Mumford & Sons revealed that they paid the producer of their debut album “on credit” because no one at the time wanted to sign them.
The folk-rock band’s Marcus Mumford and Ben Lovett appeared as guests on The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X and opened up about the creation of their 2009 debut album ‘Sigh No More’ and how they were about to get it produced.
Released on October 2 2009, ‘Sigh No More’ entered the UK Albums Chart at Number 11 and peaked at Number Two on February 2011. In 2010, the LP was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. It also won the award for Best British Album at the BRIT Awards in 2011. ‘Sigh No More’ also became the third most digitally downloaded album of 2011, selling 761,000 copies in the United States.
The album was produced by Markus Dravs, who had previously worked with the likes of Coldplay, Arcade Fire, Florence + The Machine, Wolf Alice and more. Dravs went on to produce the band’s second album, 2012’s ‘Babel’ which landed the Number One spot in the UK Charts and the Billboard 100 in the US.
Speaking to Chris Moyles, the band opened up about that unexpected success the album received, with Moyles adding: “No one, I don’t think, including yourselves, thought the success that you had from that would ever be even possible in a dream.”
Marcus responded, saying: “I think Markus Dravs did, actually. Yeah. He was really ambitious for it early on, and we all thought he was nuts.”
Lovett added: “You know no one would sign us for that record? We were just like, going out and around, and all the labels who were going to put us out were like, ‘No one’s going to want to put banjos and accordions out there into the world.’ And eventually someone was like, ‘Alright, we’ll give you a development deal.’”
He continued: “And we used that money to go and pay for a great producer.” Marcus added: “We did it on credit. We did it on credit. We paid him afterwards. He took a punt.”
Moyles then asked if Dravs took a “fee or did he get, ‘Do you know what, I’ll do the best job I can…’”, to which Marcus replied: “No, his fee – I don’t know, I’m probably not supposed to talk about this – but I know he delayed us paying him his fee because we didn’t have the money, and then someone lent us the money.”
Lovett added: “It was basically the point being that there was no one, maybe apart from Markus Dravs, who really was like, ‘I’ll probably see that back someday.’ But there was no one around who was like, ‘No one’s crafting this story.’”
Elsewhere, Mumford & Sons are set to release their forthcoming album ‘RUSHMERE’, on March 28 via Island/Glassnote (pre-order/pre-save here).
The LP follows 2018’s ‘Delta’, and has already been previewed with the title track and the single ‘Malibu’. It also marks Mumford & Sons’ first LP as a trio, comprising Mumford, Ted Dwane and Ben Lovett. This comes as banjoist Winston Marshall departed the group in 2021.
In other news, the group have recently announced details of an intimate, live-streamed show taking place in Manchester and played two back-to-back surprise gigs in London.