Mission Creep

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We’re here to talk about the new drama, but as with so many men, his first language is football. Barely have I sat down and he’s chatting footie. Lewis, 51, is still a keen and talented player, who takes part regularly in Soccer Aid matches on behalf of Unicef. He tells me he recently played with Cafu, Brazil’s most capped male player, who is a year older than Lewis. “He’s kept himself in shape. He’s my age, charging around that pitch.” He asks me who I support. Manchester City, I say. And now he’s started on the phenomenal goal machine Erling Haaland. “He’s like a CGI construct. He could be out of Jurassic Park. He’s got an incredible physical form.” It’s so much easier than dealing with the stuff of life. But that’s not what we’re here for. Speaking about ‘She Comes’ Lewis explains “'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 crescending with a jazz feel brought by my brilliant band”. I wrote the songs on the steel-string and a bit on the piano and took them into the guys. [The songs] are complete enough that they could be busked, but they’re better with a band. We recorded on tape, and I said to Giacomo who produced it and introduced me to a lot of music, ‘Let’s not do this big, over-produced digitised thing – let’s do something that feels like we’re all in a bar playing together’. Because that makes me feel more legit and authentic, because that’s the way I’ve always played – getting out a guitar on the street and playing in a market square by a fountain, outside the Pompidou. In that regard, it should have that feeling.”

Reflecting on writing the album, Lewis said: “I suddenly had a lot to say. People will judge if it’s any good or not, but for me, it felt entirely natural.” It’s the first song I wrote,” Lewis tells me. “It is a complicated love letter, about ghosts. I probably wrote it out when I was at my most raw.”Today Damian released his debut album Mission Creep! What a monumental achievement for him, congrats! Visit our Gallery here to see the making of the album art and studio photoshoot. Singles released ahead of the album are Down on the Bowery, Zaragoza, Makin’ Plans and She Comes. Upcoming shows include Rough Trade East (includes album signing!) on June 19, Union Chapel on July 11 in London and Mercury Lounge NYC on July 19. Additionally, Damian just announced new September/October UK Tour dates here. Don’t miss out, get your album copy now and enjoy the music!

Musicians becoming actors seems to be a lot more acceptable than actors becoming musicians. Do you have a take on why that is? The journey to this point began a long time ago. A fan of everyone from John Martyn and The Rolling Stones to Velvet Underground and Eddie Cochran, Lewis tried to write songs in his early twenties before his nerves got the better of him. “I didn’t feel comfortable doing it,” he tells Music Week. “I didn’t know how to do it, I wasn’t confident.” Meeting and then teaming up with American jazz musician Giacomo Smith inspired Lewis to start playing his own songs in public. Smith introduced Damain to some of the musicians from the much-revered Kansas Smitty’s House Band, with whom he immediately jelled – in the studio and on stage. They formed a band fronted by Damian and started gigging. I wanted the album to give a sense of a journey to this point, from busking ‘til now,” Lewis added.If this side of your life were to be a success. How will you accommodate it with the various other facets of your career? Damian and his brilliant band played gig number eight of their UK Tour in Gateshead at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music (formally Sage 2) on Saturday, October 7, 2023 in support of his debut album Mission Creep. Damian opened the show with his first single Down on the Bowery, followed by Zaragoza, Hole in My Roof, My Little One, Soho Tango and nine more songs, not including encore songs! He also played his new songs Pentonville Prison and Traffic Jam. For encore he played a cover of After Midnight and his other new song She Makin’ Me Change. As his acting schedule freed up due to the pandemic, he began playing and writing songs and later teamed up with various musicians including Italian-American Giacomo Smith. 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.

In reference to the video, he adds “"We hoped to convey the feeling of an abandoned house, of the ghost of the woman that once lived there and a group of friends gathering to celebrate her”

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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. There’s nothing more annoying than an actor who thinks he’s Bruce Springsteen. By the way, I don’t. This is a mini midlife crisis, but not a full-blown one

Has the album got a title yet? “Yes. Mission Creep.” I tell him I’m never sure what “mission creep” means. “Mission creep is when you go to war and you invade one country, and before you know it you’ve invaded another. You allow your mission to spread and go where you shouldn’t.” Why that title? Another smile. “Are you a mission creep?” he asks himself. “Or is it a mission creep? Or ‘That mission creep.’” So is there a hint of self-loathing in the title? “No, not particularly. Not particularly.”

Indeed, there’s a quiet sense of joy and release to much of the recordings. Laid down in his native North London, Damian Lewis feels uniquely at home; ‘Makin’ Plans’ has a mischievous quality, while something like ‘Soho Tango’ lives and breathes the illicit side of Central London after hours. Damian and his brilliant band played gig number six of their UK Tour in Manchester at Band on the Wall on Saturday, September 30, 2023 in support of his debut album Mission Creep. Damian opened the show with his first single Down on the Bowery, followed by Zaragoza, Hole in My Roof, My Little One, Soho Tango and nine more songs, not including encore songs! He also played his new songs Pentonville Prison and Traffic Jam. For encore he played a cover of After Midnight and his other new song She Makin’ Me Change. Damian told the audience that the Manchester gig was the best he’s played and since we were boots on the ground, we agree! The energy in the room was amazing!