13 Stars’ ‘Finest Ramshackle Jam’ is one of those albums that doesn’t come around too often, an album that you can play all the way through and just can’t put down. It’s also an album which mixes all kinds of styles and inspirations into a warming and hearty stew, that will sooth those coronavirus aches. We caught up with Hoss to chew the fat, talk music and find out what goes into the mix of a ‘Finest Ramshackle Jam’…
Hoss: Hello
Mark: Hi mate how are you?
Hoss: I’m alright how about yourself?
Mark: I’m good thank you, how are things back there in the UK?
Hoss: It’s been sunny for the moment (laughs).
Mark: (laughs) you knew that’s not what I was asking, but I’ll take it!
Hoss: Yeah it’s wonderful for this time of year.
Mark: We’ll avoid coronavirus questions for now then! In all seriousness though as soon as I heard ‘Finest Ramshackle Jam’ I knew that we had to chat, it’s a wonderful album
Hoss: Oh thanks man.
Mark: After listening to it I managed to get a hold of the previous album ’The Raven’ and I must admit that the promise that album showed has really been built upon. What’s changed since that release? The band seems to have a few more strings to your bow?
Hoss: Well nothing’s changes as such, we had all of the songs anyway. We did ‘The Raven’ in about two weeks or so, actually I think it was 11 days that we recorded it and mixed it and what have you and we did it as an out and out rocker and once we did we thought yeah that’s good but, all of our earlier albums were a bit more mixed anyway and I think we missed that ‘eclecticism’ if you like – the breadth of the material and also it’s a significantly longer album ‘Ramshackle’ it’s an hour, so it’s more or less double the length of ‘The Raven.’
Mark: And not a weak song on there, it’s one of those albums I can sit down with and just not skip through anything on there. I’ve spoken to a few other people recently who have just released, but it must be absolutely galling not to be able to get out there on the road and play this live?
Hoss: Yeah, when anybody asks me what it’s like not being on the road I always think about the film Gladiator – there’s a bit in that film where Russel Crowe asks his assistant how the men are and he just says “Fat and bored” (laughs) and that’s pretty much what we’re like off the road (laughs). It is what it is, under the circumstances there’s not a lot you can do is there?
Mark: I know how you feel and it’s weird with all the media so concentrated on the one thing, and to see how differently it is playing out in different countries around the world. Some European countries are having it better than others but my friends in the US and the UK as well as Spain appear to be having a really hard time of it.
Hoss: To be fair our Government didn’t go along with what the WHO said straight away, some of the other countries in Europe did and now they’re pretty much out of lockdown and we’re not so go figure. I’m still doing the day job so I’m luckier than some other people because the day job is considered essential.
Mark: I know how you feel, working each day keeps your mind off things, and a ‘holiday at home’ without getting out of the house sounds nice for a bit.
Hoss: Yeah isolation initially sounds like it might be quite nice but I think after the second or third week I’d be climbing the walls (laughs). It doesn’t help that we’ve got unseasonably good weather – there’s this beautiful early summer come on in spring bizarrely and nobody is allowed out! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) Getting back to the album, I was talking to a few people about speaking to you today who all love the album and one of them was absolutely fascinated by the album cover and wanted me to ask you what it is that is reflected in the jam jar on the album artwork?
Hoss: Life! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs)
Hoss: It’s got all sorts of stuff in there, Sadie who is Jackson’s fiancée who designed it – she put ramshackles in there and all sorts of stuff, its meant to encapsulate all the different facets of the world, I guess it’s a bit esoteric, but the idea was that it would try and encapsulate as many aspects of the world as we could.
Mark: I love the title too it makes you think of The Black Crowes ‘The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion’ and Small Faces ‘Ogdens Nut Gone Flake’ that kind of thing, it’s got that bygone feel to it, it just sounds right?
Hoss: Yeah, I mean we love Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake and we love Black Crowes. We did go through quite a few different design ideas, ‘Finest Ramshackle Jam’ was an idea we had for the title of an album for quite a long time. We mooted it for ‘The Raven’ but we didn’t feel it was quite right for that. So once ‘The Raven’ was out we knew the next one was going to be called this. A mate of mine, my old drinking buddy, walked into one of our practice sessions one day and said “This sounds like a ramshackle jam” and (laughs) I just thought yeah! That’ll work.
Mark: Great story. And the name of the band itself ‘13 Stars’ what does that mean to you? Is it that connection with the American south?
