Wickham Festival 2023: Rising folk star Joshua Burnell channels his inner David Bowie on new album Glass Knight | Interview

His music has touched on numerous genres to great acclaim – he won the Rising Star accolade at the 2020 Folking Awards. But his forthcoming fifth album, Glass Knight is his arguably his biggest departure yet as it takes in glam and prog-rock on an apocalyptic concept album.

Fans and newcomers alike will get their first taste of the bold new material at this weekend’s Wickham Festival where he performs on the Saturday.

While many acts have an album which is described as their “defining” release, the multi-instrumentalist has been calling Glass Knight a "redefining" album.

“I think this album is what's been bottled up inside for quite a number of years,” he explains to The Guide.

"I've been playing on the folk scene for quite a while and I absolutely love folk music to bits. Most of the music I listen to is actually folk music, I see a lot of folk music, and I felt for quite a while that I was trying to shoehorn what I do into what I thought I should be doing. Whereas, actually, I grew up listening to Bowie and Queen and Led Zeppelin and Peter Gabriel, Genesis, all of that lot.

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“There's been this list of songs that has been growing, it's been on this pinboard in my music room for years, and finally, this is it. It feels like what I've been wanting to do for a long time has been unleashed.”

Given it’s long gestation, what was holding Joshua back from creating this album?

"Making it right!” he says with a laugh. “When I listened back through a lot of my previous albums, I think it represents quite a steep learning curve because you have to start somewhere, I don't think I knew how to do what I wanted to do properly.

“I'm doing all this myself. There's no record label. There's no producers, really, so I've been learning how to produce, learning how to record, learning how to write and arrange as well.

“I nearly did this album before lockdown and I had to make a decision. I had all the songs. I had to decide, was I going to do the "folky" sounding album, which became (his fourth album) Flowers Where the Horses Sleep, or was I going to do the "glam-rock" sounding album Glass Knight? And I thought, I'm not quite ready, I want to do a different album first, learn a bit more. I think they're quite strong songs on Glass Knight, so I didn't want to do them a disservice.”Flowers… was released in September 2020 with the pandemic “knocking the wind out of that release, which was a shame.”

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But it did give him time to revisit the Glass Knight songs: “In lockdown, I thought okay, well, I'm going do another demo of the Glass Knight songs. There is a set of demos that sound I'd say 50 per cent towards what you hearing on the CD now, which lockdown allowed me to do. Without that opportunity I'm not sure it would sound the way it does now.”

Working in his bedroom home studio, Joshua estimates about 80 per cent of the new album was done this way, but he also wanted to splash out on a proper string section.

“It was honestly a dream come true recording a live string section. I've had string players playing before but for this one I thought, let's do it properly – let's learn how to notate. I had piano lessons growing up but I wasn't particularly good at reading sheet music, I was much better by ear, and that's how I play now. I kind of know how to score things, but it did take me a while to sit down and learn how to score it out as best I could and then I hired in six string players. We went to Young Thugs studio, which is this cool studio in York, and they were amazing.

“They played all the bits exactly as I'd written and then managed to figure out the bits that I'd written wrong! Honestly they were so good to work with and I think it sounds amazing.”

No stranger to that most prog of ideas, a concept album, Joshua has created a sci-fi dystopia that reaches back to English folklore for its inspiration.

“What's really interesting about this album is that the songs within that concept have shifted. Although it's been waiting for a while, there must be six or seven songs that were meant to be on this album that didn't end up on there. And the reason that the concept allows for that is that it’s a very loose concept. It's not something like Pink Floyd's The Wall or something like that, where you have to know what's going on to follow it.

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“But the rough idea is that there is a character who has done something wrong that is not defined. They meet with their maker, and then they get shown a series of kind of vignettes, if you like, lessons, a bit like the format of the Little Prince book (the French classic where a young prince visits various planets, addressing themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss). So there are those different planets, and each one is a little lesson within itself. That enabled me to change out songs as I pleased, as long as the new song that came in had a kind of lesson to teach, or fit in with this broad idea.

