When I catch up with Cole Stacey in Honiton’s Boston Tea Party, he is on his way to Belgium to play a concert at the iconic Stadsfeestzaal with legendary Ultravox and Band Aid musician Midge Ure. It is more than fourteen years since I last met Cole and apart from perhaps slightly wilder hair and a few more bags under his eyes, his demeanor doesn’t appear to have changed. He is still as passionate about his music and his musical journey as he was all those years ago. But there have been changes. He’s since done ‘the grown up thing’ and got married and now lives on what he describes as ‘the rainy side of the moor’ near Tavistock. He is also soon to release a new solo album Postcards From Lost Places and has just released the first single from it entitled Quiet is Louder.
Cole’s journey, since he recorded a CD of early songs in 2010 ‘in order to move on’, changed dramatically in 2015 when he and Joseph O’Keefe and their India Electric Company jumped into a Ford Fiesta and drove to Motherwell in Scotland to do a support slot for Midge Ure. Cole had just spent five years doing what he calls his ‘apprenticeship’ which included ‘making all the mistakes that I needed to make in order to learn.’ Living in Paris, trying to learn Gypsy Jazz, and then London, which he quickly got tired of, he recalls learning to get rid of his ego ‘very quickly’.
While he looks back on those days ‘very fondly’, all that suddenly changed overnight in Motherwell when Midge Ure was listening to their warmup. Midge was trying to put a band together with a particular sound and heard something that he knew would fit with his own musical vision. ‘I’m just so happy that we were playing the right instruments at the time’ says Cole. Magic happened at that gig, and ever since Cole and Joseph and The India Electric Company have been entwined with Midge’s busy touring schedule around the world, travelling to places they had not imagined they would one day play in.
Midge has become a ‘mentor and a friend’ and for the next two months Cole and Joe will support him for Catalogue: The Hits Tour which ends in Glasgow on December 18th. Now also part of Midge’s band ‘Band Electronica’ Cole’s calendar is already getting busy for 2025.
However, he is taking advantage of a two-month break after Christmas to launch his own album with a short solo tour. ‘It does feel like I’m almost coming full circle,’ says Cole. After hectic years of touring, he was looking for a ‘creative space’ and came across an old Victorian clay factory in Devon which was slowly being regenerated by a charity. Nearby was a Victorian mining site at Morwellham Quay which Cole says had a ‘stillness that was intoxicating.’ The place inspired the recently released single Quiet is Louder.
The space to write while standing still, helped him to delve into a world that would produce a whole new set of songs. It all happened very fast. ‘It’s such a cliché’ he says, ‘but the songs just wrote themselves.’ He believes it may also have been a reflection of the stability in his personal life. ‘I had an incredible person next to me who is creative and supportive. That helps massively.’ At the time he had no intention of writing an album, but it quickly developed, and he says the theme of places just kept cropping up. He was enthused by the ‘juxtaposition of ancient stillness in nature and industry—such industry!’ and inspired by what felt like so many ‘amazing lost places.’
Postcards From Lost Places offers 12 songs all recorded by Cole in various locations including St Paul’s Church in Yelverton ‘on their fragile but beautiful Steinway piano.’ Other locations included The Music House For Children in London; Brentor Church on Dartmoor and Lydford Jail, where Cole recorded the vocals for a song about Mary Howard.
The songs are the result of a very different creative journey compared to much of his output over the last ten years of touring. Cole says that ‘for a long time you’re in this creative struggle and trying to produce this work, and it’s a battle, and you’re almost like in a war.’ He describes the struggle as ‘a classic archetype amongst creatives.’ But with the new album he says ‘for the first time, it felt like the exact opposite. It felt like I was at peace with it. It wasn’t a battle at all, it was just ready to come out.’
The process, and the end result, of writing a new album has been helped by the extraordinary experience Cole gained since he began touring and playing venues like the Royal Albert Hall and The London Palladium. His first tour with Midge Ure was an acoustic set where songs were paired back to their pre-production birth. ‘We would play Fade to Grey and Vienna on mandolin, guitar and violin. So, you strip the songs right back. It’s fascinating, because you get to the bones of the song, all you’ve got is melody and structure.’ He also points out that he has had to learn to concentrate on the moment. One minute he’s playing an India Electric song, then twenty minutes later he’s playing a Midge Ure song. The focus has to be in the now.
All this experience has also allowed Cole to reach back into his folk roots. ‘That’s always been in my blood’ he says. ‘But I’ve never quite let it out, if you like, to embrace it fully. And I think I needed that catalyst to let that folk element out, that traditional story. If someone’s written some words or a melody and it’s lasted 300 years, there’s got to be something good about it, and trying to then share that with other people now is a wonderful challenge.’
The first single from Postcards From Lost Places is available from Cole’s website https://colestacey.net/ where you can also pre-order the album. Cole will be launching the album with a short tour which includes a performance on Friday 21st Feb at St Michael & All Angels Church, Stockland EX14 9BR. Doors 6.30 for 7pm. Tickets may be purchased £14 from https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/stockland-promoters/t-jzyrxox. Or call Wendy for access arrangements on 01404 881207.
