MAVERICK
IN HIS FIRST INTERVIEW ABOUT HIS NEW ALBUM, INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED MUSICIAN CO WEXFORD MAN MAVERICK SABRE REVEALS THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE TRACKS AND HOW GOING INDEPENDENT HAS GIVEN HIM THE FREEDOM TO BE HIMSELF AS NEVER BEFORE. INTERVIEW BY DAVID LOO
“I wouldn’t be the musician I am without New Ross, without my dad. I wouldn’t be the person I am without my mam, my sisters, my friends, the New Ross upbringing. I wouldn’t ever have been an artist without Ireland”
HAVING burst onto the music scene in 2011 with his breakthrough album Lonely Are The Brave, New Ross musician Michael Stafford ( Aka Maverick Sabre), has established himself within the music industry. His 2015 release Innerstanding saw him collaborate with several artists and over the past few years he has been busy writing for emerging musicians and recording with English R& B superstar Jorja Smith. In the latest in a series of articles celebrating young, talented people from County Wexford, Michael, 28, from Moyle Valley, New Ross, credits his father Victor and uncle Sean with instilling a love of music in him. In a wide- ranging interview ahead of a European tour, he describes how cinema and documentaries were the inspiration for his latest album, which is due out in March of next year, and offers advice to up- and- coming musicians within the county.
When is the new album out?
It will be March next year, three years on from Innerstanding which came out in late 2015, early 2016.
Are you happy with the reaction to the first song Drifting?
It’s (been) great. It’s a nice start and a way to introduce people to the new material. I’m excited about the work we are willing to put in.
What course has your career taken over recent years?
Since the last record there has been quite a lot of change. I was signed to Virgin Records under Universal who had merged with my last label Mercury and the team had changed and everything had changed so when we put out the second record it felt quite different to the first and I wasn’t a fan of the change or the experience.
When we put it out I went touring for six months. I went touring with the Hilltop Hoods in Australia. Then I came back and we did an arena tour and about two months of acoustic shows travelling around England and Europe. It was nice to come off a bigger tour to smaller venues of up to 400 people. After that I left the label and I left everyone, my management, booking agent and started to build for two years a team around myself.
Did you feel you had outgrown the label and needed to move on?
Yeah I felt I needed to move on and it wasn’t a home for me anymore. I think when I came into it and did the first album it was the perfect home for me and it was a different feeling and I learned from album two that it definitely wasn’t the place for me. Then I learned that a lot of the people I needed who were around me, separate from the label and management, I ended up starting to write for other people for a year and a half. I went away after my second album from my own music and I started writing for young soul acts and just young acts in general who I connected with, who I could help in any way.
In that period of time I met Jorja Smith when she was 16 and she was one of the first artists I started to work with. So together we built up a team in the last few years. She started to blow up so my writing started to get busier so I just kept writing for two years and my writing started to do well. In between that time I started writing little sketches of the third album and two years into it I looked back and I had al these sketches and it was three quarters of the album.
Did you feel you needed to bring out a third album with so much material ready to be released?
It came out of the blue. I wanted to do a third album. It wasn’t really in my mind at the time but I had all these tunes and I knew I had to stick my head down and finish it off.
As an artist writing for other artists is there an element of keeping your rawest, most personal material for yourself?
I find that’s a question I asked myself when I was writing for other people. Before it was mainly dance acts or rappers I’d write hooks for, but when it came to the last two and a half years when I was writing lyrics literally for other people to sing, you question yourself: are you giving away your best stuff or your rawest feelings. But for me it got to the point as long as you love the people you work with I’m not being true to their music if I’m not giving the best and most honest parts of me.
You have very devoted and loyal followers on Twitter. Do you feel they respond to that honesty?
From the outset I’ve always wanted to convey an honesty and that has to carry me in my music or me when you listen to or meet me. It got to be truthful and feel honest whenever you see me, or read a tweet. For me that’s what I base everything on.
You have been very honest about your feelings on depression on Twitter. Do you use it to get a certain message across?
This is just my opinion and I can’t tell anyone else what to write, or to be this way but for me any platform I want to use, I use. Everything doesn’t need to be serious 100 per cent of the time but I’d like to get my honest opinion across. If they want to take it, if they don’t, they don’t, but I think I would be doing a disservice to me and to the music and the musicians and the artists and to the people in general who inspired me to not get my point across. Especially when I think there is no limit on how honest you can be when you are talking about personal things especially like depression and problems within your own life. For me, as a musician, the whole point of this is about being as rawly honest because that’s what connects to people most. That’s what connects to me when I listen to music when they’ve been really so honest that
they’ve been almost unbearably honest. There were loads of people like Tupac, Bob Dylan who were honest about their feelings or the times they were living in. Whether it was politically or personally. I think that honestly and truth are the key to long lasting music.
