Life of Ryley

"All these places I've never heard of. I love them," says Ryley Walker. "Leamington Spa? I mean, what a great name for a place?"

The Illinois-born singer-songwriter is sitting backstage at the venue he's playing, The Glee club in Nottingham, and wondering how he got to this point.

"It's just amazing how music travels," begins the 27-year-old. "I've been playing small crappy shows my whole life, and I still do in a lot of countries, and then I come to the UK and get this amazing reception. I've made a lot of new friends and it's a pleasure to come here and play. A real joy."

Walker's career began in Chicago, where he's a key figure in the city's improvisational jazz scene. His first album, All Kinds Of You, released in 2014, passed many by, but his follow-up, last year's Primrose Green, was widely adored by critics and earned him serious respect among the MOJO/Uncut magazine-reading sector of serious music fans.

He notes that the reception he's getting in the UK isn't the case everywhere he goes.

"I think the general reaction is more, 'Who the hell is Ryley Walker?', everywhere else," he says, in signature self-deprecating manner. "In France I completely bombed, never did too well there at all, and in the US, I'm still struggling. It's just such a huge country and I have a long way to go.

"But in the UK, things have been great and I've found a very warm audience. That's why I'm over here so much, I've found a lot of opportunities, and I'm very lucky and appreciative."

If his hugely amusing Twitter feed is anything to go by, it's more likely to be the country's chip shops that see him come back again than any amount of applause from the crowd. Walker regularly mentions the chippy he's just visited, and, by the looks of it, is a recent convert to the joys of mushy peas.

His forthcoming third album, Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, will hopefully find him an even bigger audience.

It's a wildly ambitious record, blurring boundaries between folk and free jazz but remaining accessible, despite only having eight songs across its 41-minute running time.

Primrose Green saw Walker wear his influences on his sleeve; Tim Buckley, John Martyn and Bert Jansch among others, and Golden Sings suggests he hasn't thrown away his record collection, but he has broadened his palette and created an album that owes more to his native America than his rather British-sounding second offering.

"My tastes changed, I got a lot better and the band got better this time around," he reflects. "My voice matured, we have better gear, better songs. We had longer to record, and I definitely wanted a 'better' sounding record - more American, more jazz in there. I really wanted to make the album slower, with big wide open spaces between instruments and longer songs."

If those were his aims, he accomplished them.

Still in his 20s, Walker's music is mature beyond his years, benefiting from the amount of time he and his band spent on the road touring Primrose Green. They notched up more than 200 shows around the world promoting the album, and went straight from performing into recording Golden Sings.

"I made Primrose Green with my own money and didn't really have resources, so this is like my first real record," he adds.

One of its charms is the way it seems to float along. The songs don't sound written, as such, but, in the best possible way, invented as they were being played.

That, Walker says, is a bonus, but in fact the music on Golden Sings is quite calculated.

"With Primrose Green, it was about economics, like I'd be in the studio and say, '1-2-3 go', or rather, '1-2-3, don't take too long getting this right, we have no money!'

"I'm not saying we had a ton of money this time, but we had 10 days in the studio to make the record, compared to the one or two we had before. Every decision was really deliberated over, and for every song, there are 100 different takes that we could have chosen from. There are so many versions of everything. That was the difference here, there was no improvising, really, but some overdubs and that was it."

There's a palpable musical understanding between all the players featured, which perhaps explains that feeling of looseness. That comes from Walker roping in friends, rather than session players.

"We're all really close friends. We eat, sleep and everything else in close proximity all the time, so there's a close bond that can't be broken."

The album couldn't have been made anywhere else but Chicago, either - a city famous for many different types of music, largely due to its central US location, meaning over the years, it's become a hub of sorts, attracting all types of musicians from all over the land.

"There's a strong sense of collaboration, and the free jazz scene here is definitely what we're all drawn to in the band."

Walker says he has changed since he started releasing music, particularly since Primrose Green came out, a time he felt self-conscious and full of self-doubt.

"I spent a lot of time in my own mind just trying to work out what I really wanted to do after that record," he says. "I think the effects of that really come to fruition on this album. Every song comes from truth, or half-truth at least, the music is the real deal for me, and it's the best thing I've ever done.

"What's changed is that I went from touring and being broke, to touring even more and being even more broke. Typical lifestyle I have. I'm a relative dinosaur in the underground basement circuit, but I'm finding my own voice and making everything pure and simple, more direct and concise."

Being a city boy, he's always shied away from writing about the countryside and nature, a trap he says many songwriters fall into, and Golden Sings is primarily a city record, despite its pastoral orchestration.

"It's about walking home from a bar or a friend's house or a party at two-thirty in the morning. It's about cold nights in January, walking through Chicago, and that feeling when you're standing in your garden in the night, or walking through the streets not listening to music because you're worried someone is going to clock you over the head.

"Your thoughts really come to the fore: what have I done, what should I do, where am I going from here? It's what inspires the writing for me at this point, and the answers to those questions are absolutely in my new record," says Walker.

"My music goes into my life and my life goes into my music, it's really all I have. Take away music and I'd be on the streets. I didn't finish school, I don't have a resume, God help me if I have to reach out for a reference at some point ever..."

• Ryley Walker's new album, Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, is released on August 19. He plays Green Man festival the day after, and returns to tour the UK in November. Visit ryleywalker.com