ALL ROADS LEAD ME BACK: AN INTERVIEW WITH BEDSIT POETS

By Valerie Simadis

After two years of transatlantic songwriting, Bedsit Poets have released their newest album, All Roads Lead Me Back. With a diverse track listing that ranges from electronica, to folk, to spoken word, this may be their best album to date.

The duo, consisting of Edward “Ed” Rogers and Amanda Thorpe have released two critically acclaimed albums (The Summer That Changed, Rendezvous), and while both had taken a hiatus to embark on their own musical endeavors, they reunited in 2020 to pen new songs. This year, Rogers and Thorpe joined forces with long-time producer Don Piper, recording at Storybook Sound in Maplewood, New Jersey. In addition, All Roads Lead Me Back features an impressive ensemble of musicians including James Mastro on guitar (Ian Hunter, The Bongos, John Cale), Sal Maida on bass (Roxy Music, Sparks) and Konrad Meissner on Drums (Silos, Graham Parker), as well as guest players Joe McGinty (Psychedelic Furs, Ronnie Spector), Tony Scherr (Bill Frisell, Sex Mob, Laurie Anderson), Mac Randall and Yair Schleider. “The main vibe is that the people got along, and they knew what we were getting at with each song. They’re sophisticated enough to know our tastes and give the musicians the freedom to create.” Said Edward.

The album title, as well as the standout track “London Town”, evokes memories of the past, particularly, memories of the London that they once knew. “Every time I go back to England or especially London, that trip from Heathrow to wherever I’m staying is eye-opening because the whole city is changing. If you go, there are new buildings going up and the old culture is disappearing. It’s kind of like it turned to dust and nobody values it.” Edward observed. Amanda (who, along with Melani Rogers recorded the footage for “London Town”) concurs. “ It seemed representative of our hiatus from each other and coming back to working together.” She remarked “As Ed said, we’ve both been on various journeys in our lives and coming back to our true sense of self is very important.”

I sat down with Edward and Amanda to discuss the release of their new album All Roads Lead Me Back, the origin of their band name, as well as their upcoming tour.

VS: Amanda, initially, how did you and Edward meet?

Amanda: We had met through mutual friends on the Loser’s Lounge circuit. Ed was playing with Joe Condiracci at the time, and I knew Ed through a songwriting program that I was doing at ASCAP. It was that usual thing where someone says “Oh, I’ve got another English friend. Maybe you know him!” As it turns out, we didn’t know each other.

Edward: [laughs] Everybody knows everybody in England.

Amanda: Joe introduced us thinking that we might get on, and luckily he was right. The rest is history.

VS: The moniker Bedsit Poets was given to you by Colin Blunstone of The Zombies. Where and when did this exchange occur?

Edward: Decades ago, Melani [Rogers] was working for Epic and they said “Do you want to do a ‘best-of’ CD and pick some selections?” Melani brought the assignment home, and I said “There should be a ‘Best of Colin Blunstone’ CD”, because all three of the first Colin Blunstone albums are on Epic. Within about twenty five minutes, we had put together a ‘best-of’. It was so simple, because you just listen to the first three records and they were astounding. When the record came out, Colin wanted nothing to do with it because he wasn’t active musically at this particular point in time. What ended up happening is, it started to get really great reviews and he started to hear about it. Eventually, he wanted to know who the mystery people were that put this CD together.

It was so brave of Colin, because I know him well enough now. He said “Next time you come to London, I’ll come and meet you for tea or dinner.” That started a relationship, and we began talking about doing different projects and trying to get him to New York, which we did. We ended up getting him over here for three nights at Fez, which was an old club downtown and he got a write-up in The New York Times. You saw this person who had been withdrawn for so many years come out of his shell. He went from seventy-five to thirty-five within two days. It was amazing!

Colin was totally in control, but on the other side of it, totally naïve to the world. For instance, Fez was a cabaret club with transvestites and he had never seen one before, so it was kind of like “What’s this all about? There’s a lady or a man in my dressing room. He wants my flowers!” And I’m like “Calm down!” Bottom line is that we sort of became mates.

“Colin said ‘So what are you two working on?’ We described the project and he replied ‘Oh, it sounds like two bedsit poets!’”

One time we were over in England, and Amanda and I were working. At one point, we got together and had dinner with the family, and Colin said “So what are you two working on?” We described the project and he replied “Oh, it sounds like two bedsit poets!” I said “You just gave us the name for the band.” It really is a great name.”

Amanda: I think it’s very English as well. In the old bedsits they used to have those meters that you would put two pence in to get more electricity.

