If you are immersed within the UK Americana scene then the name Robert Vincent shouldn’t be new to you. A much celebrated artist within the Americana scene for a number of years, Vincent has become one of the strongest singer/songwriters that the genre has to offer. This year Robert Vincent won UK Song of the Year with – “Follow What You Love and Love Will Follow” from his album of last year titled Barriers at the UK Americana Awards.

Robert is currently on tour within the UK and will be headlining a show that we at Building Our Own Nashville are presenting. Held at The Prince Albert Pub in Stroud on Sunday the 9th February 2025, the show will also see UK artist Amy Moore as support. The show is a sell out show which we are very excited about. Hosted by Peter Baxendale, the proceeds of the event will be donated to the Trinity Rooms Community Hub in Stroud.

The Trinity Rooms Community Hub is a centre that provides a venue for a range of activities which benefit the environment, and the health and well-being of local people and the wider community.

We caught up with Robert last year to talk about his album Barriers. We hope you enjoy the interview as much as we did talking to Robert.

What preparation did you have going into this album? (Barriers) What was your mindset after such a critically acclaimed album last time?

I always want to better what I have done! The last album, we went in the studio and we recorded live in the room. I did it with Ethan Johns and he is very much of that camp and I am a fan too of just setting up in a nice sounded room and just rolling the tape. We went straight to tape and recording and seeing what comes out. I am a huge fan of that which is why I wanted to work with Ethan for so long. So I’d done that and I didn’t just want to do that again, I wanted to take a little more time over it and I knew the songs that I had were slightly different in the sense that they had a slightly different approach to them. I wanted it to be a bit more concise and take advantage of the musicans that I had around me playing with them and to be able to build their parts and work things out, the melodies that they wanted to do which we couldn’t necessarily do on the last record because the last record is “what you put down is what you put down” and that’s it, you can’t go back and then change it. I wanted to make it more concise and that’s what we’ve done I think and it’s come out nice in that sense.

Well I am loving it so far. I wanted to know how you decide what song to release first?

I never sit down to write a song that I think will be something that is radio friendly- I never sit down to do that but I think The Insider was the natural one to go for because we did a video with David Morrisey who has become a friend of mine through Black Deer Festival. He saw me at Black Deer a few times and then we kept in touch. We did the video (that David is in) and then it just seemed to have that kind of big entrance of being what it was and The Insider having that kind of radio friendly sound and we just thought, well we’ll go with that one.

How do you decide the book ends of an album? Are the opener and closer important to you?

Yeah they are. I wrangled with this one a little bit. I went with The Insider where it was originally a track called Anywhere which is now track 3. I kind of chickened out at the last minute and put The Insider as the first one, I don’t know why? The last track, I think I always try to leave the last track as something for people to contemplate because I like the idea of listening to an album and by the end of the album you want to be thinking about the reasons why the writers have said what they have said and so I always try to leave it as something that is quite poignant and the last track is very poignant for me so that is why you know? The flow of an album is important.

I agree and as a listener, I really pay attention to the flow of an album. I find so many albums will have a song that just doesn’t fit the flow. One that springs to mind is Shake It Off on 1989 (Taylor Swift) it doesn’t work for me and so I always skip it.

It’s interesting you know. Back in the day with people like The Beatles, the singles weren’t in the records. You’d put out three singles in the lead up to the record and then you’d have a record that didn’t have any of the singles on.

Interesting!

Yeah, singles were entirely different things to albums and album tracks. A lot of bands from that era and that I love, they just didn’t have the concept of what a single was, they didn’t bother. I like to make albums that have an ebb and flow and they question things and make people think a bit.

Were there any songs that made it last minute or was everything ready?

There’s always a last minute one. Follow what you love and love will follow and Barriers – Those two songs were the last two that I wrote. Barriers, I wrote on the Sunday and we were going into the studio on the Tuesday to start tracking. We did three days of tracking just the drums and the bass and I had it kicking around and I didn’t really question it really. We put down all the tracks and we had an hour left on the last day and one of the lads said “have you got anything else? We’ve got time to kill” and I said “well I wrote this one the other day” I started playing it and Jim just started playing that kind of Steve Gadd, 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, Paul Simon kind of vibes on it and that was it. It went down straight away. It’s like the second take on the record. There’s always a song that then defines what the albums means I think.

Well yeah – does that mean you had another album name in mind then before laying that track down?

