Anyone from Derbyshire familiar with the work of political pop band Chumbawamba have two reasons to rejoice. In December, the band’s Danbert Nobacon will be playing a solo gig with his acoustic guitar in Belper and nearly a week later, an acoustic Chumbawamba will be playing at Derby’s Victoria Inn. As he’s the support act for both concerts, Chris Butler decided to catch up with Danbert himself and find out what’s been happening to our favourite anarchists since Tubthumping hit the charts and that night at the BRIT awards…
This last year has been a quiet year by Chumbawamba’s standards, at least for the 8 piece band we’re usually familiar with. Acoustic Chumbawamba have been out doing gigs featuring four of the band instead and a record A Singsong And A Scrap has just hit the shops comprising of that line-up. I asked Danbert about his year off and if it had been a total break from music…
"After twenty two years, which was pretty full on for long periods of time, with the odd year off here, six months off there, we felt it was time for a longer break. Artistically, it was a case of where the hell do we go from here to make the ‘difficult twelfth album?’ We always try and make each album different from the previous ones and it seemed like time to take a break from the usual approach. Economically, with dwindling record sales and loss making tours we could no longer afford to pay ourselves wages from the financial success of the one hit song, having pretty miraculously done so for the past seven years. At the end of 2004 it seemed like a natural time to diversify and try our hands at other stuff."
Tell me about Acoustic Chumbawamba then Danbert.
"Acoustic Chumbawamba seem more in tune with the times of being able to go out and play to an audience with minimum fuss, whereas the electric band even on a much scaled down basis still requires twelve people on the road."
So has it been a total break from other band members, Chumbawamba business and recording etc?
"We see each other pretty often, and the business side of things ticks over, and needs occasional attention, with anything from a request by Max and Paddy to use the song on their Christmas DVD to people wanting to know obscure details about the keyboard sound on the first album. I am currently (floundering) trying to assemble the releases and catalogue numbers of the tapes we put out on our Sky and Trees cassette label, before we had Agit-Prop Records, for someone who is doing a book on early Anarcho-punk."
So will we see full band recordings and gigs next year?
"No. The electric band is still in deep freeze. The acoustic wing of the band (Boff, Lou, Jude and Neil) have made the record A Singsong And A Scrap. I am currently writing a book and playing solo gigs (I get withdrawal symptoms if I am too long away from performing) and hopefully will record an album next year. Alice is pursuing scriptwriting and I think we’ll probably here more about her in this respect in the future. Dunstan is a full time dad at the moment and Harry is working on some music stuff and DJ-ing."
Can I ask you about the book you’re writing?
"This really is my day job. It’s a history/current affairs book, which grew out of my writings about events since 9/11 which featured on the "This Just In" page of chumba.com and the "Axis Of Dissent" pages of the former chumba.org. It is about why the world is in such chaos, trying to fill in the gaps deliberately left out of the arguments for occupying Iraq. It takes on religions, rock ‘n’ roll, empires, the military industrial fossil fuel complex, suicide bombers from Leeds and why we are rushing headlong towards the point of no return regarding global warming. It’ll hopefully be done next year but no publisher as yet."
Surely it’s been a massive change in the way you work as opposed to writing songs?
"I am doing all my own research so it is painstakingly slow. Having never done it before and it being probably the most difficult thing I could have ever chosen to do. I have had to, and am still evolving my own process. From being perceived to be good at essay writing at school, I was always pushed into more academic subjects and punk rock was my heartfelt reaction against this. So it is with some trepidation I have returned to history after twenty five years away from studying it (I dropped out of Leeds Uni after the first year). That said, I always wrote leaflets and articles as part of what I did for the band, and it just blossomed in the four years of the first Bush term when I wrote monthly articles for the band website."
So do you have time for song writing at all these days?
"Writing new solo songs now often grows out of my research, or is a reaction to it. It is like song writing has become my hobby again, rather than my main line of work, which is very liberating and leads me down all kinds of creative alleyways, from writing modern nursery rhymes to sea shanties set fifty years in the future."
Ok, Danbert. I’ve saved it ‘til last, but can I mention the deputy PM? It was strange seeing you on News At Ten! How was it for you?
"I think it was inevitable that having by complete accident had this hit record, that sooner or later we would run up against the paparazzi. As it turned out, the evening after the Brit Awards we were off to do a tour in Japan, so they only had a few hours to get me. It was completely bizarre being in Heathrow airport with a pack of thirty photographers and TV cameramen following us all the way through check-in procedure until we could get through the departure gate. My parents got the worst of it, the press had been on their doorstep at 8.30am that morning, and had blagged their way in, pestering them for the next week or so as the story began to die out as still being of ‘public interest’."
But in some ways Danbert, wasn’t it what all those years of being in Chumbawamba had been about, kicking up a fuss?
"It was exciting because we had made our mark and shoved a spanner in the spoke of New Labour cosy-ing up to the arts and music industry. If you remember it was the era of Noel Gallagher attending get-togethers at Downing Street and Alan McGhee being involved with government think tanks. It was scary because once the mainstream press got their teeth into it, we knew there was no way we could have any control over how we were going to be represented and mis-represented and quoted out of context, or have completely made-up words put in our mouths. The knock-on effect of this was that we were not asked to come and do BBC Radio stuff for about three years, because the press had created this perception of us as hooligans and thugs. Our US record company did not extend the invite to us to the MTV Video Awards in the US (at which theTubthumping video was nominated) because they were terrified we would pull some similar ‘stunt’"
But it was great to see Prescott drenched in water…
"Of course if we had our time over we would do it exactly the same, if only for the expression on Prescott’s face on the front pages the morning after. As anarchists, the natural cynicism we had about New Labour in 1997-1998 ( the time when they told us "Things can only get better") is now the popular held view of Blair and co. Things got worse, worse and much worse. In the wake of the Iraq war, complete lack of trust in our leaders is now common currency (and their own doing of course) and yet our form of democracy is so obsolete and corrupt that Blair could get re-elected with a mere 22% of Britain’s 44 million registered voters ( that’s less than 1 in 4). It will not get any better as long as the democratic system here is so skewed. Pouring cold water on a government who ceaselessly elevate the interests of privilege and power over everybody else’s is the very least we can do."
Thanks a lot for your time Danbert, I look forward to playing with you in Derbyshire again…
This is Chris.
