Status: Single
Country: UK
Signup Date: 11/30/2005
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Monday, December 14, 2009
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Category: Music
Album Review: Various Artists - The Village (429 Records)
With three stunning Dylan covers to get this little celebration underway, Rickie Lee Jones, The Duhks and Lucinda Williams prove once again that Dylan songs are very often done much better by others than by the man himself. Rickie Lee Jones takes on a sort of Three Dog Night Mama Told Me Not To Come groove to retell the Subterranean Homesick Blues stream of consciousness, whilst Sarah Dugas's stunning vocal on the Duhks performance of It's Alright Ma, may just have us pondering the notion of whether or not this may be the definitive version here. Just when we thought it could get no better, Lucinda Williams turns in a sneerful version of Positively 4th Street with a voice that could just as easily strip paint. Three Dylan covers worthy of listening to over and over.
It's quite sad for Sixpence None the Richer, who have to follow all that, coming in fourth in the track listing. Their take on the traditional Wayfaring Stranger is a subtle version nonetheless, it's just that I'm already in the habit of skipping back to the beginning at this point to hear those three Dylan covers over again, just in case my hearing deceives me.
THE VILLAGE, subtitled 'a celebration of the music of Greenwich Village' offers an interesting look back on the heady days of the Village during its heyday, when this particular area of New York City was a bustling hive of political and musical activity, frequented by the cream of the hip performers of the 1960s including Dylan, Joni Mitchell, John Sebastian, Tim Buckley, Eric Andersen and Fred Neil, to name but a mere handful, all of whom were probably only there in the first place to absorb the influence of those who had gone before them a decade earlier, the likes of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, not to mention another Dylan of the Thomas variety.
Further contributions are from Mary Chapin Carpenter, tenderly delivering her trademark delicate touch to Eric Andersen's Violets of Dawn, Cowboy Junkie Margo Timmins' slick vocal on the atmospheric Once I Was, a faithful nod to the Tim Buckley original and Rachael Yamagata, who emotes through Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now, echoing the much later version that Emma Thompson sobs uncontrollably to in Love Actually, rather than the fresh faced 1969 original.
The only dodgy moment as far as I can see is the unfathomable inclusion of Bruce Hornsby's rather weak interpretation of John Sebastian's Darlin' Be Home Soon. Once a beautifully engaging melody, now a monotonous drone with all of the colour removed, I can only think in terms of Sebastian's multi-coloured die-dyed vomit jacket and matching jeans seen at Woodstock, but in black and white. Not only does this version seem out of place due to its dullness, it's also out of place being the solitary live track, which has Hornsby confessing at the beginning to his audience 'I'm no Tom Jones'. Eh?
With some insightful sleeve notes written by Suze Rotolo, the gal wrapped up warm beside Dylan on the cover of Freewheelin', we can once again enjoy for the most part, some of the most influential songs from arguably the most influential decade in popular music, re-worked here by some of the performers who were standing in the wings, taking note.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Monday, December 14, 2009
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Category: Music
Jochen Roß and Jens-Uwe Popp - The Ten Islands (Independent)
For the most part THE TEN ISLANDS is an instrumental album, but like all good instrumental albums, it includes a handful of songs as well. Joking apart, the songs included on this album do serve to complement the instrumental pieces remarkably well, all three traditional songs beautifully sung by Canadian singer Lisa Winn; The Banks o' Doon, Kelvingrove and Smile in Your Sleep.
The German born musicians Jochen Roß and Jens-Uwe Popp have taken the landscape of Scotland as inspiration for this collection of pieces and have created an album of melodies that successfully reflect the essence of Scottish music but at the same time maintain the integrity of an international collaborative ensemble.
Taking some of Nigel Gatherer's compositions as a framework to build on, the collection of songs and tunes are held together by Jochen's mandolin and Jens-Uwe's guitar, with additional contributions from a wealth of international musicians including double bassist Guido Jäger, Moroccan percussionist Rhani Krija, guitarist Fabian Hink and on didgeridoo, Ulrich Schubert.
I hesitate to say that this album often sounds like a film soundtrack, particularly the sprawling East Parkside, which provides a theme of almost cinematic proportions, highlighted by the fact that it pops up again as a reprise at the end of the album. However, I can't help but imagine this music being used specifically to add atmosphere to a good intelligent movie.
With the additional sounds of the elements, the odd cigarette being lit or a party in full swing, THE TEN ISLANDS pretty much holds itself together as a suite of predominantly acoustic compositions, inextricably linked by a high standard of musicianship and the occasional electric guitar reminiscent of Mike Oldfield's early work.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Saturday, December 12, 2009
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Category: Music
Hedley Jones, the host of the Barnsley House Concerts, which are regularly held at his home in Wombwell, was given the first opportunity to fly the French tricolore above the Wheelhouse tonight, in honour of his French guest; an honour that has up to now been bestowed on predominantly American and Canadian visitors to the venue. Flossie Malavialle's debut was well received by an enthusiastic audience made up of friends and fans alike, all who were well aware of Flossie's exceptionally versatile voice and eclectic taste in songs and songwriters as diverse as the Beatles, Janis Ian and Colum Sands to Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel, with the odd janis Joplin thrown in for good measure.
Speaking to Flossie earlier in the evening I asked the singer about her early influences and what she might have heard around the house in back in Nimes. "Originally, when I was a kid, it was mainly Classical music because my mum was playing the piano and she had a piano in the house, so she used to play all these beautiful pieces. When I was about ten or eleven I was given as a Christmas present the Red album by the Beatles (THE BEATLES: 1962-1966, double compilation) and I started listening to The Beatles. I absolutely love their music and became a fan really. I just love their music so much. Another Christmas, I was very lucky at Christmas, I got a guitar that all my family paid money towards and started playing the songs that I was singing most of the time, which were the Beatles songs and so that's how it started."
With an almost insatiable appetite for songs from just about all imaginable genres, Flossie soon gravitated to the local live music scene in France, joining several bands whose repertoire expansion was necessary entertainment and dancing to. "I got involved in more music with bands in France and started singing loads of different things, variety mainly, stuff that was played on the radio, because we were there to entertainment people and make them dance, so I had to sing loads of different styles of music, which was a fantastic school really, to develop your ear and understanding of how it worked and singing with other people as well, learning how to sing in harmony."
Tonight at the Wheelhouse, starting with the Eagles classic Peaceful Easy Feeling, Flossie soon had the audience on her side with her infectious personality and diverse repertoire. The slower tender ballads such as Keith Pearson's More Hills To Climb and Colum Sands' The Child Who Asks Why were augmented by a more rockier bluesier side of Flossie with interpretations of out and out rockers such as Bonnie Raitt's The Road's My Middle Name and Marylin Middleton's raucous
Wild Women.
It is however with songs of Flossie's native tongue that make the hairs on the back of the neck stand up. As an ambassador of French song, Flossie delivers fine interpretations of French chanson with songs such as La Vie En Rose made famous by Edith Piaf and Les Feuilles Mortes, better known to Jazz lovers as Autumn Leaves, but adopting the French Yves Montand version and most significantly, Jacques Brel's haunting Amsterdam, which opened Flossie's second set tonight.
I asked Flossie whether she felt it was something of a struggle to have songs in the French language cross over into the mainstream anglosphere. "In France we get all the UK charts and all the American charts. Anything you will hear over here, we have in France as well, but the other way around is not true. We have our own French singers and bands as well but you never hear them, or very rarely you get to hear them on the UK radio. I think it's mainly because French as a language is not maybe as well known as English. It's the international language and everybody has to speak it, it's a very powerful language as such, but yes it's true, apart from the older generation of singers like Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel. People over here would have heard these people and Sacha Distel too, I know they were popular in England, whereas the present French people actually singing now in France, you never get to hear them. I think the only one who made it was Vanessa Paradis with Joe Le Taxi and that's a song that people remember."
It was clear tonight at the wheelhouse that the majority of the audience relished in the fact that songs were being sung in the French language and it transpires that this is the attitude of Flossie's fans up and down the country. With two albums celebrating the songs of Piaf and Brel, Flossie explains what it means to have these songs accepted in the UK. "The FLOSSIE SINGS BREL album was released in 2007 and that coincided with a show I did at the Darlington Arts Centre, in the theatre, which was all in French with a mixture of Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel songs. I already had an album of Edith Piaf songs, so I decided to record an album of Jacques Brel songs to complement it. We had to work towards the album so it was ready for the concert. The concert was a sell out, which was really in some ways for me absolutely amazing because the whole evening was in French. The theatre can hold up to 320 people who all came to listen to French music, which was amazing, the power of French music. It was Piaf and Brel, two well known names of the music but really I couldn't believe it. Even the people of Darlington said they never thought that one day a French woman would actually fill the theatre with French songs."
It's not just songs in the French language that appeals to Flossie, who has also recorded songs in English and Spanish. "I think people like to hear the songs in their original language and what they say to me is, we love it when you sing in French, we don't understand a thing but it just sounds nice. It sounds exotic I suppose. I also do a traditional song in Spanish and I obviously tend to explain what the song is about but people do like to hear the song. Once they know what it's about, even if they don't understand every individual word, they do like to know what the song is about and they enjoy it even more."
I suggested that it seems to be reminiscent of Opera, where even though much of it is sung in the Italian language, it appears not to confuse the genre's vast worldwide audience. "It's the emotion, that's what it is and that's the power of music, it doesn't matter which language you sing it in, it's the emotion in the voice and what you can convey through your voice, your instrument basically, that's what it is."
Flossie's sense of humour was not only apparent in her between song patter, but also in one or two of the performance, particularly Kris Kristofferson's Me and Bobby McGee with Flossie's delightfully quirky impression of a stoned Janis Joplin.
Currently a very busy travelling singer, Flossie has just completed a successful tour with Show of Hands, which has brought her to a much wider audience. "I was lucky enough to be chosen by Show of Hands to do their support for their County Towns tour, which started at the end of September and finished last week in Cornwall and so it was absolutely fantastic. We played in beautiful venues, some of them were like a thousand people in there, some two hundred, but the whole experience was great and the guys (Steve Knightley and Phil Beer) and Miranda Sykes who was playing with them on the tour, are really really fantastic people, lovely and selfless people and I was honoured to be part of this whole adventure."
Fulfilling her original plan of travelling as much as possible after twelve years of teaching English full time in secondary schools in the South of France, Flossie has said that she would love her music to take her around the world so that she can discover other cultures, languages, foods and musics etc. With another major tour planned for early next year, Flossie is truly spreading her wings. "I'm flying to France for a holiday, obviously for Christmas with my family and then I'm back for a couple of gigs in the region and beyond in January and then at the end of January there's a second tour starting, this one with Keith Donnelly and I'm going to be singing his compositions. We recorded an album of his songs in the middle of the last tour and with this we are going to be doing the support for Fairport Convention on their Wintour, which starts at the end of January and ends on the 6th March, so another adventure."
Flossie made it clear tonight that the size of her audience makes absolutely no difference to her, whether it's a 1000 seater in Chichester, a 145 seater in Darlington or a house concert in Wombwell, where you know just about everyone by name. The numbers don't matter as long as those in the audience can take something special away with them after a show. "It's fantastic if you can do this. If you can relate to a sentiment in a song then it's great that you can share that with people. It's a whole experience of life in a couple of hours and if people leave the room with a smile on their faces, forget about the credit crunch, what credit crunch?, for two hours then you're somewhere else, dreaming of other things and it's great if we can do that. It's just fantastic to be doing something that you enjoy so much and being able to share it with people who enjoy it as much as you do, what more could you want? It beats teaching definitely!
Finishing with the Edith Piaf classic Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, better known as No Regrets and a final encore of Janis Joplin's Mercedes Benz, this time more sober than the earlier Bobby McGee, Flossie raised her bottle of water, mingled for a while with her audience, then left for a well deserved return to France to be with her family for the festive season, leaving a satisfied gathering once again at the Wheelhouse.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Sunday, December 06, 2009
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Category: Music
Carrie Elkin's speedy return to the Wheelhouse is testament to her popularity around these parts after her first visit to the venue back in August, that time appearing with Nashville's Robby Hecht. Tonight Carrie returned to this popular Barnsley House Concerts venue this time with partner Danny Schmidt, sharing the stage as well as songs from two vary fertile repertoires. Like her previous appearance in August, it was less about working specifically as a duo and more to do with two artists sharing their individual songs with one another.
