Newton Faulkner On New Album, Fatherhood, And Being Thrown Out Of A Bar Actually Playing 'Dream Catch Me'

Newton Faulkner: 'Thrown Out Of A Bar Playing My Song'

Next time you're wading through your next mud-bath of a music festival, bewailing the Jetstream as you wring out your tent and watch the wheels spinning on your campervan, spare a thought for the artists themselves.

As Newton Faulkner tells me, "You have to keep smiling. If your heart sinks... then everyone's screwed."

Newton Faulkner - follows two codes, he says - that of the ginger, and that of the dred

And it seems Faulkner now comes prepared:

"I've been caught out so many times. So now I've got my yellow fisherman's trousers, and I wear them all the way up to the stage, I can crawl through four feet of mud to get there, and you'd never know."

Faulkner is a veteran of the festival circuit, from long before the "overnight success" (four years of work before that, he tells me) of Dream Catch Me brought him mainstream success. What does catching a musical wave like that feel like?

"I went to a bar with some friends," he remembers. "And the bouncer didn't like my face, he told me 'no trainers' even though there were loads of trainers going in and out.

"So all my friends went in, and I was sitting on the wall outside. It started to rain, and then they started playing Dream Catch Me, and I thought, 'well, doesn't that just sum it up?'"

Faulkner's new work has been influenced most significantly by becoming a father.

"As everyone tells you but you don't really believe, it isn't just about me anymore," he explains. "I've always been aware of the effect music can have on people, but I've become even more - it sounds horribly pretentious - aware of how it reflects on my son, and the prospect of having a legacy. There's definitely a new sense of responsibility."

Does Faulkner think there's a potential Dream Catch Me level of hit on the new album, Write It On Your Skin?

"Well, people have already picked up on Clouds," he says. "I'll be intrigued to see what people think of Pick Up Your Broken Heart."

Faulkner is perfectly happy with his level of fame, where the only strange looks he gets are when fans spot him on the way to his own gigs - on the tube, "why not?" - or when he tries to buy CDs of his own albums for his friends in record shops.

"They look at me kind of strangely, and I hear myself say, 'It's for a friend.'"

Write It On Your Skin is available now. Here is Clouds below...

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