Returning to the collaborative format that saw him reconnect with a host of old friends and pick up a Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award for 2012’s Thirteen Lost & Found, RM Hubbert is back, and at the vanguard of another extraordinary ensemble of musicians and songwriters. In many ways a reflection and reconfiguration of his earlier, award-winning album, Telling the Trees highlights the remarkable lyricism and musicianship of his individual co-writers whilst managing to cohere into a dazzling masterwork for all concerned.

“The basic idea was to create a mirror image to Thirteen Lost & Found. Each of those tracks were written with me and the collaborators holed up in a room for 6 hours, as we tried to capture our reconnection through song. With Telling the Trees, I wanted to do the opposite. I hadn’t even met most of the collaborators on this album so I wanted the process to be conducted entirely remotely, with ideas sent over the Internet and then developed in isolation over a month or so.”

“We wanted to capture as unfiltered a response to each other’s work as possible, to reduce the influence I might have over the final songs. It was about trusting some of my favourite artists and gaining an insight into the different ways they worked. The process was as fascinating and rewarding as I could have hoped: every piece came back differently from how I had imagined it; each collaborator took those initial ideas and made them their own; merging what I loved about their own work into my own. Whether it was the phrasing, the melody or the arrangement, there was something genuinely surprising in every song and it was a rare treat to have my initial pieces transformed into something we both owned.”

Long renowned as one of Scotland’s most creative musicians, there’s an openness and generosity of spirit behind Hubby’s curiosity for collaboration. Bringing such diverse and diffuse elements together is hardly a risk-free enterprise but with Telling the Trees it’s catalysed a synthesis bordering on alchemy…

Telling The Trees Collborator’s Notes & Observations :
With each track on the album emerging from its own unique creative process, Chemikal asked the collaborators to give us some of their thoughts on Hubby, their song and the mechanics of working together.

Could you give us some of your thoughts on Hubby himself: as a writer, a musician, his way of working...

Anneliese Mackintosh: I've known of Hubby and his music for years. As well as loving his distinctive style, I've always been particularly interested in the way he uses love, mental health and grief as inspiration in his work. His collaborations are brilliant too, and it was a real honour to be asked to contribute something for the album.

Rachel Grimes: Hubby is very generous and open and is hungry to explore and try things out musically, which makes for a fun adventure. It is so uniquely weird to get to know someone through the experience of tracking an overdub with their music, though I look forward to sharing a pint with him one day in person. He has a very natural and sure approach to the guitar, and the flourishes and gestures are very inviting to me as a pianist.

Kathryn Joseph: hubby. the beautiful human. that makes all others cry and laugh with love. i dont even think he realises how important and how beautiful what he is and makes is. but we all know. and we are all made feel better because of him. and his beautiful noise. and so to get to write with him is the most amazing and terrifying thing for a tricky human like me. how do you add anything to something so perfect and beautiful already? and it took me ages.

Martha Ffion: There are so many things I admire about Hubby. From his mind-blowing guitar skills to his ability to create such emotion in his music. Hubby is just one of those magical people who can completely captivate with no need for any backing at all. That’s very special. His ability to collaborate also shows how flexible he is- he is a master of so many genres!

Aby Vulliamy: I knew that Hubby was an incredible guitarist, with a very distinctive, meticulous but expressive style. I was taken aback by his generosity and openness to whatever I wanted to do with his piece. With such detailed and thoughtful compositions, I would have imagined he would have something specific in mind and that it would be hard for me to work out exactly what he wanted. I sent Hubby one very rough recording in advance, and described what I was thinking about conceptually (I felt like the guitar part created a landscape into which I thought the viola could emerge like a kind of dawn chorus). Hubby was very encouraging about this idea and was happy just to go for it in the studio...

Karine Polwart: I fell in love with Hubby’s music in the lead up to the SAY Awards of 2013. We were both shortlisted that year and Hubby’s album Thirteen Lost and Found won, deservedly so, in my opinion. It was my album discovery of that year. I loved that each track had its own distinctive character, because of all those lovely, maverick collaborators, but that the whole thing totally cohered around Hubby’s playing. I’ve found myself since diddling song lines between some of his instrumental tracks from other albums. So I can’t deny I was pretty chuffed to be asked to write for this one. I heard the brilliant Dundonian poet Don Paterson interviewed on the radio once. He’s a virtuosic jazz guitarist as well as one of our really great contemporary poets. The interviewer asked him if he’d ever got into writing songs to combine his lyrical and musical skill. He said: No, as a poet I realise I never leave enough room in the words for music. I know exactly what he means by that. And it’s true in reverse as well. Many brilliant instrumental players and composers don't leave enough space, or the right kind of breath, in their music for song. Sometimes it’s just full enough as it is. Or far too busy even. Leaving just enough room is an art, and Hubby has it nailed on that front. It takes confidence and trust and great judgement not to say everything yourself.

Karine Polwart (contd.): I think it takes trust and some courage also to make yourself vulnerable on a stage. And that’s something else I really respect about Hubby’s music. His life, in all its loveliness and mess, and daftness and grief, is laid right out there when he plays and sings at his shows. It’s deeply personal stuff. I mean it’s taken for granted that women musicians, especially singer-songwriters, will do this (and there’s some infuriating and lazy stereotyping around this). It takes guts though, especially as a 40-something male musician, to be that open and frank. It’s a proper gift to an audience.

Could you describe how the collaborative process worked for you, how you approached it: was it easy, difficult, did you have a clear plan for how you wanted to go about it from the outset?

