Mission Creep

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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. We’re here to talk about the new drama, but as with so many men, his first language is football. Barely have I sat down and he’s chatting footie. Lewis, 51, is still a keen and talented player, who takes part regularly in Soccer Aid matches on behalf of Unicef. He tells me he recently played with Cafu, Brazil’s most capped male player, who is a year older than Lewis. “He’s kept himself in shape. He’s my age, charging around that pitch.” He asks me who I support. Manchester City, I say. And now he’s started on the phenomenal goal machine Erling Haaland. “He’s like a CGI construct. He could be out of Jurassic Park. He’s got an incredible physical form.” It’s so much easier than dealing with the stuff of life. But that’s not what we’re here for. We are talking in a plush recording studio near King’s Cross ­station. Record company assistants flit discreetly about, and a photographer waits to shoot Lewis’s ­portrait. He looks lean and sculpted, in tight jeans, T-shirt, and the kind of ­patterned cardigan that only a man supremely confident in his own style could carry off. He has a piercing gaze and impeccable manners: softly spoken and drily amusing, he also has a fine line in self-­deprecation. I suspect that, beneath the surface, he is conflicted about giving this interview. He has poured a lot into making his album, and wants to do his duty by promoting it, but there are some things he would rather not talk about. 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.”

The Independent and Independent TV today announce the ninth series of Music Box. Hosted by music editor Roisin O’Connor, Music Box brings the latest up and comers – along with some of music’s biggest names – into the Music Box studio to play exclusive stripped-down sets. 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. Today Damian released his debut album Mission Creep! What a monumental achievement for him, congrats! Visit our Gallery here to see the making of the album art and studio photoshoot. Singles released ahead of the album are Down on the Bowery, Zaragoza, Makin’ Plans and She Comes. Upcoming shows include Rough Trade East (includes album signing!) on June 19, Union Chapel on July 11 in London and Mercury Lounge NYC on July 19. Additionally, Damian just announced new September/October UK Tour dates here. Don’t miss out, get your album copy now and enjoy the music! Lewis linked up with one of today’s most exciting jazz musicians, Giacomo Smith, who in turn introduced Lewis to a collection of brilliant musicians, many of whom had played with Smith in the hugely loved and admired Kansas Smitty’s House Band. Lewis formed his band and early shows at London’s Omeara and KOKO gave him a first sense of what leading a band in front of a live audience could feel like. “It helps that the players are all insanely accomplished,” Lewis said. Damian and his brilliant band played gig number eight of their UK Tour in Gateshead at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music (formally Sage 2) on Saturday, October 7, 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.The same can’t be said for his debut. Mission Creep sees him join forces with American jazz guru Giacomo Smith and musicians from Kansas Smitty’s House Band, and proves to be a highly compelling, eclectic endeavour. It is, in his own words, “a sort of bluesy, jazzy, in-the-room, live sounding record”– indeed a lot of his vocals were recorded live playing with the band.

I wanted the album to give a sense of a journey to this point, from busking ‘’til now.” – Damian Lewis I wrote the songs on the steel-string and a bit on the piano and took them into the guys. [The songs] are complete enough that they could be busked, but they’re better with a band. We recorded on tape, and I said to Giacomo who produced it and introduced me to a lot of music, ‘Let’s not do this big, over-produced digitised thing – let’s do something that feels like we’re all in a bar playing together’. Because that makes me feel more legit and authentic, because that’s the way I’ve always played – getting out a guitar on the street and playing in a market square by a fountain, outside the Pompidou. In that regard, it should have that feeling.”

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. 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.” Has the album got a title yet? “Yes. Mission Creep.” I tell him I’m never sure what “mission creep” means. “Mission creep is when you go to war and you invade one country, and before you know it you’ve invaded another. You allow your mission to spread and go where you shouldn’t.” Why that title? Another smile. “Are you a mission creep?” he asks himself. “Or is it a mission creep? Or ‘That mission creep.’” So is there a hint of self-loathing in the title? “No, not particularly. Not particularly.” You may know him as the star of TV shows like Band Of Brothers, Homeland and Billions, plus films like Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, but Damian Lewis is adding another string to his bow in 2023. This week, he releases his debut album, Mission Creep, via Decca Records. Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory were one of Britain’s most feted acting couples. He made his name playing Major Richard Winters in the US second world war TV series Band of Brothers, created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Perhaps he is best known as the former US marine and prisoner of war Nicholas Brody in the espionage thriller Homeland. Lewis seems to have two identities as an actor – in American dramas, he often plays macho military types. In British dramas, he tends to be cast in privileged establishment roles, of which the most obviously privileged is Henry VIII in the TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. Lewis is fabulous as the terrifying yet needy man-baby monarch. As for McCrory, she was simply one of the greatest actors of her generation on stage (The Seagull, Medea, The Deep Blue Sea) and screen (The Queen, Peaky Blinders, Harry Potter). They had been married nearly 14 years when she died in April 2021, aged 52.