Artist Interview: Django Durrant is making indie folk music for the escapists

It’s no secret uni students spend their loans on everything but their education- a new wardrobe, holiday to Berlin, not-so-legal substances… but not many can say they blew it on their debut headline tour. 

Django Durrant can though.

Singer, songwriter, producer, magazine founder, uni student (not for much longer). The list could go on. What’s important to know is that Django’s debut album, Stories As You Pass By has just been released.

Heavily inspired by the beauty of nature and less by the horrors of reality, the characters in Django’s folky, fantasy-filled soundscape urge you to take their hand and share a moment before you continue on. You’ll hear tales of a widower’s love and loss, and an invite from a sylph that’s just too good to turn down.

So how is the tour going? Have there been any surprises? What’s the reception been like so far?

It’s been good, the turnout has been mixed. We started in Leeds- where I’m at uni- at The Attic, and that was lovely. That was the day after the album came out- just a really nice way to start. Me and my band had never done any shows together, because I only met them in February. So that was a bit nerve-wracking, but it went really well.

All the places that I’m playing, I’ve only booked because a friend, or my brother or someone I know lives there and does music there. My mates will drive us and give us lifts in-between shows, and it’s just been a case of crashing at friends’ or friends of friends. It’s really worked out, and been as low cost as possible.

You said you only met your band in February? That doesn’t seem like a very long time for you guys to get to know each other.

It’s actually been nice in some ways, but it was quite stressful.

I’ve had to have a new band basically every year for the last five years because we’ve all ended up in different places. My old bass player now lives in China, and I had a band up until January this year but one member was a primary school teacher and couldn’t get the time off work for tour.

But yeah, we’d just been rehearsing once a week or something. It wasn’t until the tour started that we actually got to hang out, and it’s been really fun.

I wanted to ask you about inspiration too. I read you’re quite fond of artists like Sam Evian and Weyes Blood. You’re not only a musician but you’re the creator of Roots magazine which is brilliant. There must be this abundance of inspiration around you- what role do your inspirations play in your music, and particularly this album?

All the artists that I listen to and really love, they have a very direct influence on my songwriting. I think that’s why I have quite a range of different vibes, especially on Stories As You Pass By. It’s folky, spacey and dreamy and then there’s a bit of classic rock too.

I always know what’s been an influence on my songwriting. Quite often the tempo or the chord change or even just the general feel of it will remind me of an artist, like Weyes Blood or Sam Evian. And then I go “oh, if they tried to do this, what would it sound like?”. And I sort of try to plagiarize them as much as possible and see what I can get away with.

And more generally, my life has always been grounded in music- what with doing Roots, and all my family play as well. So I produced the album and played the drums, keys and did all the vocals. My dad, brother and maybe my sister are on there too, playing the guitars and bass.

It’s funny you mentioned all these genres that make up this album. I thought classic rock was interesting because you have a song called And I Love Her on the record, which I immediately thought might be a Beatles cover, which it definitely is not.

That one’s not too far away from the Beatles I suppose. It kinda feels like Paul McCartney more specifically, especially at the end when I’m just sort of screaming.

Elliot Smith was a big inspiration for that one. I think it’s Either/Or, that album where a lot of songs he starts off with just his voice and the guitar, and then he suddenly comes in with the band later on. The instrumental bit where I’m kind of humming, that was definitely inspired by him.

You said the other day you had just submit your final assessment for your Masters- congratulations on that.

Thank you.

That must be one massive tick off the list. But you also have a bunch of other things going on. Roots, your live shows- at what point did you think “right, I want to add recording an album to the mix”?

Yeah it’s been a bit of a mental month, but that was always on my list. It wasn’t a case of suddenly writing a bunch of songs and deciding it was going to be an album. It was more, going through all the songs I’ve written and choosing the ones that kinda work together. I think the oldest song I wrote on this album was written when I was sixteen and only one song was written in the last year.

I just thought, if I finished uni and I hadn’t put an album out then I’d be a bit disappointed. Cos uni isn’t just the opportunity to study for me, it’s an opportunity to be able to create. The tour is making a loss and doing music isn’t making me any money yet- would be lovely if it was. So going to uni and getting a student loan gave me the space to be creative and do all these things.

It’s probably more important to me than the actual qualification. Just meeting all these different people and not needing to have a job that stops you from all these opportunities. It’s meant a lot to me to be able to do all these shows.

Back to the album, I just wanted to ask, how did you settle on the title?

A lot of my songwriting tends not to be directly about me, or even from my point of view. A lot of the songs are about these fantasy characters and  just not placed in the real world. I love things being set in nature and being as far removed from the real world as possible because it’s not a very nice place.

I also settled on this selection of songs because, with these, it feels like I’m bringing the listener on a journey with me through the woods. Each song is a different character singing to them. Even on the front cover- which my friend Jack designed for me- you can see King Arthur singing about the love triangle between him and Guinevere and Lancelot.

I just thought it worked really well as these are like stories for the listeners as they pass through the woods.

I don’t know how much time you have right now to be discovering new music, but what are you listening to these days?

My least favourite thing about music is how much you can’t listen to it when you’re making it.

I wasn’t listening to much when we recorded the album, but I got down to Bristol a day before my show and managed to catch Jordana, she did Summers Over, quite pop-y stuff, that was amazing.

Paul McCartney released his album on the same day as me, which was really exciting. I thought it was pretty good for an old-timer. Kurt Vile released his album recently and Widowspeak, who I’m a huge fan of. I’ve been listening to those a lot. I’m really excited for mary in the junkyard’s new album, hopefully I can go to one of their shows when they tour.

María from The Marias has also started a solo project called Not for Radio, and her album was produced by Sam Evian. It just sounds really good.

None of these really sound like my music to be fair.

You know, variety is the spice of life.

People always come up to me after a show and be like “you really remind me of so and so” and I think- how have you managed to get that? You end up sounding like weird parts of all the things that you listen to without realising. So yeah these don’t sound like my music, but they’ll influence me somehow, I’m sure.

Stories As You Pass By and Django’s other work can be found on Spotify and all other major streaming platforms. You can also buy and support his work on Bandcamp here.