Interview with Regency: ‘To tour with legends like Stevie Wonder would be a dream come true’

Orpington in Kent indie rock band Regency have released their debut album Opulent Squalor today (26 November), giving us their take on heartbreak, social injustice and being your own worst enemy.

The band comprises frontman and pianist Dean Mumford, who also plays keys in The Rifles and for Suggs from Madness, Mumford’s brother Scott (vocals and bass) and Tom Marden (lead guitar). They have been together since 2019. Mumford credits his brother Scott for coming up with the album name: ‘We love The Libertines, it’s Libertine-esque,’ he said. ‘It’s like old spit and sawdust pubs that are beautiful. ‘Regency’ comes from the regency period (1795-1837), it’s part of that idea that in squalor, you could have royalty. It reflects that it was a period of richness or squalor for most people, there wasn’t much in between.’

Opulent Squalor gives us 12 tracks, including two new tracks, ‘Filthy Rich’ and ‘We All Fall Down’, as well as previous singles ‘Morning Girl’, ‘Photographs’ and ‘Won’t Be Long’: ‘The track order takes you full-circle (from lows to highs and back),’ Mumford said. ‘Filthy Rich’ is like Lou Reed’s ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’, it’s about people obsessing with money, that conversation down the pub about how much money you have. It’s like Oasis’ ‘Some Might Say’, that interesting argument about what money means to you. I think it was Paul Smith who said “Money isn’t everything but it gives you more options”. It’s a bit of an ironic song, a bit tongue in cheek.’

‘Filthy Rich’ kicks off with ambient pub noise, before the synths, piano and guitars layer up to create the catchiest melody on the album for me: ‘Well I’m, I’m as honest as the day is long, you’ll be choking dust when I am gone…rich or poor, we’ll all come knocking at your door.’

‘When some people go through a break-up, they have to get rid of everything that reminds them of that person’

‘Photographs’ is one of the most beautiful tracks on the album, pulled along by Mumford’s wistful vocals and soaring violins. It’s a song about coping with a break-up, according to Mumford: ‘When some people go through a break-up, they have to get rid of everything that reminds them of that person, don’t they? There’s the line about “all the photographs are burning”, he said. ”Photographs’ is an umbrella of things, if the break-up wasn’t amicable, if someone cheated on you. It was about a friend of mine having an affair with someone in the library. They split up, it had disappointment written all over it (laughs). They’d meet in an aisle in the library. That’s where the line “Let me take you home, she said, and show you all the books I’ve read” comes from.’ I ask him if his friend has heard the song. ‘He has, it brought back memories but he was flattered, he’s a top man.’

‘Red, Black and Blue’ on the album deals with partying and the aftermath: ‘It’s about going out,’ he said. ‘Remember the rave days of the late-80’s? It’s about the feelings after that.’ I tell him it would have been a perfect song for the rockers at the Hard Rock Hell festival I went to earlier this month and he laughs: ‘Haha, yeah, that’s definitely a song for them!’

I say that I’m always struck by what a hard-working musician he is, releasing a single with Regency every month, as well as a mid-month single sometimes, touring with two bands, playing keys for Suggs from Madness and composing his four-part classical opus, ‘Beautitudine’, of which part 1, “Occisor” was released last month. ‘We’ve released 14 singles in 12 months and we’ve got singles lined up until 2024, although we haven’t recorded them all yet,’ he said. ‘For our February single (2022), Suzi Quatro’s daughter is singing it, she’s powerful like her mum.’

‘My mum’s uncle Den played the piano, he’d come round and play boogie woogie, I was fascinated’

Mumford got into playing the piano at the age of six: ‘My mum’s uncle Den played the piano, he’d come round and play boogie woogie, I was fascinated,’ he said. ‘He taught himself the black notes ‘cos it was easier, so I started copying him until one day my mum said wouldn’t I like to learn properly, so I went to a tutor and learned classical piano but the number of times I wanted to give it up! I got to Grade 5 but once you get to Grade 6 to 8, you’ve got to do theory. I failed my A Levels ‘cos I played the piano eight hours a day. I had no mates, I didn’t go out (laughs).’

His dedication to learning the piano is apparent in other ways, too, and he cites the 21 minute version of The Doors’ song ‘Light My Fire’ as being a pivotal moment for him. ‘I wanted to learn that by heart,’ he said. ‘We didn’t have the internet then. There’s a 14 minute organ solo in it that I really wanted to learn, so I did play/pause on the CD over and over again to learn it by ear. Then I wanted to be able to play it with my eyes closed, I just kept playing it over and over. At the end, I think I only had one bum note in it, haha!’

