An Interview with Sano Hill

My songs begin as melodies that I usually come up with on guitar – though I’ve begun to write recently on piano also. I could carry those melodies with me for days, weeks, or sometimes months before words eventually emerge to complement the melody – sometimes this can happen quite quickly; other times, it can take some time. I usually play through the melody repeatedly, and usually, words eventually take shape. I don’t have themes as such I start with – the words usually follow the music for me and emerge organically from that process. I sometimes draw on poetry or literature for inspiration, as in ‘The Climb,’ which was influenced by the poetry of William Blake and includes some lines from a later unfinished work, The Everlasting Gospel. Other times I find inspiration from events in my life or in the lives of people close to me, or from world events – in reality, inspiration can come from anywhere and sometimes the strangest places – I have one (older) song that came from sitting up through the night one time watching “The Shopping Channel” – there is more than enough material around us to draw on for inspiration for songs.

I’m still working on getting the songs and arrangement from my forthcoming album down for live performance – generally I collaborate with musicians to realise a live sound that is in keeping with the feel and overall composition of the recorded works. I think all my songs lend themselves to live performance so I don’t have particular preferences as such – it’s a collaborative process with the musicians I work with to get the sound right. I also performed stripped back versions of singles and album tracks acoustically for smaller venues.