Today we’d like to introduce you to Kev Gray.
Kev, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’m a songwriter. I’ve written over 150 finished songs now in almost all genres, on various themes, mainly about people I’ve met or much-needed topics like sharks, yoga, S & M parties – the usual.
I started off my music career writing songs for my friend’s wedding. The first one a 50s style tune Dean Martin type tune called ‘Guatemala’ written for a lovesick friend waiting for his missus to come back from a three years NGO stint at there. People liked it and I was asked to write another, a Latin-ballad, ‘Between Football and Chocolate’, for my salsa-loving BFFs.
I’d never imagined of getting into music professionally as it was just something I did for fun but I started playing my songs live. Was ridiculously shy, looking down in terror for the first few months but the constant positive feedback slowly led me to believe there were some truth in it – I mean everyone is nice to musicians. So it takes time to believe something that comes naturally is actually a talent. I mean you open your mouth and can sing – it’s pure luck. That self-doubt really drove me to strive for perfection in lyrics as just singing didn’t seem like I had earned or deserved any praise. It’s kind of like being praised for your breathing.
Then in 2008, I was heard playing in dive bar in Ueno, Tokyo, by a music exec and with the help of two backers, Jack and Jill, I got a sponsorship deal with a three-year business plan. This meant however, I had to give up journalism and focus solely on music and set up Hemlock Music. I named the band ‘Kev Gray & The Gravy Train”, a joke about people thinking playing music is simply sitting around all day playing a guitar – money for nothing and your chicks for free. Bah humbug.
I was then flown to Australia to record at EP at Medici Studios in Melbourne with a top producer, Mike Stangel. It won two songwriting awards for ‘How The Story Ends’, a literary-themed Latin piano track about a psychotic breakdown based on the ending of a Jim Thompson crime novel, and ‘One More Chance’ about a lifelong love triangle. I was the guns blazing in Tokyo with a huge turnout every month at The Crocodile Club and lots of press and radio, so much so that we were on Wikipedia. However, I soon realized after 18 months that the glass ceiling was about as a high as the tiny doorways in my Japanese apartment, so I left for London to keep progressing – just in time for the Lehman Crash.
I therefore left one country with no music options to a one with no financial options. So that’s when I turned to America, land of opportunity and my favorite music. I spent three summers in New York slowly climbing up the ladder, finally getting into famous joints like The Bitter End. I became egotistically enamored with feedback, as Americans are such a great listening audience. This was partly as I stood out being British, and had a such a gentle voice, but also as my story-based lyrics resonated as many aspiring songwriters were often just copying the latest trend and sounded very alike. I guess by default the quirky songs jumped out at the audiences as something different.
For example, my most popular song was a bossa nova tune about yoga, specifically the sexual tension in the yoga class, called Dirty Downward Dog. It uses yoga moves in the lyrics to weave a story, and it’s a bit saucy. I love seeing people giggle at the line “I love your naughty camel pose”. Mission accomplished.
I then started coming to LA regularly after 2010 and although I hated the vast sprawl and lack of transport, was attracted by all the positive energy. After years of building up contacts and reputation, we did two tours around the US, including a coast-to-coast musicathon from New York to LA as part of a world tour in 2017. So I’ve started to use LA as my base here, most recently living out of a boat in Marina Del Rey. But I work all over the world, especially Japan and Thailand and use the money for more recordings and tours. Once the new recordings are finished, I’ll have a solid new product and merchandise to enact Operation Dirty Downward Dog. The main focus is selling songs to commission and soundtracks. The lyrical story-telling content is a perfect match, so where better than LA.
LA is at the forefront of the music industry and I learn so much more here than anywhere else about how quickly the music industry is changing. You’ve gotta be in the mixer. You meet so many creative, successful people in LA that it increases the chances of making things happen. It’s a really fertile environment. I’ve been hanging out with some film producers in the boathouse, for instance. Lovely down-to-earth chap who just sits in his shorts drinking wine, doing deals on his phone all day. It’s hilarious. I was playing tennis the other day in a house next to Arnie and Dr Dre. You come to LA and it is really is like your own personal TV show. Things just happen here that don’t happen anywhere else. It took me a long time to like this city but I’m officially in love. At last!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There is a road on the way out of the Nakayama racetrack in Tokyo that is littered with all of the losing betting slips, called the “road of broken dreams. My musical life has sometimes felt like those betting slips.
