Foy Vance knew he wanted to move to Scotland even before he set eyes on the Highland town he now calls home.
Driving from London just over 10 years ago, the Northern Irish singer/songwriter was on a visit to support his then wife’s exhibition at a gallery in Aberfeldy.
Instead, Foy found himself smitten by the chance to make a major life change.
“As soon as I came over the hill from Crieff I announced I wanted to move here,” he remembers. “This was in October, so Aberfeldy was in its autumnal glory, like a sea of orange and gold, with smoke coming out of the chimneys.
“I was living in a house I couldn’t afford and this place looked like paradise, which it still does to me.”
We pause to sip our pints in the garden of a hotel just outside the Tayside settlement, admiring the wooded hillside across the valley that provides the backdrop to the struggles with addiction and newfound focus on family life that have inspired his fourth studio album.
As well as creating an idyllic home, Aberfeldy proved a handy location under lockdown to record Signs of Life.
Foy made much use of his home studio, occasionally moving into the atmospheric high-ceilinged, wood-panelled rooms at local Victorian residence Dunvarlich House, where last December he performed a livestream concert.
A museum with a heart
“Dunvarlich is just such a special place. Anything I say wouldn’t really do it justice, you kinda need to walk into it. The place is like a museum, but it’s got such a heart.
“The folks that own it are into their vintage detail and everything’s painstakingly sourced, even the wood in the eaves that people wouldn’t see. Every room sounds incredible.”
Playing percussion, as well as guitar and piano, this process was similar to the early days of his debut album Hope, released independently in 2007.
Foy came to wider attention with 2013’s Joy of Nothing, allowing him play live with Ed Sheeran (who then signed him to his Atlantic Records subsidiary), Bonnie Raitt and Elton John, who became executive producer on its 2016 follow-up The Wild Swan.
Respected in the industry as a co-writer (see Sheeran’s own hit ‘Galway Girl’), Foy received a lot of support, but two years on the road took its toll.
On his return to Aberfeldy in 2018, the solo artist vowed never to stay away for so long again.
He also came to realise he had become addicted to alcohol and painkillers, drinking heavily then taking codeine the next morning to recover.
‘I felt like a shell of a man’
“That’s the one that was so tricky,” Foy says of his reliance on the latter.
“People take them thinking they’re just getting rid of a headache, but you’re getting addicted. It took a friend of mine who’d had issues himself to notice the wrappers I’d left at his house and warn me.
“They leave you in a complete fog. I felt like a shell of a man. The second I kicked it, I realised quite how much it was affecting me mentally and physically.”
Music became the life raft
To wean himself off, Foy spent days in bed looked after by his family and still relies on therapy, though music has been his lifeline. “I see a therapist and would recommend it to anyone that can, checking in weekly, but I threw myself into music, as always. It became a life raft.”
Soon after his recovery, Foy wrote album opener ‘Sapling’, in which he simply accompanies himself on piano singing “I once built a bower, I can build you a home”, a promise to do better for his family.
Foy scrapped the album he had already half-written and started on a deeply personal set of songs, intimately recorded yet not less powerful for that.
‘I was being honest with myself’
“’Sapling’ was the first song I had written where I was being honest with myself, there was no mask. I wasn’t ‘disconnecting’ as it’s called, getting high or drunk or whatever. I was clear of mind.”
Foy realised he had a family that loved him, a supportive team and, of course, a beautiful home. The other important thing has been to learn to go with the flow.
“Plans are great, right, but just kinda going with the universe sometimes works out a lot better”.
- Signs of Life is released September 10 on Gingerbread Man Records.
