There are times in life when you come across an artist who offers a message that is captivating, intriguing, strewn with pathos and littered with so much meaning that it would take many more phone calls in which to get all the questions that want to ask of them. The type of artist who answers a question with such honesty that you yearn that you could just keep the conversation going for longer than the required time.
For Kenneth J. Nash, the last year has seen him release his latest album, The Fall of Eden, to great acclaim and it is praise that is fully deserved. A veteran of the music scene, Mr. Nash is preparing for his latest round of gigs and takes his preparation very seriously. To be able to chat to him before he leaves for the gig is not only a pleasure but also an honour. With only a limited time in which to ask him about The Fall of Eden and reflections of it, it is with a sense of trepidation in which I ring him, not because of the artist, but because in one of those moments of clarity, it becomes understandable that you are eating into someone’s very precious time.
Congratulations on the album, it was a tremendous listen.
KN: “I’m glad you enjoyed it!”
Very much so, it’s an album which has a storybook feel to it, a collection of narratives. Is that what you set out to achieve?
KN: “Kind of, yeah, that’s my writing style, that’s how I try to do it, I tend to think of a story to write and try to put it into context. A story that’s accessed for other reasons other than from what the story was written about. For example, Carol Ann was written about my mum and it’s a song for her. So yeah I guess narrative is the way I use. I guess I used to write by disguising it, by writing from other people’s perspectives. More recently though I’ve been influenced by some artists who don’t follow that route, who just write from their own perspective and seeing them doing it, made me want to do it myself. So I said let’s forget all this he said and she said stuff and I’ll say I said… The writing’s authenticity is then increased which is what I’m after. Every time I write, it’s got to be authentic, it can’t be made up, it can’t be imagined, it has to be real, good or bad. That’s the sort of style I’ve arrived at.”
It’s almost as if you’re harking back to the Confessional poets of the 50s, 60s and 70s – people like Anne Sexton for example, Allen Ginsburg or Robert Lowell, it just seems like you’ve gone into those sort of realms.
KN: “It’s funny as I’ve been quite accepted by the bards and spoken word societies. I perform very often at bardic evenings and festivals. I guess my religious songwriting came out of my poetry and that’s reflected in it. Often I’ll write a piece of poetry first and sometimes I’ll make it into a song, not all of them are but some of them do and those which don’t. If I’ve got a nice bit of prose that I can’t get into a song that works, I’ll wait and I’ll read a book and two years later I’ll think, hang on, I had a very good piece of descriptive prose here about this exact situation but in a different song, I’ll borrow from the one that hasn’t made it into the song and I’ll use it in the one I’m doing, it’s as simple as that. It’s kind of regurgitating some of the descriptive elements, not the stories as such but I tend to write a poem about a story and leave it at that and then if it doesn’t work, then I’ll move onto another story. I don’t tend to go over the same stories again, once I’ve written that piece then I’ll move onto another one, to the next thing.”
I like that intensely. I love the way that you explained that. It takes an extraordinary mind to make that leap from turning out a piece of poetry or prose into a song and capturing more of the imagination.
KN: “To me it’ just happened one day, I tried it, it worked and so I just repeated the same process. Then after a few years, I changed the formula and started with pieces of music and then tried to write a poem to fit a piece of music, I’ve done that as well, so I’ve done it both ways. I think the best songs that I’ve done or the ones that really connect are those ones that started out as poems because I had no inclination to write a song about them. I just had to put these thoughts into words and so then changing those words into a song, you have to do a bit of editing out of your favourite lines and it’s painful but very often I’ll write five or six verses but only three will make it to a song otherwise the song would be eight minutes long!”
Then you’re delving into the world of progressive Rock! That’s very cool as it sort of ties in very neatly with the album title – the thought of redemption and loss in the Eden album and the way that you describe your songs, if I may say so, gives a melancholic overtone to it all.
KN: “I don’t find songs I hear on the radio particularly joyous. If though you hear a song and you can appreciate what’s being said, the words that they use then it has so much more resonance. Although saying that I’m a huge Leonard Cohen fan and he’s got the ability to write really emotional songs from not particularly from his perspective and that’s what I aspire to be. At the moment, I’m concentrating on what I can do and sort of specialise in it.”
You’ve explained obviously the idea behind Carol Ann and my apologies for that as it’s a testament to you as it comes across as quite a delightful song in a way.
KN: “It’s a celebration of love I suppose in a way. It’s the sorts of things that I wanted to say to my mother if I didn’t have the time for me to tell her, she’d hear them, you know what I mean? I just thought I’ve got to put all my feelings out into something that’s going to last forever as a special dedication to her really. I write these songs all the time, whether or not they see the light of day is another matter. With Eden though, they are all meant to be on there, there’s nothing left out.”
It sounds as though you’re trying to say that music and poetry are never completed works because life is never complete, does that make sense?
KN: “That’s exactly right! There’s bound to be more things happening in the future. There are things that come to me all the time and I think should I write about them. For me it’s all about emotions so I guess for the moment, all my songs will be about love and the loss of love. Slowburn is a song that I wrote to celebrate the fact that someone stood by me all the time when I was at my lowest ebb and helped me through it – that’s a celebration of love in a positive context. If you listen to the words though, it takes you into the negative areas.”
Ian D. Hall