'There Was A Connection': How Far From Saints Crafted an Album of Struggle and Beauty
Tuesday, 20 June 2023
Written by Simon Ramsay
He may have departed this mortal plane a number of years back, but Tom Petty is still bringing people together through the timeless power of his music. When American roots act The Wind + The Wave, comprising Patty Lynn and Dwight Baker, first supported Stereophonics in 2013, the Welsh rockers’ singer Kelly Jones was immediately taken by Lynn’s extraordinary voice. Yet it wasn’t until many years later, when the duo supported Jones on a solo tour that, courtesy of Mr Petty playing musical cupid, a wonderful collaboration was born.
They might have been raised on different continents, and in different eras, but a shared love of artistic references, particularly between elder statesmen Baker and Jones, allowed the Stereophonics bandleader and Texas-based pairing to become fast friends. If the seeds for any future creative partnership were planted during that time, they truly blossomed following a barnstorming live rendition of Petty and Stevie Nicks’ Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around during Jones’ 2019 trek.
Written in a whirlwind period of productivity during their time on the road together, the multi-talented threesome, who each have plenty of experience as musicians, songwriters and producers, sculpted Far From Saints’ self-titled debut with such delightful ease that, were they superstitious, the trio might have (rightly, as it turned out) feared the worst.
No sooner had that album come into the world than it was immediately shelved, consigned to gather dust as Covid raged around the globe. But after four long years the band’s emotionally potent bow, which speaks of connection, hope, and redemption in such a prescient and personal way it might easily be mistaken for a pandemic record, has finally been unveiled to deserved acclaim.
Boasting 10 poetic gems that dovetail vintage southern rock, gospel, soul, folk and country, all delivered by Jones and Lynn’s gorgeous vocal interplay, Far From Saints’ influences have collided to create a quietly mesmerising LP that, although far removed from their day jobs, should appeal to fans of both acts while also casting a wider net.
We caught up with the band members, who are shortly set to perform at Glastonbury, with the noble intention of grilling them about their long overdue debut album. But, in truth, our presence was almost unnecessary. Such is the infectious rapport between the trio that, at times, it was almost like they were interviewing each other and we were merely eavesdropping on a gang of friends whose strong musical chemistry reflects their close personal bond.
You’re all very experienced musicians with plenty of years in the industry, but none of you have ever had to sit on an album as exquisite as this for four years because of a global pandemic that shut down the entire world. What’s that been like?
Kelly: Kind of strange at first, because we were excited about getting it out. The most interesting thing, for me, is that after making a record and bringing it out four years later, most people involved would usually have lost some sort of a spark or interest in it. But I don’t feel that about this record. It’s really standing up.
Dwight: When a global pandemic first happens you hunker down, like everybody else, and you’re hanging with your family and hoping the world’s gonna continue. So you’re not thinking about the record at all, which was also nice because it gives you a break from it and then, like Kelly was saying, when you come back and actually still like it which, I don’t know how many artists you talk to a day, but often we don’t like our records. Especially right after we make them. And all of us can still listen to this and enjoy it. That’s unusual.
After you met about 10 years ago, and subsequently became more familiar with each other and your respective work, what made you realise you had similar sensibilities and could collaborate well together?
Dwight: Kelly has a way of writing simple hooks that people sing loudly, in mass. Louder than him, where he can just walk back from the mic half the time and let them go. It’s something I’m not good at writing, so I wanted to have stuff that does that too. That was one of the things that attracted me to Kelly’s writing, that he can deliver a really simple chorus that everyone knows the first time they hear it. I’m envious of that.
Kelly: For me it was the opposite because I’ve always wanted to make some sort of Americana record. I’ve been brought up with lots of country-ish kinds of artists, whether it’s Creedence, Eagles, Neil Young or Bob Dylan, and lots of guitar players who finger pick and tell stories. I’ve always had a country lilt to the way I write but it’s always been dressed up in a bit of a rock ‘n’ roll way. And watching Patty sing every night, there’s lots of people who can sing, but there’s only a few that move you in a particular way. It’s very rare. But when I would watch them from the side of the stage, the way that Patty would deliver vocals live really resonated with me. I’ve been asked to do things in the past with different singers and styles but never had any connection with anything, but I did feel like there was a connection in what they were saying and I was saying and how we could merge together as one thing.
