One of the first artists to sign with the now legendary Sarah Records, Harvey Williams, under the banner of Another Sunny Day, composed and released several singles and EP’s of his heartfelt handcrafted melodies from 1988 to 1992. In the 90’s Harvey released 2 solo albums under his own name. Along the way Mr. Williams played in The Field Mice, Blueboy, The Hit Parade and Trembling Blue Stars. Today he works for the BBC, remastering TV programmes for archival & research purposes. Harvey has agreed to take this little trip down memory lane with me.
Thank you Harvey for taking this time to revisit your foray into indie music.
First off, how has the lockdown affected you and those close to you?
I guess it’s made me more appreciative of what I have. While it’s been quite hard for all of us, lockdown certainly hasn’t affected me directly as much as some of my family or friends. I still have a job, still have my health, can still do much of what I enjoy doing. I think everyone has had to mentally readjust their expectations of life during the pandemic, and as mine are pretty meagre anyway, maybe that’s why I feel relatively unfazed by it.
Let’s start at the beginning. Where were you born? What was your childhood like?
I was born in Newlyn, a fishing village in Cornwall. From a young age all I remember was being fascinated – obsessed, even – with music. My dad had a small collection of classical & vocal records, and there was also a stack of 1960s 45s in the house (Beatles, Monkees, Joe Meek…), which – I seem to remember – were passed on by a kindly relative. I listened to them endlessly.
Did you have any formal musical training growing up?
We had a small upright piano, and when I was around eight years old, I had couple of years’ piano lessons. I wasn’t very good at playing, I always preferred music theory, but my piano teacher had a great hi-fi set-up (Transcriptors/Quad), on which he would play selected pieces to try to encourage my interest in “the classics”; I certainly remember him playing Rhapsody In Blue, for example. It would have been the first time I ever heard it, and to listen to it – & other “classics” – on a decent hi-fi really awakened my ears.
What were you listening to in high school and in your early 20’s?
Punk rock happened when I was 11, and fundamentally changed my listening habits; up til then my two favourite bands were Queen & 10cc (who coincidentally had both gone a bit off-the-boil by the end of 1977 into 78). It certainly helped that my brother – who was 3 years older, and was more attuned to punk rock than an 11 year old might have been – was bringing home records like Spiral Scratch, White Riot & Sheena is a Punk Rocker. Our paths diverged a bit after that; me getting into electronics, then into the independent scene. But he was absolutely fundamental to shaping my musical taste through the punk years.
Do you recall a local record store that you would frequent?
Through school, my go-to shop in Penzance (near Newlyn) was called Chy An Stylus. It was the only shop in the area with a punk rock 45 box; I seem to remember they had a copy of the EMI Anarchy In The UK – a desirable record even in 1977 – pinned to the wall.
Did you record any material prior to Another Sunny Day?
I was always recording stuff at home, as soon as I got a mono cassette machine. But it was all quite “free-form”; nothing that was ever released, obviously.
Were you ever part of a band with various members?
I would occasionally get together with my brother and a couple of his mates & we would record DIY/Swell-Maps-esque improvisatory stuff. It was never anything so formal as a band, but it was pretty enjoyable, though looking back it was pretty clear that the others put up with my presence, rather than seeing me as part of what they were doing. They were two years older than me, after all, which is a big deal in your mid-teens.
So you decided to make music the way you wanted, no compromise, you needed to do it all yourself?
It was less about “no compromise” and more about lacking the confidence to work with other musicians. I can be pretty unforthcoming, particularly in terms of leadership. Of course, being in a band shouldn’t necessarily be about having leadership qualities, it’s all about interaction, communication. So I wish I’d made more of an effort to interact & communicate back then; it would have made life a good deal easier. And more enjoyable too, I dare say.
I assume at this point you had all the musical instruments you needed. What equipment did you get to record the songs?