The opening set was provided by local singer-songwriter Mike Hughes, whose Dylan influenced (On My) Way Back Home recalled the same sort of energy as Bob Dylan's 115th Dream back in the good old days. Popping in for a fleetingly short set before hot-footing it over to Sheffield for a prior engagement, the young songwriter provided an adrenaline fuelled set of self-penned songs including Saviour On The Side and Friends Again, the title of which apparently derives from a suggestion made by someone in the audience here at the Wheelhouse during Mike's last appearance in the Summer.
Mike has been making solo appearances in the area for the last six months following the disbandment of the local band he was involved with. With a strong desire to explore the storytelling element of acoustic music and performance, embracing the precedent set by the likes of Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zandt, Mike brought to the Wheelhouse his own brand of stories told with a clear, confident and assured vocal delivery, not unlike Stereophonics' Kelly Jones, but with the same sort of troubadour spirit as contemporary Americana songwriters such as Ryan Adams and Hayes Carll. Joining Mike for a couple of songs was Wheelhouse regular Dick Bainbridge blowing some harmonica on the songs Lost From the Start and Sweet Rose Mae. Judging by the standard of songs played tonight, the potential for this performer is nothing short of reassuringly positive.
Before tonight's concert I met up with Danny Schmidt in the comfort of the Wheelhouse, whilst Carrie Elkin wandered around the house in her 'jimjams', having inadvertently put all her laundry in the washing machine, taking full advantage of the Jones's kind hospitality. I pointed out to Danny that the Wheelhouse has been possessed by the spirit of Carrie's voice ever since her last appearance there in the Summer. "It's probably reverberating in the walls" Danny suggested, knowing better than just about anybody the quality and strength of that voice, which projects inexplicably from such a small frame.
That voice kicked off proceedings tonight, a voice that was just a strong as usual despite a recent episode of unexpected illness. Starting with Did She Do Her Best, which appears on Carrie's current album THE JEOPARDY OF CIRCUMSTANCE the two artists went on to alternate between each others songs with two outstanding extended sets.
Danny Schmidt wasn't born with an acoustic guitar in his hands and discovered acoustic music quite by accident after forays into completely different spheres of music. I suggested that by the time Austin born Danny came along in the early 1970s, fellow Texan legends such as Lightnin Hopkins and Mance Lipscombe would have been coming to the end of their respective roads. "I remember their names and I remember seeing Townes' name all the time in the listings but at the point that I got old enough to be going to shows I wasn't really into acoustic stuff for quite a while, through my teens. It wasn't until I was about twenty that I really got into that stuff. It was right about the time when guys like Lightnin and Mance were passing away and Townes wasn't there as often, so I never did get to see those guys even though they were playing pretty regularly. I would love to go back in time and take some of those opportunities."
"I sort of worked my way back to it because I was a teenager and I was into heavy metal and 'shredding' as they say, sort of playing lots of notes really fast up and down the neck and that was the kind of stuff that first interested me and I'd go and see all of Eric's (Clapton) shows and read as many interviews as I could and I was into Stevie Ray Vaughan too at the time and both those guys were heavily influenced by Hendrix; they talked about him a lot in their interviews and so I looked into Hendrix and got into him and read interviews with him and he talked about who his influences were.I finally got to Chicago and various guys who had gone electric blues, the first electric guys. Some of those guys like Muddy Waters bridged that gap between the country acoustic blues; they'd started in that world and had turned it electric and that got me creeping back into the acoustic country blues. That's when I discovered Mississippi John Hurt, who just blew my mind, I really loved his stuff and that's when I got myself an acoustic guitar, I was about twenty, twenty-one. I didn't really look back from there. That kind of stuff turned me on a lot more than the heavy metal stuff."
That blues influence in Danny's guitar playing was evident tonight especially in songs such as Better Off Broke and Blue Railroad Train, both of which certainly owe a debt to the old blues masters such as Mississippi John Hurt. Elaborating on John Hurt's story, Danny spoke enthusiastically about his musical hero. "He has an amazing story, he really wasn't a professional musician for most of his life. He cut one B-side track when he was in his twenties back in the 1920s, the track he happened to cut was called Avalon. A couple of musicologist students were travelling through Mississippi, just trying to research some esoteric stuff and they went through Avalon, Mississippi and just stopped at the general store and asked around, assuming he was dead and just trying to get any little pieces of the story or insights they could from any of the old timers and the first guy they talked to said 'oh yeah, you wanna just go ask him yourself he lives right down the street."
Such stories are not unusual even though we have come to know these old bluesmen very well through their recordings. Whilst British blues bands in the 1960s were introducing these old songs to their young audiences, the originators of this music were living in obscurity in the Southern States of America. Danny Schmidt was fortunate enough to come along at a time when much of this music was much more accessible.
During the Nineties however, Danny grew increasingly disillusioned by the music industry and in particular the business end of it, so much so, that he dropped out of the performing scene altogether for some time. "I still waver back and forth on how much I want to be doing it. There's a few elements to it, one is that I've never been that comfortable performing, I'm much more comfortable now than I was early on, it's not a comfortable thing for me to be up in front of people. Some people you can just tell, they just open up and blossom and turn on when they're in front of people, but for me it's a scary proposition and early on, a terrifying one."
"I'm good with people one on one or a couple at a time but when you're the focus of attention it's kind of nerve wracking but that's what you have to do to put a song out in the world and that part I enjoy. I love writing and I love putting the song out there and the only way to do it is to get up there and play it for people and record them. The other element is just the music business part. When you start relying on your art for your living it puts a lot of pressure on the art and takes a lot of the fun and passion out of it if you're not careful it can get out of balance. That balance for me in my dream world would be ten percent business and ninety percent art and the way it works nowadays in the independent grass roots world, it ends up being ninety percent business and ten percent sitting there with your guitar. Probably every hour I'm with my guitar I'm on my computer for nine."
Tonight Danny and Carrie were able to momentarily forget the business end of the music industry and do what they do best, in this case, to share their stories with a small but enthusiastic South Yorkshire audience. With recent songs like Obadiah, Questions About Angels and Been Meaning To Ask, together with older songs Berlin and the Dar Williams song Iowa, Carrie delivered another outstanding performance helped along by the occasional guitar fill and harmony vocal courtesy of her partner and soul mate. Honouring a request, Carrie once again performed a stunning version of Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, which brought out some pretty nice communal singing from the small shoulder to shoulder gathering.
Community singing is nothing new to Danny Schmidt who spent a good part of his younger days experiencing first hand an alternative way of life in one or two of America's surviving communes. "I lived in two different communities, I lived in a place called the East Wind Community in the Ozark Mountains for a year and then I lived at Twin Oaks Community for almost four years and that's up in Virginia. I quit college when I was about twenty-one. I discovered that these communities still existed, they were always a dream. I had a big group of close friends growing up and just had it in my head from very early on that it would be kind of dreamy to buy a farm somewhere and all live together, have houses very near each other and raise our kids together but I didn't realise there was anything that resembled that existed still, so when I did discover that I dropped out of school and spent about a year researching some of these communities before going to East Wind. I was drawn to the self reliant element, that we'd do a lot of things for ourselves, grow a lot of things for ourselves, build a lot of things for ourselves and maintain a lot of things for ourselves, we still interfaced with the outside economy but it's just a more connected way to live, things have deeper value."
Danny became good friends with the young singer-songwriter Devon Sproule at the Twin Oaks Community and later with Paul Curreri, who went on to become Devon's husband. It has to be said that Danny and Paul share a similar style of playing and singing. Danny recalls living in the same community as the young singer songwriter and later with both Devon and Paul in Charlottesville. "I've known Devon since she was about twelve, she was a kid when I moved to the community. I'd just started writing songs and she was just learning guitar and we both decided we both wanted to be songwriters I guess at about the time I left the community, she was only sixteen by the time she left and there was an informal community of musicians in Charlottesville and Paul (Curreri) moved to Charlottesville soon after that and was very quickly incorporated into being close with us."
Living amongst like minded people certainly had its benefits in terms of music and performance and Danny would take part in regular music sessions including 'Neil Young' nights. Danny in fact wrote a song called Neil Young which sounds to all intents and purposes just like an authentic Neil Young song and which appears on his PARABLES AND PRIMES album. "I don't play that live anymore. The concept of the song is that it's sort of a love song, a cosy afternoon with this sweetie and this Neil Young album going in the background and the guy in the song is fairly well distracted by the music, he's probably ninety per cent in the music and just ten per cent with the girl. I always wanted the production on that song to have the Harvest/Harvest Moon vibe in the background with the steel guitar and the harmonica going and so once we were able to create that in the studio the song felt really naked singing it without that."
Other songs however suit that sort of nakedness such This Too Shall Pass, Dark Eyed Prince and Stained Glass, again from his PARABLES AND PRIMES album, all of which featured in the set tonight together with older songs such as McCreary's Pipes from his earlier ENJOYING THE FALL album and Company of Friends from his LITTLE GREY SHEEP album. Newer songs from his current INSTEAD THE FOREST ROSE TO SING album were showcased tonight with heartfelt renditions of Firestorm and the lighter sing-along Swing It Down, proving that much of Danny's repertoire perfectly complements Carrie's in a live setting. I finally asked Danny about the poetic title of the new album. "It was a late addition to the record, the working title was called Serpentine Circle, the song from which the line 'instead the forest rose to sing' came from is called Serpentine Circle of Money and that was the one that I thought pulled the most threads together for the record but in some conversations with a friend I realised it had a sort of sinister sound to it even though the album doesn't. It's a little bit lighter for me and has a little more playfulness than most of mine, they tend to be sort of heavy and weighty and dark."
With six albums to his credit, I asked Danny whether he approached each album differently in order to create a different sound and feel for each subsequent album. "I try to treat each collection of songs in whatever way is most appropriate for them and if that means ending up doing exactly the same kind of production I've done on a previous one I'll do that. If what the songs are calling for is a much more stripped down approach I'll end up taking that approach. I'm not one of those people that writes with a concept for a whole album, it's more I'll look over the last batch of songs and themes will grow out of looking back at them more than conceptualising a theme and then writing songs that fit along that line."
Rounding off tonight's performance, Danny and Carrie each chose a finisher to conclude what turned out to be a landmark performance at the Wheelhouse, which I imagine will be remembered for a long time. Danny chose his song Cleopatra from his MAKE THE RIGHT TIME album, which has a suitable chorus to finish with. Danny then suggested that Carrie 'leave us with something pretty', which she duly responded to with a fine unaccompanied Amazing Grace admitting that 'sometimes it's hard to leave a space like this.' She's not on her own with that thought.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Friday, December 04, 2009
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Category: Music
There are I imagine, many reasons why you might want to attend a Cathryn Craig and Brian Willoughby gig. The standard of musicianship would no doubt be one of them, then there's the unmistakable tone of Cathryn's voice, which would be equally relevant. It may be just the fact that you've been lucky enough to have met these two musicians previously and know only too well how warm, friendly and totally approachable they are. For me, it's all these things and more. Even if it's only the chance to hear the duo perform Accanoe live once again, a song that has haunted me from the moment I first heard it; that in itself would make it well worth coming along to one of their gigs for.
Tonight I spoke to Cathryn and Brian backstage as their support for the evening, two multi-talented Doncaster based musicians, Mick Swinson and Stu Palmer, were on stage checking out their sound with club organiser and sound man Rob Shaw. This duo have been playing together for many years in various combinations, bands and outfits around the Doncaster area, one or two of which I have also been lucky enough to have been involved in. Tonight, playing a variety of acoustic instruments, some of which were beautifully crafted by Stu, a local luthier, the duo performed a selection of old songs from a repertoire stretching back over nearly four decades.
With songs ranging from Farewell Lovely Nancy and Mountains of Mourne to Joni Mitchell's For Free (which Mick confessed summed up their career thus far!) and Woody Guthrie's Plane Wreck at Los Gatos, better known as Deportee, Mick and Stu have returned to fine form, after many years of being hidden away from the public eye, playing together for the pure pleasure of playing. Two friends and musicians doing what they know best. The audience tonight recognised their intuitive playing and welcomed this revival of timeless songs and the chance of seeing them on stage once again.
