Nat Johnson

Nat Johnson talks to Christine Brain about her new career and how it feels to be headlining her first festival.

I've been lucky enough to spend some time chatting with the charming Nat Johnson recently. The first time we met we had a quiet drink in one of the few pubs in Walkley that hasn't closed down. It was in marked contrast to next time we met, but more of that later.

When you're the songwriter and singer in a successful group of musicians, all of whom are your friends, going solo is always going to be hard. Such has been the lot of Nat and her group, Monkey Swallows the Universe. They had a record deal, done a national tour with Richard Hawley, they'd even been on Ned Sherrin's Radio 4 show, when it all came to a crashing halt. What happened?

"I began to feel that the instruments we had made us move in a certain direction which we couldn't get out of. I wanted to do things with the songs that not everybody in the band wanted to do. They were really happy with the way things sounded but I wanted to change things. Everything was fine until after the second album came out, and I suddenly I realised wanted to move away from the shy, twee, girl-with-guitar thing."

The more successful they were, the more the reviews they were getting all added to her feelings of being pigeonholed.

"From the very first album we got the Belle and Sebastian comparisons, which stuck with us and it was unfair because we weren't like them. It was very frustrating."

In an attempt to be more true to herself she announced a string of solo gigs.

"Going from being part of a five-piece to suddenly performing on my own was horrible, but I felt I had to do it. It was terrifying at first but I've done quite a lot of solo stuff now and I'm a bit more used to it. If things go badly, I might fall back on the old songs a bit more, but people are starting to come to the gigs more regularly and are getting to know the new stuff. In the end I don't really care if they know about Monkey Swallows or not."

She has been writing new material and has tried to develop a sound she felt was lacking before.

"When I'm on my own the material does tend to sound like the Monkey Swallows stuff, but I've put together a band and when we do the new songs it will be different. I've just spent two weeks down in Norfolk in a recording studio in the middle of nowhere. No phone, no internet, and no distractions. At the moment I've got a first draft of an album, which I've given it to a few friends and asked them to be brutally honest with their feedback, so I can rethink stuff before I put anything out."

As a taster of the new Nat, she has a single out, Dirty Rotten Soul, on Sheffield's Thee SPC label. It's certainly a fuller sound than it would have been had she still been with Monkey Swallows the Universe, having almost a country rock feel to it.

"The new songs do sound different, and I've tried to break away from the acoustic guitar. They are still about relationships and frustrations with life, although it's all made up situations, and not autobiographical at all. Usually the music comes first, with lyrics taken from ideas which just occur to me, often from a single line I wrote down at some time. I've got scraps of paper all over the house, and I've even got ideas written on my phone."

We move on to talking about the Last of the Summer Festival, which is the first chance anyone will have to see her new band. Not only are they headlining, but Nat is promoting the gig herself.

"The idea for a festival event just grew out of a conversation I was having one day. I knew by now I'd have something I wanted to launch, and the idea of an all-dayer just grew out of that. There are loads of bands, and stalls, all hopefully making the day into an indoor festival, celebrating local bands, and giving me the chance to introduce my new band."

Fast forward ten days and I'm at the Last of the Summer Festival at the Academy. A dozen or so local bands, a raffle, afro-Caribbean food, cake stalls and people have even brought their kids. It has the air of a real old fashioned festival, without any of that annoying corporate sponsorship.

I manage to meet up with Nat in the dressing room and the atmosphere is altogether more hectic and exciting than before. A band from Leeds are due on stage in an hour, but are nowhere to be seen, and there's not been any messages, but she herself is relaxed about everything.

"I'm really enjoying today." she tells me. "This is the biggest thing I've ever put together, but all the hard work's been done and I'm not stressed at all. There are eleven bands on the final bill, and everyone apart from I Concur are here. People have even come over from Birmingham to see Major McCa. We're about half way through, the attendance has been good, and the atmosphere in there is really great now."

On stage tonight she'll joined by a range of local musicians and singers and even though Kevin and Rob from Monkey Swallows are back with her, the audience can expect to hear something new. I was interested in where she saw herself in six months to a year's time.

"I'd love to do some festivals with my band and hopefully I'll have the album out by then. Everything's going so well at the moment. The new single's been played on local radio and on XFM and the BBC."

At that point, we got a message that I Concur had finally arrived, and she put on her promoters hat again to sort out their dressing room and to see if they'd notice we'd been drinking their beer.

A couple of hours later she was making her triumphant return to fronting a band, and despite some sound problems, they were tremendous. I'd asked her before how she felt about this new chapter in her life and how she felt about leaving behind the success of her former band.

"I loved it, I still love it and I still miss it, but I had to move on. It's been really hard to break away from them, but at the same time I had to be honest and true to myself."

Interview by Christine Brain
Photography by Chris Saunders

www.natjohnson.co.uk