Kings Of The Road

When Mumford & Sons arrived on the scene in 2009, this well-dressed, better spoken collective of period-styled Londoners didn't seem to fit any existing box. They were too trendy to be folk, too refined to be deemed an indie group and far too progressive to be considered a Country and Western band. But while music press around the globe were left scratching their heads trying to coin a new niche genre, the general public swooped, not so much interested in which category the quartet's songs fell into but, more importantly, what their first single sounded like. Like Kings Of Leon's Sex On Fire before it and Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know following, Little Lion Man became more than just a song. Their banjo-led pop smash became a snapshot of 2009, one that will be entrenched in popular culture forever, like it or loathe it. Since that initial explosion of popularity, success has been unwavering for the band, and now after a three-year wait, Mumford & Sons are ready to deliver their fans a second helping by way of Babel.

Ted Dwane is making a cup of coffee in his kitchen at home, a scene that the 28-year-old multi-instrumentalist describes as, “all quite civilised”. He concurs that on the eve of Babel's release, the band were feeling a different kind of excitement in comparison to the weeks leading up to the release of their multi-million-selling debut, Sigh No More.

“It is and we definitely feel like we owe them one,” Dwane concedes, referring to their passionate fanbase, a collective that has helped position Mumford & Sons as this generation's most popular folk band. “We've battled with the idea of being a prolific band and releasing a lot of records, and also our love for the road, but the two don't really go hand in hand. This album came together by writing all the songs between tours. We've had a few weeks scattered about the last few years writing in various locations, but generally it's been soundchecks and dressing rooms, so it's a great feeling to have it done because it's been a busy three years since Sigh No More. And some of those big festival slots that we've been playing, they've got you up there for ninety minutes, so to have twice the material out there is just going to be great to broaden the window of which people look into Mumford & Sons – it's just a bigger picture for people to see what we can do.”

Against every trend in music and bucking every established idea of what should be topping the charts, these four unassuming Brits – Dwane and fellow buttoned-up bandmates Marcus Mumford, Country Winston Marshall and Ben Lovett – have attracted a fanbase without demographic boundaries or national borders.

“We're endlessly surprised,” Dwane admits. “We get absolutely everyone and it's such a great thing. I remember when we were first setting out in London and we were a bit trendy and you'd get all the kids in their crazy uniforms, and that was really exciting, I thought, 'Fuckin' hell, here we go!' But that's very fickle isn't it? That's a moment – but there's nothing more real than two or three generations of family coming together to a gig – that's the dream.”

Babel is the sound of the open road. There's the expected Mumford warmth across the record's 12 tracks, but it's driven by romance, drama and restlessness. Not that they'd plans for any such things.

“Not a lot of what we do is very intentional to be honest with you. And it's an amazing thing for any sort of artist to have the acknowledgment of peers and to receive any sort of success, it does give you confidence. But when it comes to our creative process I think it's the most un-cognitive thing in the world. We work within our parameters with the instruments that we play and our ability; we all have various roles that kick in when we are writing or recording together. It's just the band dynamic. It's four people that write music trying to help each other and look after each other to create the best songs we can.”

Wanting to really capture the immediate feelings that the band were harbouring and mould them into workable songs, they gave themselves a fresh challenge – the 'Ten-song game'. Played during a farm stint in Somerset, it was a creative process that highlighted Dwane as the murder balladeer of the group.

“It's true,” he laughs. “I shouldn't be confirming that but yeah, it's true. It's there hidden underneath the jovial exterior.” To play this game, the band had to open the doors to their workshop; however, it's far from the typical sense of the word. “We always refer to the Mumford & Sons workshop, which is a place full of half-finished songs and ideas that haven't been fully developed, and I think with the ten-song game you just pull all that stuff out and get it done – you clear the workshop. It's a really fun and healthy thing to do. When you focus on quality it completely shuts out your inner critic, like [you think] 'Okay, that's a really obvious rhyme, but I've got to finish this song because I've got to write ten tracks in six hours.' So you just get it all done, and when you turn off your brain a little bit and just write from a more intuitive place it just comes straight out.”