I didn’t at that point no, I was just literally starting to put down and see what was working but Life In Easy Steps, the first record, that kind of defined everything for me and then same with I’ll Make The Most of my Sins – that song was the last one to come of that album so there seems to be some sort of a pattern you know? There’s always a tune that comes and drags everything in, like a net it drags everything into the perspective of the album like Barriers did because then I realised what I was trying to say with all the other songs then. It was a real sign post of the album and it’s interesting how that happens. I think that’s definitely the subconscious of the writer, you’re obviously taking everything in that’s around you and this album is more personal than I have written. Your subconscious is always working.

Were any of the songs a challenge to write?

They were all a challenge to write haha!

Follow What You Love and Love Will Follow probably came along quite quickly. I had a very sleepless night about something and I woke up in the morning, put my feet out of the bed, picked up a guitar and wrote it in about half an hour. The lyrics and melody just kind of fell out. Songs like Beast Inside, Circumstance of Ignorance, they were big heavy players on this record and there were some interesting moments and were hard to get across the line

I was going to say Circumstance of Ignorance is an early favourite for me.

Oh good! You’re in a good position there because I think everyone who is listening to the record is gravitating to that one.

Oh how nice!

Let’s talk about the album artwork because it’s obviously great album artwork. How did that idea come to be?

I was trying to come up with something and I hate being on the cover of everything and so I have never been on the cover of any record of mine before apart from EP’s at the start. I just thought standing leaning on a tree “what does that even say?” You almost are starting to judge a book by its cover then. The artwork has to say something to me and with it being called Barriers….I’ve got a friend of mine, Mike Walker who has taken a lot of pictures of me over the years and I said I wanted to have something that was me but isn’t me but me playing a character like the character that is in The Insider. The face painting and a signal to the barriers we have and we hide behind masks and walls and are our own worst enemy. With The Insider, that tied into Barriers because David (Morrisey) was playing the character of this politician that was evil and behind the scenes of the people who were the puppets, and so I was playing the part of his good and bad side and was trying to plead with him to be a better person within that song. I think that whole theme of the album is that the barriers that we put up and the barriers that other people put up for us and that we have to overcome them. The artwork was all that, that even in this industry we feel like we are slightly performing monkeys for the people that are pulling the strings and they know that we would do this regardless which is why they don’t look after their artists and pay their artists well. It all ties into those feeling of feeling slightly fooled by the system. You hit a wall sometimes as a musician and question what you are doing at the time because it’s not easy you know?

The artwork does lure you in and as you say, you can’t help but judge a book by its cover sometimes.

I am a Pink Floyd fan and I come from that world where the artwork is as important as what’s on the record. So if what’s on the record is really good, there’s no way I am going to put up a picture of me standing in a field.

No!

So who did all your makeup for the album cover?

I did it!

Did you?

Yeah believe it or not haha! I just bought a kids Halloween set and slapped it on. It didn’t have to be perfect because that was kind of the idea, it had to look quite dark and messed up really.

That’s amazing, I couldn’t pull that off haha!

What was it like being on the Old Grey Whistle Test?

Oh wow yeah, now that was a moment.

I stayed up to watch that.

Did you? To the end (as was in very late)

Yeah I did!

It was special. I had obviously become friends with Bob (Harris) and he had been championing me playing the records and we had become very good friends so it had become a very natural thing to be on the show because it was all about him championing music that no one had heard before and he continued to do that again in the way that he had always been doing that. You think to yourself when you watch back at the old Old Grey Whistle Test videos that you will never get to be on that (as the show was no more ) and then you do (for the special) and actually then closing out the show. If they never do another one then I will be the last person to have ever been on it!

Amazing! Are you secretly hoping he never does another one now? Haha!

Haha! It would be nice if it continues but it was a special moment of being a part of something that was huge and a huge part of my heritage of music growing up. If it wasn’t for Bob I don’t think we would have had the Jools Holland show or The Tube and all these shows that went in to take that format. It’s a big part of everyone’s lives whether they know it or not.

Agreed!

What song of yours is a family favourite?

There’s a song on my second album called All For You which is about when my son was born. It’s about changing part of yourself for someone else and in this case it was my son. My mum really liked it and I played a demo to her and after she had heard it a few times she said “I really like that song but there’s a line in it that says “there’s a hole in the ground where I lay you down” and I think she was a bit worried I had become a serial killer and she said “maybe just change this line because…” and I said no as it’s all metaphorical it’s about burying a part of yourself. She loves that song. It kind of doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks, if your mum likes one then that’s the end of that isn’t it? Haha!