Ep 109: Orlando Weeks

I understood that question right till the end, like.

Yeah, I went too far with it. Hello and welcome to Midnight Chats, a podcast of casual interviews with leading musicians, published weekly and midnight to suit these informal and often under researched conversations. This week's episode is hosted by me Stuart Stubbs, editor of Loud and Quiet magazine. Thank you for joining me on tonight's episode of the podcast, where my guest is Orlando Weeks, who, as luck would have it, has released a brand new track today on the sixteenth

It's been all right, it's been I'm trying to think. I don't feel like I've done anything. No big grand moments this week, but just ticking along.

I've been working on some music for for for a play, and I've been doing lots of that, and I've been doing just the beginnings of this beginning to talk about new staff.

Music and stuff. What can you tell me about the play? Is that? Is that a play that you have devised.

Or No, it's it's a play that is at the National Theater and I am writing some music for some original music for it. And I went to I think it was Monday. I went to the first read through the first rehearsal, which I've never never been to anything like that, and I loved it, and I felt so part of something bigger. And I think seeing anyone, I mean, anytime you see people that are very good at what they do, sort of in the raw just doing it

Now.

Is it a big cast?

It felt big to me, I mean, but there's probably maybe ten fifteen actors.

So this was was this a table read?

So well?

I think maybe it would have been a table. There would have been a table.

In normal times, in normal times, right, but this was more tables. Too dangerous right now.

Too dangerous for this theatrical read through. So everyone was in the in the round and all laid out, and it all felt very distanced and safe, but still just hearing actors give lines that you've read. But suddenly it all starts taking on a much more life.

Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

They were they acting their lines, they were acting because that that sort of thing. I've said this before on this podcast, and I swear to anyone listening, I haven't got a problem with actors, but when I see people acting, especially if they're not especially I guess if they're not in costume or cartoon characters or cartoon characters. That's part of me that kind of just tightens up when you see them doing the bit and I think, but you're not that person. Yeah, I can't suspend my disbelief. And

And I would say that on the whole my freeze up. It's probably similar to yours. But I think if people are doing it really well, I didn't get it anyway. I think also I was feeling quite fish out of water, and maybe that helps with just going with the flow a little bit.

I didn't freeze up, and I thought, God, they're good at this.

Yeah.

I mean I remember getting off that.

I got off the tube and I felt like I had a real sort of sympathy panic that. Imagine to be an actor that's going in for that first read.

Especially quite a lot of.

Them are quite young, I imagine, haven't done it lot. Maybe this is their first thing at you know, the National Theater. It's big, old concrete monstrouss. I like it.

I don't know why.

I good. But it's a huge institution, huge institution, the big time.

And you're going in there and you're going to read, you know, going.

To act, and weeks is going to be Yeah, there's going to be this awkward man at the back.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I didn't pursue acting. I mean while I was rubbish, but I could never in a million years have dealt with the nerves of that, of the the rejection of it, of not getting the thing, but also just the nerves of walking into that room. Awful.

Oh, I don't know how. I genuinely don't know how they.

Do how they do it? How How are you? How are your nerves genuine? Do you some means very nervous?

Yeah most of the time.

Yeah. Has that always been the case?

I think so.

I mean, lots of lots of musicians are aren't they like you? You're in good company there. There are so many singers and front people, I mean all musicians, but people at the front who everybody thinks that the confident one, sometimes the least confident in the group or whatever. I think that's just a natural thing.

I think, in a way, what is maybe not appealing, but what you come to and maybe enjoys too strong But what what what the sort of saving grace of that is that you're nervous until or at least I have felt nervous until.

Almost the day of the thing, because by then.

That the boulder is rolling and you're you know, I mean, you're not going to stop it. You're too nervous to try and divert it anyway, So it's happening. So then so the kind of commitment that that kind of the step off the cliff's been taken and that that is then then it's kind of okay.

So you see, your nerves don't evaporate once you're walking onto a stage that the day before you're all right, the day.

