Ren Stedman: Singing in the Rain
As the heavens opened over the Cabaret Stage at London Pride 2016, Ren Stedman apologised for the rain, before wryly admitting that his next song was the appropriately-named ‘English Weather’. After his captivating set, I reached out to Ren to talk about several facets of his life, both as a musician and as a young trans man. In time for Pride 2017, here’s what he had to say.
I first heard your music watching you perform in the rain at London Pride. How was that performance for you?
I always enjoy performing, no matter what the weather, but the torrential rain definitely made this performance a bit more challenging! Despite the actual stage being covered, the rain still managed to find it’s way into my guitar. I do think that the weather impacted on the day, as the turnout compared to my performance last year was quite a lot smaller, but it still felt great to see people dancing along to my songs even though they were getting absolutely soaked.
What does Pride mean to you?
Pride means a lot of things to me, but the main feeling that I have about Pride is the enormous sense of community. Pride always feels like an event where nobody is left out, and that means a lot to me, coming from a town where people within the LGBTQ+ community aren’t particularly accepted or acknowledged.
A lot of trans/queer artists often find the industry boxes them in via their gender identity or sexual orientation — for example, Olly Alexander (lead singer of Years & Years) took to Twitter to express his frustration at his bands album being filed under the genre ‘Gay’. What has your experience of this been, and how do you feel when you’re referred to as ‘a trans musician’ rather than simply ‘a musician’?
In some ways it doesn’t bother me being labeled a ‘trans musician’ rather than just ‘a musician’, as I’m proud of my identity, but sometimes it also feels like people are more interested in my transition than my music. Being transgender is such a huge topic in the media at the moment that it often feels like people want to use my transition as a selling point, as though maybe people wouldn’t even notice me or my music if I wasn’t transgender.
There’s been three years between the release of ‘Mr Worrypants’ and ‘English Weather’. How would you describe the change and progression between these two EPs?
I think that my writing style has changed quite a bit since Mr Worrypants, I’m more conscious of the lyrics and try to be more open and honest in what I’m singing about. I think that instrument wise there’s been a progression, I’ve worked hard over the last 3 years to improve on the instruments that I play, so I think that’s made a big difference to the songs that I produce.
Do you write and record totally solo?
So far I’ve only written and recorded solo. I find song writing quite a personal process, so I don’t know whether or not it would be difficult for me to collaborate in writing with another person.
Which is your favourite song from ‘English Weather’?
My favourite song on the EP is ‘Grow Up’, because it was fun to write something using the banjo. In all of the other songs the guitar is the main instrument, so it was nice to swap things around a bit and have a different instrument as the main focus for a change.
‘What Have I Become’ talks a lot about the difficulties of self-sabotage, is that something you still find yourself struggling with?
I don’t find myself struggling with it anymore, when I was younger I often found myself in a vicious cycle of self destruction that was difficult for me to break away from, and it took a lot of years of looking at myself and my life properly to identify what the real cause behind it all was for me to get on the right track.
It also contains the intriguing line “It seems to me that everybody’s dying except me.” Can you talk me through what that lyric means to you?
It was a thought that I had when I was younger, and at one of the worst points in my life. I remember thinking about all of the self-destructive things that I’d done, and wondering how the hell I was still alive. It was a moment of also thinking about people who had died through no fault of their own, and wondering why I was doing such terrible things to myself and wasting my life trying to end it.
‘Grow Up’ talks about how you “can’t drink the same measures and still feel okay the next day” — something I know I can definitely relate to! What’s your drink of choice, and where’s your favourite place to go for a drink?
I’m a lover of lager, but when I first tried it I absolutely hated it! When I first started playing gigs I was spending more money travelling to gigs than I was earning money from them, so I decided that if I was going to drink it would have to be the cheapest drink, hence the choice of lager. My favourite place to drink is my local pub, I’ve never been much of one to go to clubs because I can’t dance to save my life, so the pub is the first point of call for me.
More seriously, it also discusses how you “focused on people that just waste my time, avoided the problems and said that I’m fine.” I think these are pretty common feelings for a lot of young people. What methods have you learnt to combat them?
I think the main thing that I’ve learnt is about how to respect myself. I’ve wasted a lot of time on people who don’t really care about me, and once I found real friends I realized what a waste of time it was hanging around people who don’t really care if I’m there or not. For a long time I knew that I had problems in my life, but it seemed so much easier to just tell everybody that I was fine rather than talk about it, it almost seemed easier to let myself get wrapped up in how I was feeling than to change it, because getting yourself out of a cycle of negativity can sometimes take a lot of hard work. I think I just hit a point of realization that enough was enough and I had to make something change.
Why did you choose ‘English Weather’ as the title track for the EP?
The last track on the EP is called English Weather, so it fitted anyway, but I thought that the name English Weather described a lot of how I was feeling when writing the songs on the EP. I think that English Weather is how depression felt for me, waiting for things to get brighter but just being bitterly disappointed that it’s always grey and dismal instead.
Are there any other trans/queer artists you find particularly inspiring?
I’ve always found Skylar Kergil quite inspiring, in both his music and how open he is about his transition. In a video on Youtube he speaks about how he will out himself quite frequently, as he passes incredibly well. He outs himself in the hopes that it will show people that you should be proud of your identity and to break down the feeling of gender identity and transitioning being a taboo subject.
What advice do you wish you could give your teenage self?
There’s so many things I wish I could say to my teenage self, but I think that the main piece of advice that I’d give myself is to talk to people. I think I could have avoided a lot of years of how I was feeling if I’d have had the courage to actually talk to people instead of avoided the problems. People underestimate how much talking to people can change a situation, sometimes you have to talk things through to actually understand them yourself.
Listen to ‘English Weather’ on Spotify below:
