The river Stour meanders through the stunning Dorset countryside just 300 yards from Gregory Spawton’s door. Quietly brimming with fauna, flora and fungi, it’s one of the songwriter/ bassist’s favourite spots to meander, too; a place for rumination, or just to catch some vitamin D.
One July day in 2023, Spawton’s constitutional took on extra significance. Excited but a little nervous, he put on his headphones and reached for his Sony MP3 Walkman, then pressed ‘Play’ on the final mixes of tracks for a new album by his band Big Big Train.
The music unfolded, and the mixes were good – great, in fact – across a suite of songs remarkable for even existing, given what the group had experienced over the previous 20 months. “There was a strong sense of catharsis,” Spawton tells Classic Rock. “I had to blink away some tears.”
After a time of calamity, sorrow and uncertainty, Big Big Train’s sixteenth studio album, The Likes Of Us, truly signposted their future.
The band began in 1990 in Bournemouth. Spawton had graduated from Reading Uni with an archaeology degree and relocated to Wessex, and formed Big Big Train – as guitarist and keyboard
