19th-20th century composers who first mastered harmonies that seemed to have no definite key center, giving a very floating feel to the music before it transitions into the minor key that starts “Folklore”.
Greg Spawton: This overture is primarily Danny’s work, developing David’s themes in the original song. Danny has a very high level of understanding of harmony and deploys his knowledge in this section. String samples on keyboards are really very good now so it is perfectly feasible to get complex string parts sounding strong in the live environment. However, it is always good to use real instrumentation and we did take the opportunity to record the Overture with a 17-piece string section earlier this year. I am not sure how or when this will be released, probably as a B-side at some stage.
CJMT: I enjoyed the pedal point intro to the live “Brave Captain” because it was easier to discern how it was done via slide guitar and keyboards. The studio version was wonderful in it’s “how did they do that quality” but the live version was nicely revealing as well as having its own power.
Spawton: That’s one of the things I like about live albums; the performance and the mix will be different from the studio recording so there is sometimes an opportunity for the listener to unpick the threads that go to make up songs. Back in the 70’s, live albums were serious statements by bands. That is much less the case now as it is much cheaper to record multi-tracks of live performance as part of a mixing desk set-up and the market has been saturated with live material. With Merchants of Light, we thought we’d try to make it a bit more of a grand statement like those 70’s albums.
CJMT: Putting “Meadowland” just before “Mead Hall in Winter” was a good move because the melody and theme from “Meadowland” is restated in “Mead Hall”; it is a great symphonic touch in the live setting.
Spawton: These thematic links can be hard to spot amongst all the music and we really enjoyed making that connection between the songs more explicit than it was on the album.
CJMT: “Experimental Gentlemen Part 2” has a great rocking sound of Rikard Sjoblom’s Strat single coil in the left channel and Dave Gregory’s Gibson humbucker in the right channel. This was part of what made the Grimspound album stand out for me as the second album integrating two lead guitars, and on Merchants of Light it gives a great deal of ‘rock’ punch.
Spawton: I think we are a powerful live band, but that rarely presents itself in terms of ‘rocking out’. Occasionally, it’s nice to deploy some heavier guitar sounds!
CJMT: Because “Swan Hunter” is one of the tunes that also has a video release it is cool to see Dave Gregory emulating the banjo part on his capoed Rickenbacker 12-string electric. The ending with just David Longdon and Danny Manners was an effective way to end a tune that had been previously recorded as a fade out.
Spawton: We rarely use fade-outs on studio albums. Sometimes, it’s the right choice for a song but I find it a bit lazy when that happens too often. One of the core themes of “Swan Hunter” is the father-son working tradition and it was good to convey that with a proper ending to the song.
CJMT: On “Telling The Bees” I had not previously noticed Danny Manners ascending and descending chromatic line on the piano near the end: a little quotation from the piece “Flight of the Bumblebee”.
Spawton: Very few people have picked up on the quotation from “Bumblebee!” It was a bit of fun (progressive rock can and should be serious, but it doesn’t have to be po-faced all of the time.)
CJMT: Having the live concert book-ended by “Folklore” and “Wassail” was a nice touch in at least two respects: it says to me all this music is folk music as it deals with those aspects of life that traditional folk music has covered, and musically “Folklore” and “Wassail” share a common thread.
Spawton: Merchants of Light and the two live shows we played this summer have been a nice way for us to sum up our music over the last few years. We have been putting “Folklore” early in the set and “Wassail”at the end as thematic bookends. We are currently making a new album and will be on tour next year with a very different setlist. However, I think we will look back quite fondly over the music we have made and gigs we played during the time of the Folklore and Grimspound albums.
CJMT: With the two successful concerts Big Big Train has had this summer, and the release of Merchants of Light, showing that Big Big Train’s music can thrive in the live arena, do you have a sense that this is a new ‘Haymaking’ time for Big Big Train?
Spawton: Yes, we do feel this is a time in which the band may be able to thrive. Our shows up until this year have each been to fewer than a thousand people. We sold a thousand tickets for our show at The Anvil and played to 3,000 or so at Loreley. It felt really good to be on bigger stages before bigger audiences. Loreley in particular was quite a test for us. It was our first festival and we were headlining to a crowd which contained a few hundred of our fans but was otherwise a festival audience. I feel we connected really well and it gave us considerable confidence that we can do well at festival shows and play to bigger audiences.
CJMT: Thank you, Greg. This has been a great time for Big Big Train and for music fans as well to see your music getting the recognition it deserves and to see you playing to larger audiences. The Merchants of Light album is not only a well recorded and powerful live album but it brings together all the many facets that make Big Big Train such an interesting group of writers and musicians.
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