One thing we can almost certainly depend on when you attend one of Cathryn and Brian's gigs, is the regular starter That Ol’ Guitar, which is as familiar to their set now as snow is to Eskimos. Even the slight technical glitch of losing Cathryn's guitar momentarily couldn't spoil their performance of this song, which showcases Brian's familiarity with his fret board from the start. Filling in with the old Janis Joplin unaccompanied song Mercedes Benz, whilst Brian and Rob sorted out the sound problem, the set was resumed with the beautiful Alice's Song, written especially for Brian's niece. When once asked to appear in public to help publicise the song, Alice refused on the grounds that this young spirited girl would like to some day be famous for something, but certainly not for being Autistic. So good is this song, that it has been recorded no less than three times; by Brian on his solo album BLACK AND WHITE, then by the Strawbs, complete with a Robert Kirby (Nick Drake) string arrangement and again now on Cathryn and Brian's new album CALLING ALL ANGELS.
Cathryn and Brian come from quite different musical backgrounds, Cathryn from the mountains of Virginia and Brian originally from Northern Ireland but for the most part growing up in and around London. Brian spent much of his formative years around London's burgeoning club scene, witnessing first hand some of the musicians who would subsequently go on to become household names. "When I was a kid there was a club in Hounslow, West London, it was called the Zambezi Club and I saw Rod Stewart's Steampacket with Long John Baldry, Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger; Jimi Hendrix, several versions of The Yardbirds, in fact one fantastic Yardbirds thing, and I consider myself really lucky to have seen this, Jimmy Page was playing bass and Jeff Beck was playing guitar and the usual guys, Jim McCarty and Paul Samwell-Smith. It was an absolutely fantastic incarnation of the band."
"But then I started going to the White Bear in Hounslow, which was run by the Strawberry Hill Boys, which was Dave Cousins, Tony Hooper and Ron Chesterman and every Thursday I used to get my homework done and then run up to the White Bear to watch people like Ralph McTell and Wizz Jones and David Bowie used to come to down."
Brian spent twenty-six years with the Strawbs with whom he contributed to several albums and numerous live appearances around the world. It was through his association with some of the members who eventually became Strawbs that he got his first start in the music business. "I always loved the Strawberry Hill Boys music, songs like Josephine For Better Or For Worse, that kind of era of song. I went to Regent Street Polytechnic and I was on the entertainments committee there and there was a lady that I'd seen at the white Bear, Maureen Kennedy-Martin her name was and she had this American guitar player and I thought he was fantastic this bloke, everything I wanted to be. So I booked her to come to Regent Street Polytechnic with this American guitar player and play and she turned up without him. A friend of mine, Trevor Wallace his name is, he said 'he plays guitar' poking me in the back and pushing me forward and Maureen said 'oh really, would you like to play with me?' and that's how I really started."
Cathryn and Brian's set is usually predominantly self-penned material with the odd traditional song thrown in. Cathryn's version of Dixie conjures up the authentic feel of Civil War balladeering much more than Elvis could possibly have done as part of his famed American Trilogy. As a Nashville session singer Cathryn was given the opportunity to blossom as a songwriter in her own right, despite early setbacks in confidence. "The thing that working in Nashville did for me was that it made me terribly frightened to do my own songs because the quality and calibre of songs I was singing from these great hit songwriters was so exceptional. I thought mine aren't anything like that and it took me a while to get out of that mindset of Nashville songs and I still appreciate that three minute movie that they can do so well there, better than anywhere else I think. But it never was me, artistically."
The subject matter of some of Cathryn's songs are specific to her native Virginia, written with a keen eye on the State's historical heritage, tackling such subjects as Slavery in Mr Jefferson and the plight of the Native American in the stunning Accanoe. The Pocahontas story when told by a native Virginian comes over as quite different from the tale Walt Disney tells. Accanoe is one of those exceptionally powerful songs that comes from a tradition of material detailing the true history of the Native American as opposed to the much more common romanticised version. Cathryn is one of those rare performers who can convey the spirit of this part of American history, and in this song, provides an authentic chant throughout the chorus.
"The Accanoe chant is something that just came to me in a dream." Sadly, even though the song was written as a heartfelt commentary of this period of American history, not everyone was keen on the language used in the song, particularly the descendents of the people at the heart of the story. "I did talk at great length with many different members of the Chickahominy Nation but none of them liked the song" Cathryn explained. "They didn't like some of the words that I used; I used a quote from John Donne that said 'a victory for righteousness the savage's defeat' and it's such an insult they say, to use the word 'savage'. The other thing was 'sharing the pipe of peace', 'never happened' they said. For me it was just an image basically to say there was friendship there and they lived in friendship together, I didn't mean literally that they were passing the peace pipe around, it was too cold, they were inside under bear skins and so forth."
"We tried to get some of the drum circle from the Chickahominy Nation right there where my daddy lives when they were here in London celebrating the 400 year anniversary of Jamestown, to come and play on Accanoe. They honestly didn't have the time but also until I was willing to change the word savage, they were not willing to do it."
It's a little disconcerting to imagine any song being changed due to the disapproval of the listener. Wouldn't it be like asking Monet to remove an offending water lily? I asked Cathryn if she ever seriously considered changing the lyric at all? "I tried, but it's a quote, it's not something I made up, I wish I had made up something so effective as victory for righteousness this savage's defeat, but it's an old old quote and I just thought it so typified exactly what was going on politically at that time. It was in the hate filled era right after Guy Fawkes and people were really on this crusade to convert the world to Christianity, and some people have never stopped that, but the first target was the new world."
The song still stands out as one of the most passionately performed songs in Cathryn and Brian's set and despite the excellent version to be found on the new album, nothing captures the spirit of this well-intentioned song than a live performance of it, which was received by a silenced Rock audience tonight.
Brian opened the second set tonight with a couple of guitar pieces including the sublime Fingers Crossed, the title track from his instrumental album. Such sensitive playing is a world away from Brian's earlier work with a variety of bands that came along in the Punk era, which we discussed earlier backstage. "Immediately before I joined Strawbs I was in a band called No Sweat, who were the first signed to Pete Townshend's Eel Pie record label, we were on the pub circuit around London basically and we could hardly get arrested to be honest because the whole punk scene was there all encompassing. There was a wonderful band called Meal Ticket who in a different era would've been like The Eagles to be honest, they were all fantastic musicians that they just got totally eclipsed by punk music, which killed everything stone dead. Then of course in came the keyboard era, you know people writing songs with one finger stuck on the keyboard somewhere, so it was difficult times for guitarists."
"At that time we had three bands running at the same time, Strawbs and then High Society, a sort of Thirties pastiche band. All the songs were written by John Ford and Richard Hudson and Terry Cassidy, who was The Strawbs tour manager and sound engineer. We used to dress up and slick our hair back, apart from Huddy who didn't have any, erm, then concurrently we had The Monks and Nice Legs, Shame About the Face, which was a hit. We made an album which went gold in Canada, a DJ in Toronto picked up on it and off we went, great fun."
Now a sort of elder statesman of British guitarists, Brian demonstrates a much more delicate approach to guitar playing, which perfectly complements Cathryn's strong vocal delivery. The more delicate the song, the more emotionally engaging the performance. Written especially for 'wonderful audiences', These Dreams has one of those dreamy melodies, rich in atmosphere and texture, which exemplifies this notion perfectly.
Other highlights of tonight's set were the title song from the duos last album I WILL, a handful of songs from their latest release including Two Hearts, One Love, the traditional Rejected Lover featuring the voice of Mary Hopkin, Brian's erstwhile musical partner on the recorded version, as well as the title cut Calling All Angels.
Finishing off with a medley featuring River Deep Mountain High, Cottonfields and the old Bob Wills Western Swing classic My Window Faces South, with Brian's impressive slack key guitar break, the duo performed a final encore of Genevieve, bringing a memorable evening to an end.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Monday, November 30, 2009
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Category: Music
A bit of a coup for the Black Swan Folk Club tonight as they staged one of only eleven shows in the maiden tour of Chris Wood's new project, Handmade Life. The very thought of putting together a musical combo comprising guitar, trombone, cello and drums was at first slightly disconcerting. What kind of din would this combination make? With Chris Wood at the helm however, those initial doubts were soon diminished. After getting things underway with a couple of solo performances, The Grand Correction, which is one of the featured songs on Chris Wood's new album HANDMADE LIFE and The Cottages Reply from his previous album TRESPASSER, Chris introduced his fellow performers to the stage as 'the best band in the world'. The band comprised of fellow Imagined Village musicians Andy Gangadeen on Drums and Barney Morse Brown on Cello as well as Robert Jarvis on Trombone. Speaking after the show, Chris told me "The guys are unbelievable; I wasn't sure it was going to work, drums, trombone, cello, voice, guitar. Everyone's got great ears on them, everyone's listening like crazy to each other, and it's just all working, it's coming together and it sounds gorgeous."
Chris Wood has become something of a national treasure over the last decade, particularly on the English folk music scene, not least for his voice and his delicate musicianship on both guitar and fiddle but also for his uncompromising political views and honesty on stage. It has to be said, his popularity has taken far too long to get off the ground really, whilst working on a wealth of notable music projects, collaborating with the likes of Martin Carthy, Andy Cutting and more recently, the beast of a band known as The Imagined Village, the 17-piece multi-cultural revue from which the majority of this current band derives.
The Arts Council contacted Chris with a view to funding a project of his own choice, to which Chris promptly got the ball rolling on Handmade Life. I asked Chris whether he first came up with the material and then went in search of musicians to perform that material or whether it was the other way around. "It was something I'd been thinking about for a little while; I'd already done a couple of gigs with Barney and Rob on trombone and cello before, I'd gone to Belgium and done a gig, a double header with Martin Simpson and I thought this is no good two blokes playing guitars, how boring is that? So I thought I'd let Martin do his thing but I thought what I'd do is change it up a little bit and so I asked Barney and Rob if they'd come."
Initially, the thought of drums and trombone brought to mind a potential racket over Chris's particularly sensitive guitar playing but it was surprisingly mellow, with an even distribution of sound throughout the set, largely due to fellow English Acoustic Collective member Rob Harbron's clever touch at the sound desk. Chris explained why he chose such an unusual combination for both the album and the tour. "The reason for those instruments is because a lot of the songs are stories, they're narratives. Now, I love harmony, I just adore harmony and I don't think you can really be sung a story by more than one voice, you can't really hear a story from several voices, I don't think you can, some people do but I just don't. I knew I wanted harmonies but I wanted to keep the narrative integrity. So think of it not as trombone and cello but think of it as three voices, and then it works."
The new album is not officially due for release until March 2010 but Chris has decided to make it available to those who attend these concerts. "I think it's incumbent on us to favour the people who actually come out to the gigs. There’s so many other things that the people tonight could have done, but they didn’t do those, they got off their arses and they came to see a gig and that’s fantastic.”
Chris Wood is enormously proficient in the art of storytelling and over the last few years has managed to do this with his voice alone, that and a very distinctive guitar style reminiscent of Martin Carthy, but the new material is enhanced by some intuitive musicianship and inspiring arrangements, which is largely down to the cohesive playing ability of Chris's new collaborators.
"They take these songs and they make them incredibly muscular. When you’re on your own you can do so much but when I finish off as a soloist, these lads pick it up from there and sculpt it. It's the same thing but it's just sort of bigger and deeper and richer. Don't ask me how they do it, they’re not playing what I've told them to play, that’s the whole point, that was the big agreement at the beginning, they're not parts, they're not playing parts that I've told them to play, they're playing what they want to play. I mean I'm just really relishing not being in control, everyone's just doing what they want and it's turned out better than I could possibly have dreamed."
The best examples of these arrangements are of course in the material from the new album such as Turtle Soup, Caesar, My Darling's Downsized and No Honey Tongued Sonnet, all of which were introduced during the course of two exciting sets tonight. Utilising these musicians on established arrangements from Chris's back catalogue was also evident on songs such as Albion. When Chris appears solo these days he has taken to humming the haunting opening section to this song in lieu of a fiddle, or in this case two fiddles. Drummer Andy Gangadeen took command of the two fiddles tonight to keep the metronomic ticking clock pulsating throughout the performance of the song.
