Ken Bonsall is not your typical interviewee, but then Ferocious Dog are not your typical band. Where, with some artists, you ask a question and then have to probe for additional detail; one question posed to Ken prompts a wide-ranging response that shoots across so much ground, it’s hard to keep up. Deeply passionate about both his band and his lyrics, Ken reins himself in periodically, and rather apologetically tells me I need to stop him if I have specific questions. But, the truth is, he’s so engaging a speaker, that I’m happy just to listen and tick off the questions he answers as he goes. So, if this looks like a somewhat one-sided interview, it’s because I simply didn’t want to interrupt Ken’s flow of consciousness.
The purpose of the interview, of course, is that the band’s wonderful Kleptocracy (reviewed here) is about to hit the racks. A twelve-track (sixteen if you buy the deluxe version) masterclass in folk-punk, it is one of those rare albums that is gloriously life-affirming musically, as it is challenging thematically – a juxtaposition that the band manage with deft skill. And, for sure, you can simply enjoy Ferocious Dog at the surface level, and dance the night into a sweaty oblivion. However, hearing Ken talk about his influences really adds depth to the songs and, for those who enjoy digging into the subjects will find than reading this while listening to the album more than repays the effort, as Ken’s unswerving dedication brings the topics thrillingly to life.
To kick off, I’d like to ask about the nature of how you approach ideas in the band – what comes first, is it an idea, a lyric, the music? What drives the initial process?
I always say that I’m not your typical songwriter. The system I use is that… well, I know what I want to write about, but I never start writing until… say, if we bring out an album every two years, we never have any songs at all in between. I won’t sit down and think “oh, that’ll be a great song for the next album, I’ll write that, and that…” and then, three months later, “oh, that’s a good idea” and write another song and start playing it.
I used just to write with Daniel, the fiddler who’s left the band now. When it was time to do an album, I’d probably do two thirds of it, and he’d do some as well and then we’d write some together – we’d feed off each other. Since he left, this is the first album where I’ve had to write every song but yeah, I know what I want to write about. And what I’ll do is, if things come into my head, say: something on the news, or a topic – I’ll write it down. Or, if I see something online, I’ll take a screenshot.
I do a lot of historical stuff. I don’t make things up. On this album, we’ve got Merthyr Rising, which is a song I’ve always wanted to do – me being a socialist and it being the first time the red flag was raised on British soil. So, it’s all about the socialist uprising – the working classes rising up against the oppression of the ruling classes. I’ve always wanted to write that song, and now was the time.
You’ve got to be spot on, as well, with songs like this. People will fact-check the lyrics! You know, Hollywood, they change it, and the hero becomes the president of the United States of America or whatever. But we’ve got be spot on because the people who follow Ferocious Dog will go and check, and it’s like a history lesson from Ken and they’ll want to read about it.
And you know, Merthyr Rising uses a bit of Welsh, just in that one song. And I don’t speak any Welsh. But I’ve got Welsh friends, you see, in North Wales, and watching the documentaries of Dic Pendryn – he was the one who lost his life (because they always wanted someone to pay for it) – I had to get the pronunciation of his final words just right: “O Arglwydd, dyma gamwedd” (oh lord, here is iniquity). I had to get that right (fingers crossed) [laughs].
So, I got straight on to a friend who follows Ferocious Dog, and whom I know teaches Welsh, and I asked for help, because you’ve got to get it spot on, and not just near enough. And, of course, the factual bits as well.
So, I only write in that way. This album, I had a window of four weeks to write thirteen songs, so, I sat down, wrote thirteen songs – no more, no less. Thirteen songs. And then they wanted sixteen songs for the album – because they wanted to put out a deluxe edition with extra songs. Not my idea – Graphite Records [laughs]. I don’t get involved. I just write the songs and sing!
