the LP, while they are targeting more sustained exposure in America and Australia.


And what of the person behind the big voice and the stage name nicked from Steptoe & Son? With his boy turning four this year, is he ready to uproot his quiet life and turn himself over to the music industry once more?


Comber says the key to managing this transition is, “To be an ear for your artist when they need it, but also keep calm when everything around them is chaos”. Tieku-Smith, meanwhile, says it helps that, together, they’ve been through everything. “We’ve been together at moments of severe stress, jubilant celebration and everything in-between, and so there’s nothing really to hide,” he explains.


Clearly, Graham is laying himself bare, and is prepared to sacrifice everything for his new record. And being under the spotlight is hardly new for him...


R


ory Graham leans back in his chair and smiles. He’s got two words for how it feels to go from being a virtual unknown to a superstar in the space of a few weeks. “It’s fucking mad really, that it went quite as big as it did,” he says. “I never foresaw it going that way. No matter what you say, you have to have hard work and determination in the music industry and be able to have years of slogging it out. But there is a certain element of being in the right place, at the right time, on the right person’s radar. I do genuinely feel lucky.”


Tatts life: Rag’N’Bone Man


Luck, though, can only take you so far. It can’t prepare an artist for the endless promo and exposure. Not everybody wants to cosy up to film stars on chat shows, or, as Graham puts it, “I’m not about fucking celebrity parties or anything like that, I don’t care for it, I just want to make music and when I’m done with that I want to go home and be with my family.”


As a former support worker who’d slogged it out for years in music, the sudden surge in popularity made him recoil, and he bought a place deep in the countryside in the wake of Human’s success. Soon after, he became a dad, forgoing an American tour to come home after his son was born. Fatherhood changed everything for him, and despite the break-up of his marriage last year, he remains fully focused on his family.


“It makes you think about stuff like your moral compass and how you were when you were a kid, how you might have grown up and the scary world that’s out there for your child,” he says. “It opens up doors of inspiration, I found that to be a real muse for me, just being a dad.”


While the break-up obviously impacted his personal life, Graham purposely separated those feelings from his music. He “put the blinkers up” and wrote only one song – Talking To Myself – about the relationship.


“I had it in my mind that people might expect me to write about heartbreak, but I didn’t really feel that, so there aren’t really those kinds of songs on this record, it’s a bit more joyous,” he says. “There’s one break-up song on it, which I told the label they’re not allowed to release as a single. I don’t feel anybody needs any more heartbreak songs, it’s been done so much that it made me want to hear something different. Even that one song is too much to sing live.”


Understandably, Graham is more motivated by the vitality of tracks such as Fireflies, which was written for his son, who is slowly getting to grips with his dad’s profession. “He’s just started to ask Alexa to play my music,” Graham reveals. “He goes, ‘Play Daddy Rag’N’Bone Man’ and it just doesn’t play it. But he hasn’t quite worked it out, he must think his mum’s got music as well, so he says, ‘Alexa, play Mummy’ and it plays this weird song. He’s heard my music but he’s not really into me playing guitar, he’s like, ‘No, Daddy, don’t! Put it down.’ He prefers reggae and drum’n’ bass at the moment.”


Now that his son is getting older, Graham says he may feel more able to commit to the rigours of international promo again, and maybe even crack America – as Columbia and Blackfox believe he can.


“I really hope this record opens things up for me,” Graham says. “I’ve never really thought, ‘I’m gonna try and break America’, that’s never really been in my peripheral. If I did, it would be amazing. The fact Human didn’t take off as much in the US was probably my fault, but there are more important things and being there when I’ve got a baby at home is much more important than having a hit in America. But now I feel I’d probably put in the time. Listening to these songs, I feel like this record potentially could do something in the US.”


And Graham feels he has the structure around him to facilitate such dreams. “I don’t know what it’s like for everyone else in the industry or the pop world, but the most important thing for me has been to keep people around me that I trust,” he reasons. “I’ve had the same band since 2015, the same musicians, mostly the same engineers, management. Nothing’s really changed. I found the right people, trustworthy people and not ones who will blow smoke up your arse, people that take the piss out of you, tell you when you’re being a dick and give you good advice. Basically, not fucking sycophants, just good people you trust. If I didn’t have that, it would have been shit.” Graham laughs for one last time. No-one knows better than he does that it’s been far from shit for Rag’N’Bone Man until now. And now, with a new album in the can, he’s more comfortable in his skin than before, hardened by success. As we part ways, his message is loud and clear: Rory Graham is coming for the world. “Before I wasn’t sure that I fitted in the confines of pop music and that world, there was a part of me that thought people might reject me because of either the way my voice sounds, the way I look or that it’s not on paper a perfect Justin Bieber [thing]…” he says, staring down the lens.


“Now, I feel more comfortable. I deserve it. I think my music is good and I definitely think this record deserves it. I’m definitely more prepared this time around…”


musicweek.com Music Week | 31


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