Benjamin Woods on his Cornwall-born music project The Golden Dregs

We recently chatted to Falmouth graduate Benjamin Woods about his new album On Grace & Dignity, the power of storytelling through music and being signed by eminent record label 4AD.   

Listening to the eloquent and entrancing baritone tales of The Golden Dregs – the music project of Benjamin Woods - it’s hard to believe that songwriting wasn’t always on the cards for him. After spending his childhood in Cornwall, Woods returned to Falmouth to study BA(Hons) Creative Music Technology after a stint up north - a move which ignited his songwriting spark. 

When did you first become interested in making music?  

While playing the drums in bands at secondary school, I remember trying out a friend’s 8-track recorder. I loved how you could use it to layer things up, which got me interested in going down the route of studio recording. I never set out to be a songwriter; I wanted to be a producer or studio engineer, which led me to the course at Falmouth. It wasn’t until my final year that I started writing music, which is perhaps a bit later than some people. But I’m now hellbent on being a songwriter.  

Having grown up in Cornwall, what made you decide to come back to complete your studies at Falmouth? 

I did a couple of years on a music production course in Manchester, but I was drawn back to Cornwall. A lot of people I’d been playing with before moving away had stayed in Falmouth, and whenever I came back during the holidays, I noticed a real scene developing. Music students were playing with local musicians and using a studio space called Troubadour; I ended up recording an album there with a local band during the summer. There were a lot of creative people around, and I felt excited by the prospect of making my mark. 

Coming onto the course during the third year had its challenges, because it’s lot more self-directed than the first two years. But I received such strong guidance from lecturers D Ferrett, Johny Lamb and Antti Saario, and we’ve maintained those relationships; I’ve taken every album I’ve made round to both D and Antti’s houses, and we’ve had a dinner and listened to it on their speakers. That’s been vital.  

It was Johny who encouraged me to write songs in the first place. For my Final Major Project I had planned to record with a band in Mali. I’d sorted out the funding and then conflict broke out in the Sahara, so of course I had to put the project on hold. That was when Johny suggested I should try writing my own songs; I wrote my first album and recorded it with some local musicians, so it’s all down to him! 

Your second album Hope is for the Hopeless is an introspective album, and your latest album On Grace & Dignity a meditation on place. Why do you think music is an effective vehicle for storytelling?  

Melody can make words a lot more digestible. Although it can be hard to fit a narrative into the length of a song – as opposed to a novel or longer piece of writing – the melody can help the listener to take it in. It also leaves more space for interpretation; you can infer one emotion through a line of a song, while the melody can suggest something else entirely using the timbre or the key. It provides more of a palette than straight-up writing.  

You can also hide behind the music as a songwriter. I do like poetry but when it’s purely words on a page, it can be very stark and exposed. This was hammered home to me recently while doing a solo record store tour to promote On Grace & Dignity. I hadn’t played solo for quite a few years – there's usually six or seven of us in the band – and I realised how much more I was connecting with the songs and feeling the stories in them. I couldn’t hide behind the spectacle of us all on stage having fun – it was an emotionally exhausting experience!