On the traditional songs, Chris pointed out that he is often conscious of the presence of the spirit of his predecessors who perch upon his shoulders when performing such material. "If you play these songs the same each night, you tend to get a spectral dig in the ribs." Cold Haily Rainy Night, previously re-invigorated by The Imagined Village with Chris taking the lead, still had the spirit of Martin Carthy watching over his shoulder even though he's not quite dead, as the present band provided yet another fresh arrangement to this old night visiting song.
Opening the second set, Barney Morse Brown performed Katherine Wheel, a clever cello solo incorporating some equally clever EZ sampling foot work, which had heads at the back of the room searching in vain for the other players. Robert Jarvis's own party piece came at the end of Spitfires, when he did a pretty convincing impression of the fighter aircraft coming in to land, with only the aid of his instrument and an expert trombone embouchure.
Johnny East is a song written by Hugh Lupton, no stranger to Wood's repertoire. His award winning lyrics to the 'chip shop song', One in a Million, brought both Wood and Lupton to the attention of a much wider audience when they picked up the BBC Folk Award for best original song in 2005. Introducing another Lupton song, Chris explained why he loves this writer's songs so much "He's a really lovely writer; when he writes a story or a lyric, you always get a really strong sense of who the story is being told by. It's a thing that Phillip Pullman is always going on about, who is telling this story, where are they standing, what are they writing."
Finishing off with another song from his award winning TRESPASSER album, Summerfield Avenue, Chris and the band, by this time joined by Rob Harbron on concertina, rounded off one of the most inspiring concerts this reviewer has witnessed at the NCEM for a good while, a notion agreed upon by the many who thanked organiser Roland Walls as they left the venue tonight.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Thursday, November 26, 2009
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Category: Music
With Halloween and Guy Fawkes night out of the way, we once again find ourselves pondering over exactly when the Festive Season actually begins. Towns and cities across the nation hire an assortment of b-list celebs to throw the switches at their costly light shows from around mid-November onwards, whilst the predictable TV adverts start sometime in July, a few months after our shopping lists began to be ticked off from around early January time. Let's face it, Christmas is almost a year round event.
Joking apart, I'm not entirely sure when the Christmas themed gigs should begin but I must say if they involve songwriters of the stature of Thea Gilmore, they could start in February for my money. With the release of her new seasonal album STRANGE COMMUNION at the beginning of November, it was logical to get the current Wintertide tour off the ground as soon as possible in order to fit in all 23 dates before Christmas Eve. Refusing to use the 'C' word this early, the singer-songwriter insisted that the release is in fact a winter-themed album rather than a Christmas record specifically. After the show I asked the Oxford born songwriter whether a Christmas album was just a natural progression once the covers album (LOFT MUSIC) and the live album (RECORDED DELIVERY) were now out of the way. "Oh I don't know, I personally had to do a Christmas album just because I'm daft about Christmas. I haven't got much competition, there's only Bob Dylan who's released one this year, so hey."
Curious to discover why Thea chose this specific period in her career to release a seasonal album I enquired whether motherhood might have had something to do with it and if so, to what extent her song writing might have changed with the responsibility of having a child. "I remember when I was pregnant, my friend who is also a singer-songwriter, Kathryn Williams, had just had a baby and she said to me the one thing about being a parent is that it doesn't necessarily change you or your views on things but it makes you think that you were viewing the world in black and white before you had a child and then suddenly colour appears in your vision. It was a perfect way of putting it. I don't think having Egan my son has changed the way I look at things very much but it has heightened everything and made everything much more intense and I've got a bit more clarity now."
Here is a songwriter who actually loves the Festive Season for herself and not just for the kids. Considering herself a cynical person eleven months of the year, Thea reserves the right to be 'squishy' in December and confesses that she makes a special effort to celebrate it and so why not celebrate it with a themed album and tour? "I love Christmas, I'm a real Christmas freak so it sort of made sense; I had a song that I really wanted to put on an album and so it just made sense to explore ideas and themes of winter and just enjoy my feelings about it as well."
The song in question was Midwinter Toast, which was inspired by a comment made by the radio presenter Janice Long who had said to Thea "I'm so fed up of playing the same old shit on the radio at this time of year; why doesn't anyone write Christmas songs anymore?" Rising to the challenge, Thea went on to write Midwinter Toast but at the time, had nowhere really to put it, therefore it was never actually recorded. 
Tonight at the Duchess, as the stage lights dimmed in anticipation of the main part of the show, after an excellent opening set by Rod Clements (Lindisfarne, Jack the Lad), a recording of Scott Walker crooning a seasonal Winter Night segued into some atmosphere-setting jingle bells music as the tall slim figure of Thea Gilmore emerged from the back of the stage. Standing still before the audience, waiting for the last note of the 'twinkles' to fade out, Thea Gilmore greeted her audience with a distinctly chirpy 'hello'. Starting with her own version of Yoko Ono's Listen, the Snow is Falling, Thea and her band, which consisted of husband Nigel Stonier on guitar, Rod Clements also on guitar and 'mistress of the four strings' Fluff on fiddle and tenor guitar, played a seasonal set made up of songs from the new album, with one or two familiar things thrown in for good measure.
The opening song from the new album Sol Invictus, features the Liverpool-based choir Sense of Sound, who recently re-joined Thea once again, this time on stage at a concert in Birkenhead. "It's actually very difficult singing in front of a choir, leading a choir, not least because there were 20 of them on stage with me and I'm trying to make sure that they all know what I'm doing and when I'm doing it but more than that, it's an incredibly emotional thing to be part of such a huge group of human voices; to be in the middle and in front of them all and I find it really difficult not to cry when I hear this. The venue is a very echoey venue anyway and it's almost church-like and so it's just incredible and you get this massive wave of emotion coming over you." Tonight, Thea sang the hymn-like song unaccompanied, which in a way, was just as haunting as the recorded version.
The two non-original songs on the album were very carefully considered. "Originally when I thought about making a seasonal album I thought it was going to be half covers and half originals but the originals kept coming. I started writing them in May and I just didn't stop really and so it came a much more original album than I thought it was going to be. The two songs (Yoko Ono's Listen, the Snow is Falling and Elvis Costello's St Stephen's Day Murders) I couldn't leave off. The St Stephen's Day Murders is such a rollicking good laugh and it illustrates a family Christmas so beautifully."
I suggested that the song bore similarities to Fairytale of New York, which Thea was only too willing to concur. "I think we accentuated that by having a male voice on it as well, we're doing it as a duet and it just works like that, it's just fun." The other voice on the song is radio presenter Mark Radcliffe who is known for his appreciation of all things Pogues. "The reason that came about actually does have a connection to Fairytale of New York because a couple of years ago he (Radcliffe) asked me to be Kirsty MacColl to his Shane McGowan. He's got a band and he was doing a gig around Christmas and so I went and did that and we laughed all the way through it, it was just hilarious. When I heard St Stephen's Day Murders and knew I wanted to do it, I thought it would be great as a duet. He was the first person I thought of and I was very lucky that he said yes."
The single from the album That'll Be Christmas, is as infectious as any classic Christmas song we all know and love and I suggested with lines like 'Hot wine and a Christmas tree, the Sound of Music and the family, faith, hope and gluttony, that'll be Christmas', it's just everyone's idea of Christmas these days. "It really is; Nigel is a much more positive person than I am, I'm very definitely the pessimist in this relationship. He put all the nice positive bits in and I was the faith, hope and gluttony girl."
There were a few exceptions to the seasonal theme of tonights concert with a few well chosen songs from Thea's back catalogue, Old Soul and Wrong Side from her LIEJACKER album, Mainstream from AVALANCHE and Saviours and All from Thea's so called 'breakthrough' album RULES FOR JOKERS. Audience participation was called for in Oh Come On encouraging her audience to join in on the contagious refrain by suggesting that Gordon Brown should win the next election 'oh come on!' or the fact that Simon Cowell has made a major contribution to music 'OH COME ON!' etc. The participation obviously grew more enthusiastic as the suggestions got more bizarre.
For the encore, Fluff paraded a makeshift dartboard amongst the audience inviting someone to throw a magnetic dart at it. The board was divided into ten sections, each containing the title of a 'cheesy' Christmas song, which Thea promised to sing. Wizzard's I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day was the chosen ditty thanks to York's chosen Bullseye contestant in the audience.
Christmas is about children, it always has been and it always will be. As the last of the remaining audience left the building, and as Thea and the band packed away their bits and bobs ready for another long drive through the night, little Egan ran around the dance area, which had just been cleared of chairs. "Sorry about the noise" Thea laughed as her son ran around, presumably having slept through mum's set. "I considered myself to be totally un-maternal and not interested in kids at all and it's no secret that Egan was a very happy happy surprise and I expected myself to feel hemmed in and locked down but in fact the opposite happened, Egan has just opened my eyes to so much and has just made my life so much richer."
Thea Gilmore hopes that STRANGE COMMUNION will be re-visited at this time of year for some time to come and I for one will probably do just that. It's just sometimes nice to hang up ones cynical cap, if only for a couple of weeks in December.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
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Category: Music
It was a decidedly chilly Humberside evening when I arrived at the Tap, formerly known as the Tap and Spile, an unassuming high street pub on the corner of Springbank Avenue and Norwood, not far from Hull's city centre. Live music can frequently be heard coming from the small stage at this venue, most often on a Tuesday night when open mic sessions take place with regular especially invited guests. I arrived at the venue quite early, recognising it by the abundance of posters pasted to the windows outside, some of which showed the distinctive profile of tonight's guest. Once inside, I found an almost empty bar room, save for the obligatory lone bearded figure seated in a corner, having an early evening beer whilst poring over the discarded sports pages, before calling it a day. The dimly lit stage in the corner had already been visited by tonight's guest, judging by the well travelled instrument cases stacked at the back, the owner of which must have gone off in search of a warm place for a bite to eat.
Shortly afterwards, a slightly windswept Bob Cheevers returned, along with his road companion, the former Cutting Crew bassist Dominic Finlay, who would be providing tonight's support as well as joining Bob on stage throughout his two sets. Wearing his trademark floral Nudie shirt, which incorporated brightly coloured embroidered flowers set sharply against a black background and bejewelled in various pieces of turquoise set in silver, the Memphis-born singer-songwriter sat with me in a quiet corner to discuss his new album, the current tour and the story so far, including his formative years in Memphis, his move to California and subsequent drug-infused hippie lifestyle; his gravitation to Nashville 25 years later and finally his recent move to Austin, Texas. With a familiar deep Southern drawl, Bob talked candidly about all of this before taking to the stage in order to perform two sets of songs covering the various periods of his long career in the music business.
Joining Bob and Dominic on stage was local guitar hero Dave Greaves, who it was alleged had never heard any of these songs before tonight, which if true, proves Dave's credentials as a first rate pick-up guitarist. Starting with the bluesy Texas is an Only Child, Bob eased us into a first set made up entirely of songs from his new release TALL TEXAS TALES, an album that successfully chronicles the songwriter's observations of his newfound home in the Lone Star State. "I moved to Texas not to be a Texas artist, but to be an artist in Texas" Bob explained. "I didn't want them to think I was coming down there trying to be like them, because they're real protective of their art and their style of music and very satisfyingly so. I was welcomed with open arms because my music was really refreshing for a lot of people down there, talking about the Old South and the Civil War stuff that I had written so much about."
Bob was at pains to point out that his infiltration into the Austin scene was more to do with that of being an observer. "These songs over the last two years of living in Texas are more my view of what Texas life is like through the eyes of a Southern boy from Tennessee. So on that ground, the Texans will accept that, because I'm not trying to say I'm like you all, I'm trying to say, I'm really not like you guys and this is how I see you guys."
Texas is an Only Child references many of the things we have come to know and love about Texas. With a nod towards songwriters such as Townes Van Zandt, Buddy Holly and Willie Nelson as well as reminding us of the Alamo, border patrols and 'keep Austin weird' bumper stickers, Cheevers leaves us with no doubt of how he sees Texas. There are however, some moments in Texas history that the natives would rather not be reminded of and interestingly enough, Cheevers was in fact persuaded to change some of his lyrics before the song was submitted to tape.
