Oxford's Huck Astley gears up to perform songs from his "folk operetta"

Illicit love, sex, drugs, religion, debauchery and rebellion set in the steamy American Deep South.

When it comes to taboos, Humphrey ‘Huck’ Astley does not have much time for social niceties. And his magnum opus is a vengeful swipe at dogma and ignorance.

For the past few years, the Oxford poet and singer-songwriter has been working on a musical project he describes as a “folk operetta”. It’s called Alexander the Great, but has nothing to do with the Macedonian warlord of antiquity.

Instead, his “queer runaway myth” tells the tale of a Texan boy called Alex, from a strict Christian family, who meets a young but worldly-wise half-Caddo Indian called Johnny Wingo Crow.

Johnny introduces Alex to a world he did not know existed – and the two run-off to Louisiana – with disastrous results.

The story tackles such big themes as faith, identity and sexuality, and revolves around a bisexual love triangle. Easy listening it is not.

Huck, a former Ruskin College student, best known for his work with Oxford bands The Epstein and Sextodecimo, explains how the project came about: “I’ve always been a writer as well as a musician but it wasn’t until I did my degree between 2008 and 2011, that I decided I would have a go at channelling both disciplines into a single project.

“The product was Alexander the Great, which tells a story through a series of songs.

“I’ve called it a ‘folk operetta’ but essentially it’s a concept album, though it has more in common with a work like Willie Nelson’s Red-Headed Stranger than it does with Dark Side of the Moon.

“That’s the practical explanation for where the project came from, but, in hindsight, I can see that 2011 was a tough year for me personally, and maybe I needed to create a world I could escape.”

He adds: “A common, and quite understandable, misconception is that the album is about the historical Alexander. It is not, though it does reference the Ancient Greeks.

“The Alex of the title is actually a modern-day Texan teen who goes on a kind of polytheistic rite-of-passage adventure in the Deep South with his friend Johnny – the quintessential ‘bad influence’.”

The operetta is divided into three acts, the final chapter having just been completed. It will be released on an EP next Thursday, in a show at The Library, on Oxford’s Cowley Road. The show will see Huck perform songs from all three acts, alongside guitarist Billy Quartermain.

Growing up in Charlbury and now living in Cowley, Huck’s inspiration came from time spent in the States with another former band.

“I wouldn’t have had the experience, knowledge or confidence to create this story if it wasn’t for the time I spent in Texas and Louisiana with my old band The Handsome Fee in 2010,” he says.

“That was a life-changing journey, for better or worse, and Alexander was a way to make sense of or at least record the impression it made.”

The tale is told through a series of musical pieces, performed in a style linked to the story’s locations. It makes for an exhilarating listen with an irresistible, and at times, shocking, narrative.

Huck says: “The music can generally be described as Americana – a bit blues, a bit country, a bit folk, but all with a harder, more modern edge.

“I plotted the album in three sections, with each act serving as a standalone EP with its own sound and style, but advancing the narrative, nonetheless. I always knew exactly what kind of feel and theme each section would have.

“Act one, for example, is all about innocence and daylight, so the sound had to be very bright and exuberant, which is why it’s the most poppy of the three.”

And how did he go about writing it? “The writing of the songs was more or less linear, with a few exceptions that couldn’t wait to be realised – Xander, for example, comes somewhere in the middle, though it was one of the first tracks I wrote. I’ve sung that one countless times now and it’s become something of a signature tune.”

• Renaissance man: Huck Astley plays solo

It would not be giving too much away to let on that things don’t end well for the Native American protagonist. Did Huck know how the story was going to end when he began it?

“No, and I agonised over it a bit,” he says. “To be honest, I regret not keeping Johnny alive. It’s a bit of a cliché and not very progressive to have the hedonistic homosexual fall foul of his own deviance. I wish I’d killed off one of the boring old straight characters instead.”

He goes on: “The overarching theme is of how ideologies are just our way of making sense of mortality and the journey of life. We need to feel that our lives – and deaths – have meaning, so we apply these grand narratives to them, or indeed apply ourselves to these grand narratives.

“The world’s religions can’t all be right, but they are all grasping at the same thing, which is why it doesn’t make sense for any one of them to be dogmatic. That’s essentially what Alex is running from when he runs away – dogma in all its forms, whether they be religious, cultural or sexual.”

The act three EP was recorded live, giving it an individual energy and tension. “It is 20 minutes of unbroken audio that should have the listener deeply immersed by the end,” he says.

“The material itself is very dark and very stark, but also very beautiful.”

Despite the strong narrative thread, Huck assures us that the music does stand alone, with no knowledge of the story necessary.

He says: “It’s not at all essential, in my opinion. Much of the material is very accessible and you don’t have to pay attention to the story, let alone be 100 per cent involved in it, to enjoy the songs.

“The performance itself will be very low-key compared to the stage-show proper that we did last year, but it’s an opportunity to see a kind of summary of the whole album and narrative in an intimate, stripped-down setting.

“My guitarist Billy and I will also be playing a set of songs from my album-in-progress The Torch, which is very different from Alexander and should make for some real contrast.

“I won’t be revisiting any of the Alexander material any time soon, so this is your last chance to see it!”

* Huck’s music is available at huckandxander.bandcamp.com.

Where and when
Huck Astley plays songs from Alexander The Great at The Library, Cowley Road, on Thursday, November 12.
Tickets £5 from wegottickets.com