David Ian Roberts - David Roberts - The Sleepless Bard

First of all, David, thank you for your music and for such an inspired record. Since there isn't much information about you online, would you like to start by telling us a bit about your career as an artist and musician?

I've been playing guitar since I was eleven and started making home recordings at fifteen. I've kept writing "albums" constantly ever since, but I only felt ready to release something with "St. Clears", in 2014. I love recording music and I'd do it even if no one were listening. Over the last few years I've played live a lot more and I'm gradually gaining confidence in my performances. I just want to keep improving. 

Five years have passed since your debut, "St. Clears", and this new "Travelling Bright". Looking back over these five years, can you reconstruct the path that led you to this second album?

I was already starting to write "Travelling Bright" while "St. Clears" was being released, and in the middle of writing it I moved from Herefordshire to Cardiff. It was an exciting period, I met several great musicians and started playing live a lot more. I got funding from a BBC and Arts Council programme called Horizons, to record an EP with some of the songs that would later end up on the album, and this gave me the chance to record at Fieldgate Studio near Cardiff, with producer Andrew Lawson and two great musicians I'd met, cellist Kirsten Miller and bassist Aidan Thorne.

I was really pleased with those sessions, and at that point I felt confident about recording the rest of the record with those people. The EP was released on the Welsh label Cambrian, which has now also released the album. Let's say that building these connections in Cardiff is really what led to the whole project coming together over these years.

I read that at least some of the songs were conceived in an altered state, caused by the insomnia you were suffering from at the time. So it seems the songs come from a specific period of your life. Can you describe it for us?

It was a really exciting and intensely creative period for me, and I struggled to sleep. I'd often lie awake and couldn't stop thinking about the music I was writing. Hypnagogic images inspired a lot of the imagery in the lyrics. The album comes from a defined two-year period when things were going up and down and I had a lot of emotional charge, experiences I needed to express. I sleep very well now!

How did the arrangements develop? Did you start recording with specific ideas about the final shape of the songs, or did they evolve over time, perhaps through collaboration with other musicians?

Most of the arrangements come from a series of solo demos made first of all. Many songs grew out of separate fragments and ideas that I glued together, and they evolved a lot with each new recording. It was like a big puzzle. Robert Pugh, who played on "St. Clears", had several great ideas for the piano parts on two songs, and I recorded the drum demos with the help of Adam Huyton, who produced "St. Clears". Kirsten Miller, who plays cello on the record, recorded a ton of amazing stuff in the final round of demos, and her instrumental contribution was hugely important in ultimately pulling together the final shape of the arrangements. By the time we got to the actual recording sessions we basically followed the demos note for note, but there are parts where Aidan, Kirstie and Daan Temmink (on piano) improvised together, and I love listening to those parts now.

In our review, there's a line that says: "This record could exist even without a voice" - not to undersell your voice or vocal melodies, absolutely not, but it struck me as a new feature, or at least a more pronounced one, of your songwriting approach. Would you agree?

Yes, I really hope the songs sound good even without the singing. The music matters just as much as the voice and lyrics, to me. There are a lot of instrumental sections. In a way, it didn't feel new to work like this, since I've written a lot of instrumental music in the past. But yes, it was fun blending the arranging work with the actual songwriting.

There's a strong sense of nature on "Travelling Bright", so much so that a lot of reviews out there describe the record as the perfect companion for a walk through unexplored territory. Is there a place you mainly connect to the record (and I'm sure there are several examples in Wales)?

On the album cover there are fragments of photos I took, from places that inspired my music. Park Wood in Hergest, at Kington, the Credenhill woods near where I grew up, Cefn Onn Park in Cardiff (where the inner sleeve photo was taken), the Ystradfellte waterfalls, and the Whitchurch canal are some of my favourite places for a walk.

Can I ask you about the current situation, from your point of view, for a young musician/artist in the UK, in terms of opportunities?

I think the opportunities to record music by yourself are better than ever - you don't need a big studio to start experimenting with recording. And I think there are also several opportunities to start performing live. But there are probably more people than ever trying to build a career, and there are so many incredible artists doing great things, that I think you have to accept there's no guarantee of making money. There's huge competition for a very limited amount of funding, then - so I think doing things yourself and having fun are the most important things, and probably the healthiest, for younger artists. As long as you keep working and "giving it a go", you'll keep improving and learning.

Can we hope to see you play in Italy in the near future? Thanks for your time.

I'd love to play in Italy and in Europe at some point in the coming years, if it happens. If the UK really does leave the European Union, I expect things to get more complicated, but I'll do my best to keep playing even further from home.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google