The long July Sunday afternoon has stretched open with the sense of the familiar, the dog days of August are beginning to bark and whine with canine excitement in the distance and the taste of the future prosperity of the city has become visible as Fredrick’s on Hope Street opens up its doors and the pavement area of Hope Street becomes the playground for the weary and the traffic dodgers.

The thought and themes of Chris Callander’s album Ghosts Of The Old Casartelli fills the mind and wrestles with a past in Liverpool that many new students, many new investors in the city won’t ever get to see. They will read about it of course, should they venture far enough into the annals of Liverpool’s history or get to meet one of the fine noted city historians, but they won’t truly get what built the city on the first place and what kept it going when all was seemingly against it.

Meeting up with the musician behind Ghosts Of The Old Casartelli is nevertheless a personal thrill as his music, like the man himself, is amiable, agreeable to be in the company of, and one that just begs a series of questions of. As the evening air begins to pick up a bit of a breeze, enough to quell the heat slightly that had built up during the day, I ask:

 

The album is called the Ghosts Of The Old Casartelli, what’s that about?

CC: “It’s the Casartelli building at the bottom of Duke Street, which was the home of a family of scientific instrument makers in the 17 and 1800s. The building is still named after them although it was derelict for years. It was the image that the Liverpool Echo used in their ‘stop the rot’ campaign when there was a lot of iconic buildings in the city centre in need of renovation and sadly it was demolished by the developers and the owners of it. Liverpool woke up one morning and it was gone! Which they also did with Josephine Butler House, they took off the listed front of the building and oh sorry, it’s not listed anymore is it?”

That’s the point, isn’t it? The album has that wonderful almost texture-like duality to it. It’s very much like it’s sitting in two separate camps – it’s very new but it’s harking back to a previous time. That’s how it comes across.

CC: “Certainly the tracks that most lend themselves to the are Ghosts Of The Old Casartelli and Back In The Old World as well, where there is a past that’s been reflected on and goes back to the old Casartelli. The spirits inhabiting the building go through this whole process of regeneration and renewal and bewilderment of what’s happening around them and what must they think of the people going into the Posh Pads of a weekend. Back in the Old World is the story of someone who has left this old and quite enriching and rewarding circus-like world in the hope of finding something even better than that and finds themselves in world that’s almost the opposite of the Wizard of Oz in a black and white monochrome world and they can’t get back to that old world.”

It’s almost like the safety element of the black and white of the noir, rather than the complete and utter colourisation of everything, it’s all so busy, it’s harking back to a time when it was all so simple.

CC: “It seems simple and in the old world, it’s a nostalgia, it’s a romantic ideal, there’s a past romance and I guess life can throw you into periods of a time when there is an absence of that and you can wonder if you can ever achieve that again. You can certainly never go back!”

Are you nostalgic?

CC: “It’s an interesting question – am I nostalgic? Yes, there’s always things that I’m nostalgic for – you have a nostalgia for what you did in your 20s and your 30s and you have to look forward, you have to hope that you fill what’s coming ahead with things that you can be nostalgic about.”

That’s interesting as it took a while for the album to come together didn’t it?

CC: “It was a very slow process, the final two tracks were recorded a couple of years ago and I didn’t do anything with them. The other five tracks we did early last year and then revisited them at the end of last year, just really to give them polish. I brought Thom Morecroft in to direct me on the vocals just to give the performances some more life. Thom’s great, he just has so much energy that’s always firing off in so many different directions all at the same time that when it came to recording he was just able to be able to talk in metaphor and story and, like, I go that’s it! John Mac who is producing, even when we were batting big mixes backwards and forwards, just says whether you want it louder or quieter, don’t give me adjectives Chris! So when Thom came in, his face was brilliant!”

Just looking at the list, that’s a great line-up of musicianship you’ve got there! Thom Morecroft, Helen Maher a great accordion player, yourself and the wonderful Steph Kearley on the cello.

CC: “That was the first time I’d worked with Steph and Helen, I’d seen both of them play and they just exceeded all my expectations about what working with other musicians would be like, the textures and the performances they brought, the creativity, the musicality, I was so thrilled listening to what we’d got when they’d left.”

Too often you don’t see the shine of a person’s eyes when they are talking about other musician’s work within the group, it’s very heartening to see!

CC: “It’s a total pleasure to do that. The next batch of songs that will be recorded, already my mind’s starting to turn to what do we bring in, what instrumentation and I’m really excited about what that could be and what people I could bring in.”

Is that likely to be another lengthy process, I don’t mean in a harsh way, I’m thinking more of about momentum really?

CC: “Bringing this album out has given me a renewed sense of momentum. I’ve got a good bunch of songs ready to go to be recorded. I’ve got some strong songs, there’s a couple of songs that I’m writing at the moment that I’m quite excited about and I want it to be a quick approach this time. I learned a lot about recording band versions of songs and bringing in musicians, the bouncing of mixes and developing a language and understanding the language that you need with recording. So I think that will be quicker, I think I’ll be able to say to John we need to do this, we need to do that.”

I think there’s a sense of poetry that runs through all the songs on there, regardless of whether it’s with the musicians or through the way you’ve written them. Are you a big fan of the poetic structure?

CC: “I love great lyrics and I’m such a fan of Tom Waits, his poetry and the whole range of worlds he builds through words and the economy with which he can do it, that storytelling that Bruce Springsteen can do, the heart he can bring to songs. When I’m writing the lyrics come last and they come mostly slowly. They are often structured with diagrams, little squares and triangles represent verses and choruses and middle eights, then I just give myself time to see what’s going to fill in what’s going to go in there. It’s a long time since I’ve done it the other way around.”

How do you see how that compares structure-wise to those musicians who find the lyrics first then the music. Do you find that doing the reverse that the music comes naturally to you?

CC: “I don’t want to ruin the music that I’ve come up with, I sit around on the couch with my guitar and go “I like that” and often I’m writing after I’ve played somewhere and I’ll come back and think I wish I had a piece of music that had this feel or that had that quality so then I’ll be playing around with something that has that so that I’m better equipped and better armed to have songs that will suit different audiences.”

Ian D. Hall

For a review of Chris Callander’s Ghosts Of The Old Casartelli album go to http://www.liverpoolsoundandvision.co.uk/2015/06/06/chris.