‘I’m enjoying my sobriety. Everything gets better – including your bank account’

Whenever someone tells Foy Vance that he ought to be a bigger name than he already is, he has a well-prepared answer ready for them. He has collaborated with, supported and earned the admiration of everyone from Elton John to Kacey Musgraves and Bonnie Raitt.“I’m, like, ‘I’m getting away with it. The bills are paid, everyone’s happy, I get to do exactly what I want, release music whenever I want; I don’t have to speak to anyone.’ You know what I mean?”The musician, who was born in Bangor in Co Down but spent years in the United States, sighs softly, smiling. “So I guess, in a nutshell, if you want to play a stadium and you’re good enough and you’ve got enough contacts and all that bullshit, it’s just about working twice as hard as the next guy. Whoever’s the hardest-working f**ker out there, work twice as hard as them and then you stand a chance, if all the other stars are in place.” READ MOREHe grins, a twinkle in his eye as he shrugs. “But who wants to work that hard?”Vance is as self-aware as musicians come, and so impossible to dislike. His outlook has bled into his songwriting, too, with seven fine studio albums under his belt, including The Wake, produced by Ethan Johns, which was released earlier this year. [ Foy Vance: Signs of Life – Acute and denouncing self-awarenessOpens in new window ]A soulful, tender album, it’s the culmination of a cycle that has defined Vance’s creative life, beginning with the death of his father, Hugh Bailie Vance, a pastor with the evangelical Church of Christ, in 1999. It was a soul-rattling experience that ultimately set Vance on the path to becoming a recording artist.An accompanying tour, which will take him around the world after it kicks off, in mid-October, includes a string of Irish dates at the end of the month. Vance will also launch a new album cycle, releasing his eighth studio album, If, in three parts, each appearing as an EP between October and April. “At one point we were looking at maybe getting me checked in somewhere, because I was starting to appear crazy,” he says of his creative purple patch, chuckling. “I was writing scripts, books, new songs, painting, making films. I just couldn’t stop. I was barely sleeping. I just had an almighty surge. So I’ve already got more music to go, but I’m glad The Wake’s in the world. It’s one of the only things I’ve ever seen through.“I used to say music and marriage are the only things I’ve ever committed to, but now that I’m three times married I can barely say that one.” He laughs hard. “I said I was going to do something, I set out to do it and I did it.”A number of changes preceded the release of The Wake and If, most notably Vance signing with a new label. His association with Ed Sheeran, who signed him to his Gingerbread Man Records and championed him over the years, has been both a blessing and a curse, although Vance has nothing but good things to say about his friend. Foy Vance: ‘The only reason I was on Atlantic was because of Ed [Sheeran]. He was spearheading the whole thing. So I think they did their best by me’ On the one hand, it brought his music to a wider audience; on the other, being perennially linked to one of the most famous musicians in the world can come with its own pitfalls. The Wake was Vance’s first album since Joy of Nothing, from 2013, not to be released on Sheeran’s label, which was backed by Warner Music and distributed by Atlantic Records until recently.“It was just, like, ‘Let’s call it what it is,’” he says, shrugging. “And this is not about me being in any way self-effacing, but I was a minor artist on a major label. The only reason I was on Atlantic was because of Ed. He was spearheading the whole thing. So I think they did their best by me. They’re all beautiful people, we’re all still great friends, there’s no bad blood. It was just sort of mutual.” He smiles. “I can imagine when my name came up in the meetings, they were, like, ‘Okay, right, that’s Rihanna done ... so this Foy ... who the f**k is this Foy? Is that Ed’s mate? Why do we keep talking about this old bald guy that writes about his dad?’” He chuckles again. “So I kind of went around looking for a viable partner, and I met the team at Rounder Records and just loved their vision, their support. They were very excited, and that charged me.”Vance’s new clarity of purpose coincided with his decision to stop drinking alcohol. It hasn’t been a particularly difficult shift, he says. “I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t addicted to it. I said, ‘I’m going to do Dry January,’ and then a friend was, like, ‘Well, if you want to prove that you can break an addiction, it takes up to three months.’