VS: It reminds me of that Moody Blues lyric ‘Bedsitter people look back and lament…’

Edward: Wow, good catch! It’s just one of those names that sits right when you hear it, which leads to development.

VS: London is a recurring theme in your lyrics, and you both have roots in England as well. What parts of England do you hail from?

Amanda: I’m originally from Derbyshire.

Edward: I’m from Birmingham!

Amanda: Those are both sort of Middle England. Of course Derbyshire is more of the countryside. Birmingham is considered the Black Country because it’s all sort of coal and industrial. Ed moved to America when he was very young and I moved to America just coming out of college. I have always felt like I grew up in New York.

“You would go to London and clothes would be different, records would be different, the music you were listening to would be different, and the culture was different (the food was terrible! That’s changed! We’ve gotten better.) You went over there and it was exciting!”

Edward: I grew up in New York, but my roots, as far as music references go, were always English. I always wanted to get back to London, so once I was able to do that we would go to London once or twice a year. In the seventies, people were just beginning to take international flights. You would go to London and clothes would be different, records would be different, the music you were listening to would be different, and the culture was different (the food was terrible! That’s changed! We’ve gotten better.) You went over there and it was exciting! It was two weeks of seeing musical bands and influences that I couldn’t get in America.

VS: Bedsit Poets have released two albums, The Summer That Changed [2005] and Rendezvous [2008]. What prompted you to reunite after sixteen years?

Amanda: I think we stopped playing in 2009. I had a child, and I also moved back to Europe so I could be closer to my parents. We still continued our musical endeavors independently.

Edward: When Amanda went back to London, whenever I would visit, we would sit down for an afternoon and try to write songs. We took some of the older songs that we had left off which were intentionally for our third album.

Amanda: There were a lot of songs that has been left on the shelf, and they were either going to stay on the shelf or we were going to give them some life. We began working on refreshing the old songs, but of course, being songwriters, we were like “What about this new one that I’ve been writing?” Suddenly, the new songs were taking over the old songs, and once you have twenty or so, you’re in a good position to be able to say “Okay, what are the best songs out of the group?” Eventually, we whittled it down to twelve.

Edward: This album was all about taking chances. I have my career and Amanda has hers, and no one expects us to do drums and loops and bring in samples. No one expects David Sylvian (or at least, someone trying to sound like David Sylvian) on this album. From Amanda’s point of view, I was pushing her, saying that we needed two influences, and the two influences were Patti Smith’s second album, and Broken English by Marianne Faithfull. From that, we wrote two songs which seemed to show a different side to us. This was a chance to experiment and deviate from the familiar.

Amanda: As artists, one of the nicest things about working with somebody versus independently is that they’ll push you in different ways and challenge you. Finding somebody like Ed to challenge me (and vice versa) is really nice. He’ll take me out of my ‘safe zone’ by saying “Let’s change this arrangement and turn it on its head.”

VS: I was reading the reviews for All Roads Lead Me Back, and every writer was billing the album as ‘psych-pop’. When I listened to the album, I felt as though every track was a different genre. It was impossible to classify you.

“We both have fairly distinctive voices, and I think that’s what holds it together.”

Edward: You got it, yes. It’s a different identity, if you want to call it that.

Amanda: I feel that way as well. It’s like when people ask “What is your favorite music genre?”, and I can’t really answer that because I’ll be listening to Stephen Foster from the 1800s, and then I’ll be listening to The Only Ones, and I’ll be listening to Rosetta Tharpe. It’s the joy of discovering new music. My love of music is equally reflected in the diversity of what we end up creating. We both have fairly distinctive voices, and I think that’s what holds it together.

VS: What inspired you to name the album All Roads Lead Me Back?

Edward: It’s been an up and down adventure for both of us both apart and together. Every time I go back to England or especially London, that trip from Heathrow to wherever I’m staying is eye-opening because the whole city is changing. If you go, there are new buildings going up and the old culture is disappearing. It’s kind of like it turned to dust and nobody values it.

Amanda: It seemed representative of our hiatus from each other and coming back to working together. As Ed said, we’ve both been on various journeys in our lives and coming back to our true sense of self is very important.

VS: Tell me a bit about your creative process. Was collaborating / writing songs remotely a bit of a challenge?

Amanda: We definitely prefer to be in person in a room tossing ideas back and forth. Ed is incredibly prolific with words. Of course, there is FaceTime and Zoom, but it isn’t the same.