The way that we’ll do it normally is we’ll sit down as a band and jam for a week (or two weeks), just getting the ideas for music that we think sounds good. Like traditional Irish, or this, or that, or a reggae beat. Anything that we feel would be nice to put on an album. And, as well, throughout the year, I’ll be listening to traditional Irish music, and if I like the tune, I’ll put that forward, and we’ll have a go at it.
And then, when it comes to writing an album, I’ll get the musicians of the band – not me – like Sam and Jamie (the fiddler), to play those tunes twice as fast and make them Ferocious Dog! Then we’ll jam them and make them into a song with no lyrics. And that’s when I’ll say right – I want that subject – Mick Malloy, that’ll fit that tune. Kleptocracy, that’ll fit that one perfectly. And Running with the Hounds -which was a more acoustic, longer song that builds up and builds up – so, that’s a longer story which goes crazy fast at the end, it’s like going down into the arms of hell! When it starts off, it’s quite a nice song, but it gets faster and faster and faster, as the hell hounds are chasing. So, we take the music and stick the lyrics in once we’ve got near enough the bones of the song.
Some songs, like Blood Soaked Shores, I came up with (and there are a couple more where I just had the chord progression), but I don’t do the diddly-da bits – Blood Soaked Shores was brilliant, for instance. I had four chords that sounded quite punky, I put them together quite easily. I wanted to do a four-chord song [sings the refrain], I did that without the instrumental bit, and that’s where Sam and Jamie come in. And they kept trying stuff but, because it’s quite a fast song, the instrumental was stupid fast for an Irish jig. There was no rhythm in it – we’d gone too fast with the rhythm of the song, and it just wasn’t working. It was too fast and live it would have just sounded like a mess.
So, Sam just said “give me five minutes” – he took his accordion, he went outside, into the car park, came back and played the tune of Blood Soaked Shores [sings the melody line]. Straight away, I was like “that’s the Pogues!” Not the same tune as the Pogues, but the style. Straight Away. Sam didn’t grow up with Pogues. That’s my generation – my era [laughs]. He’s a young lad, he’s into death metal, not the Pogues! And he came back playing 100% Pogue’s style and I was like “wow, what a tune!” And we recorded it on a phone – these are all demos – and it just fit.
It’s a really uplifting tune and straight away it’s Saint Patrick’s Day- people jumping around drinking Guiness, with the silly Irish hats on, and silly Irish beards, getting pissed. And they’re English – doesn’t matter. Any excuse for a piss up on St Paddy’s Day, listening to Blood Soaked Shores, dancing about with big smiles on their faces, because the tune is so uplifting. The content of the song is such an anti-war song. About losing loved ones when the blood on the street is washed away with the rain. If you can get them two together, fair play. It’s a happy song, with people jumping around happy, happy, happy, but then, they ask what the song’s about and it’s like “oh wow! Ooh, I didn’t realise that; that’s a bit hard hitting!” Perfect. If you can get them to go together, then you know you’re on to a winner. You don’t have to play a sad song just for the sake of playing a sad song. People go to jump about, be happy and love the music, but the content is really hard hitting.
I think it ticks the boxes, and it shouldn’t work, but yeah – fair play to Sam for coming up with that tune. And that’s how it works, putting songs together when we rehearse, that’s when people like Sam make it their own, because they can hear things. I’ll sit down and work on the lyrics, because I’m passionate about what I want to say.
It’s the same with Sus Laws. I’d always wanted to write about that. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a reggae artist / poet called Linton Kwesi Johnson, but he wrote a tune back in the 80s called Sonny’s Letah. It’s about a guy from the Caribbean, he was looking after his little brother Jim. They’re stood at a bus stop, and a police riot van pulls up and they say they’re taken them in. In Brixton. And of course, he says he’s not done anything, he’s just waiting at the bus stop, and they start hitting little Jim with truncheons and the police are laughing, and the older cousin or brother or whatever ends up hitting one of the policemen, knocks him over, he hits his head on the floor and dies, so he gets life in prison.
