Ex-Gomez star Ben Ottewell gears up for Oxford gig

We were one of the last bands lucky enough to sign an old style record deal,” Ben Ottewell says, reflecting on his time with the rock group Gomez.

Ben played guitar and shared lead vocals in the band whose debut album Bring It On won the Mercury Music Prize in 1998.

A further six albums followed, and the unit sold well over one million records in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“At the beginning the record company would chuck money at us” he admits “and you knew there was no way you could ever make it back.”

Ben says things are simpler since he launched his solo career with the album Shapes and Shadows in 2011. I spoke to him about new album Rattlebag, and the accompanying 12-date UK tour which opens in Oxford on September 18.

“Throughout my years in Gomez, songwriting was a collective effort,” Ben explains. “We had four people chipping in. I’ve always loved writing music and, in the end, I probably had more songs that Gomez could accommodate.”

He wasn’t sure whether it would suit the band’s collective approach to record an album entirely penned by him. A solo career beckoned.

“In the end, I needed an outlet,” he shrugs. “Sometimes I just like being able to have it my own way. Even though making music remains a collaborative effort I eventually get to call all the shots.”

The result is a sound Ben describes as “British Americana”.

“It leans heavily on old country and American music,” he says.

“But there are influences from English folk music too.”

His debut release Shapes and Shadows revealed a new, mature sound, characterised by his rich baritone and a heavy debt to country music.

He says: “For a first solo record it was well received and a lot of people seemed to like it.

“Initially it appealed directly to Gomez fans, although you begin to get people at shows who were never that into Gomez and are curious, or who have been dragged along to gigs by mad Gomez fans who want a drinking buddy for the night!”

Ben is a self-taught musician who was given his first guitar as a present when he was 11.

“I didn’t really start picking it up properly until I was 13,” he reveals.

“For a while I was always the singer in a rock band, or the bass player in a thrash metal band. Metallica were the band who everyone wanted to imitate at the time.

“I wasn’t interested in that and I started to take it seriously when I was about 13 because no-one at school wanted to play the kind of music I wanted to.

“I wanted to play blues, I liked Neil Young and Grant Lee Buffalo. Soon after, a friend of mine showed me open tuning on the guitar and I really moved forward from there.”

That friend was Sam Genders of English folk group Tuung, who grew up near Ben in the Derbyshire village of Bonsall, near Matlock. He is also Ben’s co-writer on Rattlebag. “When we began to write the songs, Sam brought an English style to the music and I brought influences from American music I enjoy.

“It was a great record to make because I toured the songs with Will Golden, the producer.

“We played through everything live, and then found ourselves staying up late in hotel rooms, figuring out the arrangements. So when we came to record it in Los Angeles the entire process only took us five days.

“It was a very good experience. I didn’t have to sit around waiting for a lot of other people to finish recording their parts. I could just sit back, and really enjoy playing in a way that I haven’t since the early days of Gomez.”

Ben says the song delves in dark blues, tackling themes of faith, redemption, relationships, love and escape.

“Good rock and roll records should always cover escape,” he grins.

• Natural: Ben Ottewell says he is enjoying life as a solo artist

He names his favourite songs on Rattlebag as Patience and Rosaries and Papa Cuckoo – which grapples with the difficult subject of ghosts: “Papa Cuckoo is a song about the house I grew up in,” he says. “My sister had an odd sort of bedroom and she became convinced it was haunted.

“We were out walking one day and ran into an old couple who had previously lived at the house.

“When they moved in many years before, they had been told the house was haunted.

“In the attic there was an old iron bed frame, the bed had belong to a man who lived in the big house over the road but who had fallen on hard times.”

He admits the record is something of a departure, saying: “Rattlebag is different from the first album because it’s more of a beat record.”

“There are some great guitar solos as well,” he laughs, having admitted earlier in the day that he was trying to convert his eight-year-old twins to the music of Led Zeppelin, and had recently brought a pair of ‘guitarleles’ – a cross between a guitar and a ukulele – into his family home in Brighton.

The album was funded through a crowdfunding website, and the first thing fans who receive the record can enjoy is the stunning front cover, designed by artist Amy Williams, which features an intricate papercut design featuring a skeleton in a top hat, flanked by birds and swirling foliage.

“Amy is a friend of mine who works with paper cuts,” he says. “I’ve long been interested in the Mexican Day of the Dead, and it turned out she was too.

“We shared some images and from there she went on to produce the art work. It’s beautifully intricate and she put a phenomenal amount of work into it, sitting over the table and cutting into the paper.

“To me, the cover speaks of a dark Catholicism that really suits the record inside.”

And he is looking forward to bringing the album on the road – with an extensive tour which takes in the O2 Academy Oxford, Matlock, London’s Jazz Cafe and Milton Keynes, before moving on to Australia He goes on: “I’m looking forward to playing Oxford on the 18th. In the days of Gomez I used to stay at the Malmaison, but nowadays I’m thinking about checking in at the Premier Inn.”

It’s just the kind of place where I can imagine Ben rattling off another great song of love and loss.

Where and when
Ben Ottewell plays the O2 Academy Oxford on September 18.
For tickets, go to ticketweb.co.uk