A Pretty Good Team: Downton Abbey Stars Michael & Michelle on Their Musical Second Act
Monday, 22 January 2024
Written by Simon Ramsay
It’s easy to default to cynicism when successful actors decide to walk a musical path. Yet, in the case of former Downton Abbey stars Michael Fox and Michelle Dockery, you’d be wise to hurl such preconceptions out of the nearest window. Anyone listening to the duo’s beguiling Americana without knowing who was behind it could easily believe it’s the work of seasoned artists operating at the peak of their creative powers. They are that good.
The duo’s EPs, ‘The Waiting Silence’ and ‘Don’t Go Alone’, released under the Michael & Michelle banner, offer a fine showcase for two artists who possessed musical aspirations long before the roles of Andrew Parker and Lady Mary Crawley shot them to superstardom.
A trained vocalist who grew up listening to Alisson Krauss, Joni Mitchell and Indigo Girls, Dockery had already sung on various London stages, and also performed at the 50th anniversary of Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, before she and Fox, who’d played with a number of stylistically diverse bands throughout this youth, met on the set of that now classic period drama.
But for all their individual talent, it’s the chemistry between the tightly-bonded pair that elevates the duo’s music, which nods to The Civil Wars, Robert Plant’s work with Krauss and The Swell Season. They may start from an Americana-folk base replete with mesmerising harmonies and poetic storytelling, but the growth between their two EPs, as well as a burgeoning ability to sew in other genres and tweak structural conventions, offers a level of craftsmanship and authenticity most actors turned musicians rarely possess.
Prior to the twosome embarking on their UK tour, we caught up with Fox and Dockery to discuss the ins and outs of their creative partnership, what makes the other such a special artist, and what their hopes are for a musical future.
I’d like to start by talking about your debut show at Omeara last year and what that experience was like for both of you. I watched some clips on YouTube and it must have felt pretty good to hear the crowd cheering so enthusiastically when certain parts of songs like Starlight kicked in?
Michelle: Yeah, it was fantastic. It was our first big gig and kind of blew us away. Particularly that moment, what you’re saying, when Chris Maas comes in with the drums. It was a real goosebump moment for us. It was a magic night and the response was incredible.
Michael: We had the first EP out, so there were certain songs like Misfire and Walk With You that, as soon as we started playing them, the response, that was the first time I’ve ever experienced that. Having done a few gigs with different bands I’ve never had that, where people are mouthing back the songs to you. It was a bit of a dream really.
It was quite a while ago that you began playing together. How did things progress from that point and why did it take a number of years for the first EP to come to fruition?
Michelle: We met on Downton, knew that both of us were singers and started jamming together on set. The film Inside Llewyn Davies was out at the time and the song Fare Thee Well, it’s a really beautiful song on the soundtrack, we started jamming that and our voices worked really well together. There was a lot of playing on set but it was only when we went to L.A when the cast were promoting Downton, that we started writing songs and wrote Walk With You.
When we were there a friend knew somebody who had a studio and said he can hook you guys up and you can record some songs. So we recorded two songs there in L.A. We had that material but it was only when we did the gig at the Kiln Theatre in West Hampstead and Decca happened to be in the audience that we got this email saying, ‘We’d like to meet you.’ And then it went from being something we love doing to something much more than that. We signed with Decca, started working on more songs and before we knew it here we are, about to go on a tour. It’s been pretty magical but has taken some time because, with our acting careers, we’re always trying to carve out time.
Was that a blessing in disguise at all, meaning did it give you time to really define your identity as a duo and refine the songs you were writing, rather than just throwing something out there at the first opportunity?
Michael: Definitely. And it was about finding the right people to put it out there. People who’d recorded music that we love. That’s when Decca introduced us to Iain Grimble (producer) who records with Bear’s Den, Daughter, Travis, Michael Kiwanuka. We met other people, other record labels as well, but wanted people who we could be with for a long time and make music we could be proud of. We could have jumped quicker, fast tracked things and tried to sell it on the idea of Downton a little more, but we wanted the music to stand up for itself and wanted to do it the right way. That’s been really good because we can stand by every song and know we’ve pulled it apart and made it the best it can be. We feel so proud of the music we’ve put out already and hopefully we’ll continue to do that.
Was there a process of trial and error when it came to finding your sound or did you have quite a simpatico vision from the beginning?
Michelle: A little bit. We wrote a couple of songs in the very early days that were more the XX route, with that kind of two part harmony, male and female, that kind of voice. We sort of played around with that but always kept going back to the Americana-folk feel. That seemed to work best for us.
Michael: Being back with the band for the Lafayette gig, we were talking about it with them. There’s a marked difference between the first and second EP. When we were going in for our first EP we were learning the ropes and seeing what our sound is. But the second, we knew that we wanted to make something bigger, a bit nastier, a bit rougher around the edges. Something with more risk in it. We just wanted to stretch ourselves more, for it to be more lively and exciting.
Michelle: Starlight is the one…it’s like what we could see when Michael started writing that first riff at the beginning, of this expanse of America. Like a imagining a big long stretch of road in America. It kind of has that Western feel so it ended up being a bit more bluesy, just as Michael said, slightly edgier and it was fun to stretch our legs a little bit.
Michelle, can you tell me what Michael’s strengths are as a songwriter, musician and creative partner?
