Name: Ed Wallis aka Green Rays
Nationality: British
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, producer
Recent release: Ed Wallis's homonymous debut album as Green Rays is out February 17th 2023.

If you enjoyed this interview with Green Rays and would like to find out more about his music, visit him on bandcamp, and twitter.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I think at its most basic, it’s a simple and straightforward love of music. It’s pretty deeply embedded at this point in my life - hearing great songs, being inspired by them, wanting to make up my own ones.

My two major interests are music and politics, but I have to keep them very separate. For me they don’t mix very well. So I take lots of inspiration from other music, from art, and in particular walking. When I lived in London I’d take long walks across the city, sometimes taking things in and sometimes tuning out.

I now live in the country with lots of big open spaces, so there is a different set of stimuli to respond to. It’s an interesting experience to have the process the same but the external inputs different.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

I never have a map. If I ever start off with somewhere specific I’m trying to get to, I never end up there. For me it’s about absorbing enough and playing enough, to every once in a while be in the right place to catch something.

Those songs always have their own momentum and you have to capture as much of them as you can when whatever it is that’s going on is going on.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

For me it’s about having things to hand and accessible. As I get older, the time available to create gets less, and so I haven’t got time to set a lot of things up or prepare things a certain way.

At the moment, for example, I’ve got two small kids and so I’ve been trying to incorporate opportunities for being creative with our everyday life. So I’ve been writing more songs just on an acoustic guitar, often with my foot keeping a baby bouncer going as I play.  

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

No. As I say I’m pretty ad hoc these days, grabbing moments of quiet when I get them, or incorporating playing music into what’s going on.

I think in the past I would be more focused on creating a certain mood or getting into the right head space, and in lots of ways I wish I had more time to be deliberate like that. But I kind of like the fact that it’s all embedded in the warp and weft of where I’m at in my life.

When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

The music always comes first for me. I’ve always got some kind of melodic structure, whether that’s chords I’ve come up with on the acoustic guitar and a melody, or some patterns I’ve looped together on my computer. The melody has probably suggested a few lyrics, or some shapes of words, that create the building blocks for the lyrics, and I work from there.

I find an empty page quite daunting, but there are normally a few things there in the song as it emerges, which gives me a clue on what direction to head in, and I can develop themes from there.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

I think I find the lyrics the hardest part, but also often the most satisfying - presumably because of that. I have to actively work on them, whereas sitting around coming up with music is more recreational.

It’s a good barometer for whether a song is any good, if I’m prepared to put the effort in to write lyrics.
 
Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

It’s normally long walks to finish something I’ve started. I find the movement helpful, and the sense of time and space. I can really get into the details and turn the sounds that have been suggested by the song into themes and lyrics.  

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

Yes I think I’m guided by the song rather than starting off with a very clear sense of where I want to go with it.

I do have things I want to communicate, but I don’t necessarily start off with a particular statement to make - it emerges through the process of making the song.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

I think that’s a key part of it. A lot of my songs I write initially on a guitar, but more and more I’ve been working on my computer at home which takes things in different directions. Here I might start with the bass or a drum pattern, or a repetitive loop, and then layer things up from there. I get lots of different intertwining patterns and sounds going, and pick out a melody from there.

That way of working is all about the alternative roads, and trying to follow them as much as possible.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

I’m not super precious about things I don’t think. And while I’m always coming up with the basic songs, I like collaborating.

I feel in a positive position now where I feel empowered to try ideas if I have them but also able to leave space for others to jump in and add things. So I’m generally trying to get things to a point where there’s a basic song there, which I then share with others in the band.

I’m lucky to have brilliant musicians and trusted collaborators I’ve known for a while. So that’s a really crucial part of the process where others get stuck in and add ideas I would never think of, which is really how things get finished.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

I’ve always been very involved. My bands have never really had an outside producer - more out of necessity than design really. But we’ve made limited budgets work by producing ourselves and working with an engineer to record the foundations, doing lots of the experimentation and embellishments at home, and then spending the bulk of the budget on someone to mix it.

My basic feeling has been that you can get the record sounding really good and do a fair amount of post-production in the mixing, and it’s a more realistic way of doing it cost wise, as it’s often remote.

In my previous band, My Sad Captains, we had great experiences working with Larry Crane. He would be mixing in his studio in Portland, on an old analogue desk, where he’d be mixing in real time and not able to save a mix and return to it. So he’d be mixing on Portland time, and we’d be staying up in London waiting for him to send mixes through in the middle of the night, approve things or ask for changes.

Because of the slightly cumbersome process it was quite a good discipline. It’s a slight faff to change things, so you have to think about “does the overall song sound good”, rather than getting into the weeds of thinking that in an ideal world the guitar would be louder or whatever. We’d make comments, but quite often we’d like the vibe of Larry’s first pass and know that changing one element would have knock on effects, so we’d go with it.  

Having said that, the one time we worked with a producer I’m really proud of what we came up with. We worked with Leo Abrahams to re-record a song called “Extra Curricular”, which was on our first album for Bella Union (Best of Times).



Leo helped us totally reimagine it. He was like “you’ve done it that way already, let’s try this way”. It was brilliant collaborating with someone who wasn’t just looking after the sound, but had loads of creative and musical ideas for us to respond to.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

It’s always been my experience that there has been a long wait between finishing something and it being released. So that means that by the time a record finally comes out I’m ready to get going on the next thing.

I find it hard to really start in earnest before the current record is actually out. But I’m always writing and collecting ideas in the interim, and once one record is out in the world, that provides me with the impetus to get properly into the next one.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I find music sits in a totally different sphere to anything else in my life.

I certainly feel that moment when you’re writing a song, and it’s kind of going along by itself and you’ve managed to catch it, and it feels like a good one, is unique experience-wise for me.