"The second verse originally was about the Branch Davidians and David Koresh, the FBI and burn 'em up and Waco, and also about the Kennedy assassination. When I played the song originally for some of my Texas friends they said 'you need to change that second verse' and I said 'why?' and they said 'we really don't want to hear about that stuff'." Although persuaded and not forced, Cheevers did re-write that verse and he told me tonight that he was actually glad that he had done so in the end.
The Stephen Doster produced TALL TEXAS TALES was recorded in a very short period of time, the whole thing from start to finish coming in at just over a week. "We had two days of rehearsals, about three hours each day and then went into an analog studio, not a digital studio as we'd done with the last bunch of albums. We did it old style. Everything on the record is live to tape, singing and playing. We spent two days recording ten songs and then spent two more days adding overdubs, string parts and keyboard stuff and then spent four days mixing, so eight days from start to finish."
The songs are accomplished on record despite the seemingly rushed approach and they transfer to live performance particularly well. It would have been nice to hear the distinctive Tex-Mex accordion on Luckenbach tonight, which on the record recalls all the sweat and gristle of Jerry Jeff Walker's Lost Gonzo Band, but Dominic's bass lines and Dave's flirting guitar fills brought the feel of central Texas to Hull so well, that you could almost taste the enchiladas.
Several hand picked songs from the new album featured in the first set tonight, including Budget Motel and the intriguing Turquoise Heart with a West Texas Smile, bringing a further taste of West Texas to the Humberside audience. Dedicated to some of the older members of his audience tonight, Grown Up People shows a maturity in Bob's most recent writing. Some of the grown up people in the audience were possessed of diploma standard heckling skills, especially the woman who insisted on telling the band how good they were between each song. It all made for an enthusiastic and living atmosphere nevertheless. By far the strangest song on the album and also included in Bob's set tonight was Mushroom Cloud Lil, the unlikely subject being that of the father of the atom bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, and his suicidal daughter. By Bob's own admission, the songwriter is in possession of a vivid imagination 'being a Scorpio only child' and admits he has no idea where these things come from. "I'd like to disclaim responsibility for this song", Bob pleaded during the introduction.
With two more songs from the new album, Is It Ever Gonna Rain and One Good Rib, Bob took a break from the stage with the band being reminded once again how much the most prominent heckler was enjoying the show.
Bob Cheevers embarked on his musical journey in the 1960s having been born and raised in Tennessee. Emerging from a musical family in Memphis, his mother being a professional musician, Bob spent his formative years in the city immersed in a rich musical heritage. "My mother was a radio star in the 1920s and 1930s and the radio station was in the basement of the Peabody (Hotel), so she'd go down there every morning before she'd go to work and do her piano playing and singing."
At the time Bob came along, Memphis was a hotbed for the rising stars that would soon become household names, not just in America but throughout the world. Sam Phillips' Sun Studios would frequently be visited by the young Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison, the 'Million Dollar Quartet' that would influence the young Cheevers and his contemporaries. But Bob's musical spirit was somewhat dampened by a mother who was only too aware of all the pitfalls inherent in the music industry. "My mother really discouraged me in many ways from the music scene because of the heartache that she had gone through and the difficulty that she knew that everybody goes through being in the music business; so rather than encourage me to use my talent, which she knew that I had of being a singer - she also gave me guitar lessons for a little while until my math began to fail, and then she ended those - therefore she discouraged me."
Bob had to wait until much later for that particular calling to manifest itself during his late teens. "For me when I was young and when Elvis and those guys blew up in Memphis, it was larger than life and for me it was something that was impossible to go for. A lot of my friends saw that as an opportunity for them to look at themselves and possibly get into that field but for me it didn't work that way until I got to College, which was 15 years later. I borrowed a friend of mine's guitar and I started writing songs and we had a little band, then people started saying 'wow, you're a singer'."
"I moved to California after college and went to work for Capitol Records and I gave some songs I had written to the lady in their publishing department. She was playing them one day when an independent record producer was in the office and he heard my voice and said that's the voice I've been looking for. So this magic thing happened and I got this major label deal. It all sort of blew up for me in a good way."
The young Cheevers was drawn to the magnetic pull of pop music during this period and like many a young singer at the time, he saw opportunities in the emerging commercial world of 'bubblegum', that is, manufactured pop groups found in the likes of Bobby Sherman and The Monkees. "The guy who heard my voice at Capitol's publishing company was a record producer and when he found me he had already found this other group of guys that with his help, formed the group called the Peppermint Trolley Company. Over the next few years of all of us being under his direction, they had a falling out with him and he reformed the band with me and three other guys. We went on to continue to make records with him and had more hit records. We never performed; we did radio stuff, interviews and some TV stuff but we didn't go on the road and perform, even though we'd had some hit records."
Having sung with the Peppermint Trolley Company, most notably on the theme song to the hit TV series Love American Style, it didn't take long before the pull of the stifling world of commercialism turned Bob's head towards the counter culture, with its well documented experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs and a desire to discover what the songwriter was capable of writing. "We were a manufactured band and they told us what to sing and what to wear, what to say. I was happy doing that, I was young and dumb, but then my wife and I started smoking pot. Remember this was in the 1960s in Southern California, it was called the Summer of Love and we became hippies; we started taking LSD the way everybody in our circle was doing and it profoundly changed my life. Among the many things it did, it gave me a reason to look inward and to find out what I had to say and talk about and I started writing completely different songs, more from the heart and certainly less about what that producer had wanted me to write about."
Cheevers didn't arrive in Nashville until 25 years later. "My publisher had been pitching me in Nashville as a writer and as an artist, because my songs were much more Country than they were Pop, whereas I had been in the Pop field in California and by then I had gone long away from that. We moved out of LA, lived on a ranch up in Northern California and I started really writing for myself. When that happened it was yet another increment of change and they tended to be more Country."
Tonight at the Tap in Hull, I spoke to a couple of people who had not until now encountered Bob Cheevers and both said the same thing to me afterwards, that Bob reminded them of Willie Nelson. Bob makes no effort to hide the fact that Nelson is one of his musical heroes. "Every time I sing somebody says 'you know who you sound like?' and now people are saying I look like him, so he's a hero of mine because of what he's done with his career and how he's handled himself as a person. I know a lot of people who are good friends with him, I haven't met him yet, and they're very protective of him. I think I'll meet him one of these days but not until he's ready to have me included in his circle of people, but it may or may not happen. I'd like for him to do a few of my songs though."
Willie Nelson may not have recorded one of his songs yet, but Bob has had his moments of success as a songwriter, albeit in a spooky way. One of his songs, Big City Gambler, was reportedly on a pile of songs ready for Elvis to record just before he died. "I missed the boat on that, but Johnny Cash also recorded a song of mine, so did Waylon Jennings and all three of those guys are dead. I know it's a joke, but now people don't want to record my songs for fear of the death curse."
The curse was not apparent when out of the blue, Johnny Cash asked Bob to open for him during the Country singer's very last tour. "When I was 15 we had a little combo that won a talent show singing a Johnny Cash song, Big River was the name of the song, 40 years or however many years later for him to say would you come support my tour, it was like God speaking. Every night backstage, he was a giant man, it was like he was seven feet tall and he wore this long coat and he was always very nice. He'd listen to our set and we'd talk about stuff; I told him about winning the talent show and he said 'that was very nice son' (laughs)."
Bob's second set tonight was made up of songs from his impressive back catalogue including I Need To Slow Down and Memphis Til Monday from TEXAS TO TENNESSEE, Once in a Lifetime Ride from WE ARE ALL NAKED, River Gonna Rise and I Saw the King from GETTYSBURG TO GRACELAND and New Forest Rain and Plans to Meet in Paris from Bob's last album FIONA'S WORLD.
Despite tonight being very much Bob's gig, he showed just what a generous musician and performer he is by leaving the stage midway through his final set, whilst inviting the brother of guitarist Dave Greaves up to perform a couple of songs. The brothers sang together on Michael Greaves' autobiographical My Heart Will Sing Along as well as Joe and Audrey Allison's classic Jim Reeves hit He'll Have To Go, proving that the local Hull music scene has a lot more to offer than tribute bands and karaoke. Rounding off the night with an older song called Popsicle Man, which Bob dedicated to his son, who he described as 'an astronaut, who's up there now', I was left with one of Bob's favourite sayings, I don't know if these stories are true, but they certainly happened to Bob.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Sunday, November 15, 2009
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Category: Pets and Animals
The Regent Hotel is perfectly situated in the centre of Doncaster and provides an ideal setting for a major charity event both in terms of its location and its own musical heritage. The Hallgate/South Parade junction was heaving with traffic at lunchtime today as motorists slowed down to witness the last few remaining hours in the life of the Gaumont Theatre right next door. As diggers of various sizes reduced the old place to rubble, the ghost of Lonnie Donegan was no doubt felt by some of the older onlookers, recalling the night the Skiffle King recorded My Old Man's A Dustman live on that very stage in 1960, the recording of which was released as a single and which went on to sell over a million copies. Then there was the theatre's relationship with The Beatles who played there no less than three times in 1963 before Beatlemania stormed America. There was an air of sadness as I watched the bricks fall to the ground heralding the end of an era.
Adjacent to this old theatre is the Regent Hotel, which over the subsequent years has served as temporary accommodation for most of the performers who have appeared on the Gaumont stage in its heyday. My mother worked at the hotel for a while in the early 1960s and vividly remembers the Beatles stay over. The Abbey Road Bar in the basement is testament to that special relationship between the family who owns this hotel and the world famous artists who appeared next door. Today however, the Regent Hotel was playing host to a very different sort of music and for an entirely different purpose. The destruction and devastation of this neighbouring theatre cannot possibly compare with the awful events that played out in Pakistan four years ago, when an earthquake struck the country, destroying many communities and taking thousands of lives. Today the local folk community came together to raise the profile of the AHS Foundation charity and to raise funds that will be used in various ongoing endeavours to help those affected by this terrible Earthquake.
The charities' fundraising co-ordinator Eileen Myles joined me before the concert, where she brought me up to date on the progress of the work being carried out in Noon Bagla, supporting those communities devastated by the Earthquake, with aid for over 12,000 people in Kashmir. Seated in one of the windows overlooking South Parade, Eileen spoke passionately about the devastation caused and of the inspirational spirit of those affected and of the humility found in the people who are now offering their help and support.
I was keen to find out why Eileen chose the folk genre as the basis for this concert. "I was brought up with folk; from being twelve years old I've been listening to folk music and the thing about people I find, generally people who are involved in folk music do care. The two things I'm most passionate about in life are providing healthcare for these people in this village of Noon Bagla and Folk Music and so why not combine the two?" Why not indeed.
The first artist to arrive this afternoon was Clive Gregson. The running order and start time had been slightly adjusted to accommodate Clive who had another engagement in North Yorkshire later in the evening. I caught up with him just before his set and found him both relaxed and talkative. He seemed only too glad to be able to help on this occasion. I first of all asked him how he feels about charity concerts. "It's interesting because down the years, charity events on a local level can be chaotic and very poorly organised and although well intentioned, as functions and musical events they can be quite poor. I always try and make sure that it's something I'm interested in and something I'd like to help out with. I'm always positively inclined, but I always try and make sure it's going to be reasonably well run and that just because it's a benefit or charity event, I still think that people are parting with money and they still need to see something that's worthwhile and good." With Hedley Jones at the sound desk and Eileen Myles and her team at the helm, Clive had no such worries today as the whole event went superbly well.
The MC for the today's event was Jonathan Duffield who introduced each act and kept the audience up to date with various announcements. Clive Gregson's most recent CD release is a Best Of covering his solo years and this afternoon he performed some of the songs included in this retrospective album. A well respected singer-songwriter, Gregson appears equally at home with up-tempo rockers such as Robert Parker's Barefootin' as he does with soulful ballads such as his own Touch and Go and Home Is Where the Heart Is both from his much loved and much missed duo period with Christine Collister. Having moved to America in the early 1990s and now based in Nashville, Gregson has moved in the right circles, hooking up for a while with Nanci Griffith who recorded Gregson's I Love This Town, which he played this afternoon to an attentive audience. After consulting with the audience about what they would prefer, a song by either John, Paul or George? Gregson finished his set with a totally acoustic version of George Harrison's Here Comes The Sun.
