Mumford & Sons are one of the biggest folk-rock acts in the world these days, but they were once so lowly that they couldn’t get a record deal. It was such an issue that they even paid the producer of their first album, Sign No More, “on credit,” according to frontman Marcus Mumford.
Mumford and keyboardist/pianist Ben Lovett recently appeared on The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X and shared the story of making the album, revealing how tricky things were for them at the start of their career, and how producer Markus Dravs chose to temporarily forgo his fee since they didn’t have the money to pay him.
Mumford & Sons Paid Their ‘Sigh No More’ Producer ‘On Credit’
“No one, I don’t think, including yourselves, thought the success that you had from that would ever be even possible in a dream,” Moyles said, prompting Mumford to reply, “I think Markus Dravs did, actually. Yeah. He was really ambitious for it early on, and we all thought he was nuts.”
Lovett then chimed in: “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.’”
“And we used that money to go and pay for a great producer,” Lovett added, with Marcus then explaining, “We did it on credit. We did it on credit. We paid him afterward. He took a punt.”
Moyles asked if Dravs took a “fee or did he get, ‘Do you know what, I’ll do the best job I can…’” and Marcus confirmed: “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 finally 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.’”
Released in 2009, Sigh No More was a slow-burn album, but eventually found an audience and catapulted Mumford & Sons to the upper echelon of mainstream music. Dravs—who also worked with artists like Coldplay, Arcade Fire, and Florence + The Machine—went on to produce the band’s second album, Babel (2012).
Next up, Mumford & Sons will release their fifth studio album, Rushmere, on March 28.
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