Norman Blake
Norman Blake
Known for being one of the leading figures in the bluegrass revival of the 1970s.
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth10 March 1938
classic fans genuine indie liked met played records
We played with Superchunk on our first American tour. We've always liked the records they release. They're a good, classic indie label, and they're genuine fans of music. And they're really just as enthusiastic about it as they were when we first met them.
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We're so much happier now. We were in a position we didn't want to be in, dealing with labels that didn't know what to do with us. This album is on our own label, and we're responsible for every aspect of the release.
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When I was a kid I listened to a lot of punk music, but then along came Orange Juice, ... They really broadened my musical perspective. They were self-deprecating and had a great sense of humor. And they sounded like Velvet Underground meeting Al Green. They called themselves 'the sound of young Scotland,' a play on Motown's 'Sound of Young America.'
happy level success
We're pretty happy with the level of success we have now.
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We do hope people like what we do, but you certainly can't expect people to buy your record. But we've been pretty lucky. I'm not complaining.
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Unfortunately, I believe that we were uninformed because management and outside experts who reported to us failed to do their jobs and give us full, complete information.
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With some of our previous records, we had songs with 14 vocal tracks and three pianos. We just wanted to strip some of that back and make a record we could (easily reproduce) live. And we achieved that. We were just in London and played the album from start to finish.
melody pressure
There's more pressure on the melody when you don't have all the embellishments,
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On the other hand, there's never pressure on one person to come up with an album's worth of songs every year, ... We only have to concentrate on four or five songs each. It's something we're all comfortable with; some other people wouldn't be. We're not very confrontational people; we like things to go smoothly.
arrange guys john start
Right from the start John said, 'Look, you guys have been doing this for years, so I'm not going to tell you how to arrange things,'
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All you can do is make the records, and hope a group of people will pick up on it, and it will become the received wisdom that that's the record to buy, ... Because that's kind of how the music business works, isn't it? You think of the Coldplay record or something like that. The received wisdom is that you should have that on your coffee table, if you buy one record every two months or whatever.
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That sounds too much like hard work for us.