Like everyone without connections, my first struggle was a total lack of experience and knowledge about music and the industry. I was a total novice, signed up solely as I could sing like Chet Baker and had prolific songwriting potential. I would wake up with songs in my head.
I was suddenly writing melodies, lyrics, running a band, managing a bunch of people, meeting venue owners, networking, booking gigs, tours, travel, arranging finances, and doing endless promotion like posters and social media, thank yous, newsletters, constant blah blah blah – I mean even creating, printing a setlist for 20 songs is taxing as each venue/audience is different … who is doing what solo, when, new songs every week, etc. Learning on the job with no previous experience, no mentors, few contacts and limited funds – I had a lot of moments back then thinking, ‘Oh Lord, what have you done?’ and promptly named my second CD, ‘I Should’ve Stopped There’
So early on, I made constant bad decisions, getting ripped off due to my greenness. The best example was a Scottish guy living in the boonies of Shikoku in southern Japan (like North Dakota). He claimed to have produced top bands and owning a world-class recording studio. When I arrived, it was a spare bedroom with a blanket for sound control and his kids playing in the corridor. When I complained, he suggested I book a huge mountain cabin for eight days so we could record 24/7… and promptly invited his family along for a free holiday. I lost all of the band funds that had taken years to accumulate. All the warning signs were there – no replies about questions to his online contacts, lack of online credits, but I was so desperate to get a recording, I convinced myself he was a reclusive genius. That’s why you need third-party counsel to say, Nope – he’s just a kid’s English teacher with some music software.
Another time, the people ended up being in a bizarre religious group and accused me of being a spy. I was interrogated for an hour. Nice people but that was weird.
Another struggle was getting the right people together for the task ahead. I recorded with this one jaw-dropping female singer, Christy, who had her own TV show called The Human Jukebox. Flawless natural harmony. The deal was she would record for free if I came to church for a month. I think they call it “flirt-to-convert”. It was actually nice to see this religious community as an outsider, but I almost had a breakdown when they popped open up a bottle of non-alcohol champagne. That was the end of that. Finally, she ran off to get married. I put out ads to replace her, but nobody came close. Was like flying First-class and then going to Economy. One reply was: I’m a man… but I can sing like woman. Hit the Jackpot!
America, in contrast, is a country where literally everyone plays music, collaboration is so just easy. I didn’t have any small change for the bus once so this old Mexican bus driver lets me on and starts chatting simply as I have a guitar. I told him I love playing the Mexican classic, ‘Sabor A Mi’, and he’s like “Oh! You come with me – I’ll take you to all the Mexican music clubs, we’ll teach you more songs!”. He gave me his number and I really regret not going. There’s music in the ground everywhere you go here.
I had great musicians around me in Tokyo but I didn’t realize that we didn’t share the same ambitions. Most of them had jobs and/or families and were unbeknownst to me just doing it for fun and girls. Tour in America? No chance. It was like setting out on a rowing boat to the island of hope on the horizon. Slowly, it gets more tiring, and you finally look back and see everyone else has jumped off and swam ashore long ago.
I often felt like “the other woman” – the married guy is never gonna leave his secure life for you, you’re just the fun bit on the side at weekends. It seems common sense now but in any project of passion you need to weigh people to see what they are going to sacrifice. Here are some new interview questions: How do you feel about having a family… relationships… security… money… sanity… Don’t care about them? Great. You’re in!
I love all my old bandmates, who are like family, and molded me musically, it’s just everyone has different goals and you need to make that clear before basically starting a serious relationship. Music is the love of my life so…
On that note, being a musician isn’t the best way to find your true love in life. That’s another obstacle you have to deal with. You’re cool and romantic at first, but nobody wants to be second fiddle permanently – “See ya, Luv! I’m off for three months. I’ll call when I can”. The exception to the rule being drummers: women seem to have a soft spot for them, maybe as they are crazed individuals yet reliable, best of both worlds. (What do call a drummer without a girlfriend? – Homeless.) Everyone loves drummers. I’m buying a kit.
