David Ford, the polite rocker

(Credit: Emma Hardy)

Somewhere on YouTube at this very moment, a debate rages over David Ford and the video for song “Go to Hell.” In the video, a single camera follows Ford around a Brooklyn recording studio as he wanders from instrument to instrument, playing and banging on things for a minute here and a few seconds there, generating layer upon layer of live loops until by the end of the song, it sounds like he’s being accompanied by a small army of musicians.

The effect is so remarkable that a lot of YouTube users think Ford is faking it. But as anyone who has seen him live can attest, Ford’s ability to generate mini-symphonies with loop pedals is very real. “My loop pedal actually gets more chicks than I do,” he jokes. “People are far more interested in that than they are in me.”

That might be true if Ford, a 30-year-old Englishman who got his start in an alt-rock band called Easyworld, weren’t such a compelling songwriter. But critical response to his second solo album, “Songs for the Road,” suggests that there’s much more to David Ford than his one-man-band showmanship.

The day after finishing up a tour with Sara “Love Song” Bareilles, Ford politely pulled his rental car out of traffic so that he could safely chat with us about the making of that “Go to Hell” video, his decidedly non-rock-star cleanliness streak, and why you shouldn’t hold it against him if you happen to find any videos of him doing bad Eminem covers.

The single-take video for “Go to Hell” is pretty amazing. How many attempts did you and the filmmaker have to make before you got the whole thing right?
We did four whole takes, and the fourth one is the one that we ended up using. By the time we’d done it four times, I was pretty confident [that] I knew where I was going, and he was pretty confident that he could follow me.

Did you ever get to finish that cup of coffee that you pour at the beginning?
Well, in setting up the shots, I ended up having about 15 cups. We were trying out the sounds of various different things in the kitchen, so a lot of coffee was drunk during that. I was fairly wired by the end of it.

I’m impressed that you could keep your hands steady by the fourth take.
[Laughs] I don’t think it was particularly strong coffee. It may have even been decaf.

You mentioned that opening part of the video where you’re making loops using various kitchen appliances. Is there any of that kind of thing going on in the music on “Songs for the Road”?
No, not really. The instruments are mostly real instruments as far as I can remember. But since then, any recordings I’ve done, I’ve kind of been playing about with using non-instrumental instruments. You know, bits of wood together for percussion and big, ugly-sounding chunks of metal hitting together. There’s something quite atmospheric about the racket you can make with objects. So maybe there will be kitchen appliances on the next record.

Your first album is called “I Sincerely Apologise for All the Trouble I’ve Caused.” Are you in fact much of a troublemaker?
No, I’m actually far from being a troublemaker. So much so that last night, at the end of Sara’s tour—I was upstairs getting some things together in our dressing room, and then I heard this commotion and racket from downstairs. I came down and they’d all had a rock star moment: throwing things around, there was a table overturned, food and drink and broken glass all over the floor. And everyone was having a great time—so I tidied it all up. That’s the kind of thing that I do. If people make a mess, I come in and tidy up. That’s my rock ‘n’ roll shenanigans.

You used to be in a band called Easyworld. Why’d you break up?
It wasn’t an ideal situation for me. It was fairly creatively stifling. So I was really keen to go it alone after that…that kind of faux democracy thing just wasn’t really my cup of tea. You have to always make out like it’s equal, but it never actually is. Generally you get someone doing all the work, someone doing all the complaining and someone who’s trying to score with all the chicks. It’s never a real democracy.

And I guess the nice thing about working with loop pedals is that they don’t try to pick up chicks.
Well, my loop pedal actually gets more chicks than I do. Besides, I’m married.

Tell me about this event you do called Milk and Cookies.
It’s an annual charity benefit concert. I’ll play a whole load of cover versions…I have this book, “1,001 U.K. Number One Hit Singles,” and we choose songs at random from that, which I don’t know how to play. It’s a very informal, not-to-be-taken-seriously show—and we make a whole load of money and give it away. Last year I think we made $22,000 just by doing a couple of shows, which was really nice.

There are literally dozens of videos of you on YouTube doing various cover songs—I take it most of those are from your Milk and Cookies shows?
I think they’re pretty much all from it. If I’m ever doing anything that’s kind of s---ty and embarrassing, it’s from [Milk and Cookies]. It’s kind of shame, really, because to me, various moments are supposed to be left in the moment, but the wonder of YouTube means they’re kind of frozen forever for posterity.

And everybody can see your death-defying attempt to do a folk version of Eminem’s “Stan.”
Yeah, exactly. For me, I chalk those things up to: you had to be there at the time to appreciate it. It doesn’t really work with hindsight.