[ Róisín Ingle on Dry January: Since giving up alcohol, I’ve developed some strong opinions about itOpens in new window ]“But quite honestly, three weeks into it, it kind of dawned on me: there’s nothing missing. I thought I was going to be white-knuckling, trying not to drink every day. But I think as soon as you consciously do it because you want to, and if you take stock of what’s going on, you sleep better, you think better, you work better, you communicate better.“I mean, just everything gets better – including your bank account. And the first time you go out with your mates and they’re drinking and you’re not, you realise three pints deep that everyone talks absolute shit,” he says, laughing. “So it’s not a constant fight at all. I’m enjoying my sobriety.”Some of the songs on The Wake are testament to his newfound mindfulness. He wrote Call Me Anytime for his three kids, Ella, Sonny and Sol; it’s a track that admits to past failings but reaffirms his devotion to his children. The songs on If come from a collection of more than 100 hundred tracks, both old and new, that he reimagined with the help of the producer Anderson East. Vance pauses, blinking back tears, when I ask whether his father factors into the songs that he writes in a more purposeful way these days.“I’ve been so embarrassed over the years, talking about my dad: ‘Oh, my dad this, my dad that, my dad’ – I feel like I whinge on about him. But the truth of the matter is, his death was the greatest gift I ever got. It was the strangest and most heartbreaking gift I ever got, but that’s exactly what it was.“I could hear after that. I mean, I could sort of always hear music, but just not that clearly or that intensely. Something happens in the body after trauma; something changes. “So, yeah, it’s kind of hard to write about anything and not feel close to my dad. It’s hard to pick up a guitar and not feel close to my dad and not be aware of him. “Especially being a dad now, when I’m going, ‘Lads, lads, lads!’ I’m thinking, ‘I’m so like my dad. I just turned into him, lads. Brutal.’” There was another unexpected twist in Vance’s career in early 2024, when he found himself not only attending the Emmy Awards but also making his way onstage to accept one. A Beautiful Game, a song Vance had written for the TV series Ted Lasso with Sheeran and the pop Svengali Max Martin, won the award for outstanding original music and lyrics.“It’s on top of my piano. I shouldn’t say this, but sometimes I hang keys from it. I did have it as a toilet-roll holder at first, and then I thought, ‘If someone takes a picture of that, they will take it off me.’” He grins. “That was a mad experience. Ed wasn’t there, Max wasn’t there, so I took that as a sign of ‘We haven’t won this,’ or they would have called them and said, ‘Get here, we need you here.’ “The guy beside me, who was up for the same Emmy, was writing his speech the entire time. So I sat there the whole night with Bonnie [Bishop, his partner, who is also a musician], going, ‘This is a great night. We got a free hotel, we got flown out here, what more do you want?’“I was genuinely surprised when my name was read out – I really, really didn’t expect it, but it’s a lovely thing. What’s that saying, ‘Awards only matter if you win them’? They don’t change anything. They don’t change the arc you make. But I guess, in certain worlds, it puts more eyes on you.”There are perhaps more eyes on Vance than at any other point in his career, and he is making the most of it.“I’ve never been less than content for the vast majority of my life,” he says. “My dad always said, ‘Foy, son, you could fall in shit and come out smelling of roses,’ and he’s not wrong. I feel like I’ve really lucked out here, by sort of coasting at my own pace. I’ve carved out something for myself that works for me. I feel excited about what’s coming next.”If: We is released on Friday, October 30th. Foy Vance plays Wexford Spiegeltent Festival on Tuesday, October 27th; 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on Thursday, October 29th; Town Hall Theatre, Galway, on Friday, October 30th; and Lime Tree Theatre, Limerick, on Saturday, October 31st