Of it, I'm sort of all right. The morning.

I'm committed to this and there's no going back, And I remember, I think sometimes I feel the nerves creeping in towards the end of the set, but I think it's more adrenaline than anything, and just not being very good at knowing how or you know, on a dream or level, knowing how to compartmentalize that or push that into kind of rousing hurrah, just the big fish.

I just feel it.

So I think maybe by that point in the show, people are there right like.

I feel like they're not.

Either way, Yeah, I suppose sometimes they're not, and you and you feel this sudden responsibility of getting getting them over the line on their way home, like, when was the first time you sang in front of people? And just how nervous you felt then, Like these actors who were going into their read through, I.

Remember thinking quite early on, I mean not on my own, but really liking everyone's singing in assembly and is that that's sort of slightly dodging the question.

Uh, that's singing in a group?

Yeah, okay, Well, then the first time was the first ever?

Would have been the first?

Like in front of when the first time we started a band, or like the first time maccabee sat in a room together.

Well, I mean as someone who sings terribly, and that's not modesty. I mean I am appalling.

Can't sing, can't act, can't sing, can't act.

That's why I turned to podcasting, as we were just saying before we started, I hate the sound of my own voice. So maybe this isn't my calling either, But as somebone who can't sing, I like even singing in front of a band, like if I was with I've been in bands, bad bands, I wouldn't sing. Even singing in front of a group of friends fills me with anxiety. Singing in front of people, I mean, we're on another level there. But are you would you have been when

I did it kind of incrementally because I did it with sort of.

One of them.

And then because there was only me and Rob to begin with, Rob who was played drums originally, and so I sung in front of him and that was kind of all right. And then then I say in front of him and Hugo and that's sort of all right, and you know.

So, and also no one else was going to do it. So if I was going, if we were going to do this, that happened someone to do it. Yeah.

There are so many bands where singers have been asked have said no one else wanted to. Someone had to step up and do this. Yeah, because I suppose lots of people start bands when they're in that young and cripplingly anxious state. Nobody wants to be the singer. No one wants to put themselves out there. It's a big deal of singing in front of people, I think at any age. But especially if you're a teenager and you're starting out. I think it's brave, man, I think it's really brave.

Well, that's very kind. I'll remind myself.

Remind yourself. So where was the first Can you remember what the first show was?

Then?

When it was the first show?

Was?

It wasn't Maybe it was on this No, it was on this road. It was on Kings No, it was it was it used to.

Be called the Pleasure Unit, okay, and it was on I think it was the Bethnal Green Road. So is that the next one along from there? And it's now called something like star something just next to the test goes if it's still a testos.

Was the pub there?

Yeah?

The pub on the corner?

Yeah? That?

And it was it was great.

I mean just in terms of I mean in the same way of as saying, you know, if no one's going to sing, all right, I'll sing. I think I felt so committed to the idea of just doing something and if that's something, was this band, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to make the flyers and I'm going to you know, like all of that fun stuff.

Doing the first gig.

I didn't care I had no idea how it sounded, because the chaos of it was, you know, how.

It sounded wasn't the point.

The point was getting to the end of it and thinking, we have we have carried all our crappy kit to here, we have set it up, we have managed to get through a sound check not knowing what it was, you know, like we've got to the end of it, and then all just sort of feeling the relief and the celebration of achieving that it was a big deal for us, Like, because I don't think we'd even We were all sort of nineteen or something, so.

I don't know.

I mean, I hadn't really been to many I don't think i'd been to many gigs in that kind of room, so I had not a huge amount to you know, I'd been to some bigger, bigger concerts and stuff, and so I didn't have a lot to go on. Yeah, but we've done it.

It's funny, that, isn't it, Because I was exactly the same. You know, I'd go to gigs at the end of school, but that'd be at bricks and Academy or something. It'd be like a big shot. And then when you're a

And then open mic nights and you know that just all these funny offshoots of you know, waiting for the next proper bricks and academy gig you're going to go to.

