‘Motorway Of The Sun’ (MOTS), the new album from Julian Conor Reid, is a collection of songs written from 2014 to 2019, documenting the Liverpudlian singer/songwriter’s geographical journey from Lombardia to Campania to Oxfordshire – and the accompanying emotions and thought processes.

The album was recorded at NoizeLab Studios in Cagliari by Samuele Dessi, whose credits include Italian greats such Adriano Celentano, Vasco and Laura Pausini. This is a polished pop album – but one whose infectious melodies are balanced by lyrics which deal with themes such as addiction, mortality, grief, God, love and doomed relationships.

I was introduced to Samuele by my good friend Gianfranco Liori, a well-known Italian children’s author. Gianfranco and Renzo Cugis co-wrote four of the songs on the album.

The album is named after Autostrada A1, the 800-mile axis of the Italian highway system links the country’s three biggest cities Milan, Rome and Naples – with the tip of the peninsula at the Straits of Messina. Reid spent hours driving around Italy.

70% of the album was written and recorded in Italy. It was produced by an Italian. Four of the tracks were co-written by Italians. To all intents and purposes it’s an Italian album – by a Liverpudlian.

Born in Liverpool in 1980, Reid worked in a recording studio in his teenage years, later attending The Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, Paul McCartney’s fame school. He has worked with and performed alongside members of notable British groups such as The Dead 60s, Supergrass, The Boo Radleys and Space. He has performed live in America, Argentina, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

From 2010-2012 Reid toured a workshop based on the lives and music of The Beatles around Italian elementary, middle and secondary schools. Thousands of Italian schoolchildren will remember ‘il inglese con la chitarra che ha cantado i pezzi dei Beatles’. For his work preaching the gospel according to John, Paul, George and Ringo – Reid was made an honorary member of L’Associazione Beatlesiani d’Italia – The Beatle People Association of Italy.

Reid returned to England from Italy in 2015. And whilst the contrast between Oxford and Liverpool was perhaps not quite as stark as that between Milan and Naples, the familiar themes of leaving (a house, a city, a relationship, a body, memories). As John Cale once sang: ‘Learning about the difference between north and south’. Reid picks up the thread: ‘This album is about those 180 degree turns – and the motorway is an artery that either connects or divides a country, depending on your point of view.’

The tone for the album is set by the first two songs: Time to Climb the Mountain (introspective, change, mortality, reflective Followed by World of Pain – a glorious pop song reminiscent of Morrisey at his most rock ‘n’ roll and carefree.

Reid on MOTS’s opening track ‘Time to Climb the Mountain’:

I wrote it back in Summer 2015 when I was living in Capocastello, a medieval borgo in Mercogliano in the province of Avellino. There were several things on my mind at the time of writing, in particular the recent death of  my best friend and former guitarist from a heroin overdose. I was also recovering from a nasty viral infection that had left me laid up inside the house for a period of several weeks. During this time I had read ‘Into The Wild’ and drifted into a somewhat fragile mental state of melancholic pantheism. I had lived in Italy for seven years and Spain for two years before that. I not lived in England for almost a decade and felt that my time in Italy, a country I love dearly, had run it’s course.

Capocastello and the mountain of Montevergine, crowned by Santuario Di MOntevergine was the physcial backdrop to the mental and emotional setting described above. Although Montevergine was inspiration behind the song, my memories are that the mountain I intended to climb was actually Terminio, visible in the distance from my accommodation.

Fittingly, the song’s live debut was at the Castellarte music festival in 2015. Four years have passed since I wrote the song – and it is now a staple of my live set, having been played live on numerous occasions.

I was interviewed at Castellarte by Antonella Russoniello a and asked when the album would be released: I said September or October. Fortunately I didn’t specify which year! 4 years have passed and the album is finally ready for release. It took as long as it took and perhaps that’s how things were supposed to be.

Tracklisting:

Time To Climb The Mountain

World Of Pain

A1

Motorway Of The Sun

I’m Not The Man

Where She May Never Find Me

Ghosts of Summertown

Little Plans

Twice Born Man

Words by Julian Conor Reid.

Music by Julian Conor Reid except World of Pain, Twice Born Man, Motorway of the Sun, A1 written by Julian Conor Reid, Renzo Cugis, Gianfranco Liori

Produced, Mixed and Mastered by Samuele Dessi in NoizeLab Studios, Cagliari 2019

For several years now I have been in the market for a new acoustic guitar. I currently own a cheap and battered old Fender and a Takamine EG320C – both of these guitars would be classed as ‘low-end’.

Not dissimilar to a man who has always wanted to own a Ferrari or a Harley Davidson, there are certain brands that my ego likes the idea of owning, namely Martin or Gibson. But whenever I have tried those brands I have not been too impressed. Or rather, I have been impressed, but I haven’t been blown away, which is the feeling I would like to have if I am going to spend a large amount of money on a stringed instrument.

When I lived in Napoli I visited a number of negozio chitarre in Via San Sebastiano. I tried a few guitars and the one which impressed me the most was a Taylor 110 CE. It felt lovely to hold and to play. It looked beautiful. I had never been particularly keen on the idea of owning a Taylor, but the model that I tried in Napoli really spoke to me. I also tried 114 CE which was an equally positive experience.

