Name: Stephen McAll aka Constant Follower

Nationality: Scottish
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Current Release: Constant Follower's 2021 album Neither Is, Nor Ever Was is still available via Shimmy Disc.
Recommendations: Norman MacCaig – any collection of his poetry; Talk Talk: Spirit of Eden

[Read our Tim Friese-Greene of Talk Talk interview]

If you enjoyed this interview with Constant Follower and would like to stay up to date with his work, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.

For an interview with his recent tour support, read our Andy Aquarius interview.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I started playing music about 6 years ago. I’d been a musician in my teens but a head injury stopped my progress for many years. It was just 6 or so years ago that I was in the place to begin playing guitar again. My mother is a musician, so the house was always buzzing with music – The Beatles from her side, Floyd and Neil Young from my father.

But really my own first musical love was electronica. I read a review of To Rococo Rot’s ‘An Amateur View’ in my dad’s newspaper one Sunday and went off into Glasgow to buy it. The record shop I went to was above Hillhead underground in Glasgow – an early incarnation of Monorail.



Stephen from The Pastels sold me it and suggested several other bands I check out, which started a love that continues to this day.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

Music is all about feelings for me. So, when I’m creating, I’m only thinking about feelings, about conveying a feeling. The words are a mechanism for delivering feeling so I’m not overly concerned about making sense if it conveys what I’m trying to. If I’m thinking too much about words or performance or accuracy, then I’m losing what’s most important to me.

I know I’ve hit the mark if I’m listening to my song and I’m feeling it in my belly.  

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I found the music of James Taylor around the time I picked up guitar again. I just love how he plays. So I learned by playing his songs. I don’t know much of his music, but his playing style heavily informs what I do on an acoustic.



Then I guess you can hear my love of electronic forms in the production of my music.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I haven’t considered my sense of identity. I don’t identify with anything in particular that I can think of other than being a dad and a partner, and I try to be a good friend. Family, friends and nature is where it’s at, I think.

I’ve got no interest in anything that’s outside my sphere of influence – or, at least, I try to limit my exposure to anything that pulls me away from what I can change. This is all distraction from what’s actually important in life.

Some people might have enough bandwidth to be able to concentrate on all these things they have no influence over, for me that’s not the case – I have barely enough energy to look after my family and make my music.  

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Staying out of the way of the songs. Being honest and true to my own likes – if I’m satisfied, then it’s done.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

Anyone who picks up a guitar is continuing a tradition. Every single sound you hear is coming from a continuum that was started countless generations before. If there was no Gregorian chanting, there would be no dubstep.

If you’re being honest and true to the songs, you’re not thinking about replicating or copying. Music naturally evolves as we evolve as a society. The major changes in music in the last decades has been dependent on equipment developments. So there may be stuff that’s coming out that sounds very different, but it’s all following a lineage.

There are endless songs and, going against some of the narrative I hear, no song has been written twice. I’ve never played any of my own songs the same twice. Everything moves and changes. If I’m in the middle of a gig and someone shifts in their chair, the room changes, the way I feel changes, so the music changes.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

I’m an acoustic guitarist of sorts. I don’t know what I’m playing, none of the notes … which is problematic when I want to work with other people.

But, again, it’s all about the feeling for me. If I’m hitting the right feeling, it doesn’t matter what I’m playing, if I feel it then I trust that other people will.

I find that not knowing what I’m playing allows me to continue to experience wonder. When I’m getting my band, or other musicians, to play on the songs, I notice that they play much more interesting things when they don’t know what chords I’m playing. As soon as they work it out, the response becomes duller.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

My days are fairly chaotic depending on what my body’s doing – I have issues that continue from the head injury. If you remove interruptions from that then an average day looks like:

Wake as earl, coffee (x 3), write 3 pages in my notes, read some poetry of Norman MacCaig, read a few pages of my notes (I have limited long-term memory, so I write everything I want to remember down), play a little guitar, shower, meditate, eat, leave for the studio.

At the moment I’m working on the second Constant Follower album, so today (after I’ve done this interview) I’ll be straight into editing the guitars I recorded last night. I’ll work until late, or until my body takes over, then head home.

I try to make time every day to be grateful. And everything works around time with my family.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

I’m trying to write a couple more songs for the next album at the moment.

There’s no real process. I’ll play the guitar as much as possible, then when I find a few changes I like, I’ll begin singing non-words until a melody and real words begin to come. They come at once for me and then the initial melodic idea will develop into a full song as I run out of road.

Where does it come from? I used to find it hard to connect with artists who said it was god or something magical … but now I’m pretty sure it’s something magical.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

Writing for me is solitary. I’m not interested in writing with anyone else at the moment. But once the initial writing period is over, then it’s time to bring people together. Music is community. And I think the best music comes from working with other people.

I’m entering my favourite stage of creating an album at the moment, when I bring all my favourite musicians together to add their magic to the songs.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

It sounds selfish, but the truth is that I make the songs for myself. Or sometimes for my family. And on one occasion as a message for a friend. I release them to the world with a hope of making some money for all the time I spend doing this.

It’s an added honour to think that people might find some solace or healing from the songs – as I have from countless artists I love. And it’s lovely when folk get in touch to tell me this. But, it’s just not a concern of mine when I’m making the music. I hope I’m going to make something that lots of people will connect with, and therefore pay for, but it’s not a thought of mine when I’m writing.

The role of musicians should be to make their music humbly and honestly; the role of society should be to pay for the music that they listen to. After family and friends, music is the single most important thing in life. So ensuring that the people who sweat blood to make good music are fairly paid for their efforts (talking minimum wage) seems about the least we should be doing as a society for music.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

Music’s been with us all through all of the important, and unimportant, events in life. I can’t imagine my life without music.

The music I’m making and listening to is dependant on my mood. I’m not taking any advice or life lessons from the music I listen to, and I don’t feel that’s the remit for making music.

Big questions are answered through experience and connection, and music will always be the companion to these.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

New instrument development has shaped the direction of music since time immemorial. I don’t see how it works in the other direction other than in every field, science included, everyone’s working away to their favourite music.

I’m sure that music has accompanied the greatest minds at some point in their development. But this is so hard to consider, as there is no society without music that we could compare ourselves to.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Making a great cuppa or making some meaningful art is an impossible comparison. Is making coffee creative?

It’s like playing really well in an orchestra – it’s not creative in the way I understand the word. You’re not creating, you’re performing a difficult task extremely well after years of practice. Drawing in the steam on a bathroom mirror requires no practice but is creative, spending years creating an album is creative. It’s a single word that describes novelty across disciplines – making something new.

We can all do some things really well, but to create meaningful art takes years of growing, years of learning your tools, a lifetime of experience and lots of something else that we can’t put our finger on, something that the artist either has or doesn’t have. So, yes, I think making music is inherently different from all other things. My favourite painting might bring me a moment of feeling when I look at it, but not even a fraction of the emotion, solace, hope, happiness, feelings that a song I enjoy will ... or, now that I think about it, not even of a song I don’t particularly like.

I think we just have an enhanced emotional response to music that isn’t present in other art forms. It’s just an entirely unique and essential part of life. When I think back to when my first daughter was born, I don’t remember the moments based on the coffees that I drank, the books I read or the paintings I looked at. But I do remember the music I was listening to at the time, and when I hear those songs now … even talking about them stirs deep emotions.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

I wish I did. It’s magic. And I’m grateful to the Universe for it.