But maybe that's not true, because being whimsical is an essential part of my personality and my own searching. Yet on the record's final song, 'Epilogue (Nothing 'Bout Me)', I say you can search all and still not know anything about me, the storyteller.
"On this album, I've looked around at the most normal things in my life: the cowboy movie on my TV, the golden fields of barley beyond my house, and tried to see the subtle stories within them. I'll have to sit and wait and see what happens. I don't know whether to go back to the doom and gloom. But now I don't know what to do next that's the problem. "I didn't want any more confessional songs, and I wanted to put myself in other scenarios. It was all of those factors, and just having a ball." I fell in love with the cliché of moving into a country mansion, which I'd avoided for years. "By the time I made 'Ten Summoner's Tales', that was about having a steady band that I loved and trusted, and having a nice family life. I made the record in the dining room of my 400 year old house in England and we were very happy in that environment and so we filmed the album, and the whole album is on the video - us singing it and performing it, and that's the way I want to present how the album was made - in this lovely environment. "The reason for that is that one of the major personalities on the record is my house. On the reason for making the video 'Ten Summoner's Tales'. 'Ten Summoner's Tales' Promotional Interview Disc, '93 So I thought of my connection with this name Summoner and with the album being an eclectic ragbag of tunes I'll call it 'Ten Summoner's Tales'." So I thought there was a connection, because the album is essentially a ragbag of styles - it comes from everywhere and the only thing that connects it is me. They each tell a story and their all kinds of stories - romantic stories, funny stories, rude stories and they are all told in different styles. The Canterbury Tales which was written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the fifteenth century is a collection of stories told by a group of pilgrims - there's a nun, a miller, a knight, a summoner, a pardoner and they each tell a story. "The title is a mild literary joke because my name, Sumner, comes from the medieval name Summoner and a Summoner was someone who summoned you to court or to see the king. I think the result is that it shows him in a truer light than any of his previous solo albums." "It gives the album a band feel - very close to the feel of the early Police albums. On recording the band with a group he had toured with rather than session musicians. The album artwork does include the first picture of me with a lute, something that would become significant to me in the years to follow." There was nothing more to it than that, and subtitling the first and last songs 'Prologue' and 'Epilogue' was just further mischief. The title was a mischievous conceit linking my surname, Sumner, with the scurrilous character in Geofffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It is this carefree spirit that pervades the album and helped it to become one of my most popular records. There were no grand concepts, no plan, except to have fun telling stories in as many diverse styles and moods as I could think of. I felt inspired to write, and, for the first time in years, with a genuine spirit of happiness. The gardens were beautiful, and walking in them was like walking into a dream. "In 1992 we moved the family out to the country, to a run down manor house built in the sixteenth century that needed some care and attention.