11.87°C This Saturday, Colchester Arts Centre hosts another Keep Colchester Cool showcase, bringing together some of the city’s most original and exciting acts. On the line-up: Rev Simpkins, Shed, BIG big SKY and Dean Frost.
Ahead of the show, I caught up with Rev Simpkins to talk about his new album, Headwater, a record that takes listeners on a journey through illness, recovery, and a unique collaboration with his son, Jim. It’s an album that turns hospital wards, hallucinations and hope into stunning songs.
The Album & Sound
Headwater has quite a unique origin story. How did those challenging experiences end up turning into music?
“To be brutally honest, when I started working on Headwater, it appeared that I was dying, and I was just hoping to enjoy my family and music while I could. Making an album was not on the agenda, but using the 10 minutes of energy I might be able to summon each day to do something with music was an act of defiance as well as an act of joy.
I’d had the first of several waves of Meningitis from a rare reaction to treatment for stage IV cancer, and the Meningitis had affected my hearing and eyesight, as well as my cognition and my ability to play. But if I couldn’t play the guitar or the fiddle or whatever, I was still determined to make some sort of music – so I began doing stupid things like trying to make the sound of a squirrel using an 808 drum machine.
I went through periods of recovering and writing, and then getting extremely ill again, but I kept stubbornly focusing on music. Eventually, getting Headwater done became an obsession.”
You used oscillators and synths to recreate some of the sounds you heard while unwell – what was it like trying to capture something as surreal as hallucinations in music?
“I’d had all sorts of hallucinations over a period of months, a few of them were very dark, but mostly I found them hilarious or fascinating. Writing them down wouldn’t have captured them adequately, and I was desperate to remember them, so I turned to the thing I know best, music.
All these experiences had, of course, been accompanied by an endless chorus of bleeping and whirring machines in the wards. So using analogue synths seemed the natural choice as I was able to twiddle knobs even when I couldn’t play other instruments. Actually, I found taking up the bleeps into music really helped me feel better. It turned something that had tormented me when I was in pain, into something that I could control and craft something beautiful from.”
When you and your son Jim sat down to turn those rough sketches into songs, how did the process unfold?
“Jim was very generous and patient with me. Very kind and very patient. And this was during a time that must have been stressful for him. I had recorded hours and hours of strange ambient and electronic soundscapes and sketches. Everything I had done was a mess! There was no form, no words, just great swells of noise and things breaking down and building up again.
I’d say to him things like “this is a song about squirrels” (I’d had a hallucination that Squirrels were brushing my insides clean to make me better). I’d then play him the stupid squirrel noise I’d made and a bass line.
He listened to this nonsense, sat down at his kit and simply began putting grooves over the noises. And it sounded brilliant! What he was playing began to give the songs shapes, and then – as I recovered – I started overdubbing vocals and guitars and pulling everything into shape.
I’ve never worked like this before. I’ve always had all the arrangements in my head before going into the studio – I try to think absolutely everything through. But Headwater was completely different – a collection of weird sounds and pieces that took form from Jim’s grooves and then bloomed into songs.”
Hallucinations & Inspiration
Hallucinations can be unsettling, but also strangely vivid. How did you decide what to carry into the music and what to leave behind?
“A lot made it into the musical sketches; most were fascinating.
I left the darkest ones behind in Side Room 3 of Nayland ward.
Is there one track that really sums up that strange mix of delirium and clarity?
Actually, I think Keep Silence does, even though it’s a sort of ambient take on a 6th-century hymn. When we record it, I couldn’t bring myself to sing the words, so I left it as it is!
Collaboration, Faith & What’s Next
Working with your son Jim on this record must have been special. Tell us about that.
“My whole family are amazing. Martha’s voice was central to the atmosphere of my previous album, Saltings. Jim started playing drums live with me when he was 12! Pissabed Prophet lost its drummer two weeks before our first gig, and Ben Brown said,” Why don’t you get Jim to drum?” I just laughed. And then I realised the genius of it.
Throughout the period when my cancer was spreading, I was determined to share what I could with my kids – I thought that making music and records together would give them something to look back on.
The relationships I’ve built through music have been essential to my keeping going these last few years – I really wanted that for my kids, too.
Jim has a remarkable ear and a natural feel for form and musicality. It’s up to him what he does with his talent! I’ll enjoy listening!”
As both a musician and a priest, do you find those roles overlap when it comes to expressing themes like suffering, hope and recovery?
“Yes, at the core of music and the Christian faith is the acknowledgement that human experience- good and bad – is something meaningful and occasionally transcendent.
Though Christianity has done a depressingly good job of giving the impression that it is a religion obsessed with bedroom ethics and condemnation, I believe it’s really about the beautifully foolish claim that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus offers hope and redemption amid the very real and ongoing experience of human suffering and frailty and death. But, don’t worry, I don’t preach on the record!”
Headwater feels like both a personal milestone and a creative leap. Do you see it as the start of something new musically, or more of a unique moment in time?
“Thank you. It is certainly a personal milestone; I’ll leave others to judge its musical merits! I have now made an astonishing and unpredicted recovery from cancer – my scans have been clear for a year. So, I’m focused on being Vicar of Clacton and Jaywick and trying to show and share gentleness, hope and respect in that place. However, I spent so much on synths when I was ill that I’ll have to do something more with them, otherwise Mrs Simpkins will go ape.”
Finally, you’ve said music became a lifeline during a period of real uncertainty. What would you say to others going through illness about the transformative power of music to bring comfort or hope?
“I’m very wary of offering people advice about illness. All I can say is that I found creativity, friendship, and love (in whatever form I could experience and practice these things during my illness) to remind me each day that I was a human being with an awful lot to be thankful for.
I was determined to give thanks for these things when we thought I was dying, and I’m determined to give thanks for these things now I feel so alive!”
If you want to experience Headwater live, Rev Simpkins will be performing at Colchester Arts Centre on Saturday, 13 September, alongside Shed, BIG big SKY, and Dean Frost as part of the latest Keep Colchester Cool showcase. Tickets are £7, doors open at 7.30pm, and the show starts at 8pm. Get your tickets now via the Colchester Arts Centre website.