We are living in politically charged times. Is that reflected in your new album?
Most definitely, it’s always a part of me anyway. As much as I like to be in tune with what’s going on in my own head and put that out through my music I have always been very affected by the world I see around me. I like to put my perspective across because if people want to ear, if they don’t no problem. If you sit down with me you’d hear my perspective and it will always be present in all of my albums.
What is your writing process?
My normal day, Monday to Friday I’ll have sessions with people about my own music, or it will be split between writing for other people. In the evening I’ll go to someone’s house and jam some tunes. It’s a constant process of making music in different environments to make it not feel pressured. Because sometimes writing for other artists there is a label pressure that they want this kind of song so you just have to mix it up to ensure you’ve got enough life in every element. To me I only do music. When people ask what do you do in your spare time, I say it’s music, it’s all music.
Is writing all about getting the tune out first and then finishing it later?
It’s about making sure you enjoy it and bringing it back to a point where there’s no pressure. I’ve always wanted to get back to a point where I am making music for fun. Sometimes within the industry it can sway your point of view if you don’t keep your head strong. You have to remember why you got into it in the first place.
Is it difficult to make money in the industry outside of gigging?
At the moment there is a lot of money to be made in the industry but sometimes it’s not the most accessible. Gigs are the bread and butter of most artists. Streaming is a massive thing now. Spotify are slowly changing the amount they have to pay to artists. There is still money to be made, most definitely. I’m in a lucky position where I’m an artist and I’m a writer so I can delve in between the two worlds so it’s not too bad. As with all industries, specifically with music, it’s a non stop industry: you stop and you stop your daily living really. It’s not nine to five, clock in, clock out.
Did you get overwhelmed by the fame?
It was only ever after the second album. No, fame or pressure never got too much. When we put the second album out I knew this wasn’t the place I needed to be as the people around me weren’t serving me correctly and didn’t push it enough. I had to step away from making music for a moment. I had to take my head space out of being disappointed by other people’s movements. That was the only point when I realised I needed to go independent. The people around me were working on the Jorja Smith project and to see that grow and it was all my friends around me. We had built this already. All the team is the exactly the same. My lawyer I had known for ten or 12 years and he showed me how independents can work. That was the moment, five months after my second album, when I became disillusioned with the industry, not with myself. I discovered there was an independent industry within this industry that exists and I didn’t need to deal with the rubbish that I needed to deal with a major when it doesn’t go right.
What has going out on your own as an independent artist been like?
It wasn’t really considered an option as being viable ten, 15 years ago. There were a couple of US, hip hop artists and UK artists who did their thing independently. It was never something that was pushed as a viable option for a career path.
Any surprises for the new album?
This record was written to cinema movies or documentaries. There have always been movies that I’ve loved that have inspired me and music videos and documentaries that I’ve really liked. Maybe five, ten minutes of movies with no clips, no words, beautiful shots that made me want to make music.
What was the process?
I had the videos on a loop. I put two screens up. I had my laptop and another screen up and would have them playing two different bits of footage. I would have an idea and wouldn’t know where I would go with this idea but I could hear where the end result would be and I’d put on a documentary or movie and would write through it.
Was cinema and film a big passion of yours growing up?
We were always into movies but we weren’t five years of age watching La Haine or Schindler’s List. One thing I really wanted to do on this record; the way I’ve pierced this third album together is where it feels almost like a score to a movie. Some songs are really atmospheric and cinematic and that’s the emotion behind them and there are songs that are back to the norm, big soul ballads, other ones could be a soundtrack to a hip hop album or hip hop documentary.
It has a movement of a soundtrack feel throughout the album. That is why we want back to Dublin to shoot the first video, Drifting. I want to tell different stories. I want to go back, as much as we can, and shoot (in Ireland).
Which Irish films have inspired you?
There have been loads of Irish movies that have inspired me in the last couple of years from Intermission to Kissing Candice and Cardboard gangsters; Kissing Candice being a more beautifully shot movie. Even Irish music videos capturing free-styling rappers around Ireland. They just felt really real and honest. These are films I’d play for American and London rappers as they felt really authentic and I was always giving them links to movies I grew up on like War of the Buttons and Into the West. I wanted to come back to Ireland and use it as a sensory theme and capture the Irish cinema that inspired me growing up.