Knowing you were coming today. Right dug out something from the Loud and Quiet archive. Okay, right here, Okay it is. Do you remember this I'm showing Wow, Well, a very early copy of the magazine issue twenty one. We're currently on issue one hundred and forty seven, so this is like two I try to work out. I think it's two thousand and seven. Okay, I think it was February time. It's I will post a picture of this like under this podcast so people can see what I'm tormenting you with. Essentially,

Was a good sort of almost question on that.

How do you how do you generally feel about seeing like old old pictures and stuff? Does it should I turn this over? Is that making you feel quite ill?

I've seen it now.

So I need to look at that anymore.

I think I've probably got all I need to take from that. No, but I I weirdly I remember this, remember that graphic, like, I just think there was that era that kind of graphic was sort of everywhere, and that it's nice.

I mean, what I'm seeing in that picture is no rob which I think you were.

I think you were just between without I think it was that little window when Robert left sam Adam.

Yeah started yeah, yeah, so I'm sort of trying to join some dots.

It was in Brixton, right, so I think it was at Rufe's house. Who was doing Yeah, it was there, and I think if I remember correct, because I was there. I didn't do that interview. I didn't take the phoze, but I was there just skulking around. Okay. I seem to remember you were all trying to get into Bricks and Academy that night Arcade Fire were playing. We think you were all trying to hustle into that show.

Yeah, I think we got in.

Did you get in?

Yeah? Because I mean I definitely saw them at Bricks and I remember them playing at the end of the thing, playing guns of Brixton and walking through the crowds just with the acoustic instruments and everyone following them out like pied pipers, and it just like the chant of that of the of the kind of just saying yeah and yeah, that one. That was one of the great gigs I've seen there.

I mean, that was obviously so long ago. We're talking a long time. Yeah, two thousand and seven times so and so much has obviously changed since then. You've become a father in recent years, the band have obviously disbanded a few years back. You've released a book, you've released it. I mean, I don't really know where to start a solo album. I mean, how is post mccabee's life treating you?

I don't know about a world And I also think we're all going.

To feel that because this year or that the kind of COVID year is going to make That would explain why that feels. But I suppose what I'm trying to do is use the time well and and so I feel good because I feel busy. And the thing that I love most is, you know, in terms of work life is making stuff. So and I feel like I'm doing a lot of that. So it's been it's been really good. I've been really enjoying my making good.

Yeah.

I thought it was very classy. The way you guys announced your final shows a whole year is that it was a year before, wasn't It was like you announced that that the band was ending, and he said, we're going to do these final run of shows and there any years time, Yeah, like when it actually came to those moments, because that then essentially gave you a year to prepare yourself for those shows and for the end of a band that had been your life for like

Well, I think we part of booking the shows was that we wanted to have them be these celebrations, and and we sort of had a we hoped enough people might come to One Alley Paddy, but even to book that is it's you need a big run up to book it. So did that and then that I think we booked that, and that sold out and it became three and it was you know, if we hadn't had it that far off, then we couldn't have done out

That just.

Definitely not nervous, trying to just feel as much of it as possible, and knowing my.

You know, all my.

All of our families, all of our lots, you know, all the wider friends and everyone was going to be there was quite just that on its own is quite a lot to sort of keeping your head. And my I remember getting a call quite late in the afternoon, and it was my mum saying that she wasn't going to know she was going to be able to make it, but my dad had tripped over something and had broken

Maybe do you think he did it on purpose?

He's a very good dad, but he's not that good.

But yeah, he is as clumsy as he is good, So yeah, you'd have to ask him. But yeah, I just it just felt like just shifted your position, just slightly took the kind of the heat of it.

Sure.

And then the next day.

My partner and I flew first thing to France. We flew to Bordeaux for four or five days, three or four days, I can't remember, and just walked around a beautiful city.

Just to because I think if i'd stayed.