And this letter is the heartbreak letter back to his mum back in Jamaica, and it’s all about the Sus laws. If the police hadn’t had the laws to do that, it wouldn’t have happened. They did it for fun, the police, they did it for fun. And, when we’re finished, just find Linton Kwesi Johnson, and that is why I wrote Sus Laws.
Listening to that, I wanted to put my take on Sus laws growing up in the late 70s – early 80s, and looking at the Brixton Riots. And we have them now, under a different name, but they had to scrap that version, because of the racial unrest spreading from the Irish, and mainly the black community – because there were riots with police who were racist. And we still see it now. So, when I write songs like Sus laws and Brixton Riots, it’s to try to tell people that this was my lifetime – it happened. You know, even in the 60s, you could see, say in a guesthouse, signs saying “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish”. I’ve always remembered that being young and seeing that.
You know, people coming over on the Windrush, when we needed them after the war, for our economy – we begged them to relocate to the “mother country”, but a lot of people forget that. So, I try to address these things, because although we’ve moved on, and you can’t put signs like that now and you can’t discriminate, but in my lifetime you could, and I’m only 56. And it just shows how far we’ve come but, if we don’t sing about it, it could go back that way as we’re seeing now, sending people to Rwanda. It’s just the same laws and picking on the same kind of people. People who’ve come to this country and are being discriminated against, because the wind is blowing so far right, what was unimaginable back in the 90s and 00s, now it’s going back that way again, and people don’t realise…
[Ken pauses a moment, then changes tack a little] I’ve been to Ireland lots of times, and I’ve had people buy us drinks and call us brothers, and the next person at the bar spits at your feet, because we’re English – because of what the English have done. And I’ll say, that weren’t me – I’m working class. They did it to us first before they did it to the Welsh, the Irish, the Scots. They cleared us off our lands first, it started with us!
Things like that help put it into perspective and it’s good to write an album about it. And the good thing about signing to Graphite Records is they’re not silencing us – my politics. And I’m not scared to write what I want, but you’ve got to be clever. You can’t just tell someone they’re wrong.
For example, the hardships we went through, I always tell people that Margaret Thatcher wasn’t wrong and, you think striking miners and thirty years down the mine and you’re saying that?! But it’s all in the context. It was wrong for us, but it was right for her and her ilk. For neoliberals, it was spot on. For the establishment who are now reaping the rewards of what Thatcher did, crushing the unions, it was the best thing since sliced bread.
But that’s the thing I always keep in mind – them, they’re not wrong. It’s wrong to me, but you can’t write a song and simply say “you’re wrong” because half the population don’t mind. You can’t discriminate and that’s the thing. What I’ve got to do when I write the song is to tell the facts and, if I want to say they’re bastards, I can say they’re bastards, because I see the consequences of their actions. But I can’t say they’re wrong because they’re not wrong. It was 100% right for their people. The ones who gain through their policies.
And not many people sing from that point of view, because there’s that much hatred, that it comes out in the music. You’ve got to be cleverer than that. Just because it’s our stand, it doesn’t mean it’s the person next door’s stand.
[He pauses suddenly] Any more questions? Have you listened to the album?
Yes, I have, and you’ve covered a huge amount of what I wanted to ask!
You have to stop me! Once I’m on it, I’m on it.
No, no – it’s great. But I want to come back to that point about being cleverer than simply spewing hatred. I think, in a political band, and the thing I really liked about Ferocious Dog, is that you’re not telling people what to think / what to do – you’re giving them information and allowing them to make informed choices. And that’s basically what I find so antagonistic about the whole social media set up, is that it’s very black and white. But having a discussion and informing people is so much more potent than telling someone something, because you alienate half your audience by doing that.