Anneliese Mackintosh: I was quite apprehensive when I was first asked to do this. I was really excited at the prospect of creating something with Hubby, but I've always found his work so beautiful I didn't want to make something 'ugly'. When he sent me a rough demo of a guitar tune he had in mind, the cycles and repetitions made me think of evolution, and an old short story I'd worked on exploring that subject. I tried chopping up the story and reading it aloud to fit the changing mood of the piece. When I recorded it and sent it to Hubby, he was really positive and supportive. We fiddled around with a few things and then Hubby put together the final piece. When I listened to the finished track, I was amazed how much more intense and apocalyptic it sounded, compared to how I'd imagined it. It's good to be surprised. The piece is something that neither of us could have made individually, and something very different from any of my own work, which all comes direct from my own brain. It was fun having a 'joint brain' with Hubby for a while.

Rachel Grimes: It is very satisfying to intuitively respond to a recording by just sitting down and overdubbing with it, which makes for spontaneous moments I might never replicate. I did stumble a bit over the timing, since there is a good bit of space, breathing and pauses - when you can’t see someone, it is easy to miss a downbeat, and placing it with a click just did not feel right. So, I just practiced with the track, getting to know the song and Hubby’s gestures a bit more each time. I got most of this track in one swoop finally, which helps it feel like a living room performance I think.

Marnie: I'd heard a lot about Hubby before working with him, but had never met the man himself. So when he got in touch out of the blue asking to collaborate i was more than happy to be involved. We worked remotely, with Hubby sending me his guitar track, and from there i knew that i wanted to create something fragile and melodic and pop. I'm quite used to working remotely and writing top-lines, however, i think it was a first for me writing over such a stripped back track. I was a little nervous at first, but Hubby's work was so pretty and emotive that it made my part relatively easy and it developed and flowed naturally.

Kathryn Joseph: to understand i just had to listen to him. and everything would be ok. it was already written. my daughter heard it when he sent it to me first and knew it was about a heart being broken. it took me longer to realise. i am so so lucky to get be tiny part of his beautiful. and i am so so lucky to get to be his friend. Thank you for have me. and thankyou the most for sing on it. those are the best bits.

Martha Ffion: It took me quite a while to navigate my way around the song. I’ve never written with anyone else before and my usual song writing style is very safe and quite formulaic. This was such a beautifully complex piece of music. Once I got to know the song the melody came very easily. The themes I wanted to write about were clear from my first couple of listens: naivety, nostalgia, dystopia…The song had such a sorrowful and eerie tone to it and I just wanted to push that further.

Sarah J. Stanley: I got Hubby’s guitar track through and at first thought this will be an easy track to just top line and add some extras, but actually I found the chorus a real challenge, reminding me that I sit so uncomfortably in major cadences and uplifting chord changes! I offset this by using some dark lyrics I had waiting to be used in something and it seemed to marry well in the end.

Sarah J. Stanley (contd.): For me it was a strange nostalgic hark back to the days where I myself was mainly playing gigs with depressing songs and my guitar (something I love about hubby’s work) and at the same time, a challenge to tint the melodic sweetness inherent in Hubby’s song structure with my more known style of late, which involves more synths and production than guitars. I was tempted to pull out a second guitar track but there really would be no point; Hubby’s rhythmic clatterings through chords and accented by sort of sub melodies didn’t need tampering.

Aby Vulliamy: I realised Hubby really had no preconceptions at all, he wanted me to respond in a personal, sensitive and unique way to his piece. So he gave me total freedom, and I felt that he trusted me to be authentic and brave in response to his music, and I think we both just believed that this freedom and honesty would simply work. At the studio we barely discussed the piece in advance, and I think I was less than an hour in the studio, including a bit of discussion and direction from Hubby. And then Jamie and Hubby spent what felt like just a few minutes teasing out a load of viola lines that worked and made sense as a whole, from a tangled mess of ideas. I love this type of collaboration. The process of listening carefully and responding sensitively to other peoples' music. I like to throw a bunch of different ideas onto the track, then discuss and listen back and adapt and add some more and trust that the best ideas will rise to the surface. I don't feel precious at all about which bits get used - in fact my offerings are usually so spontaneous that I have no memory of them once I leave the studio. Then I just trust that I'm in safe hands, and that something good will come of it (and in this case it's clear Hubby's safe hands were also held by Jamie and Paul Savage's combined recording and producing genius!)

Karine Polwart: When the unnamed instrumental shape for Yew Tree arrived I could tell straight away that it had a song inside it. Hubby’s style of playing - his melodic and rhythmic instinct on the guitar and those shifts in tempo and metre - it really reminds me of my brother Steven, with whom I’ve co-written many of my own songs. So the collaborative approach felt very familiar - all this lovely space left for counter melody and lyric. And when I found myself mumbling along with the tune setting right away I knew it was in a happy key too. Then I set it aside and let it sit for a couple of months. In the meantime, by the by, I fell in love. And in the autumn of last year a slow walk to, and a wee sit beneath, The Great Yew Tree of Ormiston, Midlothian played a part in that story. Yews are such wise, wizened trees. There's so much time and resonance and lore in them. A day or two later, the song unfurled itself in a morning - lyric and layered up vocal parts and all. So it’s a very personal song for me. And unusually loved up and optimistic, as my songs go!

Tracklisting

1. The Dinosaur Where We Fell In Love (Anneliese Mackintosh)
2 .Self Portrait In A Convex Mirror (Anneke Kampman)
3. In Accordia (Rachel Grimes)
4. I Can Hold You Back (Kathryn Williams)
5. Sweet Dreams (Marnie)
6. The Dog (Kathryn Joseph)
7. The Unravelling (Martha Ffion)
8. Probably Will // Probably Do (Sarah J. Stanley)
9. KAS (Aby Vulliamy)
10. Yew Tree (Karine Polwart)
11. Chelsea Midnight (Eleanor Friedberger)