I’d be well suited as drummers have lots of scrapes. I almost died about eight years ago choking on something. Was taken to hospital with oxygen. They said if they operated, it would destroy my voice. So I just kept retching for an hour and waited till it went down. I couldn’t speak for weeks and had huge gaps in my vocal range. Saw a specialist in London who surmised the gaps were due to trauma in the muscles due to the retching and choking. It was actually an American woman observing who after the appointment said, come next door and I’ll teach you some rehab techniques. She made me do the trumpet sound and said once you can do this in the full range, the trauma will have gone. Genius. Now I do the mouth trumpet in my shows and it blows people away [pun definitely intended]. I wish I could find her to say thanks.
Another accident occurred on a tour of the US in 2015. I did a 20 USD rideshare to San Francisco. The driver was an aspiring actor texting constantly for auditions the whole way and rear-ended someone at 60mph. I was air-bagged and my seat-belt broke. I didn’t know about the effects of shock and so still went on a 3-day bender with my mate at the Burning Man decompression parties. Big mistake. Maybe it was the shock or whiplash but I lost my voice completely and the tour was over.
However, again, there was a bizarre upside. I had to write notes to communicate and so people thought I was deaf and dumb. The effect was incredible. I went to buy some hats in Venice and the staff not knowing I was not deaf and dumb said, “Jeez, poor ****** – give him that one for free”. An old tailor on the boardwalk who had previously tried to rip me off weeks earlier, fixed all my clothes for free. He was miming to me the whole time. Still cracks me up. American Airlines who previously been pretty crappy, rushed me through the check-in and TSA as I was late and then put me in Business Class to NYC. People would write the sweetest things to communicate and show compassion. I still have all the notes. Americans come from that cowboy culture of self-reliance, looking out for yourself, especially in big cities, so there is a hard shell, but if you can get through to that beautiful American heart down inside, it’s golden. It’s one of my fondest memories. Thank you! (BTW don’t even think about it!)
However, each one has taught me the value of perseverance and it still amazes me how my body gets better. I’m so lucky to still be here, so being able to sing like an angel instead of hanging around upstairs with them is a real blessing.
I’m an optimistic Sisyphus. You roll that rock up the mountain, get to the top, and then see a bigger mountain that was hidden. In shock, the ball rolls down the other side but it’s still higher than where you started from and you go again up the next one. What else you gonna do – Give up? I’m gonna be the next Ibrahim Ferrer!
Another challenge was being British in an American world. To succeed in the US, you have to put yourself out there and be shameless. At first, It’s hard to learn that if you don’t have it in your culture, even more so after living in modest Japan.
So that’s why LA is such an ideal place for learning and growing. People have this natural confidence in what they are doing and it’s intoxicating to be around. I believ-vvve.
I used to feel like a punchdrunk boxer who doesn’t know when to quit but when in America that all disappeared as everyone has a dream here. I feel normal here – It’s normal to have a dream, it’s abnormal not to. And LA is the Mecca of dreamers.
Overall, I’d say my road resembles the bike path from MDR to Santa Monica, starting off with the fun and excitement of the volleyball, the crashing sea, the day-drinking bars then stumbling into the homelessness, and the sadness and the madness of Venice, but then back onto the high-octane gymnastics rings and the energy and the bright lights of the big wheel. You just gotta keep going till you end up in Malibu 🙂
Please tell us about Hemlock Music.
Essentially, we are songwriting agency at heart. Lyrics, melodies, full compositions. Songs, not scores. Real stories, not fillers.
I’d say lyrical songwriting would set us apart from others. We’ve had two songwriting awards and get commissioned as a result. A good example would be a song I was commissioned to write about shark finning for a conservation group. It’s called ‘The Last Shark’. It took a lot of research to perfect the lyrics and is written in a soft jazz style to dramatize the lament of the last shark on earth. It has humor, outrage, and sadness to the backdrop of sweet melody. So when people come to me when I play it live and ask about it, so again, mission accomplished.
