Jake Bugg

97.3 KBCO Presents

JAKE BUGG
with Nina Nesbitt

WED, 4 APR 2018 at 08:00PM MDT
Ages: 16 & Over
Doors Open: 07:00PM

OnSale: Fri, 8 Dec 2017 at 10:00AM MST
Announcement: Mon, 4 Dec 2017 at 08:00AM MST

Shuffling, playlisting and cherry-picking your favourite songs is all well andgood, but sometimes you can’t beat sitting down with an album and playingit from start to finish. An album that sounds like it was recorded in one room,with the same group of people and that perfectly captures a specificmoment in time.
Jake Bugg’s last album, 2016’s On My One, was a dizzyingly eclecticcollection of styles and sounds, but for the follow up, the 23-year–old wantedsomething that felt like the LPs that took pride of place in his own recordcollection. Albums take you into their own, sealed world. “On the last albumit was fun to experiment with different instruments and writing styles,” reflectsBugg. “But this time around I just wanted to make a complete record asopposed to a collection of songs. Just write the tunes and record them withgreat musicians.”
He’s certainly got his wish for Hearts That Strain. Starting in January this year,Bugg would write songs at home then fly out to Nashville to record them withsome of the best players in the history of popular music. As part of AmericanSound Studio’s legendary house band The Memphis Boys, Gene Chrismanand Bobby Woods provided the chops on such pivotal records as Dusty InMemphis, In The Ghetto, Suspicious Minds and Dark End Of The Street, cuttingtheir teeth in sessions with Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and DionneWarwick.
“They’re old guys but they’re amazing,” Bugg recalls with disbelief. “It was tento five and then that’s it. They’d pack up and we’d done two or three tunes.It was a mad vibe being from England and meeting these absolute legendsand then cutting some tracks with them.”
Working with producers David Ferguson and Matt Sweeney, Bugg’s time inNashville proved to be incredibly productive. In just three week-long tripsthey’d finished the album. “Nashville is mad. Everybody plays out there. Yougo around somebody’s house for a few beers and just jam with them.”One of the people he ended up just jamming with was The Black Keys’ DanAuerbach, who collaborated with Bugg on breezy opener How Soon TheDawn, the shuffling rockabilly get-down I Can Burn Alone and In The Event OfMy Demise, a tune that sounds like a generations old folk song the pair havefreshly dug up out of the Mississippi mud. “Dan’s wicked,” smiles Bugg. “He’sgot this amazing work ethic, he just knuckles down and gets on with it.”
Another chance encounter provided a surprise collaboration. When Buggwas back in the UK writing, mulleted country rock superstar Billy RayCyrus stopped by the studio and was so taken with the rough version ofWaiting he heard being played off the desk that he suggested his daughter -younger sister of Miley and rising star in her own right – Noah Cyrus should singon it. The result is one of Hearts That Strain’s finest moments – a Southern Soulwaltz of a ballad to which a swooning Cyrus vocal brings the directemotional wallop of the best country music. “I’d never really collaboratedwith many singers so I was a bit unsure,” recalls Bugg, “but when they sent itback it was amazing. It was a nice surprise. When I come back in it soundsterrible, but when she’s singing it sounds alright!”
Nashville, Billy Ray Cyrus, seasoned session pros… anyone for whom the ideaof Jake Bugg in a Stetson and bootlace tie might cause unease can resteasy. Hearts That Strain is still very much the same voice and remarkablyassured songwriter of Lightning Bolt and Slumville Sunrise, it’s more that hissurroundings and the players around him have bled into the record’s moodand warm, glowing production. It’s there in the gently strummed mandolinthat floats in on Southern Rain, the deft finger picking on the title track, thesighing pedal steel that glides through This Time and the slapback echo andcrackling guitar lines that make I Can Burn Alone sound like it could havebeen cut at Sun Studios. More importantly, it provides the threads that runthrough Hearts That Strain that make it feel like more than the sum of its parts.Rather than be an album to dip in and out of, it’s an organic whole that fromthe moment you press play you have to see it out to the final note.
“I just like putting out records,” reflect Bugg with characteristicunderstatement. “I like making albums, I like listening to albums. If you listen toa lot of those classic records throughout each track you can tell that it’srecorded in the same place. It’s nice to have that consistency.” It seemsreports of the album’s death have been greatly exaggerated.