Hoss: No, basically around the time that we were starting the band, well really around the time I was making the first couple of records which were a bit Mike Oldfield style – where I did everything myself. Bearing in mind that ‘The Raven’ was our fourth album and this is our fifth so there’s a good bit of back catalogue to get through if you want to go there, obviously forgiving production values! So around the time I was putting together songs for it the whole idea was, my attention span’s not that great anyway, if I get bored of something I’ll just not do it, so it was really kind of all about the bands that we loved- the Beatles, Queen, Led Zeppelin, all these people, they wrote really interesting and diverse music, and we wanted to do the same thing, you know. We didn’t want to be pigeon-holed into one easy to sell block, if you like, which it seemed that a lot of people were having us do at that point. And I don’t really give two shits whether they’re easily marketable or not (laughs).
Mark: (laughs)
Hoss: Because at the end of the day if every song sounds like the last one it’s not very interesting for the listener when they ultimately buy the record or go to the gig, so I kind of thought perhaps naively, that was sort of revolutionary in this day and age, and I was looking at revolutionary flags and the one that came up was the Betsy Ross – the American Revolutionary flag which has 13 Stars in a circle and I thought I’d go with that, I quite liked that. It’s an appealing image, I mean when I was looking it could have been Cuba that popped up (laughs)
Mark: Take it back even further for us then, where did your love of music come from?
Hoss: Well when I was about 11-ish I think, I pestered my parents to get me a hi-fi with a turntable and the first two records I got for that were Queen’s first album and Sheer Heart Attack. And then a few years later I inherited The Beatles Blue Album and all sorts of other stuff. And this is all after I’d spent hours and hours and hours and hours in my little Fiat Panda listening to amongst other things ‘Sensational Hits of the 60’s’. And whilst I was listening to these records I was drumming along on Lego boxes and what have you and I actually wanted to be a drummer, but we lived in a three-storey terraced house in the centre of town so that wasn’t gonna happen. So they got me a guitar instead and I got really interested with the Beatles around that time. I guess it would have been around the time the Anthology came out, it was on TV every Sunday. And my parents got me this book that had a Rickenbacker on the front, I remember that, called Rhythm Guitar and I basically went through the entire Beatles Red Album songbook and sort of taught myself to play just doing that really. You know learning all of John Lennon’s odd banjo chords and what have you. And it all really just grew from there, lead guitar wise I’m most inspired by Paul Kossoff of Free because my dad had The Free Story on LP – the double LP, the numbered one, I think it’s quite rare now.
Hoss: I just love Free I think they’re an amazing band and Kossoff’s playing to me it’s just genius, he can be so Spartan with his notes but every single one means so much. And he has a real fragility to his playing which I find incredibly endearing, there’s a real sort of insecurity and emotion built into every single note which I just think is genius – it’s heartbreaking actually t0 listen to, but if music’s meant to be an expression of the soul then that’s what it is isn’t it.
Mark: Free and bands of their ilk always mixed it up stylistically I think back then there wasn’t the push that came later from labels and A&R to fit in a box and it led to some wonderfully creative and wide ranging records. They were eclectic but still sounded like themselves – a Free album could only be by Free but stylistically they gave us all kinds of tastes. And that’s what I love about Ramshackle Jam, all kinds of great music and styles from real Rockers to Southern-tinged blues to lighter fare like Tom Petty and a little Americana, but it all sounds cohesive and all like 13 Stars, there’s nothing clumsy about it. Not many bands can pull that off how did you do it?
Hoss: Erm, I don’t really know, I mean I love Tom Petty and we were listening to ‘Wildflowers’ when we were making the album ‘cos the studio’s about four hours away from where we live so we would get through that album a few times on the way down and on the way back. But I don’t know is the short answer though. I guess it would be a bit weird if we did something and it didn’t sound like us, but I’m not sure how that happens.
Mark: I guess one measure of that is a cover song, some bands trot out covers that are almost like replicas of the original, it sounds cool but there’s not a feeling of something added. Other bands take a song and manage to make it their own. On the live EP for example I love the Black Crowes cover.
Hoss: Yeah, I think inevitably if we’re gonna do a song by somebody else we try very much to make it our own. We’ve done ‘Ohio’ by Neil Young for years and we do that very much in our own style we ‘rock it up’ much more than the original and drag it out and do all kinds of stuff. I guess we were drawing on all sorts of influences and we wanted it to be simultaneously our heaviest and our lightest album. To really accentuate the contrast between light and shade, we knew we wanted to do something in that Bruce Springsteen – ‘Hungry Heart’ kind of vibe and that’s where ‘Rebel’ came from.