Dwight, what do you think makes Kelly’s and Patty’s voices work so well together as that’s one of the record’s trump cards?
Dwight: I didn’t initially think their voices were gonna work together to be honest with you, because Kelly has a blues voice that is always reaching for the note and never quite gets there, which is a very British way of singing and I love it. Patty is a real hit the note, belt it kind of singer and I didn’t know if they would be able to sing together because of the way they bend notes. They bend so differently but, it turns out, the tone of their voices are more similar on tape than you would think. They both have a mid-range edge that cuts through music at many octaves.
What’s difficult when you do duet records is often finding the right key, where the man’s not too high and the woman’s not too low. But they both have such broad ranges that you can kind of go where you want to go, musically, and they can fit themselves into the track. And it’s a beautiful thing to know those songs were performed live, on the floor, with me playing acoustic guitar. So maybe bending while looking at each other is what makes that work. I don’t know if it would have worked, overdubbing those vocals. What do you guys think?
Patty: I think it was obvious from the jump that was what needed to happen, which was weird because I had never done that before. It was like, ‘We need to be together.’
Kelly: There’s a nervousness about doing it with somebody too. There’s an element of having to perform, having have to get it right, because you know the other person’s gonna get it right because they’re fucking great. That’s almost like you’re on stage. You don’t have that when you’re overdubbing.
Patty: It’s like two lead singers. We’re both gonna get it right, but they’re gonna be different. We have to get it right together.
Dwight: That’s an interesting thought, actually, that you’re both like one-on-one basket-balling each other, both trying to actually to nail it.
Kelly: And not in a way where you’re trying to out-sing each other, that’s the difference. It’s not like The Voice. This has to work together as one thing. So you’re performing like you would in front of an audience. When you do a vocal take in a vocal booth you’re going, ‘Let’s try another one, let’s try another one,’ and it didn’t feel like that.
The album was recorded in nine days and you’ve all spoken glowingly about how easy and fun the process was. How on earth did you craft something so fully realised in such a short period of time?
Kelly: We did it backwards, beginning with the vocals, and built the whole thing around it, which I’ve never done before. So we started with Dwight on lead guitar, a click track, Patty on one side of the room and me on the other singing live. And we got the vocals down because we didn’t think we were going to finish the record there. We thought it was going to be taken back to America and then we’d just mess about with it over time. We had no idea the record would be done within that week. All the vocals happened, all the lyrics came. I remember having a bit of fun with the end section of Let’s Turn This Back Around, making that grow and do things and all of that stuff, but I don’t remember doing a great deal of experimenting. It was literally, ‘Let’s put this part on, that part works right?’ And then move on to the next bit.
Patty: I feel like you’re lucky when that happens. When things are natural and organic and they come together quickly and easily. For me, I have to totally let go and trust the universe, fall backwards and not worry about what the result is going to be. Enjoy the process and just being there and hopefully at the end you have something.
Dwight: We knew the songs worked because they worked with just two voices and an acoustic and would be fine being played that way. If Kelly was just strumming an acoustic, or I was, those songs are still the same. They didn’t feel grandiose. To me it’s a lesson and I’ve been doing that more, especially on a lot of the country records I’ve been making. Starting from a really small place and then deciding if it should go any bigger. It’s a really interesting way to make a record.
Kelly: You start with a ‘sentiment up’ and I’d never done that before either. Since doing it I’ve read that Daniel Lanois did the same on ‘Oh Mercy’, my favourite Dylan album. He started with the vocal, and Dylan hated it, and then he built the whole thing around him. Dylan didn’t understand what the fuck he was doing but, if you think about it, the whole sentiment of how you really mean those lyrics, you capture it straight from the start. So I’ll do it again too.
