Mission Creep

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I always said I’m not doing ‘major’ label stuff, but Decca were very persuasive, very seductive and very supportive In addition to sharing “She Comes,” Lewis has also announced a further selection of UK dates in Gateshead, Birmingham, Nottingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Brighton, Manchester and Leeds. She Comes is the first song I wrote for my debut album, so that makes it… my first song (That I’ve shared with the world, at any rate….). It’s about ghosts, and one ghost in particular. The album has hybrid sounds all through it, but this song leans heavily on a folk set up before crescendoing with a jazz feel brought by my brilliant band.” Lewis previously performed at Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire last year as well as gigs at London venues including Omeara, Koko, Tabernacle and Hoxton Hall. In recent weeks, just after he announced the new album, he has been pictured with the Kills singer Alison Mosshart in London and New York.

Lewis grew up in St John’s Wood, a well-to-do area of London. His father was an insurance broker with Lloyd’s. His maternal grandfather was lord mayor of London, and down the generations on his mother’s side there is an impressive lineage of aristocrats, philanthropists, shipbuilders and a doctor to the royal family. Lewis was sent to boarding school aged eight, and went on to Eton, the country’s most famous private school. There, he studied drama and learned to play classical guitar. By the age of 16, he had decided he wanted to become an actor and went on to graduate from the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama. The first single "Down On The Bowery" provides a first taste of the album, which is to be released on 16 June by Decca. The catchy number sounds a bit as if Damian had borrowed it from the songbook of Bruce Springsteen or perhaps REM. But in fact, just like the rest of the songs on "Mission Creep", it came from his own pen. No question, the man has great talent not only as an actor. Lewis’s album may have been created partly as a balm to a troubled soul, but the songs only sound sad if you view them through his personal history. He says he prefers to leave the lyrics to each song “a ­little bit opaque” to “allow listeners to borrow from it in ways that relate to their own life and experience”. Musicians becoming actors seems to be a lot more acceptable than actors becoming musicians. Do you have a take on why that is?His biggest headline show to date will be at Union Chapel in London on July 11, with more live dates expected to be announced soon, after he spoke about having conversations with Glastonbury festival.

I said to everyone involved, ‘I am doing this for me, for fun, so let’s try and have some.’ ” Lewis self-financed the recording, but subsequently signed to major label Decca, a division of Universal Music. “It got big on me,” he jokes.Actually, he says, the project had its genesis the best part of a decade ago when he sang a couple of songs on a Radio 2 show. One of his fellow guests was the singer and broadcaster Cerys Matthews, whose husband, producer Steve Abbott, was impressed with Lewis’s performance. Abbott suggested that he and Lewis record some songs, but then Lewis spent the next five years playing hedge-fund manager Bobby Axelrod in the American drama series Billions. A couple of years ago, with McCrory seriously ill, Lewis asked to be written out of the sixth series so he could be with his family. That was when he reconsidered Abbott’s proposal. Damian Lewisunveils his passionate new single ‘She Comes’, taken from his upcoming debut album ‘Mission Creep’ due for release on June 16th via Decca. The single is accompanied by a music video. Commenting on Damian’s music and his debut album, Co-Presidents of Decca Label Group, Tom Lewis and Laura Monks, say “We are so delighted that Damian chose Decca. His songwriting is poetic, poignant and deeply personal. The album, recorded just down the road in Kentish Town, has a raw and refreshing honesty to it. Damian really opens his heart and invites us in. It is a thing of great beauty.”