Representing the younger end of the folk scene was Katriona Gilmore and Jamie Roberts who had hot-footed it over from Barnsley Market, where they had been performing during the afternoon, playing for shoppers and providing them with something slightly different to shop to. Katriona joked that after following Clive Gregson at a festival a couple of years ago, he was becoming 'consistently the best support act we've had.' Performing songs from their debut album SHADOWS AND HALF LIGHT Katriona and Jamie brought to Doncaster their own brand of gentle folk ballads, fiddle tunes and self-penned material such as Jamie's So Long and I Don't Want to Say Goodbye and Katriona's heartfelt Travelling In Time and a homage to an old Stephen Foster song with Susannah. "It’s really good that so many people are turning out to support such a worthwhile cause" said Katriona after the duo's set, going on to say "we feel lucky that we're fortunate enough to be in a position where we can help out."
Ray Hearne was on hand as ever to lend his support to such a worthwhile cause, contributing the poem he wrote about the Kashmir Earthquake Dark of Heartness as a prelude to his set. Ray told me later how compelled he felt to write something after watching the events unfold on TV. "What can you do when you're watching it on the television and you see a thing of such massive proportions as that Kashmir Earthquake? A lot of people who live in Rotherham near me are from Kashmir, so it hit Rotherham in that sense. People collected and people went over to Kashmir to try and help. It was such utter devastation and one of the great tragedies was that a lot of it could've been prevented, so many buildings fell on people, because they were badly designed, badly constructed, cheap materials. Many many people died and they needn't have done and so that added to the tragedy and what can a writer do? A writer has got to write and has got to try and find something; but if you keep at it, keep letting it nag at you and you nag back at it, eventually you can shape something sometimes."
Having released his CD THE WRONG SUNSHINE recently, Ray performed some of the songs this evening including Manvers Island Bound, Melting Shop Chaps and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as well as the beautiful Song For David, still an audience favourite.
Jez Lowe 'dragged a few greatest hits out' tonight, including Old Bones, Taking On Men and Tenterhooks, and as in the case of all performers today, performing totally free of charge. Speaking to me after his set tonight, Jez explained "We all try and do our bit for different causes and different charities and things, but this was something very different but obviously very worthwhile and something that Eileen felt very strongly about so she persuaded me, no bother."
The songs that Jez writes and sings are specific to his County Durham roots and he went on to explain "I was very attracted to start with, with the traditional folk melodies. The traditional folk thing really never died out in the North East of England, you know my parents sang those folk songs, they didn't know they were folk songs they were just old songs, so it was really in the blood of the people up there, a bit like it is in Ireland and Scotland with the Geordies. I really try to emphasise that I'm not trying to write pretend folk songs, they're actually new contemporary songs, but the style is just the way they come out of me really."
Rounding off the event was Doncaster entertainer, performer, comedian and songwriter Steve Womack who brought some of his own unique humour to the proceedings, bringing a smile to the faces of everyone who stayed on until the end of the six hour event. Such is Steve's wealth of knowledge of popular song, he invites the audience to call out three or four random artists and he performs a medley of songs by those artists, whoever they may be. Tonight the random choices ranged from The Beatles to Lindisfarne by way of Shirley Bassey, Warren Zevon and Jedwood, oh and it's a long time since i've heard Cliff's Summer Holiday sang so well in a folk club!
We left the Regent close to midnight after a successful few hours of great songs and music, a good deal of fun and the satisfaction of having been involved in raising funds for such a worthwhile cause. Delivering hope was the message and with the hard work of people like Eileen Myles and the rest of her team at the AHS Foundation, we can rest assured that the message will get through to those who need it most before too long.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Saturday, November 14, 2009
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Category: Music
For the final show in the UK leg of their current tour, Texan singer-songwriter Vanessa Peters and Ice Cream on Mondays guitar player Manuel Schicchi appeared at the Wheelhouse in Wombwell tonight as part of the Barnsley House Concerts series. Once again the Jones family, Hedley and Lynne together with Hedley's sister Sue and Rory the dog, invited a small audience into their home for another intimate evening of fine and mellow music.
Originally from Texas, Vanessa lived most of her life in Dallas before moving to Houston and then on to Austin, one of the world's leading music capitols. After gravitating to Italy and subsequently returning several times to the little town she had fallen in love with there, Vanessa met a bunch of like minded souls in 2004 and started making music together. "I was a student there, almost ten years ago now, and then I started to go back to visit because I liked this little town. Then one of the years I was visiting I met Manuel and the other two guys that form the band (bassist Juri Deluca and drummer Alberto 'Gumo' Serafini) and we all started playing together. That was in 2004 and since then we've been touring and playing together for the last five years, so I use Italy as my home base when I'm in Europe."
Ice Cream on Mondays was the name of the band and Vanessa was only too happy to join them in order to tour and play with them and together they have gone on to record three albums. I suggested that being in a band with three Italian male musicians was the unattainable dream of possibly all the women I know, to which she jokingly replied "It's true, me and three Italian guys is a bit strange but you could say the same for them; it's three Italian guys and one girl from Texas, for a lot of Italian guys that's the unattainable dream."
Completing her UK tour with not one but two consecutive house concerts, the first taking place in York last night and then again in Wombwell tonight, I asked Vanessa about the current appeal of such unique settings, which in all fairness are relatively new in the UK. "We love house concerts; if we could do a whole tour of just house concerts we would, because ultimately they're less stressful and they're more fun. They're more how story telling music is meant to be. Our music is not meant to be a big stage production with lights and dancers, it's just about the songs."
The songs were certainly what it was all about tonight and the duo performed much of the new album SWEETHEART, KEEP YOUR CHIN UP, with an exceptionally gentle touch. Completely unplugged, Vanessa and Manuel lowered their acoustic volume level to minimum in order for Vanessa's voice to cut through. "When I talk I'm a lot louder than when I sing" the singer admitted, even discarding her pick in order to gently brush the strings of her guitar with her slight fingers.
Starting with the opening song from the new album, Vanessa revealed the context of much of the new record, that of Greek Mythology and in particular Odysseus and Penelope from Homer's classic work of literature. On Good News, one of the winged Sirens is used as the basis of her story telling, as a metaphor for some of our current world conflicts. "I'm really interested in literature and so I like the idea of taking these old stories and making them modern" Vanessa admitted and at the same time pointing out that the references are not immediately obvious, "If you download the record off itunes and you never look at the lyrics and you never look at the drawings you might never even catch the mythological references because I never actually say this is the Odysseus song or this is the Penelope song, it's only if you had bought the record that you would know that. So I try to write songs that could go either way."
The characters in such literary stories as The Odyssey appeal to Vanessa in as much as she empathises with the protagonists in their yearning to return home. "I like these characters because these are characters that are not at home and we are never at home anymore, so I identify with the idea of being out to sea and trying to struggle to find your way back." To Vanessa touring and being out on the road has an appealing side to it but there is always this nagging desire to return home. "It is an adventure but at the end of the day you do just want to get home."
Vanessa tells us that home really is Texas, and despite being constantly reminded that her home town was where they shot Kennedy, the songwriter found empathy when she recently met someone from Lockerbie. "We sort of laughed together; this really is a weird world." Weirder still, for me Dallas represents the place where they shot JR, whose brother apparently had fantastically imaginative dreams that play out for much longer than your usual sleep length, but hey, if the man from Atlantis says it was a dream, then it must've been.
With songs like Austin I Made a Mess and Drowning in Amsterdam, the autobiographical element is apparent in Vanessa's song writing, but sometimes the lines between fact and fiction are somewhat blurred. "Some of the songs are totally fiction and some are completely autobiographical and it's up to everyone just to decide, because I will never tell."
Dedicating a good part of her life to touring, I wondered when Vanessa manages to fit songwriting into her busy schedule. "If I'm alone I will write on the road. It's really hard for me to write when anyone else is around at all, even if it's my best friend, I want to be totally alone." With such personal songs it would appear logical to find ones own space and to avoid distractions as much as possible.
There's a big difference between playing solo or in this case in a duo and playing in a full band. I asked Vanessa if she misses that bass line here or that drum fill there when playing in such a trimmed down version. "When you play with the band you do have to follow the letter of the law, if there's a stop coming up you have to stop there because everyone else is going to stop, so the nice thing about the duo is that we are flexible enough that if we want to do something a little bit different with the song we can and it doesn't stress anybody else out." Having said that, Vanessa is always keen to get back with the band eventually. "When we've been playing as the duo for a long time, three or four or five months and then we do have a band show, it's just really fun it's really nice to rock out a little bit."
Vanessa's popularity has grown, particularly in light of the recent video she made with Schicchi, which was entered in a video contest presided over by singer-songwriter Aimee Mann. As runners-up with their take on Mann's single Freeway, Vanessa soon found that the hits had rose from 3,000 to 30,000 overnight, eventually exceeding 100,000. Vanessa is still astonished at the number of hits the video has received. "It was crazy, I was rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, it was like is there another zero over there? I thought oh my God how is that possible overnight." Upon announcing the winners, Mann singled out Vanessa's video as one of her favourites, adding I would imagine, to the good publicity.
During two sets that our host Hedley Jones described as 'sublime', Vanessa and Manuel performed songs from their back catalogue including Nothing I Should Cry About from her debut album SPARKLER (2003), Gone from her first album with the band THIN THREAD (2005), Such Good Actors and Fireworks from her last album LITTLE FILMS (2006) and a whole bunch from the new album, plus no less than three covers, Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart in the first half and Tim Hardin's Reason To Believe in the second with the old Elvis hit (I Can't Help) Falling in Love With You serving as the final encore and therefore the song that rounded off their last UK date in their current tour, before shooting off to Holland, where they were due to be playing another gig in less than twelve hours time. Another indication of their gruelling tour schedule.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Wednesday, October 28, 2009
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Category: Music
Fresh from their appearance on Jools Holland's Later Live, the ten-piece version of The Unthanks utilised every bit of the stage when they appeared at the Duchess tonight, in order to showcase their new album HERE'S THE TENDER COMING. Once on stage, following a short set by regular support duo Jonny Kearney and Lucy Farrell, you sensed that the band had not yet come down from the dizzying heights of appearing on Later the night before with such world class acts as Diana Krall and Stereophonics, along with Elvis Costello, author Nick Hornby and Jools himself. I had some routine enquiries of my own to ask the key members of the band during the course of the night but was more interested first of all to see how some of the new songs translate into live performance. Starting with Ewan MacColl's Nobody Knew She Was There, The Unthanks performed just about every song from the new album with just a couple from their previous releases, Twenty Long Weeks from debut CRUEL SISTER and Felton Lonnin and Blackbird from their celebrated Mercury nominated album THE BAIRNS. Even those songs were given a fresh makeover, especially Belinda O'Hooley's Blackbird, which appears to have been through the Penguin Café Orchestra's mangle, coming out the other side every bit as enchanting as Music for a Found Harmonium or indeed Telephone and Rubber Band. When I first heard Because He Was a Bonny Lad on a pre-release promo, with all its Brian Wilson-like vocal precision, I was worried just how this would transfer to live performance, or whether it would make an appearance in their forthcoming shows at all. Like water off a duck's back, the band performed the song as if they'd been doing it live for years. The introduction of various tuned percussion and the autoharp together with a fine string and horn section not only provides the band's five-piece core with a new sonic dimension, but also brings a new atmospheric dynamic to the band's unique sound. The most notable change in the band was the addition of producer/manager Adrian McNally on stage, who has made the decision to fill the shoes of Stef Connor, who in turn did the same for Belinda O'Hooley almost a couple of years ago. "It was almost needs must really" Adrian explained, "it wasn't really the plan coming into the album, I was just filling boots. I've tried to stay off stage for as long as possible because from a creative point of view as soon as you become involved physically your ability to perceive what works and what doesn't in terms of the overall picture goes out the window because your judgment is clouded by your own insecurities and vanity as a musician in a way that doesn't affect you as a producer." Adrian McNally's decision to join the band on stage as main keyboard player came after many considerations, one of which must have been how to follow in the footsteps of two highly proficient pianists. "I've always felt that the great thing about what Rachel and Becky do, is the honesty in which they sing and perform and it's all about the storytelling. Musically I've always tried to reflect that in terms of ego-less performance and that the story and the song takes precedence over any one of us as performers and in some strange way my limitations as a musician almost aids and abets that in terms of always playing second fiddle to the song and to the singers and if my instrument and arrangements aren't noticed at all, that's the way I want it." 
