Everything But The Late Nights

There are some things about being an acclaimed UK DJ that Ben Watt isn't going to miss. "I've actually always been a bit of a morning person. I've tended to buck the trend of rock'n'roll," Watt says. "And it did change my time patterns for a while. I remember coming home from one night out just as the girls were going off to school. And they couldn't understand what the hell was going on – Dad coming up the garden path with a bag of records."

When he started DJing around London at age 32, Watt already had over ten years experience under his belt first as a quiet indie-pop singer/songwriter on solo debut North Marine Drive and then with his partner Tracey Thorn as the electronic-pop duo Everything But The Girl. Since putting Everything But The Girl on hiatus at the start of the new millennium, Watt had been concentrating on his dance label Buzzin' Fly and his DJ career. But recently Watt has been looking around for the next challenge.

"I feel like I need a break from all of that. I felt like I was soft-pedalling a bit, lacking the firepower I once had. I didn't want to fake it. Also I instinctively had something bubbling up inside of me that wanted to get back to words and songs. It was just timing. I may well come roaring back as some awful veteran DJ at some point," Watt says with a wry laugh.

But for the moment, the 51-year-old has left the world of late nights and dark clubs behind. He's just released his first solo album in 31 years, the charmingly low-key Hendra, and released his second book, Romany And Tom, about his enigmatic parents; his mother was an actress and entertainment journalist and his father was a jazz musician.

Watt knows Hendra is worlds away from the underground house that he has championed as a DJ and a label boss but he has faith that this return to a more traditional form of songwriting will give some of his younger fans a reason to add a whole world of music to their playlists.

"If you're just a dyed in the wool house head and that's all you've ever known then perhaps it will be a struggle," Watt admits.

"But I'm somebody who loves Bert Jansch and Frankie Knuckles. Ewan Pearson is somebody who likes Bert Jansch and Frankie Knuckles. There must be others."

"I did a gig in Leeds last year and most of the crowd was made up of old fans who were picking up on the fact that I was going back to songwriting again. But after the gig a couple of young, early 30s, bearded types came up to me and said, 'We know you from the 6 Mix [BBC radio show] and we've seen you [DJ] at Plastic People and we were just intrigued because we didn't know anything about this kind of stuff and it's just amazing.' That's what you hope for."