Twenty years after their chart-topping hit, JCB Song, we caught up with Nizlopi’s Luke Concannon on life, love and parenthood. Oh, and the band’s superfan, Ed Sheeran
Nizlopi’s Luke Concannon and John Parker have been playing together since they were 13, and when JCB Song – a song about five-year-old Luke and his dad – climbed the charts two decades ago, it was a remarkable moment. A completely independent band run from a room in Luke’s parents’ house in the Midlands, the folk band were always about integrity and community-based values rather than chasing the dollar. Luke now lives in the US with his wife Steph and their son, who has focused Luke’s mind in terms of making his music matter.
Twenty years after JCB Song, the world is a different place with much to feel concerned and angry about. Luke strikes us as someone who feels deeply and being a father has changed the way he approaches life and music to an extent. On fatherhood he says: “It’s just really beautiful. I’ve less time do things, so you just have to make these things count. It condenses life into what’s important. It also makes me show up more in music.”
PASSIONATE AND PUNCHY
Luke feels the ‘apocalyptic nature of these times’ and the ‘lunacy in the world’ deeply and finds speaking up through his music, crucial. He says: “There’s so much dark stuff happening in the world, so much injustice, so there’s lots of challenging stuff on Midnight Bloom.”
Midnight Bloom is Luke’s latest solo album and while there are joyful elements, it’s passionate and punchy – a response partly to the dark political times we find ourselves in, but also a prolonged period of illness and a diagnosis of IBS that left him fatigued and burnt out. He says he was at 50 per cent health for some time and lost his creative spark.
Moving to the US and building a life with Steph has been wonderful, but also hard work. The pair have literally built a home on a plot of land in Vermont which at times meant sleeping in a one-man tent while they completed a more permanent and comfortable structure. Luke says he’s become very handy with a chainsaw.
SUPERFAN ED
When we chatted to Luke he was travelling with his brood on the Holyhead ferry to Dublin for the last show of Ed Sheeran’s tour, on which Nizlopi opened for the star. This isn’t as random as it sounds. They go way back to when teenage Ed was front row at every Nizlopi gig and even interned for the band.
After a Shepherd’s Bush gig in 2006, a young Ed Sheeran contacted the band on Myspace to ask if they had any work experience opportunities. Luke asked him to send a video which blew the band away. Ed went on to open for Nizlopi and they’ve kept in touch ever since. Ed has regularly cited Nizlopi as a massive inspiration and chose one of their tracks, Flooded Quarry, as the one he’d save during his Dessert Island Discs interview. Ed said: “Basically everything from my live set – the way I control my voice, the way I control the audience, the way I play the guitar even and use beatbox and stuff – this comes from this band.”
When we talked, Luke was looking forward to getting home to Vermont where life now seems pretty idyllic. He’s thrown himself into the music scene and runs a Second Sunday Session at the Guildford Country Store for local musicians and storytellers. He’ll be booking gigs for next year, getting some music in the diary and ideally enjoying some peace and clarity.