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When you first hear Ian Roberts’ “Sweetlove Butterfly,” you know you’re on to something special. It has sweet, Beach Boys-like harmonies and a lilting guitar. Imagine a Henry Gross for the 2010s.
The Londoner is a throwback to an era when songs and melodies mattered. In a perfect world, “Sweetlove Butterfly” would be blaring from a car radio … on your way to the beach.
Meet Ian Roberts.
HOMETOWN: Born in Greenock, Scotland, but moved to England as a kid, live in London.
ALBUM / EP: “Come Outside and Play”
FIRST SINGLE: “Sweetlove Butterfly”
[soundcloud params=”auto_play=true&show_comments=true&color=0ac4ff”]https://soundcloud.com/ianrobertsmusic/sweetlove-butterfly-ian[/soundcloud]
LABEL / RELEASE DATE: Our Little Label, released on the 17th March 2014
WEBSITE: www.ianrobertsmusic.org
REVERBNATION: www.reverbnation.com/ianrobertsmusic
DESCRIBE YOUR MUSIC: “Fresh and new pop with more than just a hint of instant familiarity, full of lush harmonies and sing-a-long melodies, the sound of the summer …”
SO … WHAT’S YOUR STORY, MORNING GLORY?: “I’ve been a musician all my life, and singing since I was a kid, although I’m a latecomer to releasing my own solo music. I grew up with music all around me, like I said, my Mum was a singer, and I’m from a Scot/Irish background so music was always played in our home; my Mum was always singing around the house, and we had family and friends over most weekends for a singsong, everyone sang, everyone had their own song, mine was ‘Danny Boy’ and Michael Jackson’s song ‘Ben,’ and from a young age my Mum and Dad took us to clubs where we’d get to hear lots of bands playing, there would be Irish bands, covers bands, all sorts of bands, and of course we’d hear my Mum singing.
“I picked up my first guitar at 14, I sat in my bedroom with a chord book and taught myself, I listened to the radio and I picked out the chords for the songs I loved, I learnt my craft by listening to the greats. I’d try singing note for note with them and I’d listen out for all those beautiful harmonies and backing vocals, and I’d practise singing them, learning them, I still do, I love that part of learning new things and new sounds in music. But then like every other teenage boy I discovered girls and nightclubs, and for that you need to have money, so off I went to get a ‘proper job’ and I stayed doing that for a few years, I’d still play my guitar and sing in my bedroom but I needed to work my ‘proper job’ so that I could go out partying. It wasn’t until I left my hometown that I finally decided to join a band and then I realised that my music was actually where the best parties were always going to be, my party was on stage. Once I knew that I was properly hooked, I never looked back, I was in love with playing music. I played in a few cover bands at first, and then I eventually got together with a really good friend of mine called Lee Ross who was writing some of the best songs around, so we started gigging together as a duet, doing a two vocal, two guitar type sound, we would play local bars calling ourselves ‘Everything but the Amp.’ We played on top of pool tables and on small stages in pubs and bars, it soon grew and we had to plug in to get heard over an audience that grew from just a few listeners into packing out clubs and bars all over London. This soon morphed into a band called Listen with Mother, adding new faces to the band, and we did really well, the musicians in that band were unbelievably good, for example our keyboard player was Matt Hartley who had previously played with The Cure, so we toured all over the U.K. and Europe and loved every minute of it, but sometimes these things have to come to an end, we all had other journeys to walk.
“I started to busk with some friends in London and pretty soon it grew into a great cooperative of musicians, we’d busk in bandstands and at markets places, it was a massive amount of fun. Sometimes there would be just five of us other times there could be 25 of us, we’d sometimes have a triangle player as well as a guitar player, a French horn player as well as a percussionist, lots of guitars, ukulele’s and mandolins, bongos and congos and shakers everywhere, just loads of like-minded musicians in one place, and lots of singers, almost everyone sang, everyone who came along had a part to play equally. It was brilliant, we called ourselves The Souldiers of Love, and then out of that we put a new band together, we were getting offers of decent sized gigs and the smaller sized festivals, so we all enjoyed gigging and playing for a few years doing that, and then it ran its course. Everyone started to get busy doing other things, but it’s something I’d love to get going again one day. I’m trying to keep the spirit of that going, the new band I’m now putting together are called Ian Roberts and The Souldiers of Love.