In 1985 a couple of college friends & I saw a cheap 4-track portastudio in a local secondhand shop; a Fostex X-15, the cheapest available. We decided to pool our resources and go for it. I think the three of us scraped together £50 each from our student grants. It didn’t come with a manual, so we were feeling our way a bit. We shared it for awhile….then when college finished and we all moved apart I somehow ended up with it. Oops! Thanks guys. My only other musical equipment around this time was a Casio VL-Tone, a temperamental mono synthesizer (Jen SX 1000) and an Eko 12-string acoustic fitted with a pickup.
Talk about the recording process.
Later I bought a Boss drum machine, which gave the set-up some form. Every song was recorded differently, particularly when it got to the studio, but the demos would generally go: run the drum machine onto one track, while playing the acoustic onto another track. Retune the acoustic down a few tones, tweak the EQ, and that would work as the bass. Put another guitar on top if needs be. Do the vocal. Tambourine, maybe? Synth, maybe? Second vocal, maybe? That was about it. If it went to more than four tracks, I’d bounce it down to two tracks via a cassette deck, then swap the mixed-down cassette into the fostex & there’d be two more tracks to work with. And so on. Too much detail?!
Now I’ve heard lots of music over the years and I have a pretty good ear. If I didn’t know Another Sunny Day was a solo effort, I would have never guessed.
You couldn’t have paid me a greater compliment. Thank you. That was exactly the intention!
How did a couple of fanzine writers become instrumental in your music career?
Initially I only ever sent out two demos, and neither of them went to record companies. I sent one to Matt Haynes, writer of the fanzine ‘Are You Scared To Get Happy?’, and another to Bob Stanley, who was then writing the ‘Caff’ zine. They are both great writers (though in very different ways), and both really touched a nerve in me. Neither was running a label at the time, but it was never really my intention to get signed to a record label. That wasn’t the point. I just wanted to share this stuff with other people who I thought might be interested in it.
Can you recall the details leading up to and the signing with Sarah Records?
Sarah never “signed” bands, at least to my knowledge. I certainly never had anything as formal as a contract. I guess there was just a mutual agreement between us… anyway, Matt liked the demo I sent him (this would have been early summer 1987). We talked about doing a flexidisc, but then as plans for Sarah coalesced, he suggested getting involved with that instead. I was only too happy to be part of it.
Did you think this was a good fit for you and your music?
I can think of none better.
My favorite ASD song is “Rio”. Just curious if you got any flack from the “Duran squared” over this?
Thanks. Nope, nothing from Duran. Nothing from Mike Nesmith either!
Of course I also enjoy “You Should All Be Murdered”. Without mentioning names, was this written from personal experience or just a reflection on society at large?
I don’t know where it came from I’m afraid, though I was unemployed at the time and listening to The Smiths a lot, which might be a pointer. It’s a song I have very mixed feelings about nowadays. I mean, they were pretty mixed feelings even when I wrote it, but now even more so.
Curious why “I’m In Love With a Girl Who Doesn’t Know I Exist” is so short?
I’m a big fan of brevity: say what you want to say & don’t waste my time. Primal Scream’s ‘Velocity Girl’ was a template for quite a few of my early tunes, and this is certainly one of them. Verse, chorus, solo, stop.
How did you meet Bobby Wratten and Michael Hiscock?
I got to hear an early Field Mice demo at Clare & Matt’s flat, not long before their first EP was issued. It sounded great, really purposeful & minimalist. I wrote a couple of letters to Bobby (this was while I was still living in Cornwall), and when I moved to London, I suggested teaming up with them; they’d be the Another Sunny Day rhythm section, I’d be their lead guitarist, and we would play each other’s songs in the same set. It worked for a few gigs (I think we did maybe 4 in this format), but Bob’s songwriting output was way ahead of mine in terms of both quality & quantity, so Another Sunny Day fell by the wayside pretty quickly.
Any concerts that stand out in your mind? Did you have a particular venue you enjoyed playing?
We played a Sarah festival in Paris quite early on in our days as a 3-piece. I was staggered at how busy the venue was (I guess a packed 600-capacity venue), and Another Sunny Day were on first. It was the first time I’d ever experienced an overwhelming positive reaction onstage. But the best moment was during the Field Mice set when we encored with Sensitive, getting Chris from fellow Sarah band The Orchids (also on the bill) to play real drums. Suddenly the dynamic completely changed. It felt like we were a proper band.
