Conversing with Alasdair Bouch: a Prague-based English Musician

I met Alasdair at the January Alchemy and was surprised to find an interview done with him already. Though almost a year old, this interview done originally with Ffakt magazine is a great introduction to the British singer-song writer as it presents his newest album, his reasons for settling in Prague and the hardships and pleasures of a full-time musician’s life.

For how long have you been living in Prague? And how does an English musician end up in the middle of Europe? 

I arrived nearly seven years ago now, and it’s flown by.  I actually didn’t intend to stay – I originally came here for a month to learn how to teach English, and immediately fell in love with Prague.  Most people don’t believe me when I say that – of course, the beautiful women and beer might have influenced my decision to stay – but there’s something magical about this city that draws you in.  And as Kafka wrote, its claws won’t let you go!

Are there any aspects of Czech music, life or art you especially enjoy?

I wasn’t surprised to find that the Czech Republic has an extraordinarily rich cultural history; I was already aware of – and admired – many Czech writers and filmmakers before I arrived.  I even had four Mucha posters on my wall as a student in Wales!  But I was perhaps intrigued to find how closely I identified with the artists here.  Czech literature is profoundly affecting, the films witty and moving, and the art and architecture dazzling.  My favourite writer has to be Hrabal – if I were to write fiction, I would want to write like him.  He brings me to tears and laughter, often on the same page.  Seifert is a sensual and vital poet.  The directors Menzel, Svěrák, Hřebejk and Lipský are all masters of their craft.  But all these are just scratching the surface.  When I arrived here, I read every translated book in the library by a Czech author, bought any DVD I could find with English subtitles and visited all the museums.  I totally immersed myself.

Image credits: Michal Mecner

Who were the bands or musicians who made you wish to become one of them? Was “being a musician” a childhood dream, or how did you decide about your career?

When I first picked up a guitar at the age of 15 or 16, I was listening to Led Zeppelin, Pixies, Lenny Kravitz and Jane’s Addiction – as well as all the 60s folk troubadours.  My mates and I would set up our cheap amps in my parents’ garage and just shred.  We played at parties and the local church hall – unsurprisingly, Sony didn’t come calling!  Although I had been singing all my life, it was never a dream of mine to be on stage professionally.  I never thought of it as a sensible career choice – I still don’t!  Basically, it just crept up on me – I was working so hard on my music that one day I woke up and discovered that I had made a full-time career of it.

What does it mean to be a full-time singer-songwriter living in our times?

I’m glad you asked!  Excuse me if I get on my soapbox for a minute.  Being a full-time musician isn’t just a case of showing up to a gig five minutes before you’re due on stage, rocking the crowd for an hour or two, then hitting a hotel room with a couple of groupies.  That’s only part of it!  There’s hours of practice, years of honing your craft on stage, composing songs, writing lyrics, recording and mixing albums, arranging licenses and copyright, promoting your music online, uploading your songs and photos, designing posters and artwork, devising press releases, creatively blogging and emailing your fans, making videos, sourcing new venues, booking shows, long hours travelling to foreign shows, buying equipment, selling your product, balancing your finances and finally, paying your bills.  It’s amazing there’s any time for performing after all that!

On top of that, many people don’t think twice about illegally downloading your music, or giving it away to all their friends.  If your albums are self-financed, as mine are, that really jeopardises your chances of making the next CD.  Without new music every year or two, it’s hard to keep the fans engaged.  So you have to tour constantly to put bread on the table.

That said, it’s not all doom and gloom, so I’ll stop complaining now!  The Internet has given musicians many opportunities that they didn’t have a decade ago.  If you weren’t signed to a record label, it was hard to get noticed and sell albums beyond your immediate fan base, hometown or regular touring schedule.  The Internet has levelled the playing field a bit.  Now every bedroom musician and their dog can have a music website, but equally, everyone has a good shot at getting noticed.  You might not have a massive advertising budget, but if the wind is blowing in the right direction, you can still make a mark.

Do you collaborate with Czech musicians or other artists?

My current band is truly international – we are British, Czech, Slovak and American.  I am utterly blessed and honoured to be working with some of the best musicians in Central Europe.  I also use phenomenally gifted local artists and photographers for my album art.  When I have time, I occasionally help out venues looking for bands, so I check out a lot of live music.  I have met so many talented performers here, whose music I believe deserves to be heard – among them Nylon Jail, Jan Řepka, Martina Trchová, Ondřej Galuška, Žofie Kabelková… all fantastic songwriters.  I used to organise fashion markets in Prague too, because I met many incredibly original designers, but sadly I don’t have enough time for that now.  Nevertheless, it is so important to support home-grown talent.  Next time you need a present for someone, consider buying them something handmade and local.  It’ll last longer, look better, and you can bet no one else thought of the same thing!

How do you compose your songs? Are they based on your own life and experiences?