“So just as that was coming to an end, my wife and I decided to move to a warmer climate; the kids were still young enough so we thought we’d give it a try, it was while we were living in Portugal that I started writing new, and finishing off, some of my songs that I always felt were too soft for playing in the band, so I returned to some old stuff that I was never confident enough to play to anyone else. I suppose by moving away from London I had given up on the dream, and so I was now writing just for me, and I was only ever going to play the new songs to my wife and kids, so it was easy to relax and enjoy the songwriting and the songs without any of the doubts that can creep in. Pretty soon, my wife said that these new songs were better than anything I had ever done, so I played them to a few friends, they all agreed. We moved back to England and I continued to write (about 50 songs in the last three years) and I played the new style songs to a few friends in the business, and they all loved the new songs too, so we decided that I’d get into the studio. I met up with Tristan Ivemy who is one of the best producers in the country (he produced Frank Turner, amongst many others) and Tristan loved my sound too, we got on well, so we booked into The Church Studios in London (owned by David Gray) and went about recording four of my new songs. It’s a real pleasure to work with Tristan, he’s such a cool guy and an unbelievably talented songwriter and musician himself. We’ve become good friends, and hopefully soon we’ll be back in the studio together to do a full album.
“I must also mention this: Recently I was also given artist support by Marshall Amps, which means they give me lots of Marshall gear for when I play live and record in the studio, they loved all the new songs and offered me the support, which speaks volumes how good Marshall are. I’ve grown up using their gear and looking at all those wonderful posters with people like Jimi Hendrix using a Marshall Amp, so the association with them is just brilliant for me.”
WHAT WAS YOUR MANIFESTO FOR THIS ALBUM?: “I really wanted to show what I could do as a songwriter, I wanted to show that I could write in different styles and genres but still maintain my sound, The Beatles always done that, they could write a song over church organ music or German ooh pah pah, they could do ’50s teenage love songs or right up to date late ’60s psychedelic music and make it sound fantastic, but you’d still know it was them, it was still The Beatles sound, they always maintained that, they just wrote in many, many different styles and genres, and that stands them out amongst most other bands.
“Sadly all too often nowadays artists and bands release an album where almost every song sounds pretty much the same, so I wanted to get as far away from that as possible but in doing so I still wanted to maintain my own unique sound, I wanted to fill the songs with harmonies and backing vocals like I used to listen to, I wanted to give any listeners a massively uplifting summer feeling, and I think we have achieved that, and more. So this new EP is to show what I can do. Some friends and I got together and released it on our own label called Our Little Label and it’s been getting loads of airplay all over the world, and I’m delighted with that, the feedback has been brilliant, everyone seems to love the new songs, but it’s difficult to get airplay on the big mainstream radio stations without a major record label behind you. It’s a sad fact of life nowadays, so the next step has been talking with management and labels to try and get the right kind of deal that suits us. Some really good people in the business are saying that my music doesn’t need an image, that it is all about the sound, and that if someone heard it whilst driving in their car they wouldn’t care who it was or how the singer looked, all they would want to do is turn it up loud and feel the fresh new sound of the summer … So getting to the big mainstream radio stations would seem like a good idea, and probably our next step forward.”
