Alexander The Great tells the story of two runaway teens, with folk, rock, jazz and blues. Tim Hughes meets creator Humphrey 'Huck' Astley

No one could accuse Humphrey ‘Huck’ Astley of dumbing down. While other musicians are busy churning out accessible pop and indie-rock, singer-songwriter and poet Huck has his mind on higher things.

For three years he has been working on a “folk operetta” called Alexander the Great. But banish all thoughts of a Macedonian warlord in plumed helmet and breastplate, because Huck’s Alexander is a very different kind of hero.

The Alex in question is a Texan teenager who runs away from his Christian fundamentalist father with a half-American Indian boy. The story follows the two 15-year-olds as they leave Texas, cross the bayous of Louisiana and come undone in New Orleans. It is a rite of passage and journey of discovery. And while Huck admits it’s loosely based on Huckleberry Finn and Peter Pan, it’s a somewhat less wholesome tale.

“It’s a queer runaway myth of two young friends and their fall from grace in Dixie,” says Huck, who has just released Act Two of his three-part opus.

“It’s essentially a concept album, but I didn’t want to call it that, so I called a folk operetta, which sounds nicer. It has a very distinctive narrative which is, for the most part, narrated by the protagonist, Alex.”

The story channels popular culture, classic literature and mythology and tackles such big themes as religion, identity and sexuality. Without giving too much away, it is touching and debauched while remaining believable and true to itself.

Charlbury lad Huck, 32, admits its subject matter, with its sex and drugs, wouldn’t be touched by most country singers with a rhinestone-spangled barge pole.

He says: “Alex starts off as a naive Texan boy with a strict Christian upbringing. Then he meets Johnny Wingo Crow, a half-Caddo Indian, who is also young but culturally savvy, and introduces Alex to a whole universe of mythology and religion that he didn’t know existed.

“He takes a liking to Alex, tells him where he gets his name from — Alexander the Great — and introduces him to all things forbidden.”

“And there’s a bisexual love triangle at the heart of it.”

Oxford Mail:
Huck getting inspired in America

Huck, who lives in Cowley with his daughter and stepdaughter, is a respected musician with an Oxford pedigree as impressive as the Radcliffe Camera. A former student of Ruskin College, he was a member of highly regarded metal band Sextodecimo, fronted Americana quartet Huck & The Handsome Fee, and now plays bass with country and folk-rock act The Epstein.

It was his experience of touring the USA for six weeks with the Handsome Fee which inspired the operetta.

“It was the furthest I’d ever travelled,” he said. “I’d lived a sheltered life in Oxfordshire with a privileged middle-class upbringing, and found myself far from home in the States. It was an eye-opening experience which was scary and exhausting.

”It wasn’t just specific events that inspired the project but the fact I’d always played in an Americana style — country, blues and folk. I felt there should be some justification, so I set it in Texas and Louisiana where that kind of music is their bread and butter.”Joining Huck onstage are his Xander Band: virtuoso guitarist Jamie Cooper; bassist and singer Billy ‘T’rivers’ Quarterman; drummer Greig Stewart of Suitable Case for Treatment and Mercury-nominated alt-rock band Guillemots; and Sebastian Reynolds on organ and keys.

Together they rip through songs of heartwrenching passion, spanning country, rockabilly, jazz and blues. The music is, by turns, tender, raw, rousing and playful — veering from foot-stomping blues to subdued introspection. And while precious few people will identify completely with the central characters it would take a hard-heart not to sympathise with them.

Huck says: “Act One finds Alex innocent and full of young exuberance, so the music is naive and poppy. It’s not as gnarled and rough around the edges as Act Two, where he’s in New Orleans, learning about the world and getting drunk and stoned.

“If Act One is innocence, Act Two is experience and Act Three is independence. It finds Alex out in the desert working out his next move. It’s more austere, with light and shade.”

The project, which has the backing of The PRS for Music Foundation, has been turned into a theatrical stage show, produced by the aforementioned Seb who is frequently also found providing keyboard duties for Flights of Helios and The Epstein.

It takes the form of a performance-based spectacular reminiscent of Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, with projected video footage by Huck’s former Handsome Fee bandmate Matthew Halliday, which he shot on location in Texas and Louisiana. Illustrations of 12 icons — one for each song — are also projected on to side screens.

“It’s been an opportunity to flex myself and see what I’m capable of,” Huck says. “I imagine the music divides people. Some people might hear my voice and think ‘I don’t buy it; he’s a white middle-class singer from Oxfordshire trying to sound like he’s from the bayou’. But others will run with it. I’m not pretending I’m from the South, though. It’s subtly satirical and slightly subversive.”

And autobiographical? He laughs. “I was raised in a secular home and religion wasn’t a part of my upbringing, but I was fascinated with the idea of faith and how people can lose it. We all romanticise otherness and strangeness, and that’s what appeals to me.”

He goes on: “Johnny Wingo Crow is the young gay rebel I wish I’d had the guts to be. But I missed the gay boat, and created this character so I can live vicariously through him.

“The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issue is also something I feel passionate about.

“It’s a hot potato and very contentious, especially in North America where there’s a clash of values and lifestyles.”

Oxford Mail:

Passion: Huck performs live (picture: Bert Van Der Veen)

With productions in Cambridge and London under his belt, Huck is relieved it has all come together. “It has taken a long time and has almost fallen apart,” he says. “I nearly stopped because of self-doubt. When you’re writing you’re in a bubble and it’s hard to be objective. Fear of failure can be very damaging.

“But I’m of the opinion that people can take it or leave it. I’m not the kind of musician who is ever going to be commercially accessible, so I have to embrace that and be as authentic an artist as I can.”

  • Huck & the Xander Band
  • Alexander the Great: A Folk Operetta
  • The Old Fire Station, Oxford, on Thursday, June 12. Tickets £10/£8. Call 01865 305305 or go to oxfordplayhouse.com
  • He also plays a free in-store show at Truck Store, Cowley Road, Oxford, tomorrow (Fri).
  • Huck’s music is available at huckandxander.bandcamp.com