Kevin

Foy Vance, thanks so much for talking to me.

Foy

My pleasure.

Kevin

A couple of weeks ago, you went on a tour of various remote places in the U.K. called The Wild Detour, right? How did that idea come about?

Foy

Well, you know what, the honest truth of it is that I had made a little documentary when I was making the record, but when I did the interview for it, I had been back and forth between Nashville and London a couple of times and I was jetlagged and had just finished a whole day in the studio. I had a couple of pints and had this interview [laughs] and I think it’s a coherent interview but it’s pretty downbeat. The label and my management had a chat and said “you know what, we should try to get a more upbeat side of Foy.” So, in their infinite wisdom, they booked a 1972 camper van and sent me through a Welsh, Scottish, Irish and English winter!

Kevin

It seems interesting that, in a lot of your songs, you deal with the concept of home, which seems to be very important to you. How do you balance that with the desire to be on the road? You’re touring with Elton John this summer and it seems like you enjoy touring, but a lot of your songs focus on the joy of being home. Do you find it difficult to maintain a balance?

Foy

Well, you say “how do I balance it with my desire to be on the road?” [laughs] I mean, here’s the thing: I love playing live, I feel at home there, but the traveling is the difficult bit. I don’t really enjoy going to and from the show. If I could be magic-ed to the show and magic-ed back home, that would be ideal. With regard to singing about home, I mean, name me an Irish artist in the last 400 years that hasn’t left the shores of Ireland and hasn’t then written about the sense of home.

Kevin

That idea of returning to Ireland is particularly important for you because you actually spent a few years in the U.S. In Oklahoma, right?

Foy

That’s right, really really early years for me.

Kevin

Do you remember that still, or is it all a blur of a couple memories? Did that have an important influence on you, especially musically, as there’s such a rich culture in the middle of the country?

Foy

It really did; I mean, there’s lots of stuff I don’t remember, but I’ve sort of memory matched it with the photographs and stories we used to tell. I mean, America was like the land of milk and honey after we left it, you know? Typically Irish again. We wanted to get away from Ireland so we moved to America, found America was just too much to take, so we went back to Ireland and then it was always “if only we’d stayed in America.” So, growing up, it became a bit of a mecca in all of our minds and we would always look at the pictures. One of the cool things about living out there in that era was that we kept in contact with audiotapes. So, I’ve got lots of audiotapes of my granny and grandad and uncles and aunties and cousins singing songs and telling stories to us, and we would do the same back to them. Growing up, we would listen to those tapes, so with regards to actual memories, I think I was too young really other than sensory memories, but I’ve built up a lot of memories through listening to the tapes and things we got up to. And the music – the first music I ever heard was gospel music. My dad was a preacher in a church so the cool thing about that is that they used to sing all these oldey worldy gospel songs, you know? When gospel music used to be interesting, you know? [laughs]

Kevin

So gospel music was your first point of entry into music?

Foy

Well, I mean, I would say the music of just being around the place. You know, music was the main factor, it just happened to be that my dad was a preacher and he would have meetings around the house every Wednesday night so I grew up hearing that. But I wasn’t the only thing I heard–my dad was an avid fan of Willie Nelson, Chris Christopherson, Johnny Cash and John Denver. So there was lots of music in that period, it wasn’t just gospel, but I think that was the first I remember hearing.

Kevin

How does that progress to you becoming a professional musician? I read that you never really intended for that to be the case.

Foy

Well, to be clear, I never really intended for it not to be the case either. There was kind of no intent in it. We made music around the house all the time growing up. There was always music, even if it wasn’t all together. I’d be up in my room singing into the hairbrush, back when I used to need one, you know? There was always music floating around and I just carried on and augmented when I got to my mid-to-late teens and joined bands. Before I knew it, I was in this soul cover band and we were playing sometimes five nights a week and it was two years in and it dawned on me that this is the only thing I do. I was just having great craic, I was having the time of my life touring around the place, singing songs and getting paid for it and thinking it was the best thing ever – not even getting paid that much. I wasn’t doing it for the money; I was just doing it because I loved it. But then it dawned on me that this is the only thing I’ve been doing for the last two years and I’m not doing anything else. I should really think about doing this for the rest of my life… I should probably think it through a bit more and get a bit of a plan together and see what to do. So, I left that band and went into the wilderness for a few years trying to find songs and something to do that was my own. It took a long time to get there, to be honest.

