USUALLY when musicians agree to collaborate on a song, there’s a social element embedded in the process: getting together in the same place at the same time, having a laugh, knocking ideas off each other live and in the moment.
Not for RM Hubbert and the 11 artists he worked with on his Telling The Trees album.
“I decided to go with people I didn’t know, and to do it all via the internet so we’d never meet,” the Troon-based guitar maestro explains.
“Once they agreed to it, I would binge-listen to their stuff for two or three days and then write a piece of music. I would send them pretty much the complete, structured instrumental part of the song … and then deliberately cut off contact because I wanted a really unfiltered response to it.
“It was all about their response to the piece of music that I’d written after listening to their work. That’s the crux of what I got out of the record: I got to peek into my favourite musicians’ heads a little bit and say, ‘Right, I’m having that.’”
If the finished album is anything to go by, it’s an inspired way to do business.
Telling the Trees – which features Karine Polwart, Anneliese Mackintosh, Rachel Grimes, Aby Vulliamy, Anneke Kampman and others – is Hubbert’s best achievement to date, even better than Thirteen Lost and Found, which won the Scottish Album of the Year Award in 2013.
In many ways, that previous album is a mirror image of the new one.
“That one was done with old friends of mine and the whole point was to reconnect,” he says, “so the songs were written in the same room together over a very short amount of time – about six hours. For this one I decided to swap everything over.”
The new album also redresses the gender balance. Thirteen Lost and Found – which featured collaborations with the likes of Aidan Moffat, Luke Sutherland and Alex Kapranos – was male-heavy, whereas Telling the Trees features female vocalists and lead instrumentalists on all tracks, the boys represented only by Barry Burns’ and Jim Eno’s presence on Eleanor Friedberger’s 1970s singer-songwriter-styled input, Chelsea Midnight.
It’s an incredibly generous mode of collaboration, as each contributor’s artistic signature can be heard on every track. However, Hubbert’s distinctive flamenco-hued guitar ties the whole project together, even as it moves from the pop dimensions of Sweet Dreams (with Helen Marnie from Ladytron) and The Unravelling (with Martha Ffion), to the vulnerability of The Dog (with fellow SAY Award winner and artistic soulmate Kathryn Joseph) and the dramatic gothic shiver of standout song I Can Hold You Back (with Kathryn Williams).
There’s a built-in drawback to this approach, however: an album with this level of ambition and geographical spread of talent will be practically impossible to take on tour.
“I couldn’t afford to fly people in from Louisville or upstate New York, even Cornwall or London,” Hubbert admits.
“But there are two plans. Most of the time when touring this album, Sarah J Stanley will come out with me and sing pretty much all of them, including her own song, Probably Will/Probably Do.
“Other than that, I can do about half the album myself, adapting the songs and playing them live.”
On a rare occasion, he might even be able to pull off something like the launch gigs taking place at The Art School in Glasgow tomorrow and The Roxy in Edinburgh on Sunday, where a selection of collaborators (drawn from the pool of Polwart, Williams, Joseph, Marnie, Ffion, Vulliamy, Kampman and Stanley) make an appearance.
“If they happen to be in the vicinity, they’re going to be dragged up on the stage,” Hubbert says. “But there’s a high chance this will be the only time these people sing these songs live.”
Telling the Trees is released by Chemikal Underground tomorrow. RM Hubbert also plays Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree as a duo show with Sarah J Stanley on Saturday.
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