Interview with Leon Stanford: ‘I put as much of myself into my music as I can, it’s my happy place’

Cardiff-based The People The Poet frontman Leon Stanford has released ‘Plan B’, today, the second heartfelt and reflective track from his upcoming solo EP, Fear Is Heavy.

‘Plan B’ is Stanford’s take on having a Plan B: ‘It’s kind of me saying that I don’t have a Plan B, although I went out of school into painting and decorating to have a back up,‘ he said. ‘When I listen to podcasts, a lot of musicians don’t have a plan B. When I left school, music was my plan B in a way, although really it’s always been my plan A. It’s been frustrating and upsetting over the years but no matter what, you can’t give it up. I put as much of myself into my music as I can, it’s my happy place. So the song is about that and is also a love story about not giving up on someone.’

As the song goes: ‘I’m scared if I walk away that you’ll turn and you’ll only see the back of me and only then you’ll wonder who I am and who I could be.’

Last month, he released the first single from Fear Is Heavy, ‘By Your Side’, a moving song about a father’s relationship with his daughter: ‘It’s basically about a dad I know who, through a break-up, didn’t get to spend a lot of time with his daughter,’ he said. ‘Around 95% of songs are probably love songs. I try my best to make my lyrics mean something to me or to someone else. On the middle eight, there’s the line ‘Give me a hand to give it away’, it’s about him giving her away in marriage. I was trying to think of the most important day for a father and daughter, the idea of a father walking his daughter down the isle.’

The father’s anguish at not seeing enough of his daughter is palpable: ‘Waiting in the darkness of your shadow, biding my time, biting my tongue. I left the phone line clear in case you rung, I know you needed time but I never knew how much. So scared of what we’ve lost, I’m out of touch.’

‘The whole EP is about not giving up on people, you have to do what’s right for your peace of mind’

The EP, which is out next week, will comprise four tracks, including ‘By Your Side’, plus the shorter radio edit of that song, ‘Plan B’ and ‘Fear Is Heavy’. ‘I feel like all of my songs are my babies, I want them all to have the spotlight,’ he laughed. ‘The whole EP is about not giving up on people, you have to do what’s right for your peace of mind. You’re given that one chance, don’t be weighed down by fear.’

‘Fear Is Heavy’ is probably his most personal song to date: ‘It’s one of my favourite songs,’ he said. ‘My parents are really supportive. It’s a song I wrote to my parents saying I know that you love me, I know you’re wise and I know that you want to show me the world through your eyes.’

His close relationship with his parents comes through strongly in the lyrics: ‘ You told me stories to help me to bed, filled me with love and dreams in my head. Now you talk about life and what’s real instead. All those stories as children that you never read. I know that it kills you to see my heart break but I will learn the same way from all of my mistakes.’

He co-wrote it with his friend George in Bristol and produced it in one day. ‘I played it driving back from Bristol to Wales and I was in tears,’ he said. ‘I’d had these lyrics and melody attached together from the get-go. Months later, I showed the melody to George and we wrote it in a day. He gave me the line ‘fear is heavy’, it’s a good line! We were on a fag break and I was trying to explain to him what I wanted the song to be about.’

The chorus of ‘Fear Is Heavy’ is about trying to believe in the magic, he said: ‘This world can cut you in half but it’s part of the magic, you have to hold onto the innocence and magic you had as a child.’

Stanford hasn’t shown the song to his parents yet and says he finds it hard to even say the lyrics, acknowledging that it’s going to be a tough one to sing live. He knows first hand that some songs are just too painful to sing. ‘On our first album, The Narrator, there’s a song, ‘Pink Ribbon’, about my friend Sam who lost her battle to cancer. We played it once but I could never play it again, some songs just make you think.’

We chat for a while about how it’s often the most personal and heartbreaking songs that you’re drawn to and keep going back to and I ask him if writing songs like ‘Pink Ribbon’ really take it out of him and he says they do: ‘How does someone like Eric Clapton sing ‘Tears in Heaven’ every night? There are a lot of big emotions in a song like that, how do they do it, it amazes me, that much honesty. They break themselves apart to give us a song for life, don’t they?’

‘I get bittersweet when I listen to an artist and think why haven’t they made it yet?’

Stanford is very conscious of just how tough the music business can be and is grateful to have the painting and decorating to rely on given that gigging is out of the question at the moment. ‘I get bittersweet when I listen to an artist and think why haven’t they made it yet? There’s a lot of talent out there but also a lot of luck.’

The People The Poet released their latest album, The Light of Day, an album of B-sides and demos in August, which comprises 13 tracks, including my favourite, ‘Featherweight’. ‘We wrote all of those songs when Pete (Pete Mills, bass) joined the band in 2013. ‘Featherweight’ was the first song we wrote with him. It’s about finding out I had diabetes and my fight to get sleep.’

The band was formed in 2012, having previously performed with the same line up under the name Tiger Please. ‘We’re still the same four boys writing songs in the same room,’ he laughed. ‘Many bands sit on an album because they think they’ve moved on. I’m happy that we decided not to sit on these songs and got them out there.’

Even their name has an interesting provenance. ‘When we were called Tiger Please, we were just a bunch of boys from school who put out two EPs,’ he said. ‘I had a concept idea about fans sending us their life stories and turning them into songs. We got 50-100 stories and thought it would take us a few months to write the album but it took us three-to-four years! So ‘The People’ comes from those people who sent us their stories and we were the ‘poet’. The process of that album defined us as a band, as young adults with a purpose who got to tell those stories.’

Stanford says he doesn’t have a favourite out of his own songs but that ‘Molly Drove Me Away’ from The Narrator is ‘a bit of a fan favourite’. He’s a big fan of local indie rock band WYNT, who he describes as being ‘very similar to us’: ‘They’ve got a Tom Petty vibe meets The Amazons and Sam Fender.’ He’s a massive Springsteen fan and also cites Otis Reading, Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan as big influences. His dream line up is beautifully eclectic: ‘I’m not even a massive Queen fan but they’d have to be up there for the impact they had on a crowd. I’d have Otis and Springsteen as well. It would be like the greatest Glastonbury ever!’