Yeah, yeah. Do you think for one minute that there are no Tories buying our albums? Our sound engineer was a Tory! He just didn’t tell me. I knew, but we never talked politics. But, you know, he drives round in a Range Rover! And I did know that he voted Tory. We never talked about it. I didn’t say “right, we need a new sound engineer, he votes conservative and I’m a socialist and this is a socialist band.”
I can’t tell anybody what to vote – and we don’t really talk about it. Like, the guys in the band– if they’re happy being in Ferocious Dog, that’s it, really. They don’t say “Ken, I think you’re wrong.” We don’t talk about it. But, if we did, I’d have a really, really good discussion why I have that point of view. And that’s the difference between debate and argument. Everyone should be able to debate, not argue. Nobody is wrong. And that’s where I’ve always tried to be clever – if I can just get the facts in and plant the seed and make people question everything, that’s the idea. Fake News and Propaganda – that’s a massive attack on the media. It really is. Because everybody’s… You know, the Daily Mirror – a Labour backed paper; and whatever Tory backed papers – you know, during the miner’s strike, they both attacked the miners. They both attacked Jeremy Corbyn, it wasn’t right for either of them to allow a socialist to win. They wanted Labour, but not that kind of Labour.
So, you need to get people to question. It’s brilliant when you’re bringing up children because they’re kind of the way the world should be. When you’ve got a child, you say, “don’t go near that fire, it’s hot” and they say “why?”
“Because it’s really hot, if you touch it, you’ll burn…”
“Why?”
They question everything!
“Come over here, hold my hand”.
“Why?”
“We’re near to the road.”
So, you’re teaching them, but they will question everything.
“Don’t vote Tory”.
“Why?” Laughs]
It’s stuff like that and, you know, they question everything and then, as you get older, you lose that. You grow up, and you stop questioning. You don’t ask “why?”
But you should always, always question – why are they telling us this on the news; why are they telling us this; why? What are they trying to tell us.
[At this point the sound breaks up completely and I lose Ken]
Yeah, what I tell people is that there are always different sides to a story, depending on who’s telling you the story and where they’re telling it, and who they want to condemn, and who they support.
So, I’d say, watch Sky News, watch Al Jazeera, read the Morning Star – which is a socialist paper. They’ll all have the same headlines, but from a different point of view and that’s what you should be doing, you should ask why and not jut take it for granted that, because it’s on the BBC or Sky, it’s the truth.
So, you get that point of view, where you always question it and try to consider who a given narrative benefits, and that’s what you get with newspapers and news – the idiot outlets. That’s why we did Fake News and Propaganda to tell people not to believe everything that they read.
It’s really interesting you saying all that, because I used to teach critical thinking, and one of the things I would do would be to take a key political story and find, say, five different sources and get the students to look at the differences in how things were presented, so they could understand the nature of the biases and the presentation. And history is a really good way of raising questions, because there are so many allegories, and there’s nothing new under the sun – you know, you look at witch hunts, for example, and that all came back during the McCarthy era and, again, now, with communism once again a dirty word. So, it all goes round in circles.
The dirty word that I grew up with was “Marxist.” And I didn’t know what a Marxist was, growing up. A Marxist, to me, was someone with their face covered, throwing petrol bombs. That’s a Marxist for me, until I read Karl Marx [laughs].
And, of course, you couldn’t get it more wrong, once you realise how learned he was, and how he’s the main speaker for all politics in the world. He didn’t just go on about communism, he talked about all politics. He’s the major teacher for the world on politics, Karl Marx, he was a very learned man. But it just shows you. I was growing up watching the news thinking that Marxist rebels threw Molotov Cocktails. That’s how I grew up and it just shows you what they want you to think.
[A thought occurs to Ken and he suddenly changes tack]
So, if one side calls them a terrorist, and the other side calls them a freedom fighter, what is the difference?
[There’s a brief pause, because I don’t realise, he’s posing this as a direct question]
You’re asking? Um, Socio-linguistics – you paint the story you want to paint. A freedom fighter has virtue on their side, everything they do is good. Terrorist uses fear as a weapon and what they do is de facto illegitimate.