Kevin

One of the things I find is a common theme that runs through your songs is that of literature. I’m not sure if it’s a conscious thing you include, but a lot of your songs deal with writing. In your new song, “Noam Chomsky Is A Soft Revolution,” you mention Dostoyevsky and you’ve mentioned [Scottish poet] Robbie Burns in reference to [your home in] Aberfeldy. Was literature important to you growing up? Did you read a lot, or is that something you started to dig into more in later life?

Foy

Well, I guess around my late teens, early twenties, I read a lot. My eldest brother is a poet, so he would read a lot and would say “you need to read this, you need to read that” and I would read that kind of stuff, which got me into it around that age. But that song, “Noam Chomsky…” talks about sports people and musicians as well – people who are sick and tired of the regime as it stands and decide to change it.

Kevin

It also seems to chronicle your love of American music. It definitely sounds like something out of America in the 50s.

Foy

Yeah, well you know what, when I think of rock n’ roll, I think Carl Perkins. Carl Perkins was the first word out of my mouth, you know, that rock n’ roll riff.

Kevin

Yeah, it’s almost rockabilly.

Foy

Yeah! I’d love to do a whole album of that, maybe another time.

Kevin

My entry into your music wasn’t actually the studio album but rather your live album, Live at Bangor Abbey. It’s an interesting performance because it almost seems to encapsulate many elements of your life: the religious side, with your father being the preacher, the music side, and then being in your hometown of Bangor. How was that performance for you? Did it feel like a culmination of your career to that point in a way that just any other tour date might not have? The hometown connection seems significant, especially in terms of the Irish tendency to come back home. Was it a particularly emotional performance for you?

Foy

That gig was significant in the sense that it was in an abbey that I used to go to as a kid and stick my chewing gum under the pew and put my arm around Paul Rooney. I’ve got memories of going to that place and being in that space. So, going back, it had significance, but with regard to the gig feeling like a culmination of a career–I mean, please God I’m only halfway through it. I think every gig should feel a bit like that. I think a live experience should be like a lifespan – it should have youthful virility and jaded truths and realizations that make you laugh and cry in the span of a set.

Kevin

In terms of live performance in general, you’ve said that if you could magically teleport to and from a gig that you would obviously do that, but it seems like the industry is moving towards a place where recorded music – the records themselves – aren’t that commercially viable. How does that influence the way you think about music? It seems like touring has become much more important now that, with streaming, it’s more difficult to survive just off of record sales. I’m not sure an artist could do what The Beatles did and put out Sgt. Pepper and just not tour with it. What do you think about the way the industry is going and how it affects you?

Foy

I don’t think about it at all, Kevin. It doesn’t affect the way I think about music – what that has to do with is business, and that’s not really what interests me. If that interested me, I’d be doing a lot better than I am today! [laughs] What interests me is music so, with regard to what the industry standard is, I’ll roll with the punches. If albums aren’t selling as well as they used to – mine are still selling, I’ve been selling progressively more, so I guess I’m not a single artist, to put it that way, to have singles and become a big superstar. That’s not really what I do, so it’s never really occurred to me to give it too much thought. I just make music and try to present it to as many people that like music as possible. That’s why I take so many support gigs with so many different types of people. I’ve taken tours that people thought I shouldn’t have taken because my music wasn’t suited to them, but over the years I’ve learned that you can never ever underestimate an audience – ever! One of my favorite gigs of all time was in a town in middle England called Middlesbrough, where I played what was perceived to be the cool stage. The gig was alright, but it wasn’t terribly great – there were a lot of people into it and a lot of people standing around, not sure if they were meant to like it or not because they didn’t know whether it was cool or not yet, you know? It was alright, but when I came offstage I spoke to the promoter and he was stressed out and I said “what’s wrong man?” and he said “well, you know what, there’s a band that are gonna miss their set because they’re stuck in traffic and I need to fill a 40 minute slot.” I said “well, I’ll do it” and he said, “well, it’s on the death metal stage” and I said “well, I don’t care, I’ll do it anyway!” So I went in and started with “Back in Black” by AC/DC and then I played Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” but then I spent the rest of the set playing pretty much what I’d played next door in the indie venue. It was such a great gig because they [the audience] had no agenda – I guess people that are into death metal are used to the cool people thinking they’re not cool. They don’t really care about what’s cool… well, you know what, the only thing that isn’t cool is really caring too much about what is!

