David Gedge: ‘I’d never thought about the possibility of a Wedding Present musical’

Such qualities have always made his work for the bands The Wedding Present and Cinerama stand out from their indie guitar peers and earned them a fervent following.

Yet, the 60-year-old Leeds-born singer and guitarist admits to being “taken aback” when theatre director and long-time fan Matt Aston approached him with the idea of a musical based upon his songs. “My first thought was surprise,” he says. “I’d never thought about the possibility of a Wedding Present musical.”

But then, having considered it for a while, he came round. “We’ve never been one of those bands who write songs, make an album, do a tour ad infinitum, and we’ve always done strange projects.” He recalls The Ukrainians, a mini-album side-step of traditional Ukrainian folk songs that came out in 1989, as well as the 12 singles they released in one year in 1992. “Throughout the years we’ve gone off at a tangent, and so I felt this could be one of those kind of projects.

“I’m not familiar with musicals but I’m interested in seeing how it comes together. I’m looking forward to being involved with it.”

With Gedge on board as creative consultant, Aston, who has worked with the likes of James Bolam, Alistair McGowan and Vicky McClure and founded the Engine House theatre company, and Tony Ereira, director of the record labels Come Play With Me, Hatch and Clue Records, have cracked on with raising money for the musical, which is called Reception. After a successful crowdfunding appeal, they have enough to enable Aston to write a first draft of the script, develop artwork and branding and start research and development with a group of actors.

Aston says he first began pondering a musical after watching Gedge perform some of his songs with the BBC Big Band at Fuse festival in Leeds in 2009. “I parked it in the back of my mind for some time, then some years later I was at a Cinerama concert in London with a writer friend of mine, it was around the time David had re-recorded Valentina, the Wedding Present album as a Cinerama album with all new arrangements. At this concert at the O2 Academy in Islington there was a 16-piece orchestra with him onstage and it was just wonderful, it was a really lovely evening and I thought, ‘These can all work as musical theatre songs’.”

Eighteen months ago he bumped into Ereira at their children’s school in York and suggested they discuss his musical proposition over coffee, after which Ereira, who had released some of Gedge’s music on his Hatch label, agreed to approach the musician with a synopsis about a group of friends from Leeds University who keep in touch over two decades of trials, tribulations and receptions.

“David read the synopsis, liked the idea and it went from there,” says Aston. “We had a meeting in York pre-Covid and have had a couple of Zoom meetings since and that’s how it all came together.”

Aston says the conversational tone of Gedge’s lyrics lend themselves well to musical storytelling. “You can start making them duets and stuff like that, and three or four big scenes write themselves around these conversations. David was really up for it, he said he’d be happy to write a song or two as well if required. He’s been really supportive and enthusiastic. The second meeting we had by Zoom a couple of months ago he was even more excited.

“The Wedding Present have always done things slightly differently...I think this is a way of doing something slightly different with his songs.”

At this early stage in the process, Aston says choosing which songs he wants to include “changes on a daily basis”. The present synopsis has 32 songs but, he says: “I think we’ll cut that down to about 24. It does span the whole spectrum of 30 years of songs. At the moment the way the story is working there are certain points where things happen dramatically, for example we’ve got a scene at the graduation and they move out of their digs and Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft just works perfectly.

“There’s a point at the end of Act I where there’s a jealous ex looking on at two lovers dancing to Perfect Blue and that works really well. The folk singer Amelia Coburn did a cover version of My Favourite Dress on a ukulele and that works really beautifully in a funeral scene.”

Aston envisages Reception being an “actor-musicians show” along similar production lines to Aladdin – The Rock ’n’ Roll Panto that he directed at Leeds City Varieties in 2017. “That used performers who could come in and out of the band. You had ten or 12 of them who are all brilliant players as well as actors and singers so you’d got that flexibility. We’re going to bring in a producer to delve into other pots of money and investors for the next stage of the project and we’ll also have a couple of days with some actors, Covid permitting, to read through it and also get all the branding ready.”

All being well, Aston hopes to premiere the musical in Leeds in spring 2022 followed by a national tour. “When that’s going to be exactly depends on the current situation but what this current pot of money has shown is there’s a desire for it among the core Wedding Present fans so we can now go to partners and say, ‘we can raise this off our own backs with four weeks of crowdfunding’. That’s a good thing to have in the back of your pocket. It makes it a little more real now.”

Gedge, who studied at the University of Leeds, is particularly keen to see the show open in his home city. “It’s logical,” he says. “It’s where The Wedding Present was born, it’s where I was born, it makes sense to do it there for symbolic reasons more than anything.

“It’s like when we did George Best,” he adds. “We played it live for the final time in 2017 and we chose Leeds for that as well. It feels like the obvious place to do these kind of things, really.”

For more details on Reception: The Wedding Present Musical visit www.crowdfunder.co.uk/reception-the-musical

BOND ALBUM AND MEMOIR

On December 4 The Wedding Present will release a full-length album of James Bond themes covered by present and former members of the band, with all profits going to the suicide prevention charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably).

“I’ve always been a massive fan of film music and the James Bond themes, especially the John Barry classic era,” says David Gedge. “I had this idea that rather than The Wedding Present or Cinerama doing it we should throw it open to people we know. I was overwhelmed by the reaction, it became a double LP very quickly.”

Next month also sees the publication of the first instalment of Gedge’s memoir in comic book form, Go Out and Get ’Em Boy: Tales From The Wedding Present Vol 1. “It started the best part of ten years ago,” he says. “We started putting out little comic books, we’ve done 19 of them so far which we’ve been selling online and at gigs. It’s just been random stories from my past, they’re not in chronological order.

“We decided to do a compilation that was chronological. This is from my early life up to the formation of The Wedding Present and their early years. It’s funny, I think I’ve spent more time on this book than I have done on a lot of records. It’s a different set of skills when you’re telling these kind of stories and working in a format. It’s been backwards and forwards editing things. It’s been an ongoing project but we’ve finally got to the point where we’re going to release this first volume.”

The book will be published on Friday November 6 and on Saturday November 7 at 4pm Gedge will be appearing at the online version of Louder Than Words music writing festival. For details visit louderthanwordsfest.com