Michelle: Well, first of all he always starts with the melody and has this beautiful way of finding the story from the beginning. There’s a story with Michael’s lyrics and I feel we have this very common vision for each song. Then I can come in and add my part of the story but it often…Michael’s very good at setting the foundations for our music and he’s also an incredible musician. His guitar playing is unbelievable and he doesn’t know it. It kind of annoys me. He gets really critical of everything and is always having to better himself. We’ll be doing a song and he’s like, ‘Maybe it’s a bit more like this kind of vibe, it’s less strum and I can pick something like this.’ Then he’ll do this amazing thing and doesn’t know how good he is. And also, he’s a poet. He has this amazing way of writing lyrics. It can start from one thing, a feeling or something he’s experienced, and become this beautiful song within half an hour.
Michael: You’re making me well up, Michelle.
Michelle: Sorry. It’s a very long answer but I can’t stop. There’s so many strengths to him.
Let’s flip the question Michael and ask you the same thing about Michelle?
Michael: It goes without saying Michelle’s got an unbelievable voice and there’s a preternatural thing that happens when she and I sing together. But there’s also a clarity I hadn’t experienced before we’d written together, where Michelle won’t leave a lyric, it needs to be coherent. She has this ability to carve out the song and to make it…there’s a logic to every single part. There’s not just a throwaway line. The level of detail Michelle wants in the lyric means we can stand by every single one of them.
That’s what’s made us a good writing partnership because she really does want every single line to progress the story or to find new colour in it. I think that’s brilliant. It’s lifted our songs to a different level. And also Michelle can pick out a harmony from anywhere. I find that’s so hard and Michelle can come up with this unbelievable harmony. I think that might come from singing with your sisters, Michelle?
Michelle: I think we’ve kind of got sibling voices, the preternatural thing. Michael is like my brother, his partner [Downton Abbey’s Lady Edith, Laura Carmichael] is my best friend and she’s also my [on screen] sister too. That’s part of our friendship anyway but siblings, me and my sister have that. The harmonies like First Aid Kit, we find inspiration from those two voice bands.
Michael: One last thing I was thinking about was when we were playing live. Walk With You, it’s a song that changes the atmosphere in the room completely and Michelle, because she’s an amazing actress, there’s a way of communicating the story of the song that’s just stunning. It’s good to say this because we don’t actually…we do a lot of looking after each other in the nervous moments but rarely go, ‘This is what I think is absolutely brilliant about…’ We need the other person. I really really need Michelle when we’re standing on stage and feel like we help each other in so many ways. We’re similar in lots of ways but very different in lots of ways as well.
You’ve talked about your growth between the first two EPs, but where would you like to take your music in future?
Michael: I don’t know. We’ve got a couple of songs we love but we haven’t brought out yet. Infinite Skyline and Emily, that we play live. But I don’t know direction-wise.
Michelle: Because Michael and I are both actors and obviously that’s a massive part of our lives as well as the music, at some point we’d love to integrate the two. We talk about composing for a play or a film score. We’d love to explore that in the future and also hear some of our songs in films and TV. I think there’s a real vibe to our songs and it would be really special to hear them played in that world, because it’s also our world. So that’s sort of long term but, in the short term, it’s just about keeping writing new music and finding something slightly different each time.
Would you like to make a full album at some point, a real old school record that takes listeners on a journey?
Michelle: We’d love to but it feels like EPs are kind of the format, they’re more common with labels nowadays with the way music works. We were going to do an album but instead were encouraged to do another EP. So it’s partly that, but I’d love to see the vinyl of a full album at some point.
Michael: I think we could and the exciting thing about an album is you can step back from the tracks, and what story they’re telling as a whole, and try to build something that feels like a real piece of art. We’d love to do that. We’ve talked a little bit about Nashville, that kind of world. It’s what Michelle’s saying, we want to keep one foot in that but like the idea we can keep subverting the genre a bit. Dark Water’s a good step towards that with this weird time signature and we want to keep on being innovative with the sound. Even though it’s a sound everyone knows, we want to subvert it a bit. But, yeah, if we could sit in a studio for a few months recording, I’d love that. It would be incredible to really go for it but it’s about taking each project as it comes. At the moment what solid time we have, if it’s three weeks every couple of months, that’s great. So we’re holding that side a little bit loosely I think.
When the first EP was released Michael said you’ll always love acting but there’s something about the both of you, some part of your characters you haven’t fully realised within that field, and that’s happening now with your music. What does songwriting, recording and performing these songs give you that you don’t get from acting?
Michael: A reason I picked up a guitar is because I like journaling. It’s like writing a diary. It’s about trying to make sense and have coherence about what I’m experiencing, what’s going on in my head or how I’m seeing the world. There’s a direct line to exactly how I’m feeling and onstage it means I’m much closer to feeling really moved by doing it, because the words we’re saying are really authentic. With acting there are moments you have that and when the character speaks to you in that way it can be amazing. For me music is like, it’s very hard to articulate, I just feel there’s something that’s so completely us about it.
Michelle: True. I feel the same. It feels so authentic and acting, you start with yourself, whatever character you play, the core of it starts from you and what you bring to it as a person. But ultimately you’re the character and you kind of hide behind the character, it becomes this layer. Whereas with music it’s you. It’s just you. There’s something really liberating about that and also terrifying at the same time. There’s something very freeing about it and that it’s solely ours. There isn’t a script to follow that somebody else has written. It’s very different to acting in many ways, but you still have the same feelings when you get up on stage. The same adrenaline and nerves. It’s amazing to experience that. There’s nothing like it.
Michael and Michelle Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Mon January 22 2024 - LONDON Lafayette
Tue January 23 2024 - MANCHESTER Band on the Wall
Wed January 24 2024 - LEEDS Brudenell Social Club
Thu January 25 2024 - GLASGOW Oran Mor
Sat January 27 2024 - DUBLIN Whelan's
Thu February 01 2024 - STROUD Sub Rooms
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