Album 10 just as fresh from folk’s Charlie Dore

YOU recently released your 10th album Like Animals – does it ever feel like a treadmill? Do you have to come up with new songs or do you just respond to things that inspire you and when you have a collection put them together?

Charlie: It’s a bit of both actually. In this particular case, it’s three years on since Dark Matter and I did feel it was about time I produced something else. As soon as you start producing something you need to tour it and the live dates you have to plan so far ahead, so everything then relates to when the tour is happening and there you have your deadline.

It is a little bit of a treadmill, but it’s a nice one that people might, possibly, be interested.

I love producing new stuff – in some ways a deadline is good, but as soon as there is a deadline you do wish you had a bit more time. You can write stuff, but in my case I throw a lot away.

You think you have 10 tracks but in the cold light of day you don’t. In this case there were a couple of songs that went full term, but I said ‘no, I don’t love them enough’, so we had to do different ones and that takes time.

Did you manage to get the album done before lockdown?

Yes, we did. We were lucky because our launch gig was to be on June 18 at King’s Place in Central London, so it was all built around that. It was a beautiful tour. You have to have three months for manufacture and getting it out to press and all that sort of stuff, so it became clear we had to have everything finished by a certain date. We finished it the weekend before lockdown.

We knew something was afoot, obviously, but we didn’t realise just how extreme it would be. Julian and I have worked together so long that we can work online and send each other stuff, but it’s much better to be in the room and then you can eyeball each other and try things really quickly. The weekend before lockdown we sent it off to the Isle of Skye to be mastered by our friend Denis Blackham – I have a whole song about him and his courtship of his wife. Mention there of Julian Littman who you refer to as your “honorary brother” in the album booklet

Yes, he is family now. Gosh we have known each other since we were 16. He’s a wonderful friend.

How does the collaboration work?

I come up with the initial concept, I have a lyrical angle set out in my head or the initial tune.

Sometimes Julian’s part is considerable in the actual writing process, sometimes less. He is so intuitive, he knows how much or how little to do.

Julian is an amazing arranger and he’s very good at wonderful little ear worms. Also, he’s multi-faceted and can play practically anything, with the exception of brass. But we were extremely