James Hunter is a perfect match for Dan Auerbach’s modernized throwback Easy Eye label. With his reedy, rugged tenor, the the 63-year-old Colchester native is widely considered one of the finest British singers of his generation. Whether he’s dipping into ’50s rhythm ’n’ blues, early rock ’n’ roll or vintage soul, Hunter’s connection to the music always feels effortless and timeless. And he can write and sling some guitar, too.
Off The Fence, Hunter’s 11th studio album and his first for Easy Eye, features a dozen originals. All are flawlessly executed with ample help from the Six, a crack backup unit that includes double-bassist Myles Weeks, drummer Rudy Albin Petschauer, keyboardist/percussionist Andrew Kingslow and sax players Michael Buckley and Drew Vanderwinckel.
Hunter’s relationship with Van Morrison remains stronger than ever. The two first collaborated on a pair of mid-’90s Morrison LPs. He returned the favor in 1996, pitching in on two Bobby Bland classics for Hunter’s …Believe What I Say LP. Thirty years later, Morrison made the most his one-off contribution to Off The Fence. More on that below.
Hunter walks us through Off The Fence.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Two Birds One Stone”
“I overheard my wife, Jessie, on the phone to her old piano teacher—a smashing gent named Jerry Racioppi, known by us as ‘Mister Jerry,’ who also doubled as Jessie’s school bus driver—and he happened to drop this expression into the conversation. I immediately grabbed my notepad. When I first demoed the tune, it was an uninspired 12-bar until I added more melody and a few more words. (Producer) Gabe (Roth) and our drummer, Rudy, added a few nice touches with the stop-time passages at the ends of the verses, making it slightly reminiscent of an early Chuck Jackson tune.”
2) “Let Me Out Of This Love”
“Adding my own backing vocals was fun. There are probably better singers for the job, but they weren’t available—and by doing it myself I was able to dictate the exact feel and texture I wanted. Also, when I sketched out the sax-section phrase that comes after ‘desperate times call for desperate measures,’ I intended the melody to ascend. But the sax players descended into the lower octave instead, improving what I’d written. Thanks!”
3) “Gun Shy”
“Our bass player, Myles, came up with an idea for a song he was going to work on, starting with a title containing the basic concept. In this context, ‘gun shy’ means the narrator is backward in coming forward when it comes to declaring his romantic intentions. I asked Myles if he minded if I wrote it, and he gave permission.”
4) “Believe It When I See It”
“The title pretty much encapsulates the more-than-reasonable premise of the song. When it came time to record my vocals, Andy’s piano launched into a spontaneous call-and-response in the fadeout, unconsciously taking on the likeness of a gospel track and transforming it into a hymn for skeptics.”
5) “Here And Now”
“This is one of those songs that didn’t feel like a trawl to write. Often when a song’s delivery is relatively painless, it’s because it takes on a conversational flow. Other times, you can see where the lack of effort went. I don’t think I’ve used timpani on a track before. For me, it lends that orchestral feel that recalls the Drifters’ Latin-flavored productions of the early ’60s. The most notorious use of the instrument is on their Leiber/Stoller-produced breakthrough hit ‘There Goes My Baby,’ played by a drummer who didn’t know you were supposed to tune it. The resultant cacophony spurred Atlantic boss Jerry Wexler to hurl his lunch at the wall—his uneaten lunch, I hasten to clarify. But it gave the record a hypnotic throb that propelled it into the pop and R&B charts. We tuned our timpani, though.”
6) “Off The Fence”
“A familiar motif in songwriting is to ask decision and commitment of a loved one. It’s a theme I’ve explored, if not flogged to death, many times. It could be argued that most of my songs have the narrator effectively asking the recipient to you-know-what or get off the pot—but never explicitly until now. The slightly Mose Allison-influenced swing style is a bit of a departure for me, as well.”
7) “Ain’t That A Trip (Feat. Van Morrison)”
“This is the result of someone’s suggestion that I write something in the style of Jimmy Reed. It’s rather more verbose than Jimmy’s style, but his heartfelt simplicity isn’t easy to emulate. I asked Van if he fancied doing some vocals on an album track at some point, and he said he would. When I sent the track for him to overdub his vocal, I left it to him to decide which verses to take. The arrangement where I take the first, he takes the second and we split the third is all his idea.
“Thirty years ago, Van turned up at the studio worse for wear after a late night following a double-header with Ray Charles at Albert Hall. He coughed his way through the first take of the first song, and the second take was pure gold. After he left, the engineer marveled at the consistency of his mic technique, describing him as having a built-in compressor. I’ve tried to emulate this ever since. The songs we did were Bobby Bland covers because, at that time, none of my own songs particularly tickled him. I must’ve gotten better at it.”
8) “One For Ripley”
“Most older listeners will be familiar with Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, in which we’re invited to marvel at various incredible feats and miracles of nature like the dog-faced boy—or a man, disillusioned from seeking his fortune, returning to the arms of a loved one.”
9) “Trouble Comes Calling”
“A shopping list of good-luck symbols, wishing wells, gravy trains, ships coming in, four-leaf clovers, bowls of cherries and rabbits’ feet—with their murky opposites lying in wait in the shadows. My mum wasn’t familiar with the ‘monkey’s paw’ reference, so I gave her a quick rundown of W.W. Jacobs’ chilling short story of wishes granted at a horrific price.”
10) “Particular”
“While we were rehearsing this, Andy said, ‘Blimey, James. You’ve written a standard!’ That was a proud moment for me. The feel I was going for was ‘Great American songbook meets dour North East Essex carrot cruncher.’ Saying something is lovely if you’re not all that ‘partic’ler’ is a style of damning with faint praise peculiar to the region of my birth. Mr. Kingslow’s piano solo is absolutely breathtaking if you’re not … You know what.”
11) “A Sure Thing”
“I recorded the first demo for this while on tour, on my portable eight-track in a hotel room in Philly, using the waste basket for percussion. It was Jessie’s and my sixth anniversary, and as well as going out to dinner, we celebrated this romantic occasion by smacking the backside of a plastic bucket into a microphone. For some reason, I keep anticipating the phrase, ‘We’re so close to that winning post,’ to come out as ‘linen post’—possibly because laundry becomes such a major preoccupation on the road.”
12) “Only A Fool”
“This was the first song I wrote out of this new batch. I was sitting on the back porch of my in-laws’ place in New Jersey, willing myself to come up with something. It’s also my first song as a nonsmoker, proving that a pack of 20 isn’t the invaluable songwriter’s tool I used to think it was.”
See the James Hunter Six live.