Edward: It became a cliché after a while. Everyone was saying “Oh, this album was written during Covid.” That was their inspiration for years of writing or whatever the heck they were doing. Our album came out later, mainly because we’re a transatlantic. It’s not like you can get together and write out the ideas. You finally just have to say “How are we going to record this?” That was the problem. How do we record it within a short period of time and a low budget? This was arranged by Amanda, who found the studio for us.

Amanda: The studio is called Storybook Sound (Scott Anthony’s studio in Maplewood, New Jersey) Scott is a string engineer and I worked with him in the nineties on another project. Lovely guy, lovely studio.

“…all of a sudden we have Amanda and I who can quite talk, and Sal Maida playing bass (Sal definitely talks.) Then there’s the drummer, Konrad Meissner. We put him in a refrigerator…”

Edward: Very zen! I had to stay away from the speakers because I didn’t want to break anything. There were all these little porcelain things all over the place!

Amanda: They were mustard pots! I have a mustard pot.

Edward: They gave me one, too.

Amanda: They gave everyone a mustard pot.

Edward: I thought I was the only one. They said “This one is especially for you”.

VS: Edward’s dreams are shattered.

Edward: [laughs] I was very upset! The bottom line is, this gentleman is used to working by himself and all of a sudden we have Amanda and I who can quite talk, and Sal Maida playing bass (Sal definitely talks.) Then there’s the drummer, Konrad Meissner. We put him in a refrigerator and he just kept saying “Could I get another coat? Could I get another coat?” James Mastro turns up, and James is of course the perfectionist, and we have Don Piper who is semi-producing but also playing and directing us. So, he’s got to keep all of us insane people sane and not upset the environment of the room.

VS: Can you tell me more about the musicians who are featured on this album? I want to know more about that refrigerator by the way.

Edward: It’s the drum room but they keep it like twenty degrees or something.
We were recording the album in the middle of August and Konrad turns up, gets a coat, gets his two scarves, and goes back in. At one point, he said “Hey Ed, come into this room, see what you think.” I walked into the room and I was like “I want to live in here for the next three months until it gets cool outside.”

James Mastro and I are old mates going back decades to when we were both huge fans of Marc Bolan and T.Rex. Konrad Meissner has worked with Graham Parker. He is still the drummer with The Silos, and he’s highly in demand all the time. The main vibe is that the people got along, and they knew what we were getting at with each song. They’re sophisticated enough to know our tastes and give the musicians the freedom to create.

VS: “London Town” is a standout track, and boasts a fab accompanying music video as well. Where was the video filmed, and did you enjoy putting it together?

Amanda: We certainly enjoyed putting it together. It was filmed in London and New York, which was very fitting. We flew all over the world and we had Melani Rogers and myself doing most of the recording.

VS: Do Bedsit Poets have any tour dates lined up for this year?

Edward: With Amanda living in England and me living here, it’s difficult to play many dates. Right before we got on to this interview with you, we did a rehearsal just the two of us, and it was really refreshing. The last couple of rehearsals have been with a full band, but when Amanda and I are rehearsing together, there’s more of a natural charm coming through, and we can joke around a bit more. I think the PG Tips are starting to kick in…

Amanda: I have some shows coming up in England. I’ll either do an Amanda Thorpe show or we’ll do a Bedsit Poets show, depending on if Ed can come over. It’s just a matter of trying to align them so we can keep going.

Edward: The deal is we have to do some new writing. That’s kind of the key.

VS: You have a show in New York coming up as well.

Edward: On Wednesday, February 21st. James Mastro had reached out and asked us if we would like to do a double record release show. I contacted Amanda and we thought it was the perfect opportunity. The Bowery Electric isn’t the ideal vibe or setting to see us per say, but we have a great triple Bill (James Mastro, myself, and Karyn Kuhl) and they also can see Amanda before she heads off the next day back home.

Amanda: That’s right. London town!

*Bedsit Poets will have one release show in support of All Roads Lead Me Back. It will be held on Wednesday, February 21st at The Bowery Electric in New York City.

Listen to All Roads Lead Me Back here: https://thinklikeakey.bandcamp.com/album/all-roads-lead-me-back

https://amandathorpe.bandcamp.com

https://rogersbutler.bandcamp.com

https://www.facebook.com/BedsitPoets/

https://www.instagram.com/bedsitpoets/

All photos courtesy of Bedsit Poets and Think Like a Key Music, unless stated otherwise.

All live photos and video footage © Valerie Simadis

Copyright © 2024, Valerie Simadis. All Rights Reserved.