CityLife

Interview: Caulbearers

Caulbearers

When Caulbearers songwriter Damien Mahoney describes himself as ‘a retired clubber – an old Hacienda casualty’, it’s pretty easy to believe that statement.

With his unkempt facial hair, general sense of Zen-like calm, not to mention his preferred choice of meeting place for our CityLife interview – a hippy-ish cafe in Hulme – 36-year-old Mahoney is clearly living a life less defined by hedonistic pursuit these days.

However, if Mahoney can draw any parallel between his raucous clubbing past and his current incarnation as Caulbearers songwriter and multi-instrumentalist – Manchester’s much hailed new soul-funk outfit – then he is quick to highlight it.

“A sense of community,” he declares. “I think that’s one of the main functions of music, especially in a large environment.

“You can go back through the ages, and you’ll find that all communities need an outlet to congregate and enjoy music.

“It’s a very human need to go to a place to release those inhibitions in a non-intellectual way, and live music does that better than anything.

“I had that feeling when I used to go clubbing in warehouses, and there’s still that sense of celebration when I play in Caulbearers now.

“That sense of shared expression and energy – it’s the most inclusive thing, surely.”  

Mahoney’s musical outfit, the superb Caulbearers, are very much concerned with vibrant inclusivity.

Firstly, there’s the rather unconventional manner in which Caulbearers operate as a collective: although fixed to eight members, all of those eight members are also busy with other musical pursuits around Manchester’s live scene.

So saxophonist Will Lenton can often be spotted playing in various Manchester jazz outfits, while Caulbearer’s lead singer, Julie Gordon, is currently busy – hence her absence from today’s interview – in rehearsals singing for a certain Shaun William Ryder.

Further evidence of Caulbearer’s inclusivity – and surely the most outstanding part – is in their signature sound: a beguiling, bittersweet soul-funk maelstrom that sweeps through Sly And The Family Stone, The
Specials and Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions; a sound that never fails in its quest to transform any room full of strangers into gurning, loved-up best friends forever.

Watch their incendiary live shows and your immediate impression is of a band spinning musical plates with remarkable, dexterous ease: cross-stitching genres, assimilating myriad influences, improvising segments at will (but never in a naff muso way).

They are a band firmly aware that once you’re engaged with your own muse, then the engagement of the audience will soon follow. And that happens in droves.  

“Some of our most enjoyable gigs have been to audiences who have no idea who we are,”

Mahoney enthuses. “The sort of gigs when you set up in a small pub, no-one cares who you are, and you start playing. And slowly and surely, each person in the room becomes drawn to the music.

“You can see them one by one, being drawn to this sound. And it’s always such a mix of people: young students to people in their 60s and 70s who may have no interest in music. But that’s the power of a good live band – there’s something irresistible about it.

“It’s very primal and gets you moving.”

A band whose conversation lands on topics as diverse as Cubism, Manchester architecture and, err, child birth procedures (the word Caulbearers is, explains Mahoney, “a medical term related to child birth. My girlfriend is a midwife and she came up with it”), Caulbearers are most certainly not your average meat-and-two-veg Manc music combo. 

With origins in the Single Cell collective – the Manchester music and arts group who encourage cross-genre collaborations – Caulbearers first took shape when songwriter/musician Damien Mahoney began crafting songs which drew a firm line between his dance music past and a more old-school soul/reggae direction.

“I started out writing dance music in the Nineties,” he explains. “Really experimental music for clubs.

“But as I drifted out of the whole clubbing scene, I started to write very different kinds of songs.

“I went back to the old soul and reggae records that I loved – it was all about writing something classic.”

Thanks to Mahoney’s connections to the Single Cell collective, the many members of Caulbearers weren’t hard to find (they being: guitarist Matt Gannicliffe, saxophonist Will Lenton, bassist Dan Mitchell, percussionist Gavin Mullan, drummer Rob Turner, and cellist Stefan Skrimshire), while the final piece of the jigsaw, singer Gordon, was discovered via her MySpace page.

Despite her ongoing commitments as backing vocalist to Ryder, Prestwich-based Gordon was only too happy to step aboard Caulbearers’ intrepid soul odyssey. But don’t things ever get tricky sharing a singer with Mr Ryder? “It’s quite easy,” Mahoney says. “I think it’s only happened once when Julie has been double-booked with us and Shaun.

“She’s such a big part of why this band works, and she really does embody the lyrics I write.

“We don’t mind sharing her; and besides, Shaun has been busy with his jungle duties recently.”

Inevitably, when your band has eight members with numerous extra-curricular activities, Caulbearers’ progress hasn’t exactly been full-pelt since they hit the local gigging circuit two years ago.

Thankfully, that looks likely to change these next few months with the release of their first EP, plus a packed gigging itinerary starting at Band On The Wall this weekend, when the group perform as part of a Nordoff-Robbins charity concert. 

The good news: an advance CityLife listen to that debut EP – currently being mixed and scheduled for a May release – reveals a typically freewheeling statement of funk-soul intent, the sound of a group firmly living up to their all-inclusive manifesto.

Call it true musical communality, call it hippy-ish sentiment, whatever – Caulbearers just see it as a damn good party.    

“You have to make people feel involved and engaged,” says guitarist Gannicliffe. “Obviously, posturing and posing is an essential part of rock ’n’ roll music, but we’ve never felt like we need to do that.

“I watched Hurts perform on TV the other night, and their performance was so precise and rehearsed – on a pure aesthetic level it was perfectly realised.  But Caulbearers are far more about breaking through that TV screen... grabbing you and making you feel part of the music. ”

For more information visit www.myspace.com/caulbearers.