I also visited Cled Art Music in Avellino. They performed a minor operation on my Takamine and introduced me to a brand that I have never heard of: Walden. I was told that the chief designer at Walden had previously been employed by Taylor (a fact that I have so far been unable to substantiate) and for an ‘unknown’ brand the Walden left a positive impression on me.

I tried the same model Taylor that I had loved in Napoli in Dawsons in Liverpool. It didn’t sound the same. It sounded great but it didn’t sound the same. This taught me a valuable lesson: that guitars of the same make and model will hardly ever actually be the same. So, what that means, is that if you play a Gibson J-45 in a music store and it sounds and feels amazing then you should probably go ahead and buy it right there and then. Because if you go to another music store and try another J-45, it might not sound and feel amazing. Strange but true. Guitars are not Playstations. I recently read an article in which John Meyer described his relationship with Paul Reed Smith which neatly describes this phenomenon:

“And Paul Reed Smith and I went in and our saying was sort of this: ‘You take 100 Strats and two or three of them are magic. The question is, what makes those magic and how do you replicate that so you get 100 out of 100 guitars that are magic?’”

Fast forward a few years and I have still not bought a new guitar. The way I see it is if I can’t find one which I feel like I have to own then I will not hand over the cash. You see I don’t want to settle for a good guitar, I want an amazing guitar. It doesn’t have to be expensive though. The two biggest influences on my guitar playing are probably Kurt Cobain and Noel Gallagher, neither of whom were known for using pricey instruments. Kurt might have played a Martin D-18E for the Unplugged in New York performance but is that the guitar that I should scour the globe for? According to Reverb, perhaps not.

The D-18E was an early attempt by Martin to produce an acoustic-electric guitar by installing two DeArmond pickups and three control knobs into a D-18 dreadnought. The electronics adversely affected the tone of the guitar, and the D-18E only remained in production for a year.

And whilst Noel Gallagher might today favour a Martin D-28, ‘straight off the peg’, the fact is that ‘Wonderwall’ was written and recorded using a relatively humble (compared to its Gibson counterparts at least) Epiphone EJ-200. With this in mind I tried out an EJ-200 at PMT in Oxford last week but I didn’t really like it. Pity, because it retails at less than £400.

Noel Gallagher on the Martin D-28:

“I bought it brand-new in a shop, just straight off the peg. It’s f***ing incredible. It’s got a new Baggs pickup system in it, which is pretty amazing.”

One of my favourite all-time acoustic performances is Country Joe McDonald at Woodstock. For that reason I have always wanted to try a Yamaha FG-150.

I have recently been scouring Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace for acoustic guitars. It’s becoming something of an obsession. Hopefully I’m not trying to fix something that’s broken within myself. Last week I saw a Taylor 612 CE for sale for £1400. I went to the seller’s warehouse in Witney to try out the guitar. It had a couple of light scratches that were barely noticeable but otherwise it was in really good condition. £1400 is a great price for a 612CE which can sell new over £3000. I played the guitar (plugged and unplugged) for a good twenty minutes. It felt amazing – all Taylors do. It sounded crisp, clear and bright. And the brightness is where the problem lies. Perhaps the sound I am looking for exists only in my mind but I would happily sacrifice some brightness for warmth. I didn’t buy the guitar. I came close though. As I explained to my wife afterwards: “I want my guitar to sound like the tree it came from”.

And so the process continues with seemingly miles to go until I sleep. In 2019 I am going to try out some of the following brands: Faith, Yamaha, Seagull and a few more high-end Takamines, Gibsons, Martins and Taylors.

I first met Peter Hooton and Keith Mullin in 1997. Their group The Farm were in hiatus and Peter and Keith were at 51-55 Highfield Street to discuss their new project ‘Hunkpapa’ with Mark Cowley and Steve Levy of Hug Management. I found both Peter and Keith pleasant and extremely down to Earth. Peter was polite and slightly guarded whereas Keith had a twinkle in his eye and liked to crack wise. I was handed a DAT and told to run off some cassettes of Hunkpapa’s latest demo.

The cassettes contained two songs: ‘Immortalized’ and ‘Nothing’s Perfect’. They were both brilliant. I remember thinking at the time:

“These are precisely the kind of songs that most people were hoping to hear on ‘The Second Coming” (The Stone Roses long-awaited sophomore album)

The tracks were ambitious, musically tight and had excellent lyrics. Peter sang with tenderness and conviction. Hunkpapa played only a handful of gigs (including a benefit for the Liverpool Dockers at The Royal Court) and released no music officially. The Farm reformed in 2004 and continue to perform today.

Hunkpapa have left precious little for the world to remember them by, certainly in terms of a digital footprint, at least. That being said, despite having never even released a record, the band are mentioned several times in Kevin Sampson’s novel ‘Powder’. (Sampson used to manage The Farm).

Ben Thompson writes in The Independent:

While Powder might fairly be said to be based on a lifetime’s research, it draws most heavily on the four years that Sampson spent as manager of Scouse pop demi-sensations, The Farm. Despite a cover that resembles The Farm’s most successful album, Spartacus, Powder is not a roman a clef. “A lot of the characters are composites of several different people,” Sampson admits cheerfully, “and a lot of them are completely made up. There is the odd occasion too where you get real people talking to their fictionalised equivalent, just for my own self-indulgent amusement”.