Joe Yorke: "I really just like to be known as a music artist who loves Jamaican music, but all sorts of other music as well!"

Joe, you started out in music busking on the streets. What did you play in those days?
Joe Yorke: “I played a mixture of things really, from folky stuff to punk, but mainly tunes that people in Wigan and Manchester, where I grew up, might like to hear. So things like Oasis and some reggae and ska-influenced stuff as well, a little bit of Bob Marley and things like that.”

What was the area where you grew up like? Was it a culturally mixed environment?
Joe Yorke: “Not really, it was quite white to be honest, at least when I was living there. I didn’t have much exposure to black music, at least black underground music. It was only when I moved to Manchester that I got a real understanding for that. I became interested in reggae in high school through listening to punk music. Bands like The Clash had something going on that fascinated me, and I later learned that that was an influence from Jamaican music. They were living in Brixton at the time and had that whole kind of Windrush influence. That’s kind of where it started for me. I went to Notting Hill Carnival when I was about 13, and that was the first time I heard a sound system. But it was only when I moved to Manchester at 18 that I got a bit of a reggae education, and that was when my love for it really blossomed.”

Live you’ve mostly been performing on sound system. Is that also where you feel most at home as an artist?
Joe Yorke: “My first experience in sound system goes back to when I was about 18 or 19, when me and my friends, Matt and Beanie, started a sound system called Conscious Youth. We played UK steppers and I wasn’t singing much back then. When I first started singing, at least in this style, as the Joe York that is performing now, I found it very difficult to project. I’m not much of a mic man, so I’m not very good at hyping up the crowd or even saying much in between tunes. But I feel really comfortable now, and I love sound system. Having said that, I also love the stage thing. It’s just a very different atmosphere, I guess. The bonus with sound system is that you’ve got this kind of special intimacy, and sometimes people aren’t actually watching you, they’re just hearing the music. When you’re on a stage, you know that everyone is watching you, and that can be a bit intimidating. But at the same time, the sound is normally a lot more pure on stage, so I can really hear what’s going on.

You’re also part of a quite short list of iconic reggae vocalists who use a falsetto voice. Did you always sing like that, or did you just use your ordinary voice in the beginning?
Joe Yorke: “When I started out, it was more in a typical kind of voice. About five years ago, I was working with my friend Ian (producer and multi-instrumentalist Eeyun Purkins, red.), who introduced me to a lot of roots reggae music and really gave me an education in the genre. We were just making music in his bedroom, recording stuff, kind of for fun really, not with any expectation of having a wider project or ever performing. I was doing a lot of backing vocals in this falsetto style, and one day Eeyun said: “Joe, why don’t you do a full track in that style?”. We did a song called ‘Tonight’, and people really liked it, so I continued in that style. It’s become very natural for me now, and I actually think I have probably more control up there than I do in my normal register.”

You just mentioned him there, Eeyun Delroy Perkins… What role has he played in your career?
Joe Yorke: “A very big one! We met when I moved to Manchester, and we were in a band called Black Star Dub Collective together, a punky kind of anarchist reggae outfit. Like I just said, he gave me a huge education in reggae music really, and on Wednesday nights we’d often attend these jam nights in Manchester, where we were often the only two white people there! (laughs) That also gave us both a bit of an education on the discipline of how to play reggae music live. Ian would pick up the guitar, and I’d be on vocals, but people would be looking at you funny if you weren’t making it sound good! (laughs). We often work together on his projects with The Co-Operators, and he writes a lot of my lyrics. Probably half of the song lyrics are Ian’s, except for my last album, for which I did all the writing myself. He’s written tunes like ‘Quicksand’, ‘Tonight’, ‘Midnight Rock’, a lot of the most popular ones to be honest, he’s a brilliant songwriter! We work really well together, the melodies come to me, and the lyrics just flow out of him.”

About those lyrics… What I find very special and quite unique, as it takes some talent to be able to do that, is that at the same time your lyrics are often quite simple - you only have to hear them once, and the second time you’ll already be able to sing along - but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll also be able to discover different layers and a lot of wordplay…
Joe Yorke: “Absolutely, and that’s what’s crazy really about Ian. I actually forget what Ian studied, but I think it was politics. We really have kind of similar backgrounds really, as we both got into punk music at very early ages in different parts of England, and we have very similar political views. That’s what drew us together in Manchester, and we both worked a lot of rubbish jobs as well, sometimes even together. He has a real gift with words. When I have an idea for a song, I can just sit down with Ian, explain the idea, and he’ll be like: “How does this sound?”.”

There’s also something quite introspective to your songs.
Joe Yorke: “Absolutely, yeah, ‘Hopeless’ definitely sounds more introspective than previous recordings. Some of it is a bit tongue-in-cheek as well. I mean the album title itself, ‘Hopeless’, I produced it with Joe Baker, and at times during the process of making the album, we both felt quite hopeless. But there’s also tracks like ‘Dreaming’, for example, which is about my childhood, growing up, and finding it really hard to fit into a school system or in the workplace. I was often just completely distracted by art and music; that was always more important to me. That’s a very introspective song, but it’s also a bit of a joke as well.”

You released the ‘A Distant Beat’ album, a collaborative effort with The Co-operators, and then there’s your two solo albums, ‘Noise And Emptiness’ and ‘Hopeless’. As an artist, what’s the difference between your own productions and the work you do with Eeyun?
Joe Yorke: “The production style is quite different. Ian almost always uses live drums, plays the bass, and forms the production. I kind of do the same thing in my space, and both have a bit of a different sound. I also work in a little bit more of a hybrid way compared to Ian. His studio is more analogue than mine, and I guess he has created his own sonic signature.”

More so than the Co-operators album, which is quite rootsy in sound, your solo album, ‘Hopeless’ is a lot more varied in style. It begs the question: do you actually consider yourself to be a reggae musician at all?
Joe Yorke: “That’s a really good question,… I mean, that’s what people tend to call me, but I don’t really want that sort of rigid box. And there’s a number of reasons. One, because I always feel like a guest at the reggae table, and I don’t want to be given too much of a platform for that one thing. Also, I don’t listen to reggae all the time, I listen to all sorts of music. I’ve always loved all sorts of music, so it doesn’t feel very authentic or real of me to just keep churning out reggae music because that’s what’s given me a platform to be able to perform. I hope that people like it when I try some other things, even though it’s sometimes a little bit risky, moving out of that world. I really just like to be known as a music artist who loves Jamaican music, but all sorts of other music as well!”

A final question… Of course it provides you with the inspiration to create all these wonderful songs, but at the same time it’s also the reality you have to wake up and live in every day, so what is post-Brexit England like for Joe York? Is it still a nice place to live in? Is it what you imagined growing up in?
Joe Yorke: “I’m very privileged that, at least in the past year or so, I’ve felt relatively comfortable, compared to some of my friends, but yeah, it’s hard. There’s a huge housing crisis, the government are diabolical, and then the other option, the Labour Party is the same thing in a different colour. So yeah, it’s grim, a lot of people are worried, and the future is very uncertain. Even the middle classes are having a hard time these days, so yeah, it’s tough, About Brexit… A lot of my friends were kind of anxious about Brexit, probably didn’t think that that would ever happen. I can’t understand anyone who could still think that Brexit was in any way a good idea! There’s no evidence, it just made things worse. It’s tough, but we’re surviving, and I think we just need to lean more on community spirit really!”

Foto: © Fabrice De Smedt