Interview: Class of 2010 - Steve Mason On A Strange and Challenging Year

"Sorry, my brain isn't working very well. I've been off anti-depressants for five days, but I just took one about two hours ago, so now I actually feel like I'm tripping on acid (laughs). Just bear with me… I'm actually quite a lot more intelligent than I'm sounding at the moment. Actually, can you put that in the article please?!?"
 
Ragged Words is not long on the phone with Steve Mason before it becomes clear the next few minutes of our conversation could go either one of two ways: we could talk about the time Mason spent in the doldrums – a depression-afflicted period which came to a head four years ago when the Scot went missing for two weeks on the eve of his first post-Beta Band tour as King Biscuit Time; or we could get back to discussing Boys Outside, the first album released under his own name that heralded “an astonishingly brave comeback” earlier this year. With the fearless detail of this latest work already offering a candid insight into Mason’s troubled past, we instead steer the conversation towards looking back over a year which, although birthing perhaps Mason’s most complete work to date, has remained no less challenging.
 
"It's been busy and pretty tough-going because there's just no money out there, so to keep the whole thing afloat is really, really, really, really, really difficult,” Mason tells Ragged Words en route to the Belle and Sebastian-curated Bowlie 2 ATP weekender. “It's been a strange year because obviously the album's really good, a lot of people like it and the gigs are going really well; but at the same time that's all tempered with the daily worries of trying to put food on the table."
 
Mason has grown accustomed to such worries. When he called time on The Beta Band, the massively influential four-piece were some £1.2 million in debt to EMI, with their frontman resorting to working on a building site to pay the rent. In a 2006 Guardian interview, Mason recalled how his neighbours would bring him bowls of soup, believing he was suffering from starvation. He’s more aware of how deep in the red he’s going nowadays, but even if velcro suits are no longer on the shopping list, he says an artist in his position still needs to “borrow a bundle of money” from a label just to get an album off the ground. Now approaching the ripe old age of forty, he says this is becoming a scarier prospect as time passes by.
 
"I'm in the same situation with this album pretty much, only now I'm much more aware of what everything costs! It’s important that I’m aware of what I'm borrowing from the label and how much debt I'm actually getting into… But you've just got to keep going and hope that one day something is going to happen that will mean you're going to be able to pay everyone back, and still actually have some real money left for yourself.
 
“As you get older, it gets much more frightening; thinking that one day maybe you won’t have any more music left in you and you'll end up working in McDonalds or something until you retire… It's pretty scary to be honest. When you're younger, it's fine because you don't give a fuck, but yeah, as you get older you definitely start to worry about it more."
 
Pre-Boys Outside, when Ragged Words last saw Mason live – promoting his coolly-received Black Affair project in a less-than-half-full Hoxton venue some three years ago – that terrifying end-point presumably must have looked a lot closer than it does right now. After all, he’s just come off a recent string of sold-out shows marking the first full UK tour in the company of the new record. But for someone who had grown used to playing to packed-out theatres only a few years previously, were those sparsely-attended Black Affair shows particularly tough to get through?
 
"Oh yeah, I remember that gig... Well, it took me about two years to get that (Black Affair) record out, and by the time it was released that whole sound had been and gone, and so obviously it completely alienated my entire fanbase! (laughs). It was difficult from every angle; that gig that you're talking about was the culmination of a pretty miserable time for me, just driving a transit van around the UK on my own.
 
In some ways that sort of experience is good for you, because it kind of… I don't want to say it humbles you, because I've only ever considered myself to be a relatively humble person; but it certainly does something to you. Maybe it's just character-building, I dunno, but now that it's no longer just me in a transit van flooring it down the M1, I find I appreciate the small things that bit more."
 
Equally, Boys Outside – which is now troubling more than a few end-of-year lists, our own included – has made people appreciate just how good it is to have Mason back. Begun on a whim one day when he was bored from working on the next Black Affair album and decided to pick up a guitar instead – penning the album’s title track there and then in next to no time – Mason says the album reminds him that “simple sounds can be really beautiful too”. The record’s deceptively straightforward electro-soul proves just as enduring a listen as anything in his back catalogue; indeed, so pleased is its author with how well it turned out that he’s happy to throw the occasional old song in with it onstage, as Ragged Words witnessed when ‘Dr. Baker’ made an unexpected appearance at this year’s Electric Picnic festival.
 
“It's a weird one,” acknowledges Mason, “because every artist wants to move forward and not have that one song that people are hanging around waiting to hear. You still want to be relevant and make music that people love. I think I've managed to get myself to a point now where people are still going to have a good time even if I don't play some of those old songs. If Boys Outside was a pile of shit, I'd probably be inclined to play fewer of the old songs, but because I'm really confident that it’s just as goodas – if not better than – anything I've done in the past, then what's the harm in playing something for the nostalgia crew?!?"
 
Next up for Mason is a three-month writing period that may hopefully lead to some studio work later in the new year. He’s also gearing up to give The States a second go, heading for SXSW in March after deciding to scrap this month’s scheduled week-long tour (“It was going to cost me £6,000, and up until a few days ago we'd sold something like twenty-two tickets!”). There will also be a dub version of Boys Outside out before the summer, but beyond that – we have to reluctantly ask – what are the chances of a Beta Band reunion?
 
"I don't know if The Beta Band is really relevant anymore, to tell you the truth – I think it's residing in the “where are they now?” category. I just couldn't imagine (a reunion) happening really. It's all such a long time ago that I don't see why anyone would want that. They've got the records; I just don't think about it myself. As an artist, you're constantly moving forward and, like I said, I think Boys Outside is probably better than anything I've ever done in the past. The idea that I'm sitting around thinking about The Beta Band at all… it just never happens. Maybe when I'm sixty or seventy I'll remember that five- or six-year period when I was in that band, but for the time being I’m too busy thinking about trying to make what I’m doing now work."