Wall Of Sound
November 5, 1999
Robyn Hitchcock's Many Projects
by Gary Graff
Robyn Hitchcock's latest release, Jewels For Sophia, has barely been out long enough to gather dust on record store shelves. But Hitchcock is already talking about his next release -- titled A Star For Bram (as in Stoker). The new record is due out on Hitchcock's own label in January and is comprised of outtakes of songs from the Sophia sessions.
"It has 12 different recordings on it," says Hitchcock, 46, who recorded the Bram and Sophia songs with different collections of musicians in Seattle, Los Angeles, and London. "There's two songs that have been out before -- a Rock version of '1974' that was on the Jonathan Demme [film] project [Storefront Hitchcock] and a dub version of 'Antwoman', which is on Jewels For Sophia. Otherwise, it's completely different."
Hitchcock will sell the Bram disc through his website, which is one of an assortment of projects keeping him busy these days.
He's promoting Sophia with his first tour with a full band in several years, including former Soft Boys bandmate Kimberley Rew (a founder of Katrina And The Waves) on guitar and a repertoire that he says is "the first time I've done a complete retrospective of my stuff. I've sort of established myself in the last five years as a completely solo entertainer. I know I can do it for an hour by myself and entertain people. I don't feel like there's the unspoken proviso of, 'Of course he's with a band, really. This is just him being wacky on his own, but he really makes more sense with a band.' I think I've disproved that. So now I can completely reverse the process."
Hitchcock is also working trying to get MGM, which now owns the Demme-directed Storefront Hitchcock concert film to release it on home video, but he says the studio seems "very uninterested". Nevertheless, he's hoping to find a TV outlet for it as well. But while he talks about releasing some other collections via the Internet, Hitchcock's main project in the new year will be finishing an as-yet-untitled novel, which he says "is about someone whose past has basically changed while their life is happening -- which has made it particularly awkward to write.
"I want to be done next year," he adds. "Before the leaves fall from the trees, I would like to have an absolute finished version and some kind of deal in the...whatever deals are in: the works, or the pipeline, or the bank, or something. I definitely aim to have that out before I put out any further albums."
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