Boo Hewerdine: ‘I’ve been inspired by things that fell out of old books’

In a Scottish castle’s second-hand bookshop hangs a notice board that collects the treasures found by booksellers between the pages.

Lost and discarded notes, photographs, old receipts, letters, postcards - fragments of people's lives that each tell their own tale and even inspire new ones.

Boo Hewerdine and Yvonne Lyon’s new album, Things Found In Books, is an album of songs written in response to this notice board, that celebrates the ordinary lives of those on the Scottish coast.

Boo and Yvonne have formed a song-writing partnership weaving these glimpsed stories with their own, creating an album full of nostalgia, hope and longing.

“In the second-hand bookshop, occasionally, things were found between the pages. Tickets, clippings, letters, photographs, postcards. Each had been placed there for a reason,” says Boo.

“Each reason was now lost. What had been love tokens, aching secrets, catalysts for memories that brought gentle smiles had been transformed by the act of exchange into ephemera. Our job was to invest new meaning into these abandoned things. To replace fact with imagination but somehow find the deeper truth - to tell a new story that at its core chimed with a forgotten human experience. We might not know the subjects of a photograph but can empathetically divine what tale was being told. A glimpse into someone else’s dreams.

“Songs are not novels, movies or plays. They are small. Polaroids that appear before us in the writing. They feel related to these foundlings. They are not monuments, symphonies or histories. They are ephemera.”

Boo, who grew up in Cambridge and was a regular performer in the city, has recently moved to Glasgow. The Ivor Novello Award-nominated English singer-songwriter saw international success when Eddi Reader recorded his single Patience of Angels in 1995 and Boo also produced Reader’s Sings the Songs of Robert Burns in 2003, an album now viewed as a folk classic.

Now he is working with Yvonne Lyon, whose most recent album, Growing Wild, is her tenth solo studio release. She has guested on two live sessions with Bob Harris on his BBC Radio 2 show and recently completed a master’s degree in song-writing and performance from the University of the West of Scotland.

She came to Boo with the idea of writing an album inspired by the items found inside the second-hand books.

Boo says: “Yvonne told me about the second-hand bookshop at the castle and about the noticeboard of lost items that fell out of the books. And she said we should try to write about them. We have both written songs for the album and it’s taken a few years, actually, from the first idea. We'd find things on the board and then turn them into songs. And then, as well as making the record, we've made a really beautiful book, which comes with the CV. We are planning to do a tour of bookshops over the summer. It has been a really nice project to do together.

“There were all sorts of items on the bookshop noticeboard. One was a letter from King George VI; there was a photo of Paul McCartney; there were old cigarette packets and postcards from France. And went there to visit. We made a little film because we thought that would be an interesting thing to do.

“People were obviously using them as bookmarks, but they obviously have some sort of sentimental or emotional importance, which makes you really intrigued about how at some point they ended up just being sent to a second-hand bookshop. For us, it's just a piece of paper.

“There's a really lovely photograph of some Viennese horses. We have no idea why they're there or why that was important to somebody. So, in writing the songs, we had to imagine people's stories. It was very inspiring. When you're writing a set of songs, if you have a sort of framework or a reason to write them, it gives it a real extra edge. We have ended up with a very cohesive, beautiful piece.”

The songwriters chose their own favourites among the lost items to help inspire their songs. One particularly struck Boo.

“It was a photograph from the 30s or 40s of some waiters, just standing in the line in a restaurant. And I've had, I thought, well, this, this is really mundane, but also fascinating. That was the first song I wrote,” he said.

He was also inspired by the Paul McCartney picture.

“I imagined it belonged to a couple who were the same age as him in 1970 and when he went off to live on Mull they decided that he was an inspiration for them to have their own adventure,” he added.

Apparently, if the former owners of the lost items turn up at the bookshop, they will have their treasures returned, says Boo.

“And last time I went back they had a whole new selection on the board, so we could keep on writing these albums. With new inspiration”.

Things Found in Books is out on 7 March.