Mission Creep

Product Information

While the performances aren’t about to reinvent the wheel, there’s enough here to certify ‘Mission Creep’ as a more-than-admirable passion project. The lush blues sound of ‘Zaragoza’ for instance perfectly blends his whisky-parched vocal with the excellent band surrounding him, while something like ‘Down On The Bowery’ has a trenchant sense of atmosphere.

We’re notoriously bad at ­changing lanes in this country,” he says. “I’m fully aware of how dangerous it is for me, tiptoeing into another area of the arts. It’s a bit like standing up on top of the parapet going, ‘Right, take your shots, everyone; throw s--- at me!’ ” We are talking in a plush recording studio near King’s Cross ­station. Record company assistants flit discreetly about, and a photographer waits to shoot Lewis’s ­portrait. He looks lean and sculpted, in tight jeans, T-shirt, and the kind of ­patterned cardigan that only a man supremely confident in his own style could carry off. He has a piercing gaze and impeccable manners: softly spoken and drily amusing, he also has a fine line in self-­deprecation. I suspect that, beneath the surface, he is conflicted about giving this interview. He has poured a lot into making his album, and wants to do his duty by promoting it, but there are some things he would rather not talk about. I wrote the songs on the steel-string and a bit on the piano and took them into the guys. [The songs] are complete enough that they could be busked, but they’re better with a band. We recorded on tape, and I said to Giacomo who produced it and introduced me to a lot of music, ‘Let’s not do this big, over-produced digitised thing – let’s do something that feels like we’re all in a bar playing together’. Because that makes me feel more legit and authentic, because that’s the way I’ve always played – getting out a guitar on the street and playing in a market square by a fountain, outside the Pompidou. In that regard, it should have that feeling.” I tell him how much I like A Spy Among Friends. We talk about how the top British private schools proved such a fertile recruiting ground for not only spies but double agents – of the Cambridge spy ring, Philby went to Westminster, Anthony Blunt to Marlborough, Donald Maclean to Gresham’s and Guy Burgess to Eton. Was Lewis ever approached to be a spook? “No,” he says. Were any of his contemporaries at Eton spies? “Rory Stewart?” Has Stewart ever admitted to it? “No, I’m only guessing.” (Stewart has always denied being a spy, but says that if he had been, he would not be able to confirm it.) The drama programme at Eton was brilliant. So if you had the talent or inclination, you could do drama 24/7 if you wanted to Smith also introduced him to some musicians from his jazz outfit Kansas Smitty, and together they formed a group who have been performing gigs.Cary says that the more they explored the story of Philby and Elliott, the more personal it became to them. “It’s about our people, posh white men, and how they’ve endangered the country. And that’s what makes it timely. How their friendships, their clubbiness, have endangered the country. ” Like Philby, Cary went to Westminster. “The two characters cared more about themselves and their club and way of life than the country itself.” Actually, he says, the project had its genesis the best part of a decade ago when he sang a couple of songs on a Radio 2 show. One of his fellow guests was the singer and broadcaster Cerys Matthews, whose husband, producer Steve Abbott, was impressed with Lewis’s performance. Abbott suggested that he and Lewis record some songs, but then Lewis spent the next five years playing hedge-fund manager Bobby Axelrod in the American drama series Billions. A couple of years ago, with McCrory seriously ill, Lewis asked to be written out of the sixth series so he could be with his family. That was when he reconsidered Abbott’s proposal. His love of music started when he left school, after studying at Eton, and went busking through Europe, where he says he could earn up to “20 to 30 quid an hour”.

I always said I’m not doing ‘major’ label stuff, but Decca were very persuasive, very seductive and very supportive In reference to the video, he adds “"We hoped to convey the feeling of an abandoned house, of the ghost of the woman that once lived there and a group of friends gathering to celebrate her”The way he discusses death and grief is admirably honest. Has he written about this in any of the songs? “No. People will, you know … they’ll find in the songs what they want to find in them.” I tell him how much I like A Spy Among Friends. We talk about how the top British private schools proved such a fertile recruiting ground for not only spies but double agents – of the Cambridge spy ring, Philby went to Westminster, Anthony Blunt to Marlborough, Donald Maclean to Gresham’s and Guy Burgess to Eton. Was Lewis ever approached to be a spook? “No,” he says. Were any of his contemporaries at Eton spies? “Rory Stewart?” Has Stewart ever admitted to it? “No, I’m only guessing.” (Stewart has always denied being a spy, but says that if he had been, he would not be able to confirm it.) Lewis has been performing music his whole life, from choirs, to bands, to strumming for money on the streets. “If I can claim to be anything,” he says, “it’s a busker.” Damian and his brilliant band played gig number eight of their UK Tour in Gateshead at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music (formally Sage 2) on Saturday, October 7, 2023 in support of his debut album Mission Creep. Damian opened the show with his first single Down on the Bowery, followed by Zaragoza, Hole in My Roof, My Little One, Soho Tango and nine more songs, not including encore songs! He also played his new songs Pentonville Prison and Traffic Jam. For encore he played a cover of After Midnight and his other new song She Makin’ Me Change. The Independent and Independent TV today announce the ninth series of Music Box. Hosted by music editor Roisin O’Connor, Music Box brings the latest up and comers – along with some of music’s biggest names – into the Music Box studio to play exclusive stripped-down sets.

