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AUK award-winning Scots songwriter Dean Owens teams up with Italy’s Don Antonio and finds they actually have a lot in common as they record in a 400 hundred-year-old farmhouse and enjoy some wine along the way.
February 14th sees the much-anticipated release of “Spirit Ridge”, Dean Owens’ official follow-up to his widely acclaimed “Sinner’s Shrine” album. Following on from his collaboration in Tucson with Calexico for that album, this time around Owens decamped to Italy, to the Emilia-Romagna district to join forces with the renowned Italian producer, musician and film-maker Antonio Gramentieri, AKA Don Antonio, formerly of Italian band Sacri Cuori and well known for his recent collaboration with Alejandro Escovedo, the pair having been introduced by their mutual friend John Convertino of Calexico.
The album was recorded at Crinale, a 400 year old farmhouse which has been converted into Don Antonio’s studio, with some of the songs inspired by the spectacular landscape of the region. In addition, it transpires that Owens’ Italian ancestors came from the same area and this informed some of the cuts. As with “Sinners’ Shrine”, “Spirit Ridge” was preceded by a trilogy of EPs containing songs from the album along with demos and out-takes, the first of these, “Ghost Walking”, contained the song ‘My Beloved Hills’, a song directly inspired by the rolling hills which surround Crinale, the video of which contains footage of Owens’ time at the farmhouse allowing a glimpse into the relaxed and welcoming vibes he encountered there.
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AUK managed to speak via Zoom to Dean Owens and Don Antonio about the album and we started off by asking Dean about that introduction by John Convertino and when they first met.
Dean Owens (DO): When I was working with John on “Sinner’s Shrine” we had spoken about us both having Italian connections, ancestors, in our families and when I was thinking about my next move I remembered that connection. I also remembered an Italian band whose albums I had really liked, Sacri Cuori and I knew John had worked with them in the past. So I reached out to him for an introduction and John put me in touch with Antonio. So I emailed him and he was very warm about my ideas for the next album and he told me about Crinale, his studio set-up, inviting me to come over and see the place. So my wife and I decided to visit for three days and as soon as we got there everything just felt right. A couple of Antonio’s musical friends, guitarist Luka Giovacchini and drummer Piero Perelli, were both there at the time, working on some music with Antonio and, to my surprise, Antonio handed me a guitar and asked me to play something with them in the studio. I hadn’t expected to be doing anything like that and didn’t have anything prepared, just a couple of sketches in my mind really but once we were in the studio and playing together I instantly knew that this was a guy I wanted to work along with and that it would be great to play with these musicians. So we came home and a lot of songs came to me really quickly, inspired by my time there and the thought of playing with these guys.
Antonio, had you heard of Dean before John introduced you and did you listen to any of his music before he visited?
Don Antonio (DA): I knew of Dean, maybe because I had read about him in Americana UK because he seems to be one of the favourite artists on there. I read the website because it’s always been very kind to me in my previous incarnations so I knew of him. Dean sent me some of his records and I was listening to them when I was on holiday with my wife. I don’t remember where we were but I was listening to them and I thought we could work together. I could see that although we don’t come from the same place we have a similar perspective on America and American sounds. I mean, when we visit America sonically, we are also revisiting some of our personal mythology.
I think I know what you mean there and it’s the same for most of us, whether we come from Scotland, Italy or wherever, it’s hard not to be have been affected by American culture and in particular the legends of the west. Musically I suppose that one thing both of you have in common is a fondness for the music of Ennio Morricone, an Italian who practically invented a modern version of the western soundtrack.
DA: Of course America is a pretty colonialist culture, it reaches you whether you want it or not. When I was a kid I was really into Bruce Springsteen and I really loved the soundtrack of “La Bamba”. I liked Italian music a lot but there was something completely different about this American music and I wanted to know their secret. The key was not just in the notes because we all use the same notes, it was in the attitude and the sound and I devoted 20 years of my life trying to get to that secret. Music is geography as our good friend Dan Stuart would say and so it was only when I physically got there and saw the vast horizons in the south that I started to understand some of it. Of course Morricone never went to the States but he was strong enough to invent his own version of the West which was so powerful that it informed the real version of the west.
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DO: Regarding Morricone, as Antonio said he created his own version of the Western myth through his music and growing up in Scotland that whole Western scene was huge. My father was a massive fan of old western movies and they were on all the time, they still are whenever I go to visit him, it used to drive my mum mad all this shooting going on. So all those Clint Eastwood movies and that soundtrack was always there when I was a kid and that somehow must have seeped into my being.
Dean, you said that after your first visit to Crinale you were inspired to write most of the songs for the album.
