David Ford is hitting the road again and he is taking himself and his characters for another walk along the line between, elation and despair, pain and gain.

“When I started making records,” David Ford grins, “I said I wanted to them to be emotionally fraught processes, like I’d survived a war. Now I can safely say, I want to make a really easy one!” And he grins again. Or was that a grimace?

“My first album was basically bedroom demos with ideas way above their station,” he says. “This one sounds more like a record.”

“I don’t like long records,” says David. “It’s the same with live shows; I don’t like anyone playing for over an hour. I always want my records to be looked at as a complete body of work, with a beginning and an end and movement between, like you’ve experienced a journey.”

There is one last, but very salient, point. If the listener experiences a journey, as does David, sometimes those trips are the same, and sometimes they’re quite different. He’s a storyteller too, which is a side to his work that’s been much less publicised. “A lot of the time, I get accused of writing very personal songs and laying my heart bare, when in actual fact, it’s not always me. I’d hate to think I was as whiny as the character of these songs! If I only wrote about me, I’d probably end up with a massive spew of clichés, which would be massively uninteresting, so sometimes you have to empathize, to put yourself in another’s position.”

DAVID FORD
SUNDAY 3rd FEBRUARY 2008
AUNTIE ANNIES PORTERHOUSE
Tickets £7
Doors 9pm
Tickets on sale now from Katy Daly’s, Virgin & all usual Ticketmaster outlets. Credit card bookings & info: 0870 243 4455 or book online at geturticket.com
myspace.com/davidford