You planned that, right, you were like, You're like, yeah, I just can't stay. I can't go back to my house that night and wake up there. Yeah, exactly, because which just because you thought it would just be too weird and you wouldn't really really know what to do, or you.

Just think, yeah, I think I think it just felt like a good I can't really I don't know what the thinking was, but at the time, it felt like definitely the best idea to not to not be sticking around, to be in a sort of alien environment and to be looking at beautiful things and going to.

You know, drink wine and whatever. You know, Yeah, mooch.

Was going to be a good antidote to whatever, the kind of complexity of whatever was going to be, the kind of feelings after something like that.

And also just I imagine that's such a comp like that's an almost the complete opposite environment to what you've just been through in every level, Like you've been in a crowded place, No you've been you know, you've gone from one pure extreme in every way emotionallyyically, everything to this quiet rural setting just you and your partner exactly decompressing. Yeah, I think absolutely the perfect move. That sounds like that's what everyone should do. When did you do you guys?

In Berlin for that Berlin and in Lisbon in Portugal for the for the year when we were in the run up to those final shows, was.

That where you conceived and wrote The gritter Man? But yeah, great, okay, cool, because I was going to ask you, Okay, I'm just getting this is right, because I was going to ask you how I didn't know if that came after that final show, and I didn't know how long it had been. How long had that been in your mind that to make that book and a record to go with it?

I'd made a I hadn't done the illustrations, but I'd made something called Young Colossus, which was a sort of EP but with a book, and I'd like that.

Am I supposed to answer your question? Not terribly long?

I think just when we got to Berlin, I knew I'd need something to focus on, and so we had we'd been to the or I'd been to the Enemy Awards sometime in early February of that year, and Fowles had said that it was all right, and so I put all of my and my partner's luggage and equipment and music stuff on their bus because they had a gig in Berlin two nights later, and they drove all my stuff the thing, and then when they got there, I went and saw the gig and then got all

The book that came out of it. It is brilliant. Actually, I was listening to it again yesterday on on the train into here. Uh kind of made me want to cry. It's very sad, isn't it like It's like but in a what does it remind me of? It reminds me of like the Snowman. I think that's part of your illustrations, which are brilliant. They're all done by hand as well, aren't they like you?

And are a complete you know, depending on your position, either a homage or a rip off of Raymond Briggs. And I think I got a remember for the paperback edition of it, he wrote me. I wrote to him saying, look he wrote, and he wrote he said, well, I appreciate it, and uh, and wrote me a kind of quote for the front of the book that says something like, it's totally unique and.

So and I can't help but think that that is all dry.

It's been quite sarcastic, but a style all of his own. Hey, it's you know, it's it's beautiful. It looks amazing.

Thank you.

The pictures are so great. You studied illustration, right, Yeah, it was Briggs like a big Has he always been someone that you've that you've enjoyed that style or was it just for this particular story it fitted the bill.

That's that's the right way around.

Yeah, I think I feel I definitely felt like I sort of grew up on his start and I still love his style of illustration, but definitely for the for the for what I was doing.

It felt like it would fit.

And I tried others and this was just the one that felt that my comfortable with the writing that I was doing and with the music I was making basically only having a piano and a guitar and very basic setup in Berlin, it just all felt like and the way the way that I was making it was sort of having trying to have those three elements have have a conversation and that way fill out the rest of the project, because I had this this one song about a seasonal hero, and then I had the kind of

Where did Paul Whitehouse come into that? When did he come into the picture of it? How did you know him? Because he for listeners that haven't heard the record, he reads the part of the he is the gritter hera, he is the gritter man. Yeah. It does a great job of it. It sounds great. Yeah, he but did you know him before? How did you How did you get him on board? Because he's the perfect guy for the role.

So I had a sort of their manager had a friend who had done some writing with him, I think with on the Something to do with maybe even on the Far Show or something, and so we could get to him, and so I sent him everything I had and I just said, if any of this feels like something, you could talk to me on the phone about then please can we do that?

