Renowned Teesside singer-songwriter Dale Husband releases his first full-length album this month and he told me about the creative process and how it all came together: “I wrote this album mostly in 2018 and recorded it with Ste from Art Mouse. Some of the songs I’d been playing live for a while but the majority were written at the start of the year.”
The tracks are all influenced by East Cleveland, where Dale is from. He added: “I’d been reading a lot about the history of the area and was especially caught by the life of John Hall Stevenson, a writer who was a custodian of Skelton Castle. His work was really lucid and criticised quite a lot in his time. He was also good friends with Lawrence Sternes whose books I am a fan of; they were both members of a society called the Demoniacks that got up to no good. So most of these songs have themes of missing home, camaraderie and rued chances.”
In terms of the recording process, Dale tracked the songs with Ste, before his good friends ParissaZarifi and Alex Chalmers added violin/vocals and percussion/keys respectively. Dale noted: “I added bass to a number of these songs and Ste added further percussion as well as a great deal of his time on mixing and mastering. These guys are all very talented and kind people and I’m forever grateful to them for colouring in my songs. I feel their performances have lifted the music into something I’m rather proud of helping to make.”
Dale and Ste aimed to keep the feel of the production relatively loose and lo-fi. He stated: “I was listening to a lot of Jackson C Frank, Iron and Wine and early Great Lake Swimmers at the time so these certainly acted as something of a reference point.”
The record is out at the start of June and will be released on Sad For Life Records, with artwork from Elizabeth Evans’ gorgeous book, What We Came For.
Although Dale doesn’t play live too often, he added: “I will hopefully be playing a handful of shows with a small band at the back end of the year when we are allowed to play out again. I have a massive backlog of demos I need to get through so hopefully the next release won’t be too far behind this one.”
You can find out more about Dale and the release at facebook.com/dalehusbandmusic.