Kevin

You moved from London to Scotland, where you are now. Something that I’ve heard you say a lot is that you moved from “the humdrum of the music industry to the haunts of ancient bards,” which is very clearly represented lyrically in “Closed Hand, Full of Friends,” where you sing “London was alright but I was dead in the water.” What was the last straw, if there was one, which made you think you had to get out of London and find something more suited to where you wanted to go?

Foy

Well, you know what, like most people, I think there were many, many last straws actually. It had been a long time coming – I didn’t really enjoy the last few years of living in London because I was working so hard to try to make ends meet that I never really got a chance to focus on what I love, which is music. I ended up getting wrapped up in the industry that we were talking about there a minute ago – you’ve gotta do this, you’ve gotta do that, you’ve gotta be at this gig, you’ve gotta be available for that. I just felt like I got completely consumed by it, and then I was offered a gig up in the [Scottish] Highlands because a friend of mine has a gallery up here and he asked me to come play it. When I came over the hill into this valley where I now live, I just took a look around and it was in its autumnal glory – oranges and golds and browns and maroons and smoke coming out of the chimneys. It looked like a holiday destin – well, it is a holiday destination actually, people come here to go walk in the hills all the time. But I just looked at it and thought “what on earth am I doing in London?” I could be here, focusing on my craft, doing what I love and then going out and doing tours. When I finish going from city to city to city from airport to taxi or bus to a backstage door to a gig to so on and so on… at least when I come home, I’m not coming home to a busy city. I’m coming back home to something that feels like the seabed by comparison.

Kevin

How did that affect the songs? I feel like on Joy of Nothing, the songs are a lot more focused on happiness and not about a larger, broader fight against the craziness of a city or the world in general. Do you think your songs became more personal when you got out of the humdrum of the big city?

Foy

Maybe more personal sometimes, but not all the time, not as a blanket reality. But, I definitely had more time to craft songs and more time to allow them to happen in a more organic way. Before that in London, it would sometimes take me ages to write songs because I was here, there and everywhere – I never really had time to stop and think and be, whereas I get that here and I think it’s helped my writing. Whether that’s reflected to other people or not, I don’t know, but for me I’m enjoying the songs and the writing process more. I think you need silence–I need silence, I mean I don’t know if everyone does, but certainly for me I need silence and you just don’t get that in a city.

Kevin

Did you become interested in specific elements of Scottish culture when you moved up there? In the song “Guiding Light,” which is a great collaboration with Ed Sheeran, in the first verse begins, “the road is wide,” which reminded me of the Scottish folk song “The Water Is Wide.” Was that a conscious reference?

Foy

No, it’s not an actual reference to that song, although maybe it was subliminally, I don’t know. Where I grew up, in County Down on the northeast coast of Ireland, Ulster-Scots is very, very prevalent, so I would’ve grown up around a lot of Ulster-Scots music as much as Irish music. Scottish culture is very prevalent there, as is Irish culture here in Scotland where I live now.

Kevin

When I think of your songwriting, the two words that come to mind are joy and honesty, which are most impressively juxtaposed in the most pointed songs on Joy of Nothing, such as “At Least My Heart Was Open” and “Regarding Your Lover,” the latter of which was the first song I heard of yours. You really combine this genuine sense of joy while not sugarcoating anything – it’s very joyful yet can be critical as well. How long did it take you to develop your songwriting voice? Perhaps that’s a bad question though as you might actually be the worst person to ask about that! Was there any moment where you felt happy with your songs and the progression of your writing?