Adrian has also made a songwriting contribution, providing the band with one of his own songs Lucky Gilchrist, which the band confess is now one of their favourites in the live set, a reason maybe that it was also recorded the night before for the Jools Holland programme, which goes out this coming Friday. "I wrote the song for Rachel" Adrian said, "I wrote it about her friend Gary Gilchrist whose nickname was Lucky Gilchrist who died last year very suddenly, he was around my age actually. The piece of music I put it to had been kicking around for a little while and it came together extremely quickly really." Rachel said that she had written down some of her memories of her friend for Adrian and from this came the song. "I was petrified the first time I played it to Rachel. It's such a sensitive subject." The musicianship demonstrated tonight at the Duchess was indeed second to none, especially in the string and brass arrangements on such songs as The Testimony of Patience Kershaw and the beautiful Anne Briggs song Living By The Water, featuring Lizzy Jones' delicious flugelhorn solo, reminiscent of some of Robert Wyatt's most sublime work. Niopha Keegan is under no illusion how we come to have such great musicianship on the folk scene these days; in her particular case, through the efforts of the Newcastle folk degree course that she, amongst many others, have undertaken. "If anybody studies music and has constant classes every week on a practical basis and learning about music theory every day for four years you're going to improve dramatically. We're given opportunities to play with some of the best players on the folk and traditional music so we're very lucky." The newest member of the crew is Adrian's life long friend Chris Price, who takes care of guitar and bass duties, as well as tinkering with ukulele, dulcitone and marimba and providing backing vocals as well. Chris was only too pleased to climb on board the Unthank ship. "I didn't need asking twice, I was quite willing to do it. It was a great opportunity to work with some brilliant people and to work with my best friends, and that was good enough for me." It would seem a good a time as any to join as the ship appears to be now finally reaching the right ports. After three or four years of highs and lows, the lows being personnel changes and the highs being such things as the band being nominated for a Mercury Prize, I asked Chris, who has flirted with the music industry in the past, whether for him this is now the real deal. "I hope so.. I have nothing to fall back on" he joked. 
For the two constants in the band, the siblings who embarked on their maiden voyage as a duo, before sailing on three very distinct versions of the Winterset, and now with the five-piece renamed vessel, nothing about them has changed one bit. "We still sing in the same way as we've always done and we still look for songs in the same way" admitted Rachel, "but of course it's changed dramatically from singing just with Becky to having a ten-piece band and even this tour at the beginning, we were looking around for Stef (Connor) wondering 'where is she?' Rachel's younger sister Becky goes on to say "It's like the world around us has changed but we haven't." The Unthank sisters have no real need to change and when all's said and done, why should they? They are essentially folk singers in the most basic use of the term. They sing songs from their neck of the woods and in their own very distinct vernacular. "For us it's perfectly natural, we grew up on the folk scene and that's what people do, they sing in their own accents, so coming from where we do there's no alternative, it doesn't seem strange to us and though people point it out, it makes perfect sense to us." The sound of the band has become much more focused on attention to detail, where every stroke of a marimba (or 'dinger' as Rachel likes to refer to it as) or every flurry of the autoharp is essential to the sound of the performance. The string section that Niopha Keegan has made herself very at home within, gives the band the solid base on which to build, especially on The Testimony of Patience Kershaw. Jo Silveston's cello on Lal Waterson's At First She Starts provides the most perfect setting for Becky Unthank's unmistakable and inimitable voice. Aesthetics have been almost as important as the musical presentation itself throughout the short history of the Unthanks musical career. Unashamedly girly, the sisters have paid a lot of attention to their stage presentation and have always taken care to make sure their clothes have measured up to their music. Adrian explains "It's always such a privilege when anyone comes to see us; there are so many things to do with your time these days from a leisure point of view. When an audience comes to see you, it doesn't matter if it's the back end of nowhere or it's on Jools Holland you feel a duty and an obligation be your absolute best all the time." 
With an encore of Betsy Belle, the hidden music hall song on the new album, with its energetic clogging sequence, to which Rachel jumped off stage to perform, the band closed on the title song, the beautifully evocative Here's the Tender Coming, quite possibly now the bands' defining song, since it was chosen to be performed live before millions on Jools Holland's live programme precisely twenty-four hours before this performance. Allan Wilkinson Northern Sky
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Sunday, October 18, 2009
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Category: Music
As the autumn nights draw in and darkness fell early upon the city of York, I walked cautiously the short distance between the car park and the National Centre for Early Music, carefully avoiding the fallen leaves on the ground; hazardous little blighters they are. I approached the old church with its looming bell tower, aware that I was once again being watched by an assortment of mythological beasts, the ones carved into the 12th Century Romanesque porch that is, not the early arrivals for the concert I hasten to add and I soon found myself in the warm and inviting foyer of the converted St Margaret's Church for another in the series of prestigious NCEM concerts organised by the Black Swan Folk Club.
I spoke to organiser Roland Walls in the foyer, who was slightly concerned at the number of ticket sales but still expected a good crowd nonetheless. Katriona Gilmore was carefully arranging the concessions stall, fanning out copies of the SHADOWS AND HALF LIGHT cd upon the table top, whilst avoiding the possibility of upsetting the merchandising bearing the name Jackie Oates, which now includes pretty t shirts as well as the customary CD back catalogue.
The foyer provides an ideal place for social gathering, where friends meet up and re-unite in a spirit of pre-concert enthusiasm. Many a folk luminary has been encountered in this very room over the years including Stefan Grossman, Tim O'Brien, Robin Williamson, John Renbourn, Martin Carthy and most memorably, the wonderful Nic Jones, who was in attendance the last time Jackie appeared here with her former band Rachel Unthank and the Winterset back in 2006. Crikey, was it that long ago?
Tonight I chatted to old pals Katriona and Jamie, two rising talents of the British folk scene, just prior to them scuttling onstage in order to provide the support for the main concert. During their set, Jackie watched intently from the back of the hall, seated over the threshold of the 'green room' and sipping a hot beverage. Isn't it lovely when the main act watches their support and thoroughly enjoys it? Having said that, it would be difficult not to enjoy a set by this young couple, who can often be seen around the festival circuit, whether they be Kerfuffling or Tiny Tin Lady-ing, or whether they be donning their bright red tunics as part of the Frump Tarn Guggenband. Katriona, pronounced Katrina with a silent 'o'; take it from me, I have it on very good authority (her mum), and partner Jamie, play their own blend of contemporary folk, which tonight included the tunes Middle of May/Big Nige, Katriona’s songs Suzannah and Travelling in Time as well as Jamie's So Long, together with a traditional song new to the duo's repertoire, Nothing At All and finally All Along the Barley; providing a captivating start to the evening.
For Jackie Oates, Day 10 of her current tour started in the little town of Cockermouth on the edge of the Lake District and specifically in the Cumberland Pencil Museum, where her bass player James Budden, an artist therefore a pencil enthusiast, browsed the exhibits with keen interest. Tonight though, the pencils were back in their box, the canvasses locked away in the cupboard and the instruments were out on the NCEM stage as we settled down for Concert 10 of the band's current tour. Sharing centre stage with Jackie tonight was long term musical partner James Dumbelton on guitar, mandolin, shruti and fiddle, flanked by the aforementioned artist/musician James Budden on double bass and finally multi-instrumentalist Mike Cosgrove playing all the rest, including keyboards and accordion. Although Roland's initial concerns about ticket sales were probably warranted, all fears were soon dispelled as lots of people turned up unexpectedly to pay on the door, and Roland's team were soon running in and out of the hall with more chairs just as Jackie's first set got underway.
Starting with The Miller and His Three Sons from the new HYPERBOREANS album, the band soon settled into the flow of their set, providing the National Centre for Early Music with some of the sweetest sounds since Emily Smith's appearance there a few months ago. Jackie and the band performed several songs from the new album as well as a couple from her second album THE VIOLET HOUR including the delightful Wishfulness Waltz, a song written by her brother Jim Moray, and just the one from her solo debut of 2006, the utterly gorgeous Lavender's Blue, an old folk song popularised by Burl Ives in the 1949 Disney film So Dear to My Heart. The nursery rhyme has been played about with by many a potential hit seeker over the years but Jackie captures its innocence brilliantly well here, with a simple vocal delivery and steadily building arrangement, pretty much faithful to her recorded version.
Traditional song is where Jackie's heart is and Young Leonard is another in a long line of songs derived from the Lakes of Shilin, popularised by Nic Jones a few years ago and more recently by Martin Simpson as Lakes of Champlain on his award winning PRODIGAL SON album. Jackie's arrangement once again changes location to that of Marsh Green, 'a murky pond in Ottery St Mary' in East Devon, but maintains its engaging narrative and is very much in tune with the concept of an evolving tradition.
As an ardent lover of Cornish music, Jackie recently said during a festival fiddle workshop, that the music of that part of the country is gaining popularity now, largely due to the endeavours of Neil Davey, who she describes as the 'God of Cornish music.' Jackie's passion for this particular strain of Celtic music is almost tangible as the band performed a set of Cornish fiddle tunes tonight, including the same tune that Jackie taught at that very workshop at the Shepley Festival back in May. After sitting through that workshop as a spectator and hearing that tune being relentlessly dissected into each of its component parts, it was a thrill to finally hear the tune with a full band accompaniment.
Jackie described her BBC Folk Award winning arrangement of The Lark in the Morning, from her second solo album as a 'pastoral idyll' before performing this beautiful song tonight, advising the audience to avert their eyes from the normally handsome James Dumelton during the performance. James went on to contort his face throughout the song, vocalising a series of strange Indian mantras, whilst plucking violin strings with one hand and working the droning shruti at the same time with the other. This I assume is probably closer to the arrangement destined for the next Imagine Village album that Jackie has recently been working on.
The surprise song on the new album is Birthday, the old Sugarcubes song written by Bjork. The song has been given a delicious arrangement, which Jackie and the band simply glide through with no apparent concerns, especially in regard to its almost sinister undertones; of threading worms on a string and keeping spiders in a five-year-old girls pocket, not to mention the idea of sewing 'birds in her knickers.' At first the song seems at odds with what you would normally expect from Jackie Oates, but it works tremendously well. If Bjork's lyrics weren't so vividly evocative you would have thought something had been lost in translation. With the confession "it's my hidden love of pop music" Jackie sings the lyrics as innocently as the five-year-old they are about. "It reminds me of my best friend Ben when we were growing up in Stafford" she went on to tell me afterwards.
Taking up the Shruti, a laptop-shaped Indian harmonium, also popularised by Karine Polwart in some of her shows, Jackie sang one of the most heart-achingly sad songs of the night. Past Caring, based on a poem by Henry Lawson, tells of the hardships that women endured in the Australian bush, learned from the singing of Martin Wyndham-Read. Jackie tells of an 'eerie silence' whenever it is performed, and tonight was no exception, you could've heard a pin drop.
Saving the best almost until last, the band performed the infectious title song from the new Jim Moray produced HYPERBOREANS album, written by collaborator Alasdair Roberts. Describing the subject of the song as 'mythical people who dwell in Arctic places beyond the Tundra - a bit like the Lake District', Jackie recited a key line in the song, 'We'll go to our unwed bed, daring to make our ardour', going on to joke "I'd love to say that to someone."
With Dave Wood's May the Kindness as the final encore, Jackie Oates and her band concluded tonight's performance and along with it, probably made some good friends here in York. Having found her voice and her place on the folk music scene with three exceptionally strong solo albums, Jackie Oates can now boast having a tight and engaging live acoustic sound all her own, with a little help from her friends of course, whilst maintaining the integrity of the music she obviously loves.
