Richard Hawley

Brighton Dome Concert Hall, Church Street, Sunday, October 25

“THIS stuff happens to us all doesn’t it?”

From his Sheffield home Richard Hawley is pretty philosophical about the series of unfortunate events he encountered between the release of 2012’s Standing At The Sky’s Edge and new album Hollow Meadows.

First of all there was breaking his leg early on in his tour slipping on a marble staircase, which left him playing sat down with a cast and relying on prescription drugs to get him through shows.

The following year he slipped a disc while working out on a sit-up machine and spent six months in bed barely able to move.

It was during this time that Hollow Meadows came together.

“Writing in your head is a good thing to do,” he says. “Ideas compete for each other when you can physically play guitar. It’s like Jurassic Park in my head – survival of the fittest. The best ideas win through.”

Compared to the louder and more orchestrated Standing At The Sky’s Edge, the new album is much more mellow and stripped back.

“If Sky’s Edge is like looking through a telescope, this album is looking through the same telescope from the other end,” he says.

Creating an album sampler video for YouTube Hawley drew on urban and rural images, reflecting the city he loves and the countryside images that run through songs like Heart Of Oak, Serenade Of Blue and The World Looks Down.

“Sheffield is the greenest city in the EU, by a long chalk,” he says. “We’ve got two and a half million trees, 250 parks and wetlands and a third of the city is in the Peak District.

“It’s hard to avoid nature. When I was flat on my back looking out of a window I would see a murder of crows flying over at dawn, and at the end of the day they would fly back. The space in between was ****ing boring – those were the highlights of my day.

“I had to come up with something else to amuse myself. To sit and think is quite hardcore actually – but it’s one of the greatest assets for a writer. When it [the six months] started it was horrific, because I was still running at the same tempo as the rest of the human race. Eventually over time I chilled and got into a slower pace. I put faith in the forces around me that I was going to be all right. As a creative person I’m automatically going to write about something – I had nothing else to do. It filled the void.”

He admits the new album was the first where he had written all the lyrics before he went into his garden shed studio – named Disgracelands – to record them.

“I owned the songs rather than what I used to do which was bull**** everyone and say I had loads of songs finished,” he says. “I could push myself and not let anything go too safe.”

As with his other solo albums the recording process was all about capturing the moment.

“You can hear dogs barking and kids playing in the background,” he says. “One of the tracks you can hear a magpie on the roof chattering away. There’s a sense of time and place.

“I’ve got a long history of making music, and I remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s being in the studio drove me mental. You got good at playing pool or table football not making music because of the separation between things.

“Music should be something that soundtracks your life and that you engage with on a deep level – even if it is just dancing around your handbag it’s still valid.”

Hollow Meadows takes its name from a small village on the Yorkshire/Derbyshire border. As he told The Guardian it was originally known as Auley Meadows – and the Hawley family had lived there from the 1300s.

“It was a village where people lived, not a country estate,” he laughs today. “We weren’t landed gentry by a long chalk!”

The soft sounds and story-telling nature of the album reflects his folk roots growing up – not that he ever likes to define or pigeonhole his music by genre.

“Does it move you or not – that’s the most important thing,” he says. “Music should make you want to f***, fight, get ****ed, dance, destroy, love, cry or any of the other emotions – and if it doesn’t elicit a response then it’s ****.”

For years he felt he was fighting a losing battle with his belief that the album was an holistic object, in a music world dominated by MP3s.

Now with the rise of vinyl he feels the tide may be turning.

“The MP3 is the most ludicrous thing,” he says. “You’re paying money for something which is a stream. You’ve got to be mental if you do that – paying your hard-earned money for nothing. If I’ve bought something I want to see it.

“Last Christmas one of my boys said he would really like a record player. That was a punch in the air moment for me.”

Doors 7pm, tickets £27. Call 01273 709709.