Foy

Well, I felt that at various stages along the way, but then I recorded them and looked back and thought, “well that could be better” and tried to improve on them like any craftsman. The more you do it, the more you find your own groove, your own method of working and your own way of speaking. I guess for me the songs have changed since moving up here and being able to clear my head a bit more and really focus on the songs in that I don’t temper them as much – I find there’s often a temptation to compromise your songs to fit into something. When I was in London, I was surrounded by “oh, you need to be on the radio, you need to be doing this, you need to be doing that, we need a song like that, it needs to be 3:30 minutes long.” Even though I always had the opinion of “that doesn’t matter,” I think the very fact that I was surrounded by it got into me somehow by osmosis, and I can hear that reflected in some of my older writing. It wasn’t contrived, but it was definitely influenced by my surroundings, whereas now I’m up here [in Scotland], I’m nowhere near the industry and I never ever plan to be – it’s of no interest to me. I think it’s freed me up to just write songs as they come and as they please me and hopefully please others.

Kevin

I read that, when you were writing Joy of Nothing, you found yourself wondering what to write about; in one interview in particular, you said that you “wondered whether anything was actually worth writing about anyway.” Did you have those thoughts with this new album, The Wild Swan?

Foy

No, I think that’s what Joy of Nothing was about, Kevin. Joy of Nothing, for me, was a realization to just enjoy the nothingness of it and that there doesn’t need to be a reason. Do you enjoy doing it? Does it make you happy? Does it, on occasion, make other people happy? Well, you know, that’s something worth doing – that’s its own reason right there. I think one of the most beautiful things about art in general is that it’s not integral to our survival, although we couldn’t do without it now that we realize how important it is to our intellect, our spirit, our soul or whatever you want to call that – that element of us that’s a complete mystery. It appeals to that, but it’s not like food or liquid. Art is its own reason.

Kevin

Did you approach this new album any differently than Joy of Nothing? You’ve said that you realized how to be happy, so did you just continue that, or did you set out for a different vision for this album?

Foy

Well, you know what, when it comes to visions for new albums, I knew what this album was going to be called going into it, but I thought there was going to be at least five or six songs on there that aren’t. But I was prepared for that, because the truth of the matter is that when you go in to make a record, it’s all about the elements and really being present wherever you are and engaging with that process. If you go in with a set agenda that’s completely inflexible and say “we’re recording these twelve songs because these are the twelve hit singles,” that’s great for some people and works for them, obviously. But, just for me, as soon as you’re two or three songs in, you realize “oh, hang on, this is starting to sound differently than it did in my head coming into it,” and it’s important to listen to that. If you do, other things come along – I mean, “Noam Chomsky Is A Soft Revolution” was never meant to be on the record. In fact, it wasn’t even written. I’d written the first verse of it, but as soon as we went into that studio and recorded a couple of things, I just knew that I needed to work on that song which I’d had a snippet of in the back of my mind. So, I wrote the second verse in the shower and the third verse on the toilet of the studio and we recorded it there and then that day. That shaped the record – I think you have to treat making an album how you do make music in general. It’s ever-evolving, it could go anywhere at any minute, it can do anything and you can do or say anything you want.

Kevin

So it was a very organic experience?

Foy

Yeah, I’m not saying I was completely nonplussed through the whole venture, just whimsically following some mystical trail. I was quite considered at times and thought, “no, you know what, that song is no longer going to fit, I’m going to have to take that off.” But yeah, it all came very naturally for sure – or obviously, it seemed obvious to me anyway.

Kevin

Out of curiosity, who are you listening to right now?

Foy

I’m listening to you, Kev! [laughs]

Kevin

Very literal! [laughs] Musicians, I mean. Is there anyone who the American audience might not be particularly familiar with?

Foy

Well, you know what, I listen to such a wide variety of stuff. I’ve got playlists that I’ve made of late that I’ve been going back to, which are just a mixture of John Martyn…I don’t know if he’s well known over in the States… he was a Scottish folk-singer originally but found a different voice midway through his career. I listen to Serge Gainsbourg, Keith Jarrett… I listen to whatever the day brings. I like it to be quite varied, so I wouldn’t say I’m a massive fan of anybody. I’m a fan of lots of people, but there isn’t any one band that I’m really mad into at the minute or anything.

Kevin

Finally, in terms of the new album, can we expect a U.S. tour? Do you have any idea when that would be?

Foy

Yes you can! I reckon it’ll be later this year around the fall.

Kevin

I’m definitely looking forward to that. Thanks so much for talking with me!

Foy

Good talking to you, Kev!