After the show I found a quiet corner of the main hall to have a few words with Jackie, as the guys from the band, together with the Black Swan crew, began to clear the stage. Seated before me, the winner of this years' BBC Horizon Award was clearly pleased with her performance tonight and although 'giddy' would be totally the wrong word to use, there was a sense that this young girl would just love to jump up and punch the air, if her normally composed character would allow it. Smiling throughout, Jackie willingly fell into a casual and informal conversation about the road so far and the different path choices she has negotiated along the way:
AW: The last time I saw you here was way back a few years ago when you were still with Rachel Unthank and the Winterset
JO: That's right yes AW: I remember that night particularly well because I think you'd just had your prize viola nicked. JO: Oh yes that was horrible; I'd left my viola in the back of my car in Exeter and then the day before we went off on tour my car got broken into so it was quite traumatic. AW: You never got it back? JO: No, I still dream that I'll find it. AW: It's always dreadful being a victim of crime but when it's the tools of your trade and something you cherish so much its awful. JO: It's like losing a limb.
AW: Sorry for bringing that back up. Also that night it was the first time I'd seen you with what can only be described as a laptop harmonium. JO: Yes, my shruti. AW: Shruti? How do you spell that? JO: S H R U T I AW: Ah right, it's an Indian instrument? JO: Yes it's a version of the Indian harmonium and it's taken off now; it's quite popular as a means for accompanying English ballads and things. AW: So you're a trendsetter then? JO: Well I think me and Karine Polwart. AW: Oh yes she's got one hasn't she? JO: I actually stole the idea from my brother so I can't claim all the merit. AW: Okay, well let's talk about your brother Jim Moray or I suppose you still remember him and still refer to him as Doug don't you? JO: Doug, Dug. AW: Our Doug. JO: (laughs) AW: He said in a recent interview that you've been to Sidmouth Festival every year of your life. JO: That's right yeah. AW: Is that true? JO: It is true yes, it was our annual family holiday and it was great because we used to go there and then not see our parents for the rest of the week and just explore the town and the music and it was a really brilliant way of being introduced to folk music and playing and meeting other young people. AW: Well it presupposes that your parents have been into this music for a long time. JO: Yeah, I think they met at Manchester University Folk Club and then they shared a love of Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention and Nic Jones, so we've just been brought up with it. AW: Yeah and of course like you just said, you meet a lot of people in the sessions there and it always strikes me in folk music these days, lots of young artists are in various different combos and they're moving around and changing all the time, is that because they know each other from the circuit? JO: Yes I think so, we've all grown up together so you've got lots and lots of friends and your life changes and people change but your loyalty and your friendship with each other doesn't and it's really nice to see. AW: I think the first time you was on a record was on Jim's first album SWEET ENGLAND and then did CRUEL SISTER with Rachel, then you did your solo self-titled album, was that the germ that made you want to leave the band and pursue a solo career? JO: Yeah, I didn't want to leave the band really, I wasn't ready to leave when I did, but I think I might not have recognised it back then but I was itching to do my own thing. The Winterset really helped me gain my confidence as a singer because I hadn't been singing that long and I was quite shy initially and once I found my voice I was just desperate to be able to sing and do my own songs so I think that triggered it. AW: Of course. Well that was in collaboration with Phil Beer, your first two CDs. JO: Yes. AW: How did you meet him? JO: Totally randomly actually, I used to go to Topsham Folk Club every week when I was a student and someone, I'm not sure who, gave him my mobile number and so one day completely out of the blue I got this phone call saying 'hello, this is Phil Beer, I hear you want to make a demo CD?' and I didn't think I did at the time. So I went along, he's got a little private studio in Exeter and I did a day's recording and never did anything with it until six months later when he phoned up. Show of Hands were having a quiet summer, so he offered to turn it into an album. AW: Right.. JO: He's been so good to me. AW: Well yes and also, I don't know if it's through Phil Beer but you also met Reg Meuross and you've been doing a bit of work with him. JO: Yeah. AW: I talked to him at the Beverley Festival earlier this year and he said that 'Jackie Oates has no artifice and no attitude' and I know what he mans by that, you're not trying to have any image at all, you're just playing the music aren't you? JO: Yeah, yes. I'm quite a shy person really and I just think the songs are so important I’d rather let the songs speak for themselves than add any sort of ego to it, I suppose. AW: Okay well let's get right up to date, your new album just released, HYPERBOREANS.. JO: (giggles) AW: Alasdair Roberts? How did you get to meet him? JO: Oh Alasdair, I discovered Alasdair when I was still with the Winterset; I came across his album and was absolutely hooked and then, again out of the blue he emailed me via Myspace and we swapped CDs and we're sort of pen pals now. He's been sending me recordings of Scottish source singers and I send him Devon music and we write, totally obsessed with traditional songs, so he's been a good friend for a few years. So then I just plucked up the courage to get in touch with him and see if he'd like to donate a song for this album and so he sent me a few and Hyperboreans was one of them. So then he came down to Devon for four days to record earlier this year and it was brilliant. AW: It's a little gem of a song isn't it? JO: Yeah it is. A lovely melody and I just love his use of language and words; he's got a real way of portraying things really vividly. He's also quite quirky, no one else would write a song like that. AW: Well talking about quirky, I mean the album is packed with traditional music and traditional songs and they're all great, but talking about quirky, you do a Bjork song? JO: I do, yes. AW: What made you do that one? (Birthday by the Sugarcubes) That's a great song. JO: Yeah well it's my hidden love of pop music really and it's a song I've always loved and it came on the radio a while ago and I was with my brother around Christmas time and he decided that it would work really nicely as a tango. So that was the arrangement and also I think there's this level of innocence about it which doesn't always come through in her version, aside from the slightly sinister elements, I think it really nicely portrays what it's like to be a five year-old. AW: That's interesting. JO: It reminds me of my best friend Ben when we were growing up in Stafford. AW: Of course the album is produced by Jim. JO: That's right AW: Well the first two were with Phil, how different was it actually working with your brother? JO: Totally different in that we're very close in age and we're close as well; we talk a lot and so he can be as blunt as he wants. AW: There's that understanding isn't there? JO: Yeah, I took a thrashing in terms of my musical ability and what I was doing with my vocals and it really made me think about how I could improve as a singer. So it was infuriating at times but then when it goes well it was euphoric really. We recorded it in his bedroom in Bedminster and we had this little system where I'd turn up and I'd always have to bring him cake to put him a good mood and then we'd record a bit and then we'd go downstairs and watch The Gilmore Girls on Channel 4. AW: Oh great. JO: (Laughs) AW: If you did do something that he didn't approve of or whatever, did he have to articulate that or was it just a look? JO: There were a few times when he just went 'I hate this, I hate this.' But no, he's a very very clever man my brother.. AW: He is. JO: I trust him implicitly and I know that now much more than I did before we made the album. AW: That's brilliant. Okay, I saw you earlier this year at the Shepley Festival and you were doing The Navvy's Wife and you were playing Maggie. JO: Yes. AW: Why are you looking at me like that? JO: Oh 'cause I have to wear a bonnet. AW: Oh yes you do don't you? I remember that. Now that's quite a big production in terms of all those songs, I mean it goes on for about two hours doesn't it? JO: Yes. AW: I was talking to Mick Ryan, I think he was still on the stage and I asked him how long it took to write that and he said 'oh about four days' and then he said 'it took me twenty years to research.' JO: Yes (laughs) AW: It's a mammoth thing and I thought it was great. Do you enjoy doing that kind of thing? JO: I do, I really do. Again Mick is a fantastic songwriter and he's incredible because he doesn't write music and he doesn’t really have any musical knowledge, he's just a very good singer and to think that he could write all those songs, you know, it's just brilliant. AW: He's got a really good sense of narrative though hasn't he? JO: Yeah a really strong sense of narrative and some really powerful poignant stuff going on and again the people in the play are people who have helped me on the way and are brilliant singers who I've learned a lot from and I've had a great time with them. AW: Oh that's good. Well you're at the National Centre for Early Music tonight, who have you got with you? JO: I've got an array of West Country men. I've got James Dumbelton who's my long term musical partner who I've been collaborating with for about three years. I met James in Totnes a while ago and then we've got this accordion player called Mike Cosgrove who James was in a band with and who he's toured with a band called Sin É and the Daily Planet and Jackie Leven, very talented.. AW: I love Jackie Leven. JO: Yeah, and then we've got a bassist called James Budden from Dorset who I met very recently actually at a friends' album launch and then we've got a sound man from Sidmouth.. AW: Well it's a good sound a nice big sound. JO: Yeah. AW: Well it's the first time that you've toured, actually with your own four-piece band. JO: Yeah it's a new venture for me. AW: Okay, well Jackie thank you for talking to me JO: Pleasure. AW: Good luck with the album and good luck with the rest of the tour. JO: Thank you.
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Friday, October 16, 2009
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Category: Music
There was a strange presence tonight at the Maze as we settled down for what was potentially going to be yet another great night at this popular Nottingham venue. The conspicuous figure of Chris A Cummings, aka Mantler, resplendent in white suit and cravat, wandered in and out between the backstage and main concert areas as the room filled with a healthy sized audience. Who is this strange man? Those who had noticed the posters may have thought that 'Mantler' was possibly a local young band, there to gain some useful exposure, but as the slight figure of Virginia-based singer-songwriter Devon Sproule took to the stage to introduce tonight's support, I imagine everyone's perceptions of what a support artist at the Maze should be, were probably challenged.
As the stocky figure of Mantler made himself comfortable at his Wurlitzer electric piano and twiddled around with his Rhythm Ace drum machine, programming in precisely the required beat, which shortly afterwards produced the kind of rhythms associated with cocktail lounge wallpaper music (think Raw Sex from French and Saunders), the audience shuffled nervously. I thought it was a joke at first and that the Maze had inadvertently adopted the comedy fringe roster and was for a second reminded of the early 1970s Mott the Hoople Rock n Roll Circus tour, where the support was none other than the legendary Max Wall.
How wrong. Once Mantler began to sing it all became clear and we were treated to a short set of intriguing songs with a sound reminiscent of mid-period Steely Dan. The Toronto based singer-songwriter is the special guest on this, Devon's current tour and there was no one in the room tonight enjoying this music more than Devon herself and her entourage, who sat enthralled beside the stage. Towards the end of Mantler's set, Devon and her band joined him on stage for a final song before a short break. It only goes to show, you really cannot judge a book by the cover.
Devon Sproule is seemingly never happier than when on stage with her husband singer-songwriter guitarist Paul Curreri. Why they are not a regular duo I have no idea. I have seen these two artists on several occasions over the past few years and I've always been touched by their closeness on stage. Once in Manchester, they actually shared the same chair whilst performing a love song. Tonight, Curreri was happy to take his place as one of the musicians in Devon's band, together with Euan Rogers on drums and Andy Whitehead on bass.
With no introduction, Paul Curreri eased the band into the traditional song Weeping Willow with some emotive lead guitar motifs, the song originally from arguably Devon's best album to date KEEP YOUR SILVER SHINED. The album was represented by a further couple of songs, both of which would have required a note had they been missing from the set, Old Virginia Block and 1340 Chesapeake St., as well as the beautiful autobiographical title song itself, one of Devon's defining moments and on this occasion augmented by Chris Cummings' harmony vocals and electric piano. Stop By Anytime was also present in the set and it quite possibly could've been the reason some of the audience were here tonight, Devon having performed the song on Jools Holland's Later show a while back.
For anyone familiar with Devon Sproule's work over the last few years, most of her fifth album DON'T HURRY FOR HEAVEN, would more than likely be very familiar. Most of the songs have been in her live repertoire for a while and some of the songs have been available as recorded demos on the celebrated Valentine's Duets, which have been available as free downloads via Paul Curreri's website for a good while, most significantly the title song from 2007 and the couple's version of Black Uhuru's Sponji Reggae from last year's Valentine's Duets compilation. These recordings are a delightful insight into how this couple works, especially on Hoagy Carmichael's Two Sleepy People as well as the recording entitled etc, which is basically a Paul Curreri commentary, accompanying himself on guitar, as Devon makes popcorn, which pops and splutters in the background.
I first heard Don't Hurry For Heaven this way and was pleased to see it appear on Devon's latest album release, not just on the album but as the title song. It contains one of Devon's best lines 'So if you love me even half as much as you love your old Martin, you should be practicing on me just about every…', which was conveniently amended tonight to address Curreri's 'Tele Reissue', his guitar of choice.
Devon's guitar of choice is a vintage 1954 Gibson ES125, the 'love of my life after my husband', which she put to good use tonight. During a brief silence after being called back onstage for an