Mark: I can see the Springsteen there and I love a bit of Motown too.
Hoss: Yeah and there’s soul, or nods to Soul in some of the songs as well and we set ourselves some interesting rules for the recording because we knew we could automatically make it sound very full and quite cluttered, we learned that from the last album so we did have rules for what you can and can’t do and of course we ignored them most of the time! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) So what happens next? It’s hard to know at the moment I guess?
Hoss: Well we were supposed to be on tour in June and July with Black Aces from your very own Antipodes
Mark: Yes the guys from Melbourne
Hoss: But I’m guessing that’s postponed anyway and we were hoping to be in Spain and Italy later in the year but who knows, who knows…
Mark: If you could have been a fly on the wall for the creation of any great album just to see how it all came together, what would you like to have seen being made?
Hoss: There’s so many isn’t there? I’ve got to pick one have I? Can I cheat?
Mark: Most people cheat.
Hoss: OK then I’d be a ‘fly on the wall’ for ‘Abbey Road’ for sure, I’d be there for ‘A Night At The Opera’ and I think I’d be there for ‘Manassas’ – their first album with Stephen Stills, and maybe even ‘Harvest’ as well if Neil wouldn’t kick me out! (laughs)
Mark: There’s a bit of a connection there I was listening to an old Hollies album from the 60’s earlier today (Stephen Stills went on to form Crosby, Stills Nash and Young with Graham Nash who had been in the Hollies).
Hoss: Graham Nash’s ’Songs For Beginners’ is a great one too if you get a chance to listen, that’s got some really good stuff on it. But definitely check out Manassas, it’s basically what he did when CSNY stopped touring for a while and it’s got the same drummer from ‘Deja Vous’ and Chris Hillman from The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers in it, it’s a smashing album. They do all kinds of stuff: Country, Rock, Funk – it’s genius, absolutely genius. It’s a long album too and it goes through all kinds of… it’s not as clear on the CD but on vinyl it kind of describes the different sections, if you like, it’s not a short one but it’s excellent.
Mark: I’ll definitely check that out and let you know how I go with it.
Mark: Once the pandemic is over if you could invite four musicians to sit down and have a meal with you at your favourite restaurant who would you choose, and just to be fair they can be living or dead!
Hoss: Well having spent the entire day drinking and chatting with Paul Guerin in a bar in Ibiza and having a lovely time I’d have to have him along ‘cos he’s a thoroughly lovely man and I like hanging out with Paul anyway and three others… Mmm, Brian May I think he’d be quite interesting to chat to, Tom Petty because I always imagine he’d be a lovely bloke to have a drink with, and apparently he liked good coffee as well so that’s good. I was devastated when he went, that song ‘Running So Long’ is dedicated to Tom Petty, in fact the album is dedicated to Tom. I really, really had a lot of time for him and I missed his last tour because we were on tour ourselves and at the time I thought “I’ll get another chance” and unfortunately I thought there’d be another chance but there wasn’t. It’s very depressing and to know I’ll never get the chance to tell him how much he meant to me as a songwriter it’s hard, but there you go. So I have one more… Let’s go with John Lennon, he’d be interesting I think.
Mark: He’d certainly have a lot to say.
Hoss: I think he’d be great always acerbic and a bit Bolshie, but there’s nothing wrong with that he was a mixed up cat and a genius at the same time!
Mark: And we got to the end despite all those technical hiccups that we’ll edit out! Everyone from David Coverdale to now you Sir has given us the answer to the easiest question of all – what is the meaning of life?
Hoss: (laughs)
Mark: I think we’re all probably thinking of this a bit more these days
Hoss: (laughs) Try and find happiness wherever you can.
Mark: It doesn’t have to be complicated does it, great answer. Thank you so much for your time today and apologies for all the connection issues.
Hoss: That’s no problem man. There is a brilliant quote from a movie from my favourite Italian, well Sicilian Director who directed ‘The Legend of 1900’ which is an incredible film if you get the chance to watch it and there’s a line in it that goes “You’re never really done for as long as you’ve got a good story and someone to tell it to”
Mark: I love that, so it’s Manassas and The Legend of 1900 for me this weekend! I’m sorted
Hoss: You can’t go far wrong with them.
Mark: And of course a side of ‘Finest Ramshackle Jam’
Hoss: Thank you buddy and for taking the time to have a chat. We’ll speak again I’m sure.