DO: “Sinner’s Shrine” was recorded with the guys from Calexico in Tucson and I knew before I went out that there was a very much fixed palette of colours I had prepared for the record. But with Antonio and the guys in Italy there was a huge amount of colour that we could choose from and, unknown to me at the time, it turned out that both Antonio and I are big fans of the same bands, in particular of Talk Talk and Mark Hollis. I’ve always loved those wonderful Talk Talk albums along with “This Is The Sea” by The Waterboys. I’ve always felt that there is an ethereal, almost spiritual quality to them and I felt something similar in the air at Crinale even on that brief first trip there. I discovered that my great-grandfather Ambrose Salvona’s family came from Emilia-Romagna. That was a surprise to me and it added to the whole emotional experience of being over there. I felt the ties and connections quite strongly and one of my favourite moments was when we were all having breakfast together and Antonio started to sing an old Italian folk song, ‘Romanga Mia’, and all the guys at the table joined in. I couldn’t because I didn’t know the song of course but it absolutely floored me, me and my wife Nicki were sitting there with tears running down our cheeks and I turned around and the bass player also had tears welling up. It just was a fantastic moment of connection and I think that’s really what music is all about, it’s about connections. When we first started recording there was a huge lunch with about 40 people there, all the guys’ families and that was another aspect of Crinale which really came through, the notion of families. I’d see Antonio with his father, I knew that his mother had not long passed away and my own mother was unwell so there was a lot of those family connections going on.
How many times did you go to Crinale?
DO: Three in all, there was the first trip, a kind of reconnaissance trip, that was in November 2022 and then I went over in spring to record the songs and then I had one last visit in order to mix the album a few months later.
Antonio, Dean wrote the songs, how much involvement did you have in the arrangements and such?
DA: Well, Dean came with the songs and I think he already knew the direction he wanted the album to take so we started working on getting the groove and the sound as best as we could. For me the idea of a live band performing the songs in the studio is important as I think it captures the, shall we say, urgency of the songs and the process. As you can see from the space between his visits here, Dean can take his time to go from point A to point B, I mean when we started this record I was just a kid (laughs) but, joking aside, I was aiming for the music to flow pretty fast in the studio and to keep us surprised. If I can quote Dan Stuart again, many years ago he told me that the main goal for him was to wake up every day interested in something. You want to remain interested in your songs. If you play them 3000 times in your room, 3000 times with the band and 300,000 times when you hear them playback for the mix, there’s a chance you’ll get bored. But if you approach the process at the right speed and right pace then the song stays fresh and there is still that element of surprise. With Dean it was good that he didn’t just want the Italian version of Calexico, a band we’ve been compared to since the Sacri Cuori days. Dean was open enough to let some new colours of the palette in and I was brave enough to push him gently.
DO: I’d have been crazy to go over there and not use those colours, One of the things about Antonio again is his love of the great instruments, classic guitars and classic amplifiers which just create a classic sound. That alone was just great and not having to watch the clock in the studio was a new experience to me. Normally you are so aware of the cost of each minute you are in there and we don’t have a big record label paying for it. I was just reading a Tom Petty biography and my god, those guys had it good, recording every day for a couple of years for an album, how much money did that cost? Antonio allowed me the luxury of time and the set up at Crinale fitted that mood. Antonio had arranged for this lovely guy Sergio to cook for us, we’d have breakfast, cooked by Sergio, and then a short step to the studio, work until lunchtime and then have a big Italian lunch with everybody really chilled, enjoying some red wine. I’m not used to drinking at lunchtime especially when I’m recording but I thought, well, when in Italy… We didn’t overindulge, it was just really relaxing. And then we’d be back in the studio and we could record for as long as we liked. I felt sorry for poor Ivano, the sound engineer, who had to be there. At one point we were approaching midnight and I was asking him, “Ivano, are you OK still doing this?” We worked really hard, there was no slacking but it was wonderful. I enjoy recording but to do it in such a magical place such as Crinale was just really special. Going back to Sergio, the cook, I named one of the songs on the first EP after him, ”Sergio’s Kitchen’, that’s about him, not Sergio Leone. In the past I’ve always had a much clearer picture of what I wanted to do on an album but Antonio brought so much to this that there’s no way it would have sounded anything like this had I recorded it anywhere else.
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Going back to the American influences, I note that you revisit one of your recurring themes, The Buffalo on a couple of occasions. There’s the song, ‘Face The storm (The Buffalo)’ and Don Antonio’s band is called The Stone Buffalo Band.