Typically, he writes his songs at the piano: ‘I’ve played the piano every day for 40 years,’ he said, ‘You can play riffs easier on the piano, it’s more melodic and hooky. Our ‘United States of Emotion’ song that I sent you (coming out in August 2022), when I started to write it, I didn’t know where I wanted it to go but I found this singer online in Romania who sings on it. You’re not allowed to know who he is, you just pay a fee and he’ll sing it for you. It’s something different for us, a bit hip hop, those sorts of beats.’

Mumford’s classical training is also evident in ‘Beautitudine, Opus 1, “Occisor”‘, which Regency released last month, which has something in the central piano motif that reminds me of Debussy, building gently as the strings enter the fray, fading out slightly at around the 4.20 mark as the flute sweeps in, before the strings build again. You think the piece is over at five minutes but then the central piano motif re-emerges softly at the end. It’s an absolutely stunning piece and I ask him what we can expect from the remaining three parts, which have yet to be released: ‘Part 2 starts with the end of Part 1, in the same key but with more classical guitar around two-and-a half minutes in,’ he said. ‘Part 3 has more strings, it gets lighter then darker.‘

‘Ennio Morricone, he was so amazing and emotional’

Strings clearly press his emotional buttons, something I can identify with: ‘It’s like the (love) theme in The Godfather, written for strings,’ he said. ‘Erik Satie (a French composer and pianist, 1886-1925), he used G and D a lot, it was so simple but effective. Or Ennio Morricone, he was so amazing and emotional. Do you know Cinema Paradiso?’ I say that it’s my favourite Italian film and favourite film score of all time and he gets very animated: ‘In the alternate version of the ending, he (Toto, the main character) gets back with her (Elena).’ I say that the scene at the end of the original version where Toto, as an older man, played by Jacques Perrin, returns to his small Sicilian home town of Giancaldo after 30 years to attend the funeral of his mentor/projectionist Alfredo, is one of the most moving film endings of all time. Toto is given a gift of a reel of film by Alfredo’s widow, which he later watches in Rome, which is essentially a montage of all the screen kisses that the village priest Father Adelfio censored and cut from the films over the years, a reel that moves Toto profoundly, and us, as the audience, as Morricone’s soundtrack soars against a backdrop of some of the most famous screen kisses of all time. ‘The ending gives me goosebumps, if it doesn’t break you into pieces, there’s something wrong with you, isn’t there?’ Mumford said.

I tell him that when Morricone died last year, the Mayor of Rome at the time, Virginia Raggi, said there would be a day of Morricone music on public transport in his home town to commemorate him but I never heard whether it actually took place and he looks delighted: ‘Wouldn’t that be brilliant?!,’ he enthused. ‘Can you imagine? You’d stay on the bus all day!’

Other tracks on Opulent Squalor take a gentle dig at people’s desire to be someone else, notably on ‘We All Fall Down’: ‘It’s about vanity and people wishing they were better looking than they are,’ he said. ‘It’s the idea of ‘falling down’ in yourself for wishing you were someone else. When you get older, you care less, you accept yourself more.’

One of his favourite tracks on the album is ‘Aching Bones’ about the exhaustion of daily life: ‘It’s one of my faves ‘cos of the violinist. I wrote the verse riff Am and Em at the piano, the chorus is C and F. I said to her “Play the riff in the middle eight and keep it in at the end” and she layered up and up, that’s all her in it, ad libbing.’

‘He’s so nice, he doesn’t give you a chance to get starstruck, he doesn’t intimidate you’

Endearingly, it turns out that even musicians can be shy about asking their friends how a certain part in a song was put together. Mumford has been friends with former The Jam frontman Paul Weller, who he describes as “the bollocks” since 2008 when The Rifles supported him on tour. ‘He’s so nice, he doesn’t give you a chance to get starstruck, he doesn’t intimidate you,’ he said. ‘There’s a feedback note and a slide in ‘When You’re Young’ (a Jam song from 1979), I keep meaning to ask him about it, I still haven’t asked him about it (laughs) but I want to know how they did it.’ I ask if he watched Paul Weller recorded live at the Barbican with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which aired in May this year, and how brilliant his pared back acoustic version of ‘English Rose’ was that night. ‘YES, that’s what I was going to say!,’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s that good and has been consistently good for so long. I live near him in Surrey, ‘Morning Girl’ and ‘Aching Bones’ were recorded in his studio. I was having a beer with Suggs recently, he’s written a song with Paul Weller, it’s blindin’! I asked if they needed keys on it but Paul plays keys on it. I can’t really ask Paul Weller to let me do it instead, can I?! Haha!’

If he could tour with anyone, dead or alive, he picks his friends Oasis, and Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder: ‘I love Motown, it’s had a big impact on me. To tour with legends like Stevie Wonder would be a dream come true.’