In conversation with… Deal musician Will Varley
On the dawn of his seventh album, it feels that recognition has arrived
Will Varley by Rob Ashton-Baker
From playing at lonely pub open-mic nights to crazy golf with Billy Bragg in Deal, no one could argue that Will Varley hasn’t done the hard yards when it comes to the music industry. And on the dawn of his seventh album it feels that recognition has arrived.
Almost four years after Will Varley’s Live Again featured in ‘cene Magazine, the singer-songwriter’s name cropped up in talk of 2025’s most hotly-awaited albums.
His seventh album Machines Will Never Learn To Make Mistakes Like Me will be released on May 30th via US label MNRK Music Group, who over the years have been home to the likes of Chuck Berry, Townes Van Zandt and The Lumineers.
Gigging from the age of just 14, Will has been honing his craft relentlessly writing and touring to become one of the country’s most highly-thought-of performers. Having moved to Kent from south London and co-founded the renowned Smugglers Records, he has gone on to sell out headline shows in both the US and the UK – performing in hallowed venues such as the Royal Albert Hall and Shepherd’s Bush Empire – with more than 30 million combined Spotify streams.
The troubadour has amassed a dedicated following from across the globe that boasts the likes of Billy Bragg, Skin from Skunk Anansie and Adam Duritz from Counting Crows. The sheer depth to Will’s writing sets him apart... from the Dylanesque, post-apocalyptic dystopia of 2021’s Dreamland to the captivating and ambitious Weddings and Wars, in which he endeavours to compress the entire history of the world into four minutes. During the Covid pandemic, Will stationed himself behind the desk, producing Hit and Run for multi-platinum artist Eagle-Eye Cherry, while he has opened on subsequent tours with Beans on Toast, Frank Turner and The Proclaimers.
But over the last few months he has been holed up in his ramshackle studio in his beloved Deal, working away alongside long-time friend and collaborator Tom Farrer on his latest offering.
“I wrote these songs in empty dive bars and hospital waiting rooms. I wrote them while sitting in maternity wards, hotel lobbies, motorway service stations and broken-down tour buses in the dead of night,” says Will. We got in touch to find out more…
Hey Will, congrats on the new album. You’ve been writing and playing live for so many years now, do you feel like there was a point where it just went bang?
Never, no, I’m still waiting for that point!
Oh, come on, you’ve just recorded a track with Billy Bragg! He’s the one!
Yeah, he is! But the weird thing is there was never a ‘moment’, it’s just been a gradual thing. Little increments, from the first time that someone came to a gig to see me play, or the stuff I did with Cocos Lovers touring in this old beaten-up red Post Office van –that was just a golden era. Then the stuff with Frank Turner giving me a massive jump up or touring with Beans on Toast. There’s never been one moment. It’s just been a kind of journey – keep going, keep writing songs and keep recording.
Take us back to the start, the move to Kent from London and the beginning of Deal’s Smugglers Records. How did that all come about?
Basically, we couldn’t get record deals, so we just sort of said ‘Why don’t we just say we’re a record label?’. And that was the beginning of it. I remember early on people asking if they could sign to Smugglers, and we were just like ‘Yeah, of course. Just put Smugglers on your record and you’re in!’. That was it. It’s a beautiful thing, Smugglers. I still feel a part of it.
So many people we meet love the ethos of the label and the festival.
That’s so nice to hear. We grew up at that festival, you know, we kind of made our careers and our lives around music together at those events. For me, it’s all very joyful memories. It’s like being at the festival at 5am on a Sunday, trying to serve absinthe while we could barely talk. They’re chaotic, marvellous, wonderful memories.
Across your records, you’ve dipped into numerous genres and eras with your music, but was there one that stood out and attracted the likes of The Libertines, Billy Bragg or The Proclaimers to your music?
No, there wasn’t. I mean, with Billy Bragg, I played a gig in Camden around 2015 and his wife was there, right? So that’s how I met Billy.
But it’s often these unexpected moments, just some random night, often the gigs where you feel like it’s almost, on paper, not even worth doing but you go along and you do it. I remember the first time I met Jay [Beans on Toast]. I didn’t expect much from that show and yet it was one of the best gigs I’d done. I ended up meeting a guy called Dean Fragile, who’s a big part of my story and the Margate thing, and I met Jay that night as well. It’s those little moments that fuel that thing.
So if we move into the here and the now, you’ve just come back from America…
Yeah, I’ve just done a three-week tour opening for a guy called Stephen Kellogg, who’s a singer-songwriter who’s toured with Counting Crows. He’s been at it for like 40 years, a seasoned pro, and he’s coming out to open for me on my tour doing a bit of a swap kind of thing.
You’ve played and recorded in the US a lot now. Of your 120k monthly listeners on Spotify, what’s the split between the UK and the US?
Actually, there’s a lot of people in Germany, as well as the UK and the US. It’s kind of all over. I do love this, this thing [Spotify] that just sends your music out around the world, I think it’s really cool. But it’d be nice if there were a few more quid per play.
For people who’ve never heard Will Varley, how would you describe your music?
Tough question. I’m really just about the songs. I like lyrics and I spend most of my time just thinking about lyrics. So that’s kind of what I have since I was about six.
So, the seventh album… what can we expect from Machines Will Never Learn To Make Mistakes Like Me?
I think, production-wise, it’s a massive step up for me, this record. Tommy Farrer lives in Margate and is an old friend of mine and we spent a long time on this one in terms of the production and part of it was mixed over at The Albion Rooms with a guy called Jason Stafford, who’s amazing. We put so much time into the definition and the sound in a way that I’d never done before. The album probably took about seven months to make and there’s some cool features on this record. It’s really nice to have Bastille and Billy Bragg. So yeah, it’s my favourite record. But I always say that about every record I make.
The track with Billy is End Times, which felt slightly different to the rest of the album.
Yeah. I kept hearing Billy Bragg singing this particular bit, so I just went and asked him. He came over to Deal and we recorded the vocals in a spare room above The Lighthouse. Funnily enough, Billy was looking out the window and he saw the crazy golf across the road. He was like ‘Fancy a game?’. So we ended up playing crazy golf and the score was 65-65, so I think we need a rematch.
That is an epic tale to tell. Looking back at your history, you’ve done and experienced so much – does it still feel like you’re living the dream?
You certainly start out with this idea that you’re going to take it as far as you can, and then as you go through it you realise how hard it is. It’s not like a film, where you just play a few gigs and get a record deal and off you go. But for me it still feels magic. It feels incredible to me that I still make a living out of it. Playing the shows, recording... and that whole process, to me, is just like magic. And I love being a part of it. As soon as it doesn’t, I will do something else.
INSTA: @willvarleymusic
