Mission Creep

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He wrote: “She said to us from her bed, ‘I want Daddy to have girlfriends, lots of them, you must all love again, love isn’t possessive, but you know, Damian, try at least to get though the funeral without snogging someone.” Lewis grew up in St John’s Wood, a well-to-do area of London. His father was an insurance broker with Lloyd’s. His maternal grandfather was lord mayor of London, and down the generations on his mother’s side there is an impressive lineage of aristocrats, philanthropists, shipbuilders and a doctor to the royal family. Lewis was sent to boarding school aged eight, and went on to Eton, the country’s most famous private school. There, he studied drama and learned to play classical guitar. By the age of 16, he had decided he wanted to become an actor and went on to graduate from the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

In addition to sharing “She Comes,” Lewis has also announced a further selection of UK dates in Gateshead, Birmingham, Nottingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Brighton, Manchester and Leeds. Co-Presidents of Decca Label Group, Tom Lewis and Laura Monks, say “We are so delighted that Damian chose Decca. 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. Damian really opens his heart and invites us in. It is a thing of great beauty.”Damian and his brilliant band played gig number seven of their UK Tour to a sold out crowd in Leeds at Brudenell Social Club on Sunday, October 1, 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. I ask if he would like a drink. “I want to drink more coffee.” Does he fancy an alcoholic drink? “No, I can’t drink alcohol today. My daughter is 16 today. Sweet 16. We’ve got a little surprise dinner for her tonight.” How have the kids been? “Amazing. They’re incredible. That’s all I’m going to say about them.” He says he thinks he has said enough about Helen and the family. The album’s origin story begins when Lewis, after leaving school, swapped the rigorous day-to-day regime that had dominated his life for 10 years for something altogether less structured. He took to the road with his guitar and went busking through continental Europe. This experience has stayed with Damian ever since and is reflected in his debut album. Co-presidents of Decca Label Group, Tom Lewis and Laura Monks, said: “We are so delighted that Damian chose Decca. 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.

In recent weeks, just after he announced the new album, he has been pictured with the Kills singer Alison Mosshart in London and New York. I’m thinking about what he said about death being a fertile period. Can he expand on that? “Well, death is oddly ecstatic. Along with birth, it’s the ultimate act of life, and it brings this enormous energy to it. And you carry that energy around with you. However deep and profound your sadness, a new beginning always has an energy to it. And it is a new beginning when your wife dies and you’re left on your own. Life has changed. So there is an energy in that.” While the performances aren’t about to reinvent the wheel, there’s enough here to certify ‘Mission Creep’ as a more-than-admirable passion project. The lush blues sound of ‘Zaragoza’ for instance perfectly blends his whisky-parched vocal with the excellent band surrounding him, while something like ‘Down On The Bowery’ has a trenchant sense of atmosphere. Smith also introduced him to some musicians from his jazz outfit Kansas Smitty, and together they formed a group who have been performing gigs.

Lewis previously performed at Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire last year as well as gigs at London venues including Omeara, Koko, Tabernacle and Hoxton Hall. Here he takes us further inside his debut and how he came to join the likes of fellow Hollywood star Jeff Goldblum in landing a record deal with Decca… Lewis’s album may have been created partly as a balm to a troubled soul, but the songs only sound sad if you view them through his personal history. He says he prefers to leave the lyrics to each song “a ­little bit opaque” to “allow listeners to borrow from it in ways that relate to their own life and experience”. 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” Cary says that the more they explored the story of Philby and Elliott, the more personal it became to them. “It’s about our people, posh white men, and how they’ve endangered the country. And that’s what makes it timely. How their friendships, their clubbiness, have endangered the country. ” Like Philby, Cary went to Westminster. “The two characters cared more about themselves and their club and way of life than the country itself.”