ART TERRY
I met Art Terry around about the turn of the century, via an ad he had placed in LOOT, the classifieds paper, which at the time was how most musicians in London found each other…
I was looking for new inspiration. I’d spent a decade as singer-songwriter-guitarist in various guitar-based bands, and I had become jaded of that sound, and was feeling somewhat trapped in a role that perhaps didn’t suit me. I was hatching plans to start a different sort of group (which became August), and meanwhile I wanted to see what some other people were up to…
Art’s advert said ‘band with record deal’, which pricked up my ears to start with, and where a typical LOOT ad would list a whole string of influences, this one only mentioned two – Brian Wilson & John Cale. If it had said The Beach Boys & The Velvet Underground along with other selections from the 60s rock canon, I would have probably skipped past it. But the specific reference to two of my absolute favourite individuals from that scene, along with the promise of the ‘record deal’ intrigued me enough to investigate…
The laid back Californian voice on the other end of the phone put in me in mind of a blonde, blue eyed surfer dude, so I was quite surprised when I turned up at his top floor flat in Southwark and was greeted by a trim, neatly dressed black guy with only a faintly bohemian air to him. We bonded quickly over ‘Paris 1919’ and ‘Forever Changes’ and Motown, and played each other some of our own songs. I fell immediately in love with his, and that was the start of a working relationship, and a close friendship, that are still going strong a quarter of a century on…
I offered my services first as bass player, but he already had someone on bass, and when I came through the door of the rehearsal room for my first meeting with the rest of his band, The Fairys, he introduced me to the other musicians with “this is the producer I was telling you about”. I had never produced anything more sophisticated than a 4-track cassette demo. I loved the band, but I wondered how I could find a role for myself in the sound they were making, which already included Art on guitar & vocals, two keyboard players, viola, trumpet, bass, drums & harmony vocals. I ended up playing Stirling Morrison type guitar decorations on some songs, and tambourine on others, and adding a falsetto harmony where I could hear one…
The Fairys were a great bunch of people to hang around with, and we played regular club gigs and local festivals, and made some recordings for the Day Release label down in Stockwell, to which the band was signed. But the group dynamic was always chaotic, with regular line-up changes (I even ended up on drums at one point), and then the label de-camped up to Scotland, which meant the record release which might’ve held things together never materialised. I was getting more involved with my own group by that time, and Art and I drifted apart for a while…
Until I got a call asking me down to a recording session for Fire Records, in Stoke Newington, with Art and the only surviving Fairy, keyboard player Naoko Aota. Which began a gradual process of experimental recording, which culminated eventually in me producing the first Art Terry solo LP, Anutha Kinda Brotha, released in 2009…
From there, the core of my other group, August – Clean Cut Mark on drums, myself on bass and vocalist Vedina Mosé – became Art’s band too, and Art joined August on keyboards for several of the sessions for our debut LP, It’s Not The Wand, It’s The Magic. August broke up before that album was released (which is another story), but I stayed on with Art as bassist and musical director through changing line-ups that included Maree Choie on clarinet & vocals, Nick Richards on trombone (both August alumni), Damian Horner-Pausma on drums, Shohei Kawamoto on flute & bass clarinet, Jamil Reyes on tuned percussion (& sometimes drum kit) & George Simmonds on trombone…
Clean Cut Mark had moved to South Africa, and before he left we’d committed to tape, at Gizzard Recording on Fish Island, bass and drum tracks for all the songs he knew. A situation which was repeated when Damian H-P left for New Zealand a couple of years later. These rhythm tracks were gradually built upon, and a batch of them became the ’Sex Madness’ LP, which finally saw the light of day in 2020…
I stopped gigging with Art in 2015, when I became a father and left London for Budapest and then Ramsgate. We kept our working relationship going though, despite the distance, and through the lockdown year of 2020 and into 2021 we collaborated remotely on a string of online releases, including the singles ‘Make It’, ‘Backlash’ & ‘It Ain’t Christmas’. Most recently we collaborated on the ’Petroleum Milky Way’ single at the end of 2023, in sympathy with the Just Stop Oil movement…
Art has evolved a new live band since I left town, now known as the Black Bohemians, and in parallel with these releases we worked on overdubs for another batch of Clean Cut / HP rhythm tracks towards a third album entitled ‘Black Bohemian’ which is close to completion, as well as recording from scratch with the new group on songs from the ’Self Isolation Songbook’; a project which began in lockdown when Art and film maker Helena Smith recorded a song each day for 52 days, many of the songs written that same day, as Art battled the Covid virus, ending up with a documentary film of the experience, which has been screening along with live performances by the group…
As well as being one of my dearest friends, Art for me is one of the most consistently great songwriters of his generation. Not enough of his songs have yet seen the light of day, and those that have are not widely enough known. Hopefully we can remedy that over another couple of decades of collaboration…
More about Art Terry on his website – www.artterry.co.uk