When I woke up on Friday at 04:30 it was still dark outside. And I had a banging headache. The hot breath of a Newfoundland in my face didn’t help matters much. Coffee led to a weak effort at trying to figure out how to do something useful. I’d been trying to connect with John MOuse (aka John Davies) for a few weeks for an interview as a follow-up to a recent review I’d written for The Death of John MOuse. I thought dropping him a line might fall in the slightly useful column. I sent John a DM and surprisingly he fired right back.
This was going to be good. I could tell. Misery always loves company.
By 07:00 we were connected via Skype. And by 07:05 I realized that John MOuse is a character that does not exist.
If you’ve seen the video for 'I Was A Goalkeeper', with the spastic, sometimes naked, and some times drooling character, fast shouting anthemic lyrics, and hopping about, you might think John Davies is a talented, but pretty wild fucker. That was the guy I was expecting to interview. But the fellow I chatted with was smart, thoughtful, and soft-spoken, with a very sharp wit. And there was no drooling or leaping around.
“I hate fucking music,” was the first thing John Davies said as the pixels struggled to catch up with some one talking to me from 3000 miles away. That sentiment might explain the anger he’d expressed earlier. In addition to managing a music venue in Porth called The Factory, Davies was also working as one of the organizers for the Rhondda Rocks festival. One of the headlining bands needed him to find a replacement drummer for the show. And time was running out. Yeah, I’d be pissed too.
What quickly became very clear is that John MOuse is just one character drawn from the satchel of a prolific artist (with an advanced degree in creative writing). My imagined John MOuse was a radically different creature from the person that I was Skyping with. I wasn’t talking to John MOuse, because that person from the 'Goalkeeper' video doesn’t exist. That sort of came as a relief, and it also made me respect Davies even more. The John MOuse character that rambles, grouses, and rages through the eleven tracks on The Death of John MOuse is pretty well constructed and extremely believable. His songs are relatable because there are many truths woven together in the tales and characters depicted on the album. I always feel awkward asking people about the truth quotient of their lyrics. But how could I not?
“The album was hard to do. I kind of took the piss out of my family on that album,” he said, adding, “I considered sending my mother a copy with a couple of the songs removed. We did have a hamster named Baldrick, though I don’t know exactly how we disposed of him (a reference to a scene from Robbie Savage). We did sit on the stairs with our legs dangling between the railings, there’s some truth in all of it.”
John Davies is an artist, and John MOuse is just one of several characters he has created over the years. He started writing in 1999, when he was 14. Over the last twelve years Davies has played with Prince Edward Island, released four solo albums under different aliases (JT Mouse and John MOuse), as well as written a novella entitled, The Hospital.
“I worked in a hospital. I made friends with people that were dying.” That line that could have come straight from his song, 'The Teacher'. “The Teacher was written in one go. Then I came up with the guitar riff later.” It must have been easy to write- because he had lived it. And it is the spoken word pieces like The Teacher, the downer Robbie Savage, and the cynical Happy I am Not, that were the easiest to write- it was stream of consciousness. The writing process seems to work two ways for Davies, he either spits it out straight, or takes a more meditative approach. The standout track from The Death of John MOuse, 'I Was A Goalkeeper' followed the latter approach, and took a year to write. “We were just hanging out after a show talking about football, and I said to some one, ‘I was a goalkeeper and then everyone grew tall.’ We laughed about that. Then Phil (Pearce) sent me an email that read: ‘That’s a line’.”
And Davies held onto that line. It might have been in a notebook, or just rattling around in his head. “Then one day I was pushing a pram through a park in Cardiff, when I ran into some one that I had grown up with- who was also pushing a pram. From there, the pieces came together and the song wrote itself. Some songs need to incubate- and then they just pop.”
But even after the songs pop, there can be challenges. “When we recorded 'Goalkeeper', for some reason I was trying to go into a deeper vocal range- I don’t know why, because when I sang the song live, it was totally in the range that finally ended up on the recording. Once I figured that out, I realized that the song really needed two voices, because it’s a story about two people. So we got Gareth from Los Campesinos! to sing the second part.”
