Terribly Talented Mr DavidViner Don't Care, Folks.

Tue 8th Mar, 2005 in Features

“I get given them,” mumbles Mr David Viner as he hovers in his folks’ London home. “Jason [Stollsteimer, The Von Bondies] gave me one, Soledad Brothers – well, when they come over to my place they leave theirs there and I keep them so I’ve got this little collection.”

He is referring to the neat, ‘60s style pressed suits he is oft seen in on stage, complete with pointy leather boots. Viner, with a Gallagher brother lilt in his voice, coughs, clears his throat. “And then people see [the suit collection] and they feel sorry for me because they think I can’t afford any of my own.”

You’re unlikely to feel any sympathy for Viner when you consider the fact that his rock star suit donators also gave him a leg up in the music industry. Working as a roadie for The Von Bondies, Viner mingled with the likes of The Dirtbombs, Soledad Brothers, The Datsuns and “Those White Stripes.” It was the Bondies’ Stollsteimer who convinced the singer songwriter to play his own shows, and took him on tour with the band.

But it wasn’t all roses and daffodils. “Jason liked what I did, but he also wanted to make money,” he says of Stollsteimer’s decision to put Viner’s music out. Does he resent the fact? He pauses. “I used to, but I don’t anymore, because that’s the way it goes, that’s the industry, you’ve got to make money.”

Solemn realism from a man who got his start doing the rounds at open mic nights around his native North London. Viner would play his brand of folk blues – “Like, there’d be three old people sitting there” – and be quite content to leave it at that. But then fate and Stollsteimer came a-knockin’ and it was time to put out an album. The result was his self-titled debut: a rough, loose collection of blues done the way people did it way before Elvis got his hands onto it.

Viner says it was an odd transition to make. “I was just playing live and suddenly we needed 12 songs for an album. So we went in, wrote these songs, and then immediately pressed them. Like, we’d write them in the morning and then record them in the afternoon.”

Having inadvertently stumbled into the studio, Viner decided he liked it and continued writing and recording with vigour. “It’s weird, I wasn’t expecting to do an album, but then once the first one was done I just wanted to do more and more,” he says. “It’s like being a virgin and you have sex for the first time, and afterwards you want to fuck constantly.”

Viner recorded a follow-up seven months later, This Boy Don’t Care. A decidedly tighter affair, he spent some time writing the songs before hitting the studio. “The first one was just a bit of a laugh, we just went in and did it, but then with this one it was for a major label, there were more people writing on it,” he says.

With the release of albums and tours with said rock friends, Viner found he had a profile and a whole new audience. “Suddenly I was playing to these rock ‘n’ roll indie kids, it was different; I suddenly had a name.” Pissed-up troubled teens watching a lone bluesman and his guitar is an interesting proposition, to say the least. Viner thinks so too, noting the audience response to his shows. 

“80% of them didn’t know what they were listening to, they probably just thought, ‘Hey, he has pointy shoes’ or ‘He’s drunk’ or something,” he sighs. “In England people go to see bands because the singer’s good looking or they’re flavour of the month.”

Viner perks up. “But I’ve noticed older people and musos coming to my shows. They know who I’m trying to sound like, to copy.” He laughs. “The old people come to suss me out, actually, like, ‘I’ve heard this boy is a good guitar player, well I’ll decide if he’s a good guitar player’.”

Older blues appreciators may doubt the authenticity of Viner’s technique, but he certainly doesn’t. “I never use pedals, I never use new equipment. I can’t get more authentic than that, unless I was black and 60 years old.” However, he appreciates the scrutiny. “The older people, they’ll come up afterwards and say, hey that sounds like Sliding Delta by John Hurt, they know what you’re trying to do,” Viner says.

Listening to the precocious 24 yr old on record, you’re surprised he didn’t start playing until he was 17, with questionable motive. “My sister played guitar – she’s two years older than me – and I could hear her playing in the next room and she was awful,” Viner reminisces. “I’d never played but I knew I could play better than her. So it was just that sibling rivalry; pure jealously.”

Initially modelling his playing on blues legends John Hurt and Gary Davis, Viner later found his own style. “I call it ‘finger-picking dancing train track folk blues’, because when it’s just me by myself it sounds like the rhythm of train tracks,” he explains.

With six tracks already on tape for his third album, Viner says this one will be quite different. “It’s a lot more groovy rock – I don’t want to say rockabilly, but more rocking, certainly more so than the last two.” But by his own admission, some things remain the same. “I’m still singing about the same silly things, I’m still pissed off.”

Pissed off is one way to put how Viner feels when he imparts this piece of advice. “Never deal with anyone from Hollywood. They’re all horrible, fake, disgusting pieces of scum,” he spits. Ah, thinking of anyone in particular there, Mr Viner?

“Yep, the guy who put out my first album,” he shoots back immediately with a definite nod. “I just paid him off today, this very day; he sued me and I had to pay him off. I better not mention his name because he might sue me again.”

So no, it still ain’t all roses and daffodils for Mr David Viner. But as long as he has his suits, borrowed or otherwise, and his guitar, he should be just fine.