And he was great, He really.

Understood it and wanted to do it and has continued to be extremely generous with his time and energy and just you know, everything that he can do.

And yeah, it was a pleasure, total pleasure.

It's absolutely crying out for a TV version of it, like a christ Christmas special. You must have thought of it.

I would love that. I mean it's it's can.

We make that happen? Someone listening to this make that happen. We need to get this can be. It could be like this year's Gruffalo.

Do you know what?

I what I would always love how I picture it is do you remember the film or have you seen bed Knobs and Broomstick?

Yes? I have?

Yeah, one of the great.

Lovely bit of string right, very good.

So the way that that uses.

Real real life footage against to the animation is exactly how I think. Because if Paul can be the gritter Man in you know, physically as well as just in terms of the audio, then and then against this two dimensional flat animation, I think it's.

Perfect, absolutely perfect perfect. It would it would sit well, I feel BBC one four twenty five Christmas Day will do that would do me. Okay, right, we'll get that sort of after. Do you have any ambition to do more kids books? I basically feel that if you want to make some real cash these days, then make a kid's book franchise thing.

I think if you make a franchise anything, you're doing all right.

That's true. But you know the person that made pepper Pig. I don't know that name, but I know that right now that they're laughing. Wherever they are right now, they're probably laughing.

In a massive pepper Pig shaped mansion just on the tip of the nose, absolutely.

Howling with howling with laughter.

And then after that came see I'm bringing I'm bringing us all up to date.

Now, this is great, This is.

This is a professional.

This is one of those seg those.

It was the Quickening your which I guess is your first if you don't count The Gritterman as a as a solo album, because it was a book and it was part of something else. Your first album album, which

I understood that question right till the end.

Like, yeah, I went too far with it. I should know.

It was not good and it's my you know, it's my shortcoming.

It's like, I suppose what I mean is because you'd never done you'd never released a solo record before, You've been in the band for so long. Yeah, and you finally get to do that. Yes, it's probably going to feel strange in many ways. Yeah, maybe it didn't. You can tell me otherwise, but it's probably going to feel strange. But then, on top of that, you're doing it during the pandemic, where releasing a record's weird anyway. So was

I was so not relieved, but I was so ready for it to come out and very proud of it.

And really happy with how it turned out, and so in terms of just the release, I felt really good about it.

I felt like it puts a lot of stuff in.

I'm sure for everyone the work that you're doing gets sort of put into you sort of see it for what it is when there's these much larger problems going on. But really the point was for it to be there, to exist, and to have been released, and so the way that that maybe it got a bit more swallowed up in that, I was sort of at peace with that.

In terms of when you when you put out the gritter Mans and it was a book and a record, was it either intentional or just was it a happy coincidence that your first when you've been in a band and that's such a big part of your identity, especially if you're the singer. I think there's so many eyes on what you're going to do next in your first record, And I guess because the first thing that you released was also a book and it was part of something else, did that take the edge off.

I think on some level, I felt like gritter Man was enough of a sort of not eccentric but sort of other enough and a whole package enough that it meant that whatever I ended up wanting to do after it I could do. I liked that it It sort of left whatever that whatever I wanted to do be could Yeah, I was I was sort of free to move to step on from there in whichever direction, because

Yeah, I mean the difference between those between the gritter Amount music and those songs and the Quickening quite there's quite a contrast there in like the themes obviously like the rec The Quickening is all about your son and beca coming a father and kind of feels it's a beautiful record. It also feels just quite a bit more. I don't, like I was saying, like the gritter Man

That should he's right to do that. Yeah.

Well, if he's clever like his mum, then what he'll do is listen to it and say this is actually about you.

Yeah, and uh, and then I'll sit down and be quiet.

You know.

But I think and he and you know.