What particular songs you recorded with The Field Mice are your favorites?
I really like all the songs on the So Said Kay EP. Such clarity of vision, both in the songwriting & in the production.
You next had a stint with the band Blueboy in the early 90’s. Sad to hear of Keith Girdler’s passing in 2007. I always loved the sensitive vocals and delicate guitar work of Paul Stewart. Any memories here?
Paul was an amazing guitarist and arranger to play with, and a definite impetus to “up my game”. Suddenly you weren’t restricted to trying to sound “indie”; you could incorporate a string quartet or some cocktail jazz, or whatever was needed to convey the required mood for the song. It may well have been the motivation I needed to incorporate more piano/keyboards into my own songs.
How long did you play with The Hit Parade? My favorite track is “You Were Mine”.
We did a couple of Japanese tours together in the early 1990s, though have also played occasional one-offs as a duo of Julian & myself right up to the present day (I say that; we probably haven’t played together for ten years). Julian was another major inspiration in my early days of songwriting and recording. It always seemed like The Hit Parade was just a solo project of his (even though this wasn’t necessarily true), so this made it OK for me to do the same. That early run of Hit Parade singles still sounds absolutely perfect to me.
You also played with Bobby Wratten in Trembling Blue Stars. Do you have a favorite song or album from this period?
The Trembling Blue Stars records (at least when I was involved) were basically solo Bobby recordings; I don’t think I appear on any of them. My role – at least as I saw it – was to help reproduce the records on stage. There are some real beauties on the first & third LPs, I think. Something like ‘Saffron, Beautiful & Brown-Eyed’ or ‘Dark Eyes’ are really bold expressions of where Bobby’s head was at back then, and just fantastic melodically & arrangement-wise.
Talk about your 2 solo albums released under your own name, 1994’s Rebellion and 1998’s California. Are you partial to one album over the other?
Getting back to that thing I said earlier about brevity; Rebellion was a conscious decision to remove anything which didn’t need to be there, to pare it down to the bare bones of the song. I wanted to make it as simple, as minimal as possible. I also liked the idea of making a record with no guitars: that’ll confuse the Sarah purists! With California, I don’t think I could have got away with making another record as brief and basic as Rebellion (and wouldn’t really have wanted to make the same record again anyway), so I expanded on it a bit, while still keeping the sound within quite tight parameters. I prefer the second LP, particularly the instrumentals, but there’s plenty I don’t like about both.
In 2009 Cherry Red re-released the Sarah compilation London Weekend, originally released in 1992. Have you noticed a resurgence of interest and growth in Another Sunny Day’s fan base since 2009?
A little. The increase in interest I think actually started before 2009, when certain (relatively) high profile bands like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart began citing the label as being an influence on their music. But the Sarah Records book & film, along with myspace (remember myspace?!) & social media in general have all helped increase the label’s profile in recent years. Suddenly you had direct contact with the label’s fanbase; the revival circuit was instantly beckoning…
Are there any demos or unreleased ASD tracks that may one day be released?
I have plenty of home demos, but they won’t be going anywhere. I think the barrel was well & truly scraped with the London Weekend CD reissue.
Do you enjoy your work with the BBC?
Some days are pretty grim & repetitive, but there are certainly times when I can’t believe how lucky I am to be doing what I do & getting paid for it (I preserve & restore 60s/70s film-based tv programmes, and digitizing them for upload to the BBC’s online archive). Current affairs programmes from – say- the early 1970s really do give a window into a world which will now never return, and I feel quite privileged to watch some of them, and help bring them to a potentially wider audience someday. It never ceases to amaze me how much the world has changed in the last fifty years. But I guess fifty years is actually quite a long time.
How about any interests outside of work?
I’m really interested in ancient monuments: stone circles, Neolithic burial chambers & the like. There are dozens of these in the area I grew up, so it’s an interest that’s been there since I was a kid. But somehow there are always more to see.
And I still love pop music, of course.
Well thank you Harvey for this time and a trip down memory lane. Best wishes to you!
And to you!
Tending The Pale Bloom 