‘Mellowed out’ Ruarri Joseph lets the songs write themselves, as Tim Hughes discovers

RUARRI Joseph is an old fashioned kind of musician.

Just ‘a guy with a guitar’, the laid-back singer-songwriter admits he has no need for bells and whistles – let alone banks of electronics.

Occupying that hallowed ground where folk, rock, blues and country collide, the adopted Cornishman has gone from beach guitarist to festival star. Yet his music retains the feel of a campfire sing-along.

“I use real instruments and I sing about things that are real,” he says. “I guess musically people say I’m in a contemporary folk world because of the acoustic guitar, but there’s blues and jazz in there too.

“I was a big grunge head in my youth and I played in punk and rock bands where the onus was on the attitude rather than the genre.

“I’ve mellowed out since becoming a dad. I draw a lot of influence from greats like Dylan, Neil Young and Tom Waits, but I’ve learnt my lesson in not trying to be like them as it’s a sure way to fail.

“I’m more interested in letting songs kind of write themselves, just feeling my way around the guitar or piano and singing about whatever’s yelling at me most from inside.”

This month sees the release of his fourth album, Brother. The heartfelt collection of songs was inspired by the death of a friend – a keen surfer.

“I started writing it after my friend Matt passed away but it’s not an album about death or him,” he says. “However, he was in my head the whole time I was writing it. So there are songs about moving on but also about celebrating stuff. I didn’t want it to be sad, but I was patient with it and let the songs gestate over the time where we were going through the healing process. From all of that, the stories evolved.”

While stirring, the album is far from depressing, being a celebration of life. “It’s about coming to terms and accepting it’s okay to love again,” he says. “I got to know his wife and kid after he died, and she was a huge inspiration.”

The video to the single, and stand-out track, No More Sins, features British surf champion Alan Stokes and is a call to live life to the max – and not to waste a day.

“More than any other album, it felt like a responsibility, because of the stuff I was writing about. I just wanted to get it right,” says the neatly-bearded 31-year-old, speaking from Cornwall, where he lives with his wife wife, four and 12-year-old children and 15 year-old stepson.

Brother comes six years after Joseph’s album debut for Atlantic Records, Tales of Grime and Grit, which was the culmination of a long journey, from his native Scotland, via Cambridge, Cornwall, Yorkshire, New Zealand, London, and, aged 17, back to Cornwall again.

For Ruarri, songwriting comes naturally. He started, precociously enough, at the age of 12.

“At some point, I found my mum’s old typewriter,” he says. “I enjoyed writing a song and typing it out. I used to love the feel of pen on paper. I see it now in my daughter. She writes endless lists of things.”

The album follows 2009’s Both Sides of the Coin and the following year’s Shoulder To The Wheel, which he says were made “completely single-handedly from start to finish”. On Saturday, Ruarri returns to Oxford for a gig at The Art Bar (formerly The Bullingdon). It follows a packed summer of gigs and festivals, the highlights of which, he says, were Glastonbury, when his acoustic set was broadcast live on BBC2, and The Levellers’ Beautiful Days festival in Devon.

"The summer was a bit of a blur with festivals,” he says. “I was super-stoked to get a live TV session as part of the Glastonbury coverage, but my favourite gig was at Beautiful Days. Maybe it was because it was the last festival of the season.”

He is continuing to appeal to new fans without the backing of a major label. He explains: “I got a call from a guy who had seen my performance on Glastonbury, who was setting up a new approach to concerts called Gigstarter. The artist reaches out through social media and tries to piece together gigs put together by the goodwill of those involved, and using a pledging system that means a minimum amount of tickets need to go in order for the gig to happen.

“It has already led to shows in Ireland.

“For me having never played in Ireland and, at the start, only having 10 Irish fans, I was amazed at how it worked out. I ended up going over for 12 days. I’m doing the same thing in Scotland in February.”

And, he says, he couldn’t be happier. “I am one man with a guitar – I do my own thing, play and be passionate.”

  • Ruarri Joseph plays The Art Bar (Bullingdon), Oxford, on Saturday. Doors 8pm. Tickets are £8 from wegottickets.com