If he were to say that, I'd probably have to say it's probably right because it's I think it is a record about being witness to all of that stuff. And I'm glad that you felt like it was happy and perhaps just comparatively with Gritterman is happier when I in retrospect, I feel like that record doesn't didn't come close to exploring how happy and joyful I felt. I think a lot of that record to me feels like the anticipation, the suspense and the anxiety and the breath

And if he ever.

Listened to it, mm, which you know, whatever is, then then he would say A he'd say it's about you, so I don't know why it's you know, and also that yeah, he's also say it sounds very sad.

But weren't you excited?

And and so I thought, right well, in case that ever happened, I'd want to be able to show him. The next thing that I made was an exploration in exactly that, like the bounce and and pleasure and excitement and relief of his arrival. If my dad had written and made anything like that, I would find it very hard at no point to go and listen to it. So I suppose at some point he will.

Listen to it, but thankfully that's a very long way off.

Yes, sure, yeah, you can deal with that when it yeah, it's way down the road.

Don't worry about that yet.

So the new but it's the new record for him as well. Is it even more for him in a sense?

I think again he would in the future tell me that it's for me. But I think what it was. I think what I was trying to do is and this was just the start of it. Was just trying to think like it wasn't just and you know that the anxiety and the anticipation, it was just the I cannot wait and I am so excited and I'm so you know, happy, and I wanted some of that on record, you know, on record too.

So the record's done, right, It's completely done, finished, completely finished. It's going to be out later this year. Let's just well we can say that much at this point. The when you listen back to it, do you feel that you you captured that that kind of that joy that you were maybe wanted, that you felt was missing off that that first record? Do you think, yeah, I got it? Because I on these podcasts, for example, I always have to do an intro bit at the beginning. Yeah, and

At the beginning, you asked whether I felt like I'd got it, and I think I have. Like I think it's you know, not completely by any stretch, but it is even for me.

And I don't like listening back to my stuff.

I don't you know the mastering process where you're having to really listen for sort of dread it, but even I have enjoyed that, Like I think it feels uplifting as a record, and I'm not sure i've and I set out to do that. So it feels like I've sort of answered my brief. And in terms of giving you some advice for your in car recordings, ah, you should get I mean, if you get bullioned to produce it, that would help. You could put music to it in general.

In yeah, it does, it does have some music.

Whilst you're recording your No, I don't.

The recording is dry, right, Well, there we go. Maybe that's it. Yeah, that's the issue.

It sounds to me like you need accompaniment.

Yes, what are you doing tomorrow night? Can you meet me in my car in the front of my house? Do it? I think, yeah, okay, these are good. That's a good tip. And maybe it is that, but it's good to hear that you feel that you've that you've got it, that you've that you've nailed it, and well.

I've got I think nailed it. I wouldn't say that I didn't.

Yeah, but I'm really happy with it and I'm really and I think in terms of feeling like an uplifting record. I think it does that, and I think it's and I feel the pleasure of it and the joy of it when I listen to it and that and I hope that that is what will be other people's experience of it.

So what's what's the rest of your year looking like? Obviously there's the record, I mean, I suppose that's impossible to answer right now due to like COVID restrictions still being lifted and stuff. But you've got the the play, Yeah, you've got the record. Ye have you got anything else? You've got your son obviously to keep you occupied all the time. That should be enough. But you do seem to always have like lots of things going on.

That's I mean that that will be the thing that making all the hopefully having a bit more options in terms of making videos and doing performances, you know, I'm sure you know, not on the kind of pre COVID scale, but whatever form that takes. I want to try and embrace that as much as I possibly can. And yeah, and then starting to think about whatever the.

Next thing is leading up to that Christmas Day premiere, Yeah exactly.

Yeah, everything just slowly moving towards like a glacier just to that moment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, looking forward to it. Yeah.

Twenty five past four one the good Tune. For previous episodes of Midnight Chats, simply search your podcast app and don't forget to follow or subscribe in order to receive new episodes as that published every week at midnight. For more information on the music magazine that makes this series, visit Loud and Quiet dot com. Anyway, good night,