Places Beyond is the latest album from Bath based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist  Jody Prewett. The album is musically based around Jody’s finger-picked acoustic guitar songs, with the use of ambience is a crucial dimension to give the record its haunting, other-worldly atmosphere with field recordings of birds and windy moorlands providing an underlying sonic tapestry. In terms of the narratives of Places Beyond the lyrics explore strange encounters and unexplained events; from crop circles and UFO’s to clairvoyants and standing stones.

Jody joins us for a Why I Love on John Martyn and points out specific references which have influenced some of the music on Places Beyond.

SOLID AIR

I must have been 17 years old when I first discovered John Martyn. I had just started studying a music course at college and I was gravitating away from the Britpop hangover of my later secondary school years. I was getting interested in more exotic sounding music and I found myself listening to a lot of jazz and folk records; Bitches Brew and Pink Moon were definite turning points. I subsequently developed a bit of a fixation with 1970’s British folk artists like Bert Jansch, Jon Renbourn and of course Nick Drake and Martyn himself.

It was around this time that I first heard the album Solid Air and it immediately lit a spark. It opened me up to an entirely new way of thinking about playing the guitar. I became obsessed with open tunings and also Martyn’s percussive fingerpicking really struck me.

I was certainly aiming to capture the hazy jazz folk of this song and explore similar lyrical themes on my song Wild Mind. For the bass part on this song, we tried to imitate the sound of an upright bass using an electric instrument.

THE MARTYN VOICE

Then of course it’s Martyn’s voice, perhaps it was the first time I realized that old cliché about the voice being an instrument in its own right; Martyn’s is like some force of nature, the emotion and raw power he could draw through his vocal chords really struck me at the time and still does whenever I listen now.

But it is the songs themselves that really connect with me. There is a power to his singing but also a real sensitivity, even a vulnerability there too, the song Go Down Easy captures that perfectly. I also love Over the Hill; the lyrics to this song really influenced my songwriting, trying to capture that journeying sense of freedom and lightness. I still regularly close out my live sets with a cover of May You Never.

I found it thrilling exploring the rest of his catalogue and was really taken by the more progressive electric explorations of Inside Out and One World. I also love the earlier rootsy simplicity of The Tumbler, The River from that album is a song of pastoral beauty that has certainly influenced my style.

You can also probably hear traces of The River in my song Black Mountain Rose.

ALWAYS RETURN TO…

But the album that I return to more than any is Bless The Weather. I arrived at this album quite a bit later and I love the lazy midsummer atmosphere of the title track and the guitar playing always astounds me on this album. I enjoy driving to the title track and the explorative improvisation of Glistening Glyndbourne during a British heatwave, the windows down in the pollen-heavy summer air.

For the opening track on Places Beyond I was certainly trying to capture some of the textures of this song.

I have pored over Graeme Thomson’s biography Small Hours which reveals a lot about Martyn’s often troubled relationship with his wife Beverly and his struggles with drugs and alcohol. The book reveals that Martyn wasn’t always an easy person to be around. But of all the musicians that have had an impact on me, in terms of sheer ability and talent, Martyn has arguably influenced me more than any other.

Our thanks to Jody for an intriguing insight into how an inspiration has helped shaped some of his current music.

You can read more from our extensive archive of Why I Love pieces from a wide array of artists on an even wider array of subjects, here.

Jody Prewett: Website

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