BEST GIG YOU’VE HAD SO FAR?: “Since recording the new EP I have been going out on my own playing acoustic sets, everyone seems to love it, and it’s great fun, but it’s not the same as playing with a band, so I’m just putting a new band together now, and at rehearsals when it clicks there is no better feeling in this world. … But the best gig I’ve ever played in my life so far has to be a gig we played at The Limelight Club in London many years ago. We had just got going with a new band we had called Listen with Mother, the songs were brilliant, we had rehearsed ourselves almost to death, and we were ready to hit the road, DreamWorks had flown over from the USA to listen to us, so we arranged a London gig at The Limelight and when we walked out on stage it was packed to the rims, a massive cheer and roar came flowing over all of us, and from the very first note we knew that we were going to have a great night. There were moments that night when we looked at each other with tears in our eyes and we all understood that this is exactly why we do this, it’s for this feeling, and this feeling alone, it’s for the tingles all over our bodies and for the tears in our eyes. It’s a beautiful thing, and I’m looking forward to having those same feelings with the new band when we get out and start touring together real soon.”
FIRST ALBUM YOU EVER BOUGHT?: “Once again I was lucky that my parents bought lots of records and albums, so I really didn’t have to buy my own when I was real young, I’d mention that I liked an album and my Mum and Dad would go out and buy it when they were buying theirs. But the first album that I bought on my own was ‘Ooh La La’ by The Faces, I loved The Faces (and The Small Faces before them) … I seen the album in a record store, it had a man’s head and shoulders on the front cover, he looked a little like Fred Astaire in top hat and bows, when I picked up the album I realised that I could play with it, the cover allowed you to bend the sleeve so that the man’s face moved, the chin would pop out and this guys teeth would stick out, and the eyes would move too, I was fascinated by that alone, I was only a kid, really young, so I kept playing with it until the man behind the desk said “are you going to buy that or play with it all day” I bought it with the pocket money that I had saved for weeks, and I still have the album today.”
FIRST CONCERT YOU EVER WENT TO?: “I grew up watching bands in the clubs that my Mum and Dad took us to, and the first gig I went to with friends was to see a few local punk bands at the nearby college, it was great, the energy was brilliant, even if the sound wasn’t…. But the first proper gig that I went to was to see The Faith Brothers, we got a coach to a town about 100 miles away, when the band first came on stage I was blown away by their sound, and at how good they were, the vocals were brilliant, the playing was bang in time, they were so tight, and so full of energy and excitement. I was in love with them, they were my new favourite band. I bought every album, even the T-shirt … This story has a wonderful twist to it that happened only a few years ago:
“Because many years after first going to that concert a friend of mine played Billy Franks (the lead singer and songwriter for The Faith Brothers) my song ‘Sweetlove Butterfly,’ I had only recently recorded it on my mobile phone with a little studio app at that point, but Billy Franks adored it, he got in touch and told me that he thought it was the best song that he had heard in at least 10 years, I can’t tell you how wonderful that made me feel, I had bought all their albums when I was young teenager, I seen them play live a fair few times, so coming from Billy that was a real lift to my confidence as a songwriter, I felt I was on the right tracks. But it didn’t stop there; Billy invited me to a gig he was doing, and then invited me on stage with him to play, it even turned into a regular thing for a while, we would get together and play in his local pub in London to massively appreciative audiences, it was great fun, and just playing in his very good company is an honour, we’re still good friends today. I recently sent him a copy of the new EP, he said he couldn’t stop playing it as loud as his player would take, he adores every song, he tells me he’s a fan, which for me is just brilliant.”
WORST JOB YOU’VE EVER HAD?: “Digging roads; man it’s back breaking. I needed the money so I worked with a gang of friends who were laying cable, I was the guy down the pit who had to shovel the dirt out of the hole, come rain or shine, it was physically the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life, my body just isn’t built to dig roads man. So whenever I hear anyone moaning about how difficult their job is, I always tell them to try digging roads all day before they make a comment.”
YOUR LAST CELEBRITY SPOTTING?: “Bumped into David Gray in the studio when recording ‘Come Outside and Play.’ We recorded it at his studio, where he was also recording his new album. I made him a cup of tea and we sat and spoke music in the kitchen. Oh, and I bumped into Del Bromham in our local co-op food store recently; he lives close by and he’s a lovely fella. I wrapped my headphones around his ears and said, ‘Listen to this, Del,’ and I played him a new song I had just written and recorded on my phone, he loved it and started bopping around the shop, ohhh the magical moments that music can bring …”
