Music Features

It's very rare that one particular man can feel like he carries the culture and essence of one particular city on his shoulders. Richard Hawley's northern tones are as soft as the melodies he inks and steeped in years of Sheffield history.

Almost every sentence is punctuated with the Yorkshire penchant for the phrase "You know?" And yes Richard, we do know. Well, we know bits anyway.

We know that you were part of mid-90's Britpop outfit The Longpigs, we know that you then later joined mid-90's Britpop outfit Pulp and are a purveyor of affectionate rockabilly, folksy, country-rock 'n' roll as mid-noughties solo artist Richard Hawley.

Richard Hawley in the Cambrdige studio

But we also know that your love for the Steel City seems to know no bounds, and that the shop chain culture that has swept the nation leaves you feeling like your home has lost its beating heart.

"It disturbs me how much we have thrown away and all the High Streets are very homogonized," Hawley sighs.

"You know, the corporates and that and we're all aware of it, we just seem to be really passive about that, that we just knock down all these old buildings to erect something that looks like a dustbin with an old bike on top of it."

Could such a place be Coles Corner? The old Cole Brothers department store in the centre of Sheffield used to serve as a meeting place for young lovers, Hawley's parents included, and has now been replaced by architecture of a more modern persuasion.

It also serves as the title for Hawley's second from last album, with new record Lady's Bridge (no, it doesn't mean that you puerile lot!) continuing the South Yorkshire theme.

"The thing that's disappearing in Britain is that sense of otherness when you go different places. Here, we are definitely in Cambridge and this is a very different place."

So Cambridge passes the Hawley test for the time being. But the music industry doesn't; Hawley isn't exactly over the moon with his recent Brit Award nomination for best male solo artist.

"I'm slightly cynical about them you see, because I'm a bit of an older chap and I've been doing what I've been doing a long time."

Hawley recorded for the Audiofiles

"What I've done has been very much on the outskirts of things even though it has been recognised by various awards and it's often a way of the system absorbing what you do."

"You've got to a certain level where they want to buy you. But in another way it's great because it's a recognition thing where all the hard work you've done has got to a certain level."

"I went to the Brits once, a long time ago, and it's not the kind of thing I'd choose to do."

Hawley looks back on distant memories with a mixture of nostalgia and disdain. The Longpigs, it would seem, were a struggle for him and it wasn't until a certain Jarvis Cocker and co. brought Hawley into their fold that he finally felt content with his musical direction.

"I was fried by the end of the Longpigs. The last couple of years of that weren't really an enjoyable experience but with Pulp it really rejuvenated my enthusiasm for music. It reminded me that the things that go off in the industry have not necessarily got anything to do with music at all."

"That group [The Longpigs] was like a Sheffield supergroup with all the best musicians in the city at the time and the singer got us all together and there was nothing really binding us beyond that."

"With Pulp, we had all grown up together, so there was a lot binding us, you know? And those kind of things are really important and when you're in the middle of North Dakota on tour and you're with people you grew up with, and you formed a band with, you really realise how special that is."

Richard Hawley and Jez Sallis

With The Longpigs problems, you might be in need of proof that the 2006 Mercury Prize nominee is actually a very easy going human being. Just ask Guy Garvey from elbow, who was treated to a game of battleships by Hawley on a flight to the States.

It's a story from there, Lynchburg Tennessee, that reflects Hawley's relationship with alcohol. After admitting that years ago he may have spent all day in Cambridge's famous Eagle pub rather than heading for the Scott Polar Museum, he described being in a dry county.

"When they repealed prohibition each county had to have a thousand signatures to say they wanted alcohol back in the county, but at the time in Lynchburg there were only 320 people who lived there."

So no booze then?

"You have to drive over the county line to get a drink."

Ah, I suppose it goes to show that, despite it taking an idiot to try and do it, you'll never take the Sheffield out of the boy.