DO: I’ve been fascinated with the American bison from reading a lot about the American West. I wouldn’t say I’ve studied it but I’ve read a lot of history and fiction about it. I don’t know if other folk are drawn to particular animals but for me it’s the American bison and the Scottish Red Deer. The bison are majestic animals, and it was my mission for years to see a herd of buffalo in America and I was lucky enough to realise that in South Dakota on a tour a few years back. I don’t know what it is but there something about them that moves me. You could call it my spiritual animal if you want.
DA: We should add that outside Crinale there is a big stone which is buffalo-shaped, like a monument to your mythology.
DO: That in itself was quite spooky and it’s the reason why on the album I’ve called the band The Stone Buffalo Band. That’s a little bit of fun but it meant something to me.
Moving on to the album I was surprised by the funky grooves of ‘Burn It All’ which is quite unlike anything you have recorded before.
DO: Yeah, it’s a bit of a wild card that one and we spent some time discussing whether to have it on the album, wondering whether it was too different from the other songs but I’m glad we kept it. I think it’s good to have a bit of a curveball on an album, I like albums where you might think I’m not sure about this one but eventually grow to love it, or alternatively, it might draw people in who might not like the rest of the album at first! It’s a good song to play live, my band in the UK learned it and we played it for the first time at my Edinburgh show just before Christmas and it went down well, so, yes, a good live number. I mean, I don’t have a lot of happy songs and, although the subject matter of the song is not really happy, the mood of it, the bounce is. Antonio really helped with the brass arrangements here and it’s a good fun song to listen to.
The album opens with the impressive Eden Is Here, a song which seems to me to hymn the delights of recording in Crinale, painting it as a sort of paradise. It’s delicate and inspiring and Don Antonio and his musicians add just the right amount of atmosphere.
DO: Again a lot of that is down to Antonio. It was a song which I didn’t feel needed much arrangement so we kept it quite minimal but I think it works really well as an opener. There’s a beautiful middle section which is all Antonio and it just takes the song to a really special place. But then it’s a song which I don’t think I’ll be playing live. As you know we’ve got the album launch coming up but I just couldn’t think of a way to play it with the guys in my band as it feels very much like a moment in Crinale with Antonio and the guys there, frozen in time. It’s quite a spiritual song and for me, the album is a very spiritual record, very soulful. You wouldn’t call it soul music of course but there’s a lot of soul in the music.
Another song I really love is ‘The Buzzard And The Crow’ which is quite an epic adventure with its cavernous percussion, slow burning guitars and a thrilling string arrangement.
DO: That’s one of my favourite songs on the album and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it. One of the amazing things about seeing Antonio and Luka playing guitars together was that there were a lot of moments when I wasn’t sure of who is playing what. They just weave in and out of each other and it’s fantastic to see the chemistry there. And then Piero’s drums on that song are amazing as well, the whole atmosphere is just marvellous. There’s a lot of songs about nature on the album, maybe some of that comes from listening to those Talk Talk albums but since Nicki and I moved to the country I’ve been surrounded by nature. I lived in Edinburgh all my life but now I’m a real city boy living in the country. We’ve got big skies here in the borders so wildlife and nature is definitely featured more in this album than on any of the others.
There’s a connecting thread through the EPs and the album, the ridge. It seems to correspond with earlier songs such as ‘Up On The Hill’ and ties in with that idea of roaming while surrounded by the bounties that nature can provide be it in Edinburgh or Crinale.
DO: Before we even got there for the first time Antonio had told me that Crinali could be translated as a ridge and that gave me the idea for a song, ‘On The Ridge’. I imagined myself being in that place before I’d even seen it. So when I did that first reccy visit and Antonio asked me to jam, it was a rough sketch of that song we played and it felt good so I knew that was the path to stay on. We did record it but it didn’t make the album cut, it’s on the second EP.
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The album’s out in February and there’s a launch gig at Glasgow’s Celtic Connections festival and I believe Dean that you have tours in Europe and Australia lined up. Antonio, have you any future plans you can share with us?
DA: I’m working on my second album, it will all be in Italian. I’ve also started this super minimal project with just two guitars as I’m trying to keep things on the small side to see if we can actually have something we can tour abroad. Here in Italy I have my own niche which is pretty comfortable but I’m missing being able to play abroad which was, for ten years or more such a big part of my life. Things have changed for Italian musicians since the pandemic. Finances these days make it much harder for us to go abroad and play. There was a time when musicians would call me up and ask me to go on tour with them but these days it doesn’t happen much. One of the good things about recording with Dean is that it helps put my name on the map again. So, write this in capital records, I’LL BE BACK!
DO: I’d really like to work with Antonio again, the Don & Dean album. We’ve both got different avenues we can go down and I’m sure we’ll meet up again in one of them.
Dean Owens closes Glasgow’s Celtic Connections Festival with his album launch show on Sunday 2nd February. Details here.