Greg Tutwiler interviews music personalities for a podcast called Americana Music Profiles. Here he chats to Jeff about the HERE & NOW album.

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GT: For more than 50 years, Jeff Christie is still writing and recording and is excited to join us to talk about his latest album, Here & Now.
   Jeff, I appreciate you making the connection across the river here and I am speaking to you in the United Kingdom. Is that correct?

JC: Yeah, I'm up in Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I was born in Yorkshire, in a town called Leeds.
   I've kind of lived here most of my life, apart from the time when I moved down to London. And in 1970, when things really took off for me in a big way. And for the next few years, I lived in LA for about 15-16 months, and then I moved back to the UK and I came back up to Leeds and I'm still here.

GT: So you started as a young child, in your early teens playing music and finding an interest in that.

JC: I started earlier than that because I started doing piano lessons when I was probably maybe 8 or 9. That's when I first started, but music hit me very powerfully when I was younger than that because my mother was very musical. She was very much into the classics, and the great composers, opera and ballet. And my dad was probably much more of a music enthusiast, Sinatra, Crosby and people like that, and often took me to this park in Leeds called Roundhay.
   In those days, they had brass bands playing, and Victorian follies. Beautiful pop. And my mom used to tell me that she couldn't drag me away. You know, they broadcast the bandstand and the brass band would be playing and I'd be mesmerised. So that's when it must have started. When music really hit me. You know, the power of music and the magic and how enchanting it is.

GT: When did you become fascinated with songwriting?

JC: I started playing in groups when I was about 14. I think it was in my first group and from about 14 to about 17, we were playing gigs around the country, we got to a couple of record auditions. This is in this sort of mid 60s.
   We failed them and the A&R man at one of these sessions approached me afterwards and said it's a good band you got, but you gotta be doing the original material not, not covers, which is what we were doing.
   We came back from that audition and we discussed it amongst the group and it kind of fell to me. I'm not sure what it was because I was more driven, perhaps. Given I was very much the engine of the group, I used to get all the cover songs, get the records and write the words down.
   Also, I think that other people just couldn't be bothered and I had the ability because I had been doing these piano lessons quite a few years earlier.
   It dawned on me one day, I think that, you know, I was sort of looking at the piano and I'm thinking, what is the point of me trying to play this stuff written by these geniuses, I'm never going to be able to play it like them and think like them, so I would kind of wander off and start making up little tunes. And I think that's probably the genesis of me becoming a songwriter by default.

GT: Most people know your signature song Yellow River and that became a hit for the band after your own namesake Christie. There's a neat back story on how you came to record that instead of another that you pitched it to. When did you write this particular song? Is there a story behind the song itself?

JC: Yeah, absolutely. There is a story. Well, by 1967, I had already built up quite a repertoire of songs 68 and you know I had had a couple of records out previously with a band called The Outer Limits. We toured with Hendrix and the Pink Floyd on a big package tour.
   So 66-68 was a fantastic period for music, right? And I'd be listening as a writer and also listening heavily to a lot of great songwriters of the time. There's just too many to mention.

Jeff out front of The Outer Limits.

   I also was listening to people like Jimmy Webb, and I became a real big fan of his. And I loved his songs, his music and especially with Glenn Campbell.
   And I really loved the song Galveston. But at the same time, as I heard that song, I figured it was loosely about the American Civil War. It was. It was pointing to that, you know.
   Around about that time I was quite fascinated by the event as I was also by the whole story of America and the Native American tribes. To this day, I still a very big affinity and interest in that.
Documentaries about the Civil War and jazz and a few other things. And I just, I found that very informative and I loved it. So I had this head start already in a way.
   That's how I came to write Yellow River because as a songwriter you're listening to other people's songs all the time and you can't help but be influenced by things. And you obviously try not to copy other people because you're trying to make your own imprint.
   But you can't help it. I mean, we're all magpies, really. We're all borrowing from everybody else. If you think about the Western scale, there's 12 notes in it. How many songs have come out of those 12 notes? The the mind boggles. And there'll be a part of one particular song that you'll think, where have I heard that before?
   With Galveston, I remember thinking I wish I'd have written that song. From that comes that that impetus to try and write well, your own Galveston, your own Strawberry Fields or whatever it is. I think that's how something like this works.