“I take a lot of inspiration from Bowie. I really like that Ziggy Stardust is and isn't a concept album. The idea that it's this sort of, again, post-apocalyptic story of his alien who comes down and forms a rock band. But actually, you could listen to that album and not know that and still enjoy it – you can take or leave as much of the concept as you like.”

And those songs that were bumped off Glass Knight?

“A few of the songs that I pulled out of this one I'm going to put into a rerecording of my first album, which was called Lend An Ear. I'm thinking of calling the rerecording Lend Me Your Other Ear, or perhaps Here's Your Ear Back, I haven't decided yet!

“That one I'm doing through Patreon (the online subscription platform that allows creatives to work closely with their fans). I'm doing lots of videos of me, how I'm rerecording all the parts, how I'm rearranging it, and I'm really taking people through every step of that, so that's a more slow-motion project.”

Using Patreon has proved to be a boon for Joshua – he cites the string section on Glass Knight as a tangible example of how it has helped him.

“There would not have been a string section on this album if it hadn't been for my patrons. I thought, I’ve saved the money up from that, let's do something that I can pay back to the fans. It almost happened perfectly. It got round to that time when I'd need them, I asked the string players how much they’d be and it was quite expensive – but I'm happy to pay them for their time, they're very skilled people, and it pretty much was the exact amount of money that I'd saved through Patreon!

“I went along, took some videos, took some pictures, put it up on Patreon and said: 'Thank you, you literally made my dream come true, I got to record a string group’.

"It's honestly incredible. And I have so many supportive fans who aren't on Patreon as well who just are very supportive in other ways. I just feel so lucky. I feel like every week I have to send out ‘thank yous’ to so many people. A lot of my fan base is really into the music, they're on the on the journey so to speak. They're in it for the long haul, which I really appreciate – thank you to them.”

Glass Knight takes its origins from a story in a book of Essex folklore given to Joshua by his mother-in-law: “She always gets me amazing presents that lead to songs and this is just one of them. One of the stories was The Glass Knight and it was from Saffron Walden which was their local town, so it's got this family connection there too.

“It's this really great story about this basilisk, a giant lizard that's got Medusa-like powers – it looks at you, and it kills you, so it's similar to that Greek myth, and the solution is to get something that reflects its eyesight so it kills itself. And that's the glass knight. I just love that striking image of a knight covered in mirrors, it's a really powerful image.

“Then in the end, it just says: ‘Everyone cheers, said well done, they put the armour and the sword in the church, and then the church got knocked down and all the stuff got nicked’, and that's the end. I thought that it was a rubbish ending to the story – how could we change this?

“I was thinking a little bit about our modern society and how whenever there's a hero in our current society, it doesn't take long until they're thrown under the bus or cancelled.

“I thought, well, what if this glass knight comes back from saving everyone, and then everyone sees themselves and all their own evils reflected and think, 'Oh, we don't want this guy' and they smash him, they destroy this glass knight. It’s dismal – but I thought it was a better ending!”

The new album is out on August 11, and Joshua admits to being “a little bit apprehensive” about how it will be received, “but more bemused than anything else because I know it's so different (to what he’s done before).

"I think it's a weird one because there's these two worlds. I think there's most people who are into mainstream music – I think they will take to this more easily than my other stuff, but those kinds of people usually think folk music is a bit weird.

“And then you've got the folk music scene, which I've very much been in, which is very niche, and they'll think this one might be a bit weird!

“Or maybe I'm not predicting it right! I'm very excited, really, to see what happens.”

Joshua will be playing Wickham Festival with his six-piece band on Main Stage 2 on Saturday afternoon.

Wickham Festival starts today and runs through until Sunday, featuring headline sets from Show of Hands, The Saw Doctors, and Midge Ure, plus dozens more acts. Adult day tickets from £60, weekend tickets £220. Go to wickhamfestival.co.uk.