And what can you say about the themes you’ve explored on this record?
Patty: There’s a lot of relationship stuff. My husband staying at home and me travelling a whole lot, me being on the other side of the world at the time, presented some challenges and that definitely came out. Let’s Turn This Back Around, and even Let The Light Shine Over You, even though it sounds happier, it’s still the same, ‘We’re in two different worlds and making this work is hard’ kind of a feeling. What do you think Kell?
Kelly: It’s a perfect example, where both of our lives outside, as we were doing it, came into the conduit. Light The Shine Over You, I had a little demo called Life Is Beautiful Two or something, and there was some sort of line about dropping your hat on the floor. Patty ran with that and it became the whole first verse. Then the chorus moulds together to offer this thing of hope. No matter how difficult it gets, the light will shine over your shoulder. So there’s a lot of beauty on the record and a lot of beauty coming out of struggles. There’s a lot of light at the end of it all and, as Dwight said earlier, I’ve always been favourable to that. Whether I was experiencing it at the time I was writing, or searching for it myself, you put it in the song and hope you experience it. But for the audience, it’s there.
I believe that, Patty and Kelly, you have very different ways of writing too, so how did those respective approaches blend together?
Patty: I’m very crafty with my lyrics and Kelly just writes, whatever comes out comes out, and he puts it on the page and it just somehow works. It’s thoughtful but not too thoughtful. Like he doesn’t want to get in his head about it and I’m like so in my head about…
Dwight: Everything.
Patty: Everything. I’d love to be more like that so it’s nice to have that in the process. It’s nice to take those different things and puzzle piece them together.
Dwight: I think it’s them accepting how differently they write. Kelly being a through line, soul straight to page guy and Patty being a let me write every word in the English language on this page and then start circling words and making lines, like a poet would write a poem. I think those two styles really work together. Kelly, do you sometimes take two weeks to write a vocal or lyrically do they always come quickly?
Kelly: You want to get it as fast as you can to say to yourself, ‘I can do it a fast as I can’, but it’s not really that. It’s like if I try to analyse what my thoughts are saying I’ll lose something from it. So I’d rather throw it on the page and then look at it and, if it works, then it works. But through that process Patty and I were getting to know each other as well. We were writing a lot of emails to each other. It was like figuring out, ‘Well, what are you going through? What am I going through?’ That wasn’t necessarily coming through in the emails in a heavy way but there were a lot of conversations going on and, the next time we would write, we would have a better understanding of things we were trying to demonstrate in the songs.
I imagine everyone will be asking if this is a one off or if there might be more from Far From Saints, which must be a strange question when you’ve just released an album. But seeing as this was done some time ago, and given everything that’s happened since, have you done any more writing and recording or perhaps contemplated doing so in future?
Patty: Being in a band with someone is like being in a relationship. We’ve been in a long distance relationship for quite a while now and, in a lot of ways, we are still getting to know each other. So we’re at the very beginning and that’s not the time to start thinking about the long term. I’m just trying to trust the universe, stay in the moment and appreciate what’s right in front of me.
Dwight: Yeah, on a first date you shouldn’t talk about babies. But I think the fans will define whether there’s more from this. And also, do I have a folder of 10 songs that are started for the next record? Yes. But have I played them for these two? No.
Kelly: It would be great to just get a response from what we have done. That’s the natural way forward, to keep playing these songs in front of audiences, it will be really cool to see what people think about them because the first warm up show for the Royal Albert Hall felt really good.
Dwight: We all came off like ‘Oh, that’s what that could be.’ And everyone in the band and crew is super nice, which makes it pleasant to see everybody.
Kelly: It’s literally half Welsh, half American, so we’re going to try to invent some new flag with a dragon and some stars and stripes.
Dwight: That should be the next shirt. Make it happen.
Far From Saints' self-titled debut is out now.
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