Exactly. Hamas are terrorists, alright? And I tell people, I say: “why are they terrorists?” And they say “well, because of the war with Israel.”
But, it’s not a war. Since when have Hamas had a proper army? They’re freedom fighters. They’re a political wing, but people don’t understand the atrocities that have been inflicted on Palestine for well over 15 years. The wall and the atrocities at the hands of the Israelis settling and stealing the land and, you know, murdering Palestinians on a regular basis. But, not being in the front line news, you don’t get to hear about it. But if you want to read about it, the history’s there and it’s the same in Ireland – one man’s freedom fighter is
another man’s terrorist, depending on how they want to paint it.
I mean, you’ve only got to look at the history of Colonel Gaddafi – terrorist. But if you ever read the things he did for his country – it just shows how they want to paint it. I mean, usually, with history, the winners do get to write it. You blacken the other side’s name to justify what was done. And that still happens today – and you can see it in the correspondence with Israel. “Well, they have the right to defend themselves.” But it’s been going on for 15, 20, 30 years – it’s not just now. But to justify it – the British, the Americans – we have a lot to gain out of Israel, making the brand-new country of Israel and wiping the country off the face of the earth. I mean, I didn’t want to write a song about that, because it’s not finished yet. The world is still watching the outcome. That’ll probably be on the next album, we’ll look at that.
It’s challenging, isn’t it, to write effectively about ongoing issues in that way, because in some ways you need a resolution to get the point out of it. Ongoing issues tend to devolve into instinctive commentary, but it’s difficult to give it more of a thrust than, say, anger.
Yeah, because it’s not ended yet you could get it horribly wrong, so by writing a song in a void it’s de facto null and void. So, there are easier songs.
The easiest song on this album for me to write was A Place Called Home. It was a chance to write something that’s not politics, but you’re still telling people about something. It’s a love song about a couple who are homeless. In this day and age, it’s happening everywhere – people end up losing houses, they can’t afford to live, and they end up living on the street. So, it’s not about anyone specific, or any couple who live on the streets, there’re no names behind it, it’s not based on anybody, it’s just a chance to write a song where I could sing with Lizzey.
So, Sam and Nick are in a band called Red Rum – who play metal – and Lizzey’s in the band too; so that’s their side project. And she’s my vocal coach –she taught me better ways to sing and to get through tours. So, we were on a tour and Sam had done this song with Lizzey, and it was one of those Walt Disney kinds of songs, like Frozen or something, she’s that good at singing. It just sounded amazing, so I just said, “you know on the next album, what are the chances of Lizzey joining us on a song?”
And, straight away I was thinking of like Fairy Tale of New York, because there’s my rough voice – 30 years down the pit – I’m not a good singer! And her voice is just amazing. So, it crosses over – it shouldn’t work, but it does. And, the comparisons have already been made – Ferocious Dog’s concept of Fairy Tale of New York and I’m like “yeah, brilliant, thank you!”
So, Sam came up with these amazing chord progressions, and I had to take it and write a song to it, but what can you write when we’re a folk-political band playing 100mph folk-punk? But, you know, we always do food drops wherever we play – we ask for donations and I’m passionate about it and we make contact with people at shelters – so the concept was two lovers, and where’s the worst place you can live? You lose your home, you end up on the streets, but if you love someone, you get through. So, they stay together even after losing everything, they still have each other. So that’s why I wrote that. It’s a bit different, but I enjoyed writing that one. And Lizzey just nailed it in one take, that’s how good she is, whereas they had to work at mine. Every time I’m in a studio I say “right, this is where you earn your money, polish that, then!” [Laughs]
Ferocious Dog’s wonderful Kleptocracy is out Friday May 17, via Graphite Records. Make sure you grab a copy, and catch the band on tour via the dates below.