But he admits he is wary of overselling himself. “There’s nothing more annoying than an actor who thinks he’s Bruce Springsteen. By the way, I don’t think I’m Bruce Springsteen. This is a mini midlife crisis, but it’s not a full-blown midlife crisis.” If anybody is entitled to a bit of a midlife crisis, surely it’s Lewis. In addition to sharing “She Comes,” Lewis has also announced a further selection of UK dates in Gateshead, Birmingham, Nottingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Brighton, Manchester and Leeds. This is hardly a problem confined to the arts, he says. “It’s true of any self-employed business. How long can you keep it going before you need to make money? Obviously if there’s independent wealth attached to young artists or their families, then they can be supported through the bleak first five or six years, and then they could meet with great success in years seven and eight. A pattern might emerge where people who don’t have that independent money have given up by years seven and eight, so we’ll never know whether they would have been successful or not.” When Lewis was young, he did a lot of busking. I ask if he could have made a career of it. And now the man who was talking fluent football a moment ago is mumbling diffidently. “Erm … well … do you know what I’ve done recently?” I’ve heard he’s making an album of songs inspired by McCrory. “Well, yeah, it’s simplistic to put it like that, but I, erm, I am being a musician. Now. As well as being an actor,” he says, like a stage-shy X Factor contestant. “So I suppose, to answer your question, I could have been a musician. And I’ve ended up trying to be one. I’ve no idea whether I’ll be a good musician.” After Helen’s death, Damian wrote a touching tribute to her, where he recalled how she had told the couple’s 16-year-old daughter Manon, and 15-year-old Gulliver son that she had given him her blessing to find love again.

Here he takes us further inside his debut and how he came to join the likes of fellow Hollywood star Jeff Goldblum in landing a record deal with Decca… His songwriting is poetic, poignant and deeply personal. The album, recorded just down the road in Kentish Town, has a raw and refreshing honesty to it. I’m thinking about what he said about death being a fertile period. Can he expand on that? “Well, death is oddly ecstatic. Along with birth, it’s the ultimate act of life, and it brings this enormous energy to it. And you carry that energy around with you. However deep and profound your sadness, a new beginning always has an energy to it. And it is a new beginning when your wife dies and you’re left on your own. Life has changed. So there is an energy in that.”

His biggest headline show to date will be at Union Chapel in London on July 11, with more live dates expected to be announced soon, after he spoke about having conversations with Glastonbury festival. Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory were one of Britain’s most feted acting couples. He made his name playing Major Richard Winters in the US second world war TV series Band of Brothers, created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Perhaps he is best known as the former US marine and prisoner of war Nicholas Brody in the espionage thriller Homeland. Lewis seems to have two identities as an actor – in American dramas, he often plays macho military types. In British dramas, he tends to be cast in privileged establishment roles, of which the most obviously privileged is Henry VIII in the TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. Lewis is fabulous as the terrifying yet needy man-baby monarch. As for McCrory, she was simply one of the greatest actors of her generation on stage ( The Seagull, Medea, The Deep Blue Sea) and screen ( The Queen, Peaky Blinders, Harry Potter). They had been married nearly 14 years when she died in April 2021, aged 52. Co-Presidents of Decca Label Group, Tom Lewis and Laura Monks, say “We are so delighted that Damian chose Decca. His songwriting is poetic, poignant and deeply personal. The album, recorded just down the road in Kentish Town, has a raw and refreshing honesty to it. Damian really opens his heart and invites us in. It is a thing of great beauty.” Meeting and then teaming up with American jazz musician Giacomo Smith inspired Lewis to start playing his own songs in public. Smith introduced Damain to some of the musicians from the much-revered Kansas Smitty’s House Band, with whom he immediately jelled – in the studio and on stage. They formed a band fronted by Damian and started gigging.Co-presidents of Decca Label Group, Tom Lewis and Laura Monks, said: “We are so delighted that Damian chose Decca. Actually, he says, the project had its genesis the best part of a decade ago when he sang a couple of songs on a Radio 2 show. One of his fellow guests was the singer and broadcaster Cerys Matthews, whose husband, producer Steve Abbott, was impressed with Lewis’s performance. Abbott suggested that he and Lewis record some songs, but then Lewis spent the next five years playing hedge-fund manager Bobby Axelrod in the American drama series Billions. A couple of years ago, with McCrory seriously ill, Lewis asked to be written out of the sixth series so he could be with his family. That was when he reconsidered Abbott’s proposal. There’s nothing more annoying than an actor who thinks he’s Bruce Springsteen. By the way, I don’t. This is a mini midlife crisis, but not a full-blown one Reflecting on writing the album, Lewis said: “I suddenly had a lot to say. People will judge if it’s any good or not, but for me, it felt entirely natural.”