It sounds like you miss Ireland and that you’re tapping into your Irish identity?
Everyone’s gotta understand how close London is culturally to Ireland. Within London there is so much Irish culture here already. It’s almost like an extension here sometimes and I’m back and forth so much and with being independent I really want to make a stand. I need this record to be the most clear version of me I’ve ever had on an album. How do you see yourself as a modern, contemporary artist or as a throwback to a more classic, yesteryear artist?
I don’t look at myself that way. I’ve always said my genre is my voice. To me I feel like there is an element and I’ve found myself in the past saying I’m a soul artist when that’s not necessarily the most valid description of my music – as some people would listen to it expecting some soul music and haven’t heard it they might be disappointed so I don’t like to put myself in any box. For me my voice is the genre so in this album I want to give the broadest perspective of the music I make, whether it’s in a studio with brilliant, famous writers or sat at home in my living-room producing everything from start to finish ourselves and just to give a broad perspective of me. I just call myself an artist who loves creating.
Do you have any advice to up-and-coming musicians?
I think there is no harm in giving it a go. Nothing is final. Sometimes there is a lot of emphasis on if this doesn’t work out. You can sit and think about all your life and regret about things. You just have to give it a go. Practise and belief can get you a hell of a long way. Nothing is impossible and even to look back there are some brilliant young artists from New Ross like Evolution Evan Murphy and Scripter (sp) and to hear what they’re doing now is inspiring me to go back now and make more hip hop beats because they are fearless.
Have you changed in any way since you broke though or are you still the same guy?
I am still 100 per cent the same fella. I would like to feel, as with any point of growing up, that you would have a bit more understanding of yourself. I think I understand myself a lot more. I’m a lot calmer and I feel I have honed in on my craft and that all centres back on my childhood. I have become a more centred version of myself but I am still 100 per cent me but with hopefully a more mature perspective on the world. For me when I first came on the scene confidence was never a problem because I came from a spitting world where everyone was rapping. So confidence was the least thing you needed to have concerns about and you worried about everything else. It was about bravado and being in people’s faces. Later, when I started singing, it was almost me unlearning that a tiny bit as I had this presence of being a rapper when I was singing love songs. Music and performing and writing over the years has been the biggest change. As you delve into yourself and want to write more honest, natural tunes you have to be fearless and it does grow your confidence. You settle into the person who you are and you care less about people’s opinions and think you just want to make the best music you can. That’s what I was doing when I was 17 so it’s about getting that back again and add that growth and knowledge you’ve picked up over those 11 years and you can’t go wrong.
How much do you credit your family and your upbringing in New Ross to the person you are now?
Everything! I wouldn’t be the musician I am without New Ross, without my Dad. I wouldn’t be the person I am without my Mam, my sisters, my friends, the New Ross upbringing. I wouldn’t ever have been an artist without Ireland.
I got my first gig in Tramore when I was 15 with a group from Tramore, a group Waterford and a group Ballymun who were rapping at the time. I did all my first gigs back in Ireland and I used to sell my CD at school. All my friends used to be fans of it.
What have been your career highlights?
There have been 100 people I have met I’ve been blown away by and loads of artists I’ve been able to sit in a studio with and have a conversation who inspired me growing up. In general I feel happy, I quit my job at Topaz on the quay in New Ross when I was 18. I’m 28 now so I’ve been doing this for ten years and for me that’s the most fulfilling and rewarding thing.
I’d like to say to any young artist that there is a career whatever way you want to go. You can have it massive, middle of the ground or small scale; whatever way. If you put the time into it and put trust in yourself you can achieve anything, and that for me is the most rewarding thing.
Any artist you’d like to mention who inspired you?
First off, my Dad being a mad inspiration just because I saw from his perspective how pure love for music can travel through your whole life and he gave me that love. And my uncle Sean and my Dad’s friend.
That was the kind of birth of love for music for me because it just showed me a tradition of storytelling, of purity of culture and in a weird way got me into loads of different styles of music from hearing that. Music that I’m not sure I’d have gotten into without having heard the raw trad, blues and mixed with Irish traditional music and the storytelling at the core and that, for me, is something I owe a hell of a lot to.
I THINK THAT HONESTY AND TRUTH ARE THE KEY TO LONG LASTING MUSIC