While some of the songs come incredibly easy, others require more labor. The shortest track on The Death of John MOuse, 'I’m Waiting for Your Girl' (clocking in at 2:06), was the hardest to write. Actually, he was trying to over-write it. And that was a problem. Because above all else, John Davies is a writer first and a musician second:
“I was trying to write all these different scenarios as to why I would be waiting for your girl, trying to rationalize it and contextualize it- and it all got to be too much. There was too much wordplay. At one point the song was 4-minutes long, so I stripped it down to the basics. It’s my favorite song on the album.”
The more Davies spoke about his writing and recording process, he described a somewhat unique workflow:
“Over the 4-years working on The Death of John MOuse I made demos for 50 songs. And my fucking guitar playing is horrible,” he said with extreme deadpan modesty. Most of the arrangements were performed and recorded by Phil Pearce and Faye Davies (no relation) in London. Davies would make demos at home in Cardiff, some of which consisted only of vocals, and send them to his collaborators. Based on the lyrics Pearce intuitively constructed a sonic framework and a soundscape for the characters to inhabit. Then he would send it back to Davies. Some times Pearce would just say “no- not this one.” And there was a lot of back and forth as each song evolved (or in some cases scrapped). When the score was near complete Davies recorded the final vocals and acoustic guitar in a studio in Cardiff or occasionally went into Pearce’s Crocfingers Studio in London. It’s a workflow that’s only possible via the Internet, and the result of this close collaboration produced a sonically and lyrically stunning album.
But there were some bumps along the way. “I’d originally recorded the demo for 'The Teacher' with just a vocal track this hip-hop beat. I sent it to Phil, and he was distracted by the beat and he didn’t really find it interesting- so we had a hard time figuring that one out. Once we stripped that horrible beat out, it made more sense.” The result is one of the more haunting and minimalist, yet powerful, tracks on the album. The punk/hardcore version of 'IIsa Moor' proved to be another challenge, “It just didn’t fit. We almost left it off.” That was one of several moments during the conversation that my jaw dropped- because 'IIsa Moor' is a killer track.
For some one so creative and prolific, I had to ask: So, what’s next for John MOuse?
“I think the John MOuse music project has run its course, that’s why I called the album The Death of John MOuse. I wasn’t kidding.”
Are you fucking kidding me?
“As a follow up, I’m working on a book tentatively called John MOuse and the Mountain Kingdom. It’s a fictional account of a guy that runs a music venue.” By a guy that happens to run a music venue.
The struggles that all independent musicians face apply to Davies as well. But he’s both adaptable and a mature realist. “No one really gives a shit. I played Green Man in 2011, and playing it this year. The album has had multiple plays on BBC6. But at the end of the day, music is still an industry that’s hard to penetrate. You have to deal with bookers, and pluggers, and hope you get radio play.” There was no anger or attitude in his voice, Davies was just being honest and realistic. Beyond the Green Man festival this weekend, he has no plans, at the moment, to tour in order to promote the album. He’s thinking about writing and doing more spoken-word focused performances and recordings.
Because no one gives a shit.
Luckily enough for Davies, he’s a talented fellow. And while John MOuse, as a character, might soon retire- it’s quite likely that Davies will at some point create a new musical guise (or maybe several). In the meantime, the real guy, John Davies, is managing a music venue, writing a novel, and collecting new lines for song and prose. Then there’s the documentary.
Rehearsal for the Green Man Festival. Photo by Craig Chapman.
It seems that at some point along the way, Davies found himself working for a charity in the tiny nation of Lesotho, creating youth football leagues and fundraising. The country and the culture left a distinct impression on him. So much that he’s made tentative plans to go there in February with Pearce and a videographer. “It’s amazing, they literally take junk and make instruments from it. And the music is incredible. There is nothing like that. I need to document that.”
Remember when I told you that John Davies is a smart fellow? He’s way smarter than John MOuse.
John MOuse will be playing the Green Man Festival on Friday. If you dig the album, or haven’t even heard it yet- go and see him. It might be your last best chance (for now)
