It all began with a 30-year hiatus. In 1993, I was living in Los Angeles. My band had broken up, and I was an acclaimed songwriter. I was sharing a house with my regular studio engineer, a house protected by an adherence to some Wild West frontier law — a legal loophole, really, that kept us temporarily in bank-repossessed homes before the hammer fell, and we moved on to another bank-repossessed home in limbo.
Diametrically opposed to the musical situation we’d left, which was a type of pastiche Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – abrasive, dynamic, feedback and polyester-driven mayhem, we were recording and beginning to assemble what we considered could be the quietest band in the world. Maybe you recall this was right in the middle of the Seattle grunge era. Those were terrible times for music. We were in the opposition. You’d maybe hear what we were aiming for these days in the likes of Timbre Timbre, but back then, in that environment, it seemed dissolute and unwarranted. And most likely unwanted.
Listen to the music while reading the text.
A dozen or more years earlier I’d quit music and left London for Los Angeles. Music. I’d thought I was okay without it. And despite the promise of writing and recording in Los Angeles, it really felt like it was time to do something else. I’d been critically acclaimed on two continents, but as a determined outsider, it wasn’t clear to me that there was much else I could do with more outsider music.
Writing
In 2004, I lived above Sunset Blvd in Echo Park, Los Angeles. That’s where I got the notion and the title for “Sunset Conversation, Early in the A.M.”—but only the title, really. Late into the night, I’d hear the hubbub of conversation bubbling up from the street outside The Shortstop, a former cop bar gone Hipster, part-owned by the Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli. I was concentrating on writing, writing about my environment, perhaps like an itinerant psychogeographer.
I’d sold or given away all of the musical equipment, the Gibsons and Ampegs, and all that stuff. The polyester clothes had given way, too. I loved writing, immersed in an exciting city at a culturally exciting time. And after England, The Weather. I could walk to MOCA’s patio and hear Cut Chemist or something like that on a warm evening under the stars. I was hanging out on the periphery of the movie business. My friends were film and TV people.
Back to Europe
I moved back to Europe in 2009 for personal reasons. I’d never imagined coming back. In the final year of living in Echo Park, four kids under the age of 16 had been shot dead in our neighborhood.
By now, I had an American daughter and was surprised that she wasn’t immediately allowed into the UK. Why would she be? “She’s American,” a border guard told me.
It wasn’t until 2017 that I was spending some of my summer weekends in the Cotswolds at my sister’s place. There were stunning views of the Malvern Hills, but also, being back in the UK, rain. I found myself trapped indoors and began reconsidering that idea from almost 30 years before, creating very quiet music.
Songs For Older Skins
I raged at the mainstream musical monoculture I’d found in the UK. I’d moved away from radio stations in California, like KCRW, which had found a way to meld music and politics. What I found in the UK didn’t interest me, and because it didn’t interest me, I imagined that there must be plenty of people who felt just like me — older people who didn’t want to hear old music over and over again.
Beginning with the very synthetic ‘A Song For Older Skins’ and the video of my cat Margo in the snow, I began to create what I call Easy Listening for Difficult People. I’d debate with Mrs. Champion who simply never, ever calls herself that. “If I make music that is difficult to like and people don’t enjoy it, is that then a definition of success?”
Unbeknownst to me, some 30 years of music were waiting to be released, and I pursued this by melding analog and digital instruments using Logic Pro. Friends helped out from all over. I worked with a favorite, Museumgoer from Baton Rouge, who contributed pedal steel on an iteration of a track called Western and Country.
Crafting Stories
In 2021, Disco City Books published “Six Stories About Motoring Nowhere,” my first collection of short stories. This is not a collection for action junkies. Instead, here was the slow churn of life on the fringes, behind the wheel. Like a European Willy Vlautin, zooming into the uneventful. Unexpected praise for the book recognized the power of crafting stories around seemingly insignificant moments that rarely trigger a response.
I also released a debut short full-length LP, “Music Inspired By The Museumgoer of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” The Museumgoer creates some of my favorite music alongside Lauryn Hill, Noname, Felix Mendelssohn’s spare piano pieces, and many more. Museumgoer was gracious enough to contribute pedal steel to a track we worked on together in 2020, Western & Country. I also worked with poet Jay Lewis on several of his spoken-word tracks and frequently with guitarist Woodenhand and sound artist and sculptor Prehistoric Man.
Back in a Band
Around this time, I assembled a band that consisted of drummer and percussionist Adrian, bass player Agata, and organ/pianist Pete. Putting this project together for our live shows slowed the independent releases. Although we excitingly have an agreement with a super hip French indie label, nothing has happened with this arrangement so far, primarily because my ability to deliver completed musical pieces despite a demand is somewhat on a par with modernist Welsh painter Gwen John, as is my frequent use of muted tones.
The band is rehearsing for summer shows, and while working towards that, I have begun retouching and releasing some of 60 or so tunes I have been working on over the past few years.
Music, Writing, and Art
Happily, I guess, some people have long memories. I do, of course. The etymology of the most recent Ancient Champion single, The Retrofuturists Are Back, reaches back in time to one of my first dates with the now Mrs Champion, ‘Retrofuturism: The Car Design of J. Mays’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2002. At the time, Ms.Champ was designing fabrics for car interiors. That exhibition was what we did for fun. And so, here we are still.
I remain an Ancient Champion with music, writing, and art, which are difficult to enjoy, and now I find myself one of the oldest men on earth.
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