Introduced to Mumford & Sons by a group of writer pals in London, Dwane calls the ten-song game “the only formal exercise we've ever done,” and admits it worked well.

“The idea is that at the end of the day you play all the stuff to the other people playing the game. It's not a competition. You end up just hearing lots and lots of other people's work and I think in every creative venture, whether it's music or visual art or whatever, if there's a bit of a scene it spurs you on.”

The band had begun writing for the record in earnest before this, mind you. After a solid 18 months crisscrossing the globe, standing in each other's shadows, they separated in December 2010. A month later, they reconvened in the heart of Tennessee to begin work on what we now know as Babel.

“It was exciting,” Dwane begins. “The Nashville sessions were just writing – we borrowed someone's house and just lived there and wrote all day long, so quite a few of the songs got solidified and finished there. And it's always exciting, like, the writing process for us isn't at all set in stone – there's no method at all. Someone will bring an idea in and anyone's suggestion isn't theirs by the time we finish with it and by the time it becomes a Mumford & Sons song it's embellished with everyone's creativity. And that's a really important thing. It keeps all of us loving the songs forever. The Nashville week was certainly the first of the intentional time that we gave ourselves towards making the next record, but that was last January so a lot happened after that. We kept touring, kept writing and the album was just made between tours.”

This stop-start cycle, Dwane says, is typical for Mumford & Sons, and it perhaps points to a reason why their music, especially on Babel, sounds so well-aged and learnt, like it's being created by old heads with young hearts.

“The creative stuff always happens on the road with us when we're together. I mean, there's a lot of travelling and a lot of sitting around and that's where a lot of playing gets done. When we get into the studio we hope that the ideas are pretty well developed and we just work on getting a great sound.”

Such an initial burst of success can afford a band a certain creative freedom to extend themselves on their second record. It's a point of liberation for many artists, but a position that some inevitably abuse, deserting the sound that made them worthy in the first place. Babel avoids such a bump in the road. Mumford & Sons have paved the way for this album by doing what felt natural to them from the outset. Now, they've simply kept on paving. This time though, the results are bolder and more robust than ever before.

“You always want to better what you've done before – you never want to do something that's not as good,” Dwane emphasises. “On this record, I think we're expressing ourselves more effectively and in the studio we recorded a lot more live. Originally, we were mapping click tracks and building the songs out like that, and then we realised that it wasn't right so we just started smashing it out live and now it works a lot better. We just wanted it to be a snapshot of Mumford & Sons in 2012. A lot has happened in the last few years and that honest representation is Babel.”

GENTLEMEN, START YOUR ENGINES

Smack in the middle of Mumford & Sons' massive Australian tour is a date in Dungog. Where you ask? Don't worry – you're not the only one. It's a tiny town in the upper Hunter Valley of NSW – a small dot of dairy country with a little over 2,000 townsfolk, and one of seven lucky locales in various parts of the world being treated to Gentlemen Of The Road stopovers.

These dates, spliced in between the Mumford lads' regular touring schedule, are an inspired undertaking, creating a complete experience for punters while injecting a healthy bit of revenue into some small town economies. Not only do they allow the band to connect with fans who otherwise might never have got the chance to witness one of their shows, but it also lets the Brits introduce ears to some new music that they think deserves to be heard on a bigger platform.

“I spend a lot of time explaining it to people and very few of them seem to pick up on that being fundamental to the day,” Dwane admits in a rather chuffed manner. “For us, as Mumford & Sons, it's been such fun, and I think the reason that we've always loved touring so much is that we're very selective about who we tour with. We can't go out and really deliver a great show unless the support band is someone that we love and gets us really psyched up and ready to play a gig, so that's always been integral.

“As we've grown as a band and we play these bigger shows, it's been a hard thing to try and maintain [that intimacy] – a lot of the bigger venues can be quite cold and vibe-less. The GOTR stopovers are the perfect opportunity to play to 10-15,000 people but very much do it in our own way. We create a whole day – we find the location, make it look nice and the bands are all our favourite bands. We make sure the food is good and the beer is local. We play a lot of festivals now and we used to go to a lot when we were kids and we know what makes a good day, and we're in a lucky position to try and create that experience, one that we'd enjoy, and it's been a big hit so far.”