We have also written across genres and borders such as with a German-Japanese funk band called TEFCO; and a Russian Deep House DJ, Pasha Vakabular. They just send the music and a maybe a title; I write the melodies and lyrics. A title helps with the concept – such as “Busty”. Easy-peasy that one.
One feature is revitalizing old genres that had been restricted by the times they were popular. In the old days, they had two main themes: I love you, you love me. Woo-hoo… OR… I love you, you dumped me. Boo hoo… So writing jazz songs about sharks or kinky clubs expands the canon and gives more scope for soundtrack material…
When the songs hit their mark, it’s joyous. I was absolutely thrilled when an audience member told me my bossa nova song, ‘Please Make Me Paranoid’, made him depressed as it reminded him of his divorce. The theme being it is better to be paranoid than know the truth that someone is cheating on you. Is this a good thing to make people depressed? Of course not. I aim for “Saudade’ (beautiful sadness), but at least it’s real and people can connect with the song and feel alive. The music industry thinks everyone wants the usual tosh, which we do at times, but for me, the human aspect of connection, feeling, reaction is the true purpose of music.
Hemlock Music was named after Socrates’s concept of the ‘unexamined mind’. I wanted to write songs that made people think or wonder what it was about and used the symbol for the planet Uranus as a logo, the planet of inventive power. For example, the opening lines to ‘The Veil Has Been Lifted’:
The dirty windows of my soul, cleansed only by your loving face…
Stains upon your camisole, like arsenic dropped upon a shoelace…
My challenge was for someone to tell me what the song is about. Like musical mathematical puzzles. I’d love any readers to listen to the song and work it out.
The original idea was that I would sing and record high-quality tracks as the shop window to get the songs out there in the marketplace. Live performances would fund the recordings. Hopefully, the songs would get some buzz, and if not people would see at least see the quality of the songwriting and say we’d like a song like that.
Some people want melodies; other lyrics; and most songs can be rewritten or used in some way. So while lyrically it’s sometimes a niche market, musically, the songs work across the board. I know that from playing in countries where people don’t understand the lyrics but like the feel of the song or the melody.
I love performing but the ultimate goal is to write songs for soundtracks and other artists. Touring is exhausting and it makes me look less and less like Brad Pitt every day. I’ve managed to perfect selfies lately though, by taking them in the dark. I look fabulous.
So anyone needing lyrics or melodies or whole songs written to commission, for soundtracks or other artists, please get in touch. I especially love working on other people’s songs.
This connection with people is maybe what I am proudest of. Making a community – like you guys are doing – bringing musicians, audiences, all kinds of people together, and on the journey happily meeting incredible people all over the world.
Another thing I’ve been doing here is business development for a company called Live Artists Asia, which organizes music tours in Asia, and vice versa, trying to develop a network in the US to bring Asian artists over here. Again, please feel free to get in touch.
In such a divided world, it’s more important than ever to find things that unite us – Music really is the antidote.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I was really, truly blessed with such a happy childhood. It is just one long memory of playing and learning. I wrote a song about it called ‘Happy Children’ about how having such a beautiful childhood maybe doesn’t prepare people for what lies ahead. Typical, cynical Brit Hahaha.
“… Were we Happy Children … for way too long?”
Music-wise, my favorite memory would be the first song I remember, which is still one of my favorites, called “Allee-Ballee-Bee (Sitting on your Dadda’s Knee)” from when I was 2. I didn’t realize until later in life that my Dad just used to make up the songs for us. Thanks Dad!
Another favorite is when we came from school ( about 6 or 7) and our budgie/pararkeet has changed color and was smaller. Our parents told us Starsky had went for a haircut and had been on a diet, which we believed, of course. We found out recently that the cat had actually eaten Starsky so they had ran out and bought a new bird but couldn’t find the same size or color. Kawaiiiiiii!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.hemlockmusic.com
- Email: info@hemlockmusic.com
- Instagram: @dirty.downward.dog
- Facebook: @kevgraymusic
- Other: WIKIPEDIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kev_Gray_%26_The_Gravy_Train
SOUNDCLOUD www.soundcloud.com/kevgray
Image Credit:
Paolo Patrizi, Layla Shibukawa, Jason Nowe
Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
