Glad Town Ghost’s new EP Dreamsong, TS10 blends Appalachian folk textures with Teesside grit, pairing fingerpicked guitar and lo-fi arrangements with dream-inspired lyrics and local character studies. Recorded at Loco Studio with Brendan Portues, and featuring Bee Davison and Chris Groom, it follows February’s These Witching Hours and sees Glad Town Ghost, aka Dale Husband, in a ‘deep and fertile creative furrow.’
Musically, the EP pairs bright, resonant acoustic guitar with shifting piano dynamics and Dale’s Dylan-esque vocals, marked by distinctive phrasing and occasional melodic backing from Bee Davison. It’s an intricate listen filled with stories and sonic textures that will give you something new to enjoy every time you listen.
Here, we catch up with Dales to find out more about the EP…
When writing songs, do you start with the narrative or let the music lead?
It depends on the situation, I’ve always got a backlog of guitar parts and lyrics, then when an interest concept pops up I make a little collage of them, or sometimes a new song writes itself in 15 minutes, I just aim to be around often enough to be a good conduit, very arty.
As an artist, how do you balance influence with invention?
A lot of my influences for this project are old trad folk and bluegrass songs, so the chord progressions can be quite obvious, with that in mind, I consciously try to world build with my songs, there’s little fourth wall lyrics, Boro colloquialisms, recurring characters, ghosts. I’m really trying to make my writing as unique as it can be.
What does a ‘productive creative furrow’ look like for you?
Essentially I’ve always wrote songs as a side project to playing in bands, this year is the first time ever it’s been my only musical commitment, I have a huge amount of unrecorded songs, and I have time set aside every week to write more, and make people aware of my existence. I’m trying to organise myself into a position where I can record and release consistently, until death or burnout.
What inspired you to write Dreamsong, TS10 and tell us more about the name?
The songs were all wrote towards the start of this year, they’re character studies of people and time spent mainly in TS10, I think ‘Dreamsong’ is a nice word and describes my music well, I’ve noticed loads of my songs either come from or reference dreams lately, so i wanted that to be acknowledged, I might do Dreamsong, TS5 next.
The EP draws from Appalachian folk and Teesside grit. Do you see those worlds as opposites or part of the same landscape?
I think they go hand in hand musically, the North East of the UK used to be attached to Appalachia via tectonic plate, you can hear the Celtic folk influence in Bluegrass. In terms of the Teesside grit, I think that’s similar to the influence vs invention concept. I’m trying to do Americana, but without so much of the American, I did grow up in the middle of nowhere, I think that’s where the influence comes from.
There’s a lot of space in your arrangements. How do you decide what to leave out as much as what to put in?
I’ve done a lot of recordings that I feel are too cluttered in the past, plus Brendan who I record with is notorious for his love of synth layer. We need rules to keep things fairly lo-fi, also my guitar playing is quite busy. With this EP, we expanded some sounds and no doubt will again if it serves the theme, but ultimately we’re just making a bed for songs themselves to sleep in.
Tell us about some of the themes that run through the EP?
These songs are about breaking the cycle of our upbringings, the importance of family, constantly aiming for new goals and never giving up. It’s thematically the most positive music I’ve recorded, surprisingly.
You’ve worked with familiar collaborators on this release. How important are these creative relationships and what did they bring to the EP?
I’ve loved the freedom that writing and performing alone brings, but it definitely requires other people to bounce off and create with. Both the collaborators on my music, and my friends in the wider arts scene have kept me going massively this year. Knowing that such skilled people want to work with me is genuinely a massive source of pride, it helps me feel valid on bad days. I’m sure it’s the same for a lot of people who make things, we need each other. No competition.
What’s next for you?
Keep writing, learn more about music marketing, record new songs, send them to you, raise a savage daughter, have a nice a time.
