Diary Of A Songwriter: David C Clements

David C Clements: “There are vintage synths everywhere, drawers of boutique pedals, and guitars covered in stickers and doodles.” Photo: Chris McKay

A candid chronicle of working in LA with Jacknife Lee, capturing the creative process behind the alt-folk artist’s comeback album

Northern Ireland’s David C Clements recently returned with The Garden, his first full-length studio album since his 2016 debut The Longest Day In History. Alt-folk music that’s happy to bare its soul, often over layers of synths and beats, Clements’ tender and imploring vocals carry the weight of the album’s emotional journey. Listen closely to songs like Little Outsider, Contrast, and the title track and you’ll gain an insight into his life over the last decade: the highs, lows, triumphs and frustrations.

Written while The Garden was taking shape, in these diary extracts Clements heads to California to work with producer Jacknife Lee. Shining a light on the collaborative nature of their working relationship, songs like Life In A Bad Dream and Already Here bloom and flourish…

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MONDAY

I’m up and out the door early this morning. The early risers in the house are up to wave me goodbye, which is everyone because we’ve two small kids so this is standard practice currently. What’s different is I’m heading to Belfast City Airport to fly to LA via Heathrow. It’s the second time I’ve been to LA, the first being part of a ‘sync mission’ which, from my experience, means: play a short gig, shake a few hands, take some cards and never hear from anyone again. I’d put it in a category with ‘big industry night.’

I’m confident this will be more productive because I’m going to work with legendary producer Jacknife Lee, who has produced the likes of U2, REM, and Snow Patrol. It’s through Gary Lightbody from SP that I’ve got this opportunity. I’ve known Gary for a while now and am on his label Third Bar who he runs with Davy Matchett. When I sent him some demos he said he loved them and had played them to Jacknife, who also loved them and offered to work with me for a week.

I put the time in on the plane, jumping between films, plane food, and working on some of the demos I have on my laptop – wondering what we might end up working on this week. Jacknife has a broad range of bands he’s worked with, from big polished pop-rock like The Killers to indie-folk like Tired Pony. The music I’ve released to date falls into the latter category, but I’m trying to go into the week with an open mind and a willingness to experiment. It feels like there’s no point in going all that way to work with someone and not give yourself over to the process, especially if you like what they’ve done before.

WEDNESDAY

First day in the studio. I take the Pacific Coast Highway out of Santa Monica and head up to Topanga where Jacknife’s studio is. The road winds up through the valley past big stores selling giant Buddha statues and old hippy communes until eventually you clear the trees and arrive at these stunning views over the mountains all around. The studio is in Jacknife’s garage. There’s a porch at the front covered with some sort of climber plant the hummingbirds are hovering around. I’ve seen the studio in photos before, but it’s always different seeing somewhere in the flesh. There are vintage synths everywhere, drawers of boutique pedals, and guitars covered in stickers and doodles. So many interesting instruments and amazing gear all illuminated by fairy lights that cover the studio.

David C Clements: “Jacknife has a great way of getting you to look at things from a different perspective.” Photo: Chris McKay

Our session starts off the same way all my favourite sessions start; with coffee, chat and great music. Garret (Jacknife) has an encyclopaedic knowledge of music and the walls of his studio are lined with records which he is constantly pulling out to reference something mid-conversation. Eventually, we get into some of the music I have been working on and start listening to demos. There’s a track called Already Here that has an electronic drumbeat and bassline that I had made on a Teenage Engineering pocket operator. Garret likes elements to it, but thinks the beat isn’t working and isn’t sure about the first verse. We record a part on an organ that I instantly recognise from the opening track of Tired Pony’s second album. After putting a vocal on it and a subby kick backbeat, Jacknife decides that the first verse needs to be rewritten, so we park it for now. He pulls out another song called Life In A Bad Dream. It’s one of the first songs I wrote for the new album. The demo has a sort of 7/4 tambourine thing going on in the verses and the chorus jumps around a little bit so Garret spends some time going through and straightening out the unnecessary time signatures. His point was, “I can count, I just don’t want to have to,” which in this scenario is hard to argue with. We manage to get the electric guitar recorded and a guide vocal down. As I leave for the day Garret is putting in some electronic beats saying, “I’m not sure about it but I’ll put it in for now.” I head out feeling great about the day.

THURSDAY

Start out the day with the same morning routine that I’ve fallen into. Head out for coffee from Dogtown, then a walk along the beach. A surfer stops and compliments my hair cut so this day’s off to a great start. I make the the same drive up to Topanga and hear Jacknife already working on the track as I arrive in. He’s filled out the electronic beat even more and seems to be leaning heavily into that vibe.

It’s a track that I had already loosely arranged with my band at home and already had an idea in my head as to how it would go, so I’m slightly taken aback by this new direction it seemed to be heading in. I worry about it sounding too synthetic, or too far removed from anything I’ve done before. Gary had warned me that working with Jacknife would take me way out of my comfort zone and I’m beginning to see how. Sensing that, Garret decides to take some time out and we sit and listen to music. He puts on a track by Sufjan Stevens and we talk about how great he is and how much we love him. As I’m listening I realise that the beat in this track is synthetic, albeit lo-fi and stacked with reverb. Well played Garret.

Jacknife has a great way of getting you to look at things from a different perspective. Trusting someone with your songs can leave you feeling vulnerable, and in that scenario, I have the tendency to revert to the familiar. Garret is great at putting his ideas into context by pulling a record out of the wall and playing you a song that captures the feeling he’s trying to get across. He also pushes back against the idea that you are one type of artist and you must stay in your lane. To him that seems ridiculous, which coming from a fellow Irishman is refreshing. Quite often there’s a culture at home of staying grounded and not being too outlandishly self-expressive.

David C Clements: “Sync fees and recurring PPL payments can be a real boost if you get on to the right shows.”

SATURDAY

I head into the studio with a fresh sense of excitement. Yesterday took me way out of my comfort zone and had me asking lots of questions about what type of artist I can be. In this new place, I start to rediscover a sense of exploration and experimentation. I get Jacknife to create a shuffling brush-snare beat along with the electronic drums, reminiscent of Hyperballad by Bjork. Jacknife has me jump on the vibraphone and, after some messing around, we get some nice vibey sounds and some muted rhythmical notes in there too. Garret starts jumping around synths adding organ parts and distorting kick sounds ‘til they make big saw-like bass notes. He gets on his OB-Xa and after a quick rendition of Jump, he adds this choppy bass-synth line to the second chorus. This track is really starting to build now.

After the studio, I head out to dinner to meet a sync agent called Allison Wood who runs a company called Vibrant Ground. She’s recently started working for Snow Patrol and so Gary had organised for us to meet. As a musician who isn’t constantly on the road, it’s great for me to hear of other potential income streams for working writers. You often hear that the money is to be found in live, but sync fees and recurring PPL payments can be a real boost if you get on to the right shows. Allison is someone who is clearly passionate about music, deeply moved by it, and understands the impact that a well-placed song has in a show, so it’s great to have her working for Third Bar.

SUNDAY

I’m sitting at a table in Jacknife Lee’s studio where he says Gary Lightbody often sits and writes his lyrics, drinking a coffee from the machine that U2 brought, and talking to Jacknife about how Michael Stipe recorded his vocals when he worked with REM. They’re some weighty names I’ve just dropped, I know, but I mention them to highlight how crazy a week this is for me.

In general, I live a fairly regular life juggling school pickups, a regular job, kids’ dinners and bedtimes, and as much music and writing as I have the energy for around that. So it’s mad that I’m now sitting in the glow of a red neon sign that says ‘Neil Fucking Diamond’ from when they worked with him and using a toilet that has a shelf with a Grammy on it. This could be a little overwhelming, but working with Garret I don’t feel out of place or out of my depth.

Life In A Bad Dream is taking serious shape and now it’s time to have a go at some acoustic drums. We all have a go with varying degrees of success, but thankfully Matt [Bishop] is an actual drummer and smashes out some big beats for the end section which is starting to sound huge.

The one track that we had planned on working on while I’m out is a song called The Garden. In the afternoon we make a start on it. It’s really an acoustic-based, singer/songwriter song. Garret feels that anything that goes on the track needs to be beautiful. He starts bowing long notes on a psaltery and manages to find some random violin parts someone had sent him that were miraculously in the right key and time signature of the song. We had to turn the air-con off to record the acoustic and honestly, I’ve never felt more under pressure to get the take in one as the heat slowly built throughout the song until it was almost unbearably stressful. Some ukulele and baritone guitar parts later and there’s another song taking shape.

David C Clements: “I live a fairly regular life juggling school pickups, a regular job, kids’ dinners and bedtimes, and as much music and writing as I have the energy for.”

TUESDAY

Last day in the studio. We take a break in the morning for a drive around Topanga with Garret pointing out houses where famous recordings were made like Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush. It feels like an area steeped in mystery and creativity, and the views are insane. Back at the studio, we put down vocals for Bad Dream. I’ve only ever recorded vocals with headphones on and normally in a booth, so it was exciting to have the track blasting out of the speakers with me in front of them singing straight into a Shure SM7B. Sometimes you need something to stop you from overthinking your vocal performance, like in the past when Michael Keeney had me play an unamplified electric guitar in the vocal booth to make me sing more naturally – having the music around me, rather than right in my ears, really helped bring energy to the recording.

WEDNESDAY

I’m sitting in LAX trying not to cry as I listen to the latest mix of Bad Dream that Garret has sent me. If I’m honest up until this point, I still wasn’t fully convinced that I liked what we’d done. I had already been working with synths and synthetic beats with Michael Keeney back home, but it felt like Jacknife had pushed those faders all the way up. But sitting in the airport I realised that there was a new side to this song about depression that I hadn’t managed to bring into it before, and that was joy. When the piano comes in for the chorus section my eyes welled up with tears. The newly straightened-out flow gave it an energy that hadn’t been there before. There’s hope.

I emailed Jacknife to tell him how much I loved it and got it. He got back instantly and was thrilled to have helped. He then referenced the first song that we’d started and shelved. He said, “Write Already Here deeply.”

SOMETIME LATER

Jacknife has just sent through a finished version of Already Here. After his encouragement I rewrote the entire first verse and chorus as honestly as I could, trying not to hide behind metaphor as much as possible. We had talked over email about making it a ‘build and release’ type song. I thought it needed to be a big band song, but Garret felt we could achieve that in a more interesting way using synths.

He took a ‘band’ sound and messed with it. The organ from the initial recording is still in there, but filled out with synths and simple but emotive guitar lines, and building drums that all lead to a wonderful crescendo in the last chorus. I’d recorded a vocal in my garage using a makeshift booth of duvets and sleeping bags and had to stop every time a car went past. Garret worked wonders with it and it’s sitting perfectly with the instrumentation. Every song goes on a ‘journey’ as they say, and this one has more than most.

A little footnote: months after meeting Allison from Vibrant Ground I’d be sitting with friends watching fishermen haul in crab in high seas soundtracked by my song My Dear Mother as she had got it placed on Deadliest Catch. So cool!

The Garden by David C Clements is out now on Third Bar Records. The best place for all his latest music, shows, and news is on facebook.com/davidcclementsmusic

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