GT: Well, you certainly certainly achieved that goal from the outside looking in, with that song ending being at the top of the charts. I think it was 26 countries. It certainly resonated with the listener, that's for sure. And I love the lyrics. I I didn't realise until I listened to the lyrics and read that the subject of that song was truly about a soldier trying to find his way home at the end of the war, and it just adds a layer of fascination for me, living in the part of the United States where the Civil War was pretty prominent.

JC: Well, the interesting thing is that in in the States, it was thought of as the Vietnam war.
   I suppose that any song that's got a war theme to it, if you like, the listener will just put on their own interpretation on it, and at the time, Vietnam was still happening. But I was writing about a distant time, not really about Vietnam.
   I would get messages from Vietnam vets saying how much it resonated with them and that it was a song that was played a lot out there, you know, for the soldiers in Vietnam and I felt very sort of touched by that. Because I think if a song helps soldiers to connect with their homeland, especially if they're away … we can't imagine what it must been like to be in their shoes.

GT: So that was obviously 1970. Your career continued and there were some different iterations of the band, bringing us forward to modern times when you've been writing and recording.

JC: I have dry periods where I may not be writing much and then suddenly there's this rush and and they're just pouring out at me. I don't try and force it. I can be somewhere and then suddenly something will come into my head or it'll be a spark. You hear people say things. Someone will say something. Or I'll read something in a newspaper headline.
   I would be listening almost on a subconscious level properly and I could be with a load of people and then I just kind of blank out. Somebody would say something and I think, oh, that's a good line I could use.
   Later when I get home, I just have that one line that somebody said and I'd sit down with the guitar or piano, and it would all flow from there.

GT: You have a new single and a new album.

JC: I don't really get too excited these days. But in in a way, I am because this album has been a combination of probably about three to four years at least. These songs are newish, as opposed to new. There are also songs which were first recorded way back but which I wanted to rework.
And they sit quite nicely with the rest of the songs.

GT: When we had lockdown, you had to work remotely a lot, which was kind of very, very difficult in some ways.

JC: It was very interesting because it allowed me to work at a much slower pace and I think, you know, different from the old days when you used to, when I used to have a band and we'd rehearse things and going in the studio and even after that when I was on my own, I would write songs and then get into the studio and work with a couple of guys and then just build the tracks up myself and with the drummer and the bass player.
   I always like to do that as much as I can myself, if I can get a tune out of something, and a lot of these this album I've done a lot of myself: a lot of the instrumentation, 90 per cent of the vocals, even the backing vocals, and that's what I really enjoy. I just lose the time if I get in the studio and    I've got a song to work on. It's a fascinating process.
   It's a bit like a building: you know, you start with your foundations and put the walls in and then carpets and the furniture. And that's, you know, all the artists who would be painting. You start off with a sketch and then you build up on that sketch and in music it's sort of like that.
   But it's a fascinating journey. You can go down one route and you think this isn't working and then realise there are so many other ways you can work a song.
   With the song, you can change it and move it around. And I I had this one particular song from the album that springs to mind.
   It was a single that was released by Christie in the 70s called Man of Many Faces.
   I completely reworked that and it's just totally different. I used different chords, I used almost not a different time signature, but a complete different rhythm. So the whole rhythm section was different and you know quite a challenge, but I really enjoyed doing that and it it's almost like a different song. I'm really happy with how it's turned out.

GT: Do you have a plan for getting out with this new album and sharing it in some sort of tour or stage show or something like that?

JC: Well, not at the moment. I think sort of working live and touring is kind of hard now for so many reasons. You know, financially, it's very difficult to sort of put tours together and put the band together. I don't have a band as such anymore and I think I just prefer working like this. Now I can work from home a lot … and I work with work with some guys locally. And also if I need anybody to do any session work, I can just call them up, and tell them what I want. You don't even have to be in the same room. That's how technology is.
   So many people don't go into offices anymore. They all work from home and I think that goes right, right across the board.
   It's just the way of the way of working now and it seems to suit me.
   In terms of touring and playing, I don't know. We'll have to see the TV and radio and interviews and if they work pretty well, I think I'm just happy to keep writing and making music and putting it out there.

GT: How can folks hear the new music and reach out to you? Is there a way to do that? The best way to do that?

JC: Well, yeah, I have a website and its jeffchristie.com and things seem to get up on there. It's handled by a guy in Australia who's a big a big fan and he knows more about me than I do!