Henry Grace: “I feel so lucky to have the people that I do have around me”
The Londoner spoke to us about the release of his 2nd album ‘Things Are Moving All Around Me’, balancing a day job with a music career and playing with a full band.
Photo: Katie Riley for The Indie Scene
“I got locked in an elevator for an hour and a half earlier,” Henry laughs, explaining that most of his work boils down to logistics, and all the stress from gigs or recording is actually getting people to places to begin with. Music comes naturally, but getting stuck in an elevator when you’re picking up merch for one of the biggest shows of your life so far is always there to keep you humble, a week after the release of your second album that took four years in the making. “When you’ve got six people, it’s like herding cats.”
It’s been four years since Henry Grace’s debut album, Living In America, put him on tastemaker radars. Since then, he’s returned home to the UK after leaving by himself, turned 30, loved, lost, and he’s back with number two. Things Are Changing All Around Me is exactly that: changing, growing up, and leaving memories and people behind.
Photo: Katie Riley for The Indie Scene
“I really struggled with my mental health and had done for quite a long time, and ended up going out to the States to just try and get better. I spent some time in California, and it totally changed my life. I ended up going to college out there and starting to play music,” Henry says, as we’re sitting in the back corridors of Bush Hall, a mere hour or so away from what would be one of the most career-defining shows of his time in the industry so far, and something he tells me will be the “proudest moment” of his career.
Forget whatever has come before. This is huge; the venue is grandiose in size, and there’s really nowhere to hide in the carpeted hall. Comfort comes in the form of tall lamps on stage, as if they were taken straight from someone’s grandparents’ living room, and offer a more intimate atmosphere than bright stage lighting.
It’s his biggest headline show to date, in the city he was born, and with the support of an entire band. Not to mention, his family and friends would be in the audience — something I notice is a common theme with Henry, as his friends man his merch stand and everything appears to be a collaborative effort.
We’re greeted by his entire band and, like a bus going from station to station, Henry found himself welcoming new members over the last few years, meeting some by chance and creating a vast and varied backing for his Americana-fuelled sound. “I always wanted to play with a band,” he smiles, and it’s clear to see how much having a full band in tow has meant to him, no longer flying the flag solo. “Maybe like one person joined a year: Toby was first, then Brian on guitar, and then Blaine and I started writing together. Tom joined on bass, then Soren — who is playing with us tonight — helped engineer the record, so we wanted her to play with us tonight.”
A few years back, Henry met Mystery Jets’ frontman Blaine Harrison at a Glastonbury songwriting retreat organised by Squeeze’s Chris Difford and, when the two wrote together, they felt a real connection and stayed in touch, naturally becoming friends. Not only is he now playing in his band, but Blaine stepped in to co-produce the album, as Henry recalls, “I would take a lot of the songs for this album to him, and we would chip away at them together and then, when it came to going and recording it, it was just an obvious choice for him to co-produce it.”
“Going from being a solo artist to having a band has made it so much better — being able to collaborate and share it with people,” Henry says to nobody’s surprise — it must be nice to not be the only one standing on that stage. “I feel so lucky to have the people that I do have around me. They’re such brilliant musicians and artists in their own right. It’s definitely helped, it's pushed me to kind of grow as an artist and a musician.”
His second album pulls from inspiration all across the board, whereas with his debut release, Henry found himself inspired by “the American landscape,” often drawing the natural landscape overseas as a way to find inspiration. Back in the UK, Henry recounts his newfound inspirations as, “Turning thirty, ending a relationship, starting a relationship — all the big things in life. I think resettling in London, which is a city that… — I don’t think anyone has a simple relationship with where they’re from. There’s a lot of stuff here that’s quite… It’s just a lot of the past. I really feel like I’ve made roots here, and I’m happy here. Days Like This—that song is really telling that story of how I’m home and happy.”
It’s not rocket science to tell what the album is about, with tracks like Moving On, Passing Through and Leaving Song laying everything bare without a need to infer what it could be about. Lyrics like “We can get out of here tonight / If only for a little while” on Passing Through, coupled with some mesmerising guitar work and the repeated promise of “I ain’t sticking around”, show Henry’s willingness to keep going and the dissatisfaction with being stuck in one place.
Lead single, Say Something Mean, makes for a fitting taste of the album, leaving fans and first-time listeners hooked with its big sound and captivating lyrics, perhaps referencing an ex-partner, as Henry sings “Your words will leave scars / But like shooting stars, they’re few and far between.” The song was chosen as the lead for several reasons, as Henry explains, “It was the first song that got mixed. It was the song that we sent everyone to trial mix. A few different people did trial mixes of it, and I think it was partly that reason, and then also it just felt like a song that introduces the band really nicely, and it’s one of the hookier songs on the record.” And hooky, it is. If there’s one track that’ll get you hitting that repeat button, it’s Henry’s foray into the vast Americana jungle.
With several songs falling into a Nick Drake lane (softer, calmer, etc.), Henry found inspiration from an array of different artists, deciding to go a rockier route for songs like Rust, and ultimately citing his inspiration as “The War on Drugs, This Golden Messenger, Big Thief… all of those kinds of guys — Bonnie Light Horseman.” It’s plain to see the influences and inspirations in his second release, especially after listening to his first album, and the growth he’s had as an artist, not to mention the growth and development he’s had as a human being.
Every musician wants to make it their full-time job. Who wouldn’t want to be paid to play an instrument or sing a song? Henry is no different. Surviving in the industry alongside a full-time job, he balances his day job with his music by doing “pre-work songwrites”. During one of his 6am song-writing shifts in his garden, he wrote the first album track, Things, and he explains: “That pocket of the morning is when I have the headspace and the energy to write.”
Juggling two jobs isn’t easy, and Henry puts it simply: “You just have to find a way. I feel like if music is something you want to do, you’ve just got to accept you’re going to have to work harder than anyone around you, and any musician who I think is working harder than me, they’re usually doing better than me. I think this whole thing is just down to how hard you can grind.” It really is true — when you put in the hours, you more often than not get the results, and some of the most successful musicians are the busiest.
When doing research leading up to our chat, I noted mentions of Oxfordshire littered across the web, yet Henry assures me moving there was never something he wished for: “My family moved to Oxfordshire when I was about fifteen, which I was not happy about. I grew up in London, and this is where I wanted to be. Even though it wasn’t easy, this was home.” Is there a better place in the UK for musicians than London? Now he’s back in London and happy — that’s the most important thing.
Things Are Moving All Around Me is out now via At Last, and Henry has announced a new headline show at St. Pancras Old Church in Camden on April 10th. Tickets are available to buy here.
All photos by Katie Riley.
