Charlie Winston: Asking Questions One Song at a Time

Charlie Winston sits on the leather chair, swinging from left to right with the phone perched casually in his hand. He finishes up his interview with the Globe and Mail, and his publicist calls me in. In a rather Parisian manner, he kisses me on both cheeks, a stark contrast to my North American handshake. Clad in clothes that have a Bohemian vibe, Charlie does not resemble the typical musicians that we see in mainstream music.

Winston is an English singer-songwriter, who hails from Cornwall. Despite his unwillingness to conform to certain norms in the music industry, he has reached extensive billboard success in Europe with his first album, Hobo, which had a massive success in France. His debut album has been certified as platinum.

This year, Winston has won a European Border Breakers Award for Best UK Artist in Europe and I had the chance to catch up with this award-winning artist to chat about his music and success.

YT: What is the philosophy behind your music and the way you live your life?
CW: It's about asking questions and trying to break expectations and engaging people. It's about engaging people to ask questions about reality and what's real in terms of what gives you your vitality to live and everything like that. For example, the song Like A Hobo is about asking myself questions about where I've come from, how I've grown up and what kind of values I have. Do they really mean something to me? You can grow up and learn some things from your parents and it actually turns out that you don't agree with it. Another example is in my song Boxes [which is] about changes – how as children we don't have structure, categories or places for everything – free and beautiful. As we get older, the more we put things into boxes, the more you trap yourself into a box of your own identity. It's trying to smash your identity without that stigma.

YT: Amelie's Audrey Tautou stars in your music video I Love Your Smile. How did that collaboration come about?
CW: January of last year I released the record in France and it exploded in France. Audrey, at the same time was promoting the film Coco Before Chanel. She was doing a lot of interviews in magazines and on the radio. Whenever the hosts would ask her which records she was listening to, she would always say, “I love the Charlie Winston record - Hobo.” It was great. I told my record label that we ought to get her along with my gig or onto a music video. The director of the video Like A Hobo wanted to work with me for another label. My label told him that if he could get Audrey Tautou to agree to star in the video, it was a done deal – so he worked his six degrees of separation and voila.

YT: Your music has a very blues, folk and soul vibe to it. Where did these influences arise from?
CW: My parents were singers – a singing duo before I was born. They travelled along singing. When I was two, they bought a hotel – and being entertainers themselves, they wanted it to be a hub for a lot of performers. So, every weekend we had bands in the back bar, Charlie's Bar it was called. We had theatre nights, can-can dances, comedy nights – classic circuses and all sorts of things. There were all different types of influences going on. In front of the hotel, my parents were always playing either classical or jazz – or my brothers would be playing the latest records or I myself would be playing. Joni Mitchell, U2 and all sorts of things like that.

YT: Congratulations on your number one hit in France. How did you enter the French music scene so successfully and in such a short amount of time?
CW: I was travelling through France and I bumped into some friends I met several years before in Nice. One French guy Medi, is the drummer in my band now and Peter Gabriel. That night, I went and played. I went and travelled. I came back and they kept on giving me lots of gigs in Paris and I got them gigs in London. We did a lot of exchanges. I sold a lot of their CDs at my gigs and they took mine and circulated the CD.

YT: Tell me about the My Life as Charlie Winston documentary at the Ciné Lumière in London.
CW: That was basically capturing the fast success the record had last year. My friend Steph came and jumped in the tour bus with us and captured everything happening with the band last year – all the gigs and everything. She took interviews of me all over the place – videos of me when I was younger. It was really about my entire life.

YT: Your music began at a very grassroots level but is now spreading throughout the world. What advice do you have for aspiring young musicians?
CW: Make the music which is actually real for you. Don't do it just because it's just for commercial reasons – it's never going to get you anywhere, maybe short term. If you make a lot of money from it, it might not necessarily feed your soul. Work hard – if you really want it – don't be afraid of hard work, it's the only way to get it. You've got to practice.

YT: Your music career seems to be blossoming. A few of your songs allude to love – do you have a current love interest?
CW: (Dramatic Pause) Yes. I was trying to pull off the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire dramatic pause. I'm still working on it. Did it work? I currently live in with my girlfriend.

YT: Why an independent French label like Atmosphériques instead of starting off with a larger record label in Britain?
CW: I was playing for many years with my brother. He signed to Sony and after that he signed to BMI. He had some pretty bad luck with the merge of Sony and afterward with BMI. From doing a lot of work in that field, I saw a lot of the industry that I didn't like and didn't want to be part of. I noticed that a lot of an artist's liberty can be taken away when you're working in a huge organization. Don't get me wrong – they have a lot to offer as well. There's a lot of politics. As a first-time artist, because of the pressure that's on the industry at the moment and the lack of record sales – it's really hard for large organizations to invest long term into artists. Whereas, small record labels are more willing to take time to invest since they don't have so much to lose. I was always interested in going independent.

YT: Your debut album, Make Way was never fully released. Do Make Way and Hobo have similar creative touches?
CW: Yes. Make Way has half of the records on Hobo. That was the original record that was going to be released – but Atmosphériques wanted to change a couple of songs – take a few off the record. We had this meeting in London with Real World, Atmosphériques, Peter Gabriel, my manager and myself talking about what we were going to do with the record. At the time, the main CD was still Make Way. By the end of the meeting, we got three different producers to work on the whole project – a producer for the new singles, a producer for the new songs and a producer for the old songs. Eventually, I thought – this is too much, let's just keep one producer and rethink the whole album. Scrap Make Way and put all the songs down on the table and figure out what we want.

YT: How would you describe yourself in three words?
CW: I wouldn't.