Callum Easter interview: 'Everything feels like an emergency’

Callum Easter, who is set to play Solas festival next weekend, is a fan of old school gadgetry. Anything the Leith-based one man band can beg or borrow has a fair chance of influencing the music he makes. In recent years, he took up a junk shop accordion to great (distorted) effect. His latest purchase: a half-size piano. “I’ll just use what’s around,” he says. “It keeps the budget low.”

His choice in DIY tech extends to his phone, which he describes as “an old banger” on the verge of giving out during our conversation. Easter is in the park with his kids, combining daddy daycare with solo artist promotional responsibilities. Ever thought of cloning yourself?

“It’s been tough,” he says of recent hard times, “but it’s been tough for everybody, so no exceptions here. I’ve been up and down over the whole course of the pandemic. That’s the lucky thing about being able to create stuff - you can always make music so I’m grateful I’ve got that and the good support over the last couple of years, but I spent a lot of time on my own and drove myself a bit crazy.”

Easter hails from Dunbar and quit a promising football career for the equally attractive but precarious world of music, first popping up on the radar as the keyboard player in indie outfit The Stagger Rats before following his desire to experiment beyond the collective creativity of a band.

Life as a solo artist may have its freedoms but it also has its challenges, and Easter has spoken before about the struggle to make music and make a living. The main challenge is carving time out between the bread-and-butter jobs to realise his many creative ideas – such as his Green Door Sessions show during lockdown when he played under a bridge through an FM transmitter for strategically placed radios to pick up. “It was pirate radio essentially,” he says of his Covid-friendly escapade.

Other highlights of lockdown included topping the public vote in the 2020 Scottish Album of the Year Awards for his Here or Nowhere album and (eventually) releasing its follow-up System following the customary vinyl supply issues.

Easter has described the pandemic-birthed album as “a descent into ordinary madness”. “We want a system that looks you in the eye…that don’t see black and white,” he sings on the title track with a sense of justice which fits well with the Solas festival ethos of debate and inquiry.

“A lot of the songs I write come down to a sense of equality in life,” he says. “It just feels as if there’s a big imbalance currently on the grand scale of things. Everything feels like an emergency and nothing feels trustworthy – billionaire-owned media, politicians, the constant vanity we’re force-fed online. But trying to write a pop song about that…the songs are short and uptempo, so you don’t get stuck in the mud.” Did someone say festival soundtrack…?

“It’s a party album really,” he says. “I want to make people dance. I don’t know if that’s deluded or not, but some of the rhythms in there you can bring them out more. Ideally I’d have a band and backing singers, that’s my ideal set-up.”

As a former member of Young Fathers’ touring band, Easter knows the benefits of adding sonic layers to a show and is currently performing live with a drummer and keyboard player.

“It’s definitely given my live set more gears,” he says. “I’m working on the most straightforward and direct set-up for festivals as you’ve no time to mess around. I’m always changing things up though, so you never know what you’re going to get. Maybe I should turn up with some radios…”

In the interests of keeping his shows fluid and spontaneous, Easter is working out a system of cues for his fellow musicians and takes some inspiration from the notoriously seat-of-the-pants Chuck Berry. “He would just turn up and get a band together wherever he was playing,” he says. “He would rehearse with them using the Chuck Berry heel – as long as they can see when his foot is going down they knew when to stop and start.”

The Chuck Berry connection is germane, as Easter is nothing if not a Caledonian bluesman with an old soul vocal style. But there is nothing traditional about his presentation – as showcased on The Callum Easter TV Special, a 20-minute performance video filmed around the same time as he was finishing the album last year and still to be widely seen.

Described by Easter as “cable TV for the masses”, this mordant variety show “filmed in the depths of the gothic city of Edinburgh” – or the Traverse Theatre to be precise – features Easter as the unsettling MC and star, performing songs from the album with glamorous assistance from special guests including dominatrix Mistress Inka, dub-tap dancer Charmaine Brocklebank, knife and axe thrower Todd Various, comedian Paul Merryck and Easter’s backing vocalists of choice, the Leith Congregational Choir. The choir comprise two members, sisters Pauline and Jacqui Cuff, who scored a hit in 1991 with The Smiths-sampling Hippychick as part of indie dance ensemble Soho, and contributed vocals remotely to System.

As intoxicating as System is, Easter is itching to move on to the next recording project, half-size piano at the ready. “I’m looking for the most direct route,” he says, “going back, no computer, just using this old tape machine, letting it come out like that basically. Less complicated, less options, so you’ve just got to put it down. There’s plenty of ideas. I usually have some stuff almost worked out but there’s always space for things to just happen. If you’re not taking chances, then I don’t see the point.” And on that adventurous note, he signs off while the old banger still has the juice to truck on.

Callum Easter plays the Solas Festival, Errol Park, Perthshire, 17-19 June. Day and weekend tickets are priced from £21-£110 with a 20 per cent discount on adult weekend tickets for groups of ten or more. All weekend tickets include camping, see www.solasfestival.co.uk System is out now on Lost Map Records, www.lostmap.com