The Northern Echo: Hi David, nice to have you back.

David: Yeah, nice to be back. Thanks for having us.

The Northern Echo: Absolutely, it’s kind of like a revival watching you guys play, you’ve got everybody singing on stage. It feels like you’ve brought a choir on tour with you.

David: That’s the idea and I think once I’d made the record and there were these sort of…all the vocal textures are so integral to the character of the thing, that had to be represented. So I went on a little tour just before Christmas in Ireland and sort of started to build a bit of a choir.

The Northern Echo: You’re also doing something somewhat audacious on this tour. You start off with a new song and then you actually continue to play new songs. You play the entire record first and the thing is, you’re not just playing the new record in support of a new record. The album hasn’t come out yet, so you’re really kind of trusting that the audience is going to be okay with the entire album before you play songs they’re familiar with. That’s not a decision a lot of artists would feel comfortable making.

David: Yeah, I think it’s several key things. It’s a statement of intent but if the faith wasn’t there in the music and the songs I would never attempt such a thing but it feels like the beginning of a new era. This is the season of renewal for me.

The Northern Echo: Having listened to this record it is clear you’re presenting a different version of David Gray. Were you bored with where you at creatively before this record? Were you frustrated? Where’s this coming from?

David: I think when you make records one after the other obviously you finish one, you have ideas in your head but every now and again you end up down a bit of a cul-de-sac that’s inevitable. You learn ways of making music and you accomplished at doing that and so you fall into a rhythm but suddenly where I was at, on every level, the sort of crucified middle aged man posture. I was sick of that. I was sick of the usual path past the usual trees in my creative landscape, I had to find a new way. I think I’d said all I had to say. That’s how it felt.

The Northern Echo: Was that a scary place to be in? It sounds like a scary place for a guy whose bread and butter is writing songs.

David: I was wary of the tortured artist, exhausted performer routine. Obviously touring and stuff does take it out of you so trying to live a family life, trying to get this impossible balance all the time. I don’t know whether that was a part of it, I felt like I was at the end of something. It was a testing period and the record that I wanted to make had several false starts. I tried something different, then something more familiar. Neither of those felt right. Something again, that didn’t work either. It was about getting the right person. We can talk about my work but I guess it was me as a person as well.

The Northern Echo: Now where’s the line between getting inventive that way and overthinking the simplicity of a song?

David: The line that I always trot out is ‘If that’s how you want the song to be’ – if I were producing someone else, they’re clinging insecurely to the thing they think is The Song the pure artist statement I’d say – ‘Alright, you’ve got that. That’s yours; you can go home with that one. Let’s try and build something else and if you don’t like it at the end of the week, we go back to the one you had’. What’s to be lost? But it’s a scary place to walk out into, if someone starts cutting the floor out from under you and that is very much what happened in the making of the record.

The Northern Echo: Yeah, tell me about the making of the record because this is apparently, this was like World War Three making this record. It’s a guy named Andy Barlow…

David: Yeah, he was in a band called Lamb, an electronic kind of band that did pretty well. He’s sort of gone off on the production thing now. He’s early in his producer career.

The Northern Echo: And he’s not that well known as a producer.

David: No.

The Northern Echo: So why did you choose him?

David: My manager’s instinct was something good could happen, I was looking at bigger name producers but you’re always fitting into someone’s schedule. I need someone who’s sort of going to spend some proper time and I could tell he had the keys to the city, the world of sound. He had a real take on things. He got me to double track everything, which I was a bit like ‘Oh God’. I literally yawned the first time he said that.

The Northern Echo: What difference did Andy Barlow make to the record stylistically?

David: Andy made a huge impact to the sound of the record. Myself and the band provided the songs, playing and instrumentation, the sound was all his. An awful of the lot of the work that we did on the songs was about simplifying them musically and instrumentally; basically emptying them out and creating the space in order that something else could happen.

The Northern Echo: What else is going on other than the record (talk about the tour)?

David: Apart from the imminent release of Mutineers the main things that are happening are huge amounts of promotional activity (press and radio interviews, filmed or recorded acoustic performances for various media partners, TV appearances) and live shows. I am just about embark on a UK tour which includes some Irish festival dates, this is followed by a five week tour of the USA ending early September. Beyond that there is the iTunes festival at the Roundhouse in London and further tours of Australia and Europe currently being pieced together. Busy times.

The Northern Echo: Any particular future plans for studio stuff/other projects?

David: There were an awful lot of songs left over from the recording of Mutineers. I would love to steal a week or three at some point to try and record at least some of them with the new band. I also have a hankering to cut an alt country style record out in Nashville. I would imagine that I might be busy Mutineering for quite some time though...... Will probably need to stop and breathe and catch up with family and friends at some point in the near to mid future too!