People always ask me if the words or the music come first.  The chicken or the egg.  Sometimes, I’ll have a melody running through my head, and I just find some random words to fit the tune.  Often those words end up in the final song, or even determine the subject matter.  Other times, I’ll stumble upon a great sounding phrase, and the tempo of the words will suggest a melody.  But I can’t choose when the muse will strike.  Often I’ll be walking down the street when I dream up a new song – then I have to hum it all the way home, in case I forget it before I get to my guitar!

Somewhere along the line, someone told me the maxim ‘write about what you know’.  Pretty much all of my lyrics are based on personal experience – either my relationships, philosophy, or life on the road.  The core of my song-writing has to be based in truth.  How can I expect people to identify with my lyrics, if I’m not honest with them?  Even the rare story-song I write has to come from something I have felt deep within myself.  One song on my new album, ‘Third Time Lucky’, is about a homeless man who finds life getting harder every year.  The idea for the song grew from a night I spent sleeping rough on a pavement in Dublin in the middle of winter – probably the most miserable night of my life.  I could never forget that, and the thought of spending my entire life on the streets is almost unbearable.

How would you describe your newest album? Is it different from the previous ones?

Musically, it is a little different.  My debut album ‘First Person Singular’ had a solo acoustic, alternative folk-blues sound and it featured a lot of guests playing wooden instruments!  The next, ‘Second-hand Lullabies’ was more soulful rock, with a full backing band and a more radio-friendly feel.  The new CD, ‘Third Time Lucky’ shows a slightly harder, darker side of my song-writing.  There’s still the uplifting anthems to sing along to, but it’s soaked in old-school rhythm ‘n‘ blues tears and late-night whiskey laments.  Lyrically, there are still songs about love, death, hope and heartbreak, so the old fans won’t be disappointed!

If people want to listen to your music, what are the real and virtual spaces they should visit?

The websites which get updated the most are ReverbNation and Facebook – if you become a fan, you’ll get invited to shows and discover all sorts of exciting stuff there.  I don’t play any regular shows in Prague, but I really like Joy, and I’m sure to play there again soon. 

‘Third Time Lucky’, the new CD by Alasdair Bouch, was released on 10th May 2013. Keep an eye on MP’s Facebook page for Prague concerts information!

Prepared by Petra Johana Poncarová from Ffakt Magazine; published on the 15^th of May 2013.

Prague Microfestival: A Festival Looking towards the Future.

An interview with Olga Peková, an English and American Studies student and the head coordinator of the international Prague Microfestival that brought inspiring personalities of contemporary poetry from Czech and abroad into the K4 club.  (Original interview link: http://ffakt.ukmedia.cz/prazsky-microfestival-festival-zamereny-do-budoucnosti-na-literaturu-ktera-teprv-bude; translated by Jaromír Lelek and Olga Peková)

When and how did Prague Microfestival come about? And how did you get to working on the festival?

The history of Prague Microfestival (PMF) goes back to the 2004 Prague International Poetry Festival. Back then, more than 40 writers from all over the world read their work at an event that lasted a whole week and included readings in up to three languages: the language of the original, English and Czech. The festival is more or less forgotten nowadays, but back then it was a bigger event than the currently well-known Prague Writer’s Festival. Louis Armand, a writer and a lecturer at the Department of Anglophone Literatures & Cultures [Note: an interview with him follows this one!], supervised the creation of the PMF, but thanks to the ambitious scale of the undertaking it would never happen in the same format again. Then in 2009 it was resurrected as a festival that has, rather as a form of precaution, added the word ‘Micro’ to its name. A group of authors from Ireland, Australia, and other countries gave a series of readings all around Prague and the translations to Czech were covered by the English and American Studies students. That was the seed from which in the following years a full-fledged festival started to bloom again: a year after that it was hosted in Brno as well and in 2011 it finally settled in the Krásný Ztráty bar, this time again for admirable five busy days. In the same year the festival partnered up with the Psí víno magazine and thus sealed its entry at the Czech literary scene. 2011 is also the year in which I found the way to the festival, simply as one of the English and American Studies students – my job was to translate about 8 authors’ work into Czech and I was helping out here and there. The next year, I took over a large portion of the organising from the original team of Louis Armand and David Vichnar, a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, and this year I’ve become a full-time coordinator or a ‘director’ of the festival.

Who participates in organising the festival?

The team comprises six people. Besides me there’s the aforementioned Louis Armand, thanks to whose erudition we are able to invite internationally renowned authors. Next there is David Vichnar, a Ph.D. student, translator and a long-standing chief of the festival, and Ondřej Buddeus who is our connection to the Psí víno magazine. I mustn’t forget our kind-hearted colleague, Tereza Novická, a translator and an announcer, and Elizabeth Kovačeva, a translator and this year’s coordinator of practical matters like the accommodation of the guests. Both the girls are English and American Studies students. However, many others aid in preparing the festival: the K4 club team is a big partner to us and helps also with organising the festival’s small exhibition. Every year we approach students of English and American Studies with an offer of poetry translation jobs, we need a graphic designer, a photographer, a stand seller, poster distributors, and volunteers of all kinds…

Is it challenging to gather financial sources for an event like this? Who supports the Microfestival?

The main ingredient has so far obviously been enthusiasm, which of course can’t be enough on its own. Last year we founded a non-profit organisation for running the festival and we succeeded in obtaining a scarce yet very helpful subsidy from the City of Prague Council. Also we approach individual cultural institutions and embassies that, however, operate on very limited budgets themselves. Getting the money is hard and the PMF has a difficult position for several reasons. The first one is the ubiquitous cuts in support for cultural activities which doesn’t concern only foreign institutions, but, to an even greater extent, the local ones as well.

The second reason is that our festival is still a relatively young institution; with the fifth year just finished we still are in the shadow of the older and well-established institutions like the Prague Writer’s Festival or the Book World which land all the ‘juicy’ grants only by the weight of their names. It will probably take some time before we’ll be able to convince the institutions that the PMF is a special and distinct event that deserves financial support and that has a potential that ought to be reckoned with. If that would happen Microfestival could become an international Prague festival looking towards the future; looking towards literature to be, which still, perhaps, remains partly unknown in these parts and therefore inspirational for the local artists. However, if the finances were to be constantly low, or if the festival was to be stumbling somewhere on the margins of its potential, it is equally possible that in a few years it will cease to exist. Anyway, the people who are supporting the festival a lot right now are those who just attend it, talk about it, and write about it.

Compared with the previous years, how demanding was it this year to set up the festival? How long before the event itself do you begin with your preparations and what are the necessary steps?

We’re taking the same steps as any other bigger cultural event – we file grant applications and approach institutions on the one hand, and, on the other, we search for authors and accompanying artists (painters and musicians) whom we approach and provided they are interested collaborate with past the event. That includes taking care of the accommodation and travel cost reimbursements and, simultaneously with that, the time and the venue of the festival has to be arranged. When all this is settled, we seek out and coordinate translators, photographers, sponsors, commission the graphics, and start putting the programme together. During the days of the festival itself there are a lot of details to be taken care of: introducing the authors and translators, or recording the readings. Right after the festival the book stand has to be cleared away, bills have to be accounted for, and some of the translations go into print during the summer and autumn, hence they have to be edited and so we stay in touch with the authors and translators… This year the grant applications deadlines changed, but last year we had to fill in a big grant application in September and then a smaller one in the autumn. The ideal time for approaching the authors is perhaps already in December, because by mid-February the communication has to be on the level of particulars. Since then on the organisers are being flooded with a stable stream of tasks; among all this the event itself is sort of the tip of the iceberg.

Moreover, throughout the whole year the festival has to be promoted unrelentingly. After the fashion of the Nordic festival Audiatur we would like to publish an annual anthology of the festival translations when the event is over. So the workload is actually spread throughout the whole year. Partly for that reason, the festival is a bit smaller this year: as a matter of fact it has shrunk from five nights to three, the fourth is being organised together with the Svět knihy, which is a great relief.

What were the highlights of the 2013 Prague Microfestival? Looking back, was it a successful event?

This year’s centrepiece was the performance of the American poet based in Paris who has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Alice Notley, who gave a reading at the opening night, on Sunday the 12th of May. We were also thrilled to host the Norwegian Conceptualist Paal Bjelke Andersen. And both the artists also performed and gave lectures outside the festival venue: on the grounds of the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University and in the TranzitDisplay gallery. As regards the Central Europe artists we saw the recent finalist of the Jindřich Chalupecký prize, Aleš Čermák, and the Slovak duo, Zuzana Husárová and Amalia Roxana Filip, that performs with its intermedia project Liminal. However, I would have to praise absolutely everyone. Besides that a wonderful musical accompaniment was secured: Ondřej Galuška, Ondřej Štveráček, Michel Delvielle with his homage to Frank Zappa, or Ken Nash. On the 15th of May foreign authors that have been living in Prague for a long time were performing. In fact I think the festival has come together quite nicely this year and we were thrilled to see everyone happy.

See photographs from the event on www.facebook.com/PrazskyMicrofestival.

Olga Peková currently takes a Master’s degree in Critical and Cultural Theory at the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures of the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University in Prague. Three years ago she got involved in organising the poetry festival Prague Microfestival, which she runs this year. Also, she is an editor at the Psí vino magazine and occasionally assists at the Litteraria Pragensia Books and Equus Press publishing houses. She has published translations of current Anglophone Literature and her own work. She is interested in contemporary poetry.