Kris Drever - Interview
When a Kris Drever solo album comes out, it's a relatively rare delight. If you take the intervals between "Black Water" in 2006, "Mark the Hard Earth" in 2010 and 2016's "If Wishes Were Horses" as a number pattern, then the next one is due in 2024. If you're assuming he's been twiddling his thumbs in between, then you only have to skim-read his discography to see that all of his digits have been decisively and dynamically twiddly in the time between solo works, on collaborative releases with Eamonn Coyne, with Boo Hewerdine, with John McCusker and Roddy Woomble, and as the engine room of stalwart folk futurists, Lau.
Having recorded "If Wishes Were Horses" with a band featuring Ian Carr, Louis Abbott and Euan Burton, he took some of those songs on the road on his own recently, stripping them back to suit just a single guitar and his richly sonorous vocal tones. Such is the scope of the sound he makes with six strings (the man has skills), even 'stripped back' Drever often sounds like there's more than one guitarist at play.
A long way from his current dwelling place on Shetland with his wife and young son, Contact Music caught up with Kris before a recent gig in Radstock (surely a great name for an 80s revival festival). After a mouth-watering and tantalising conversation about the holistic delights of a well-made coffee and Kris' garage full of home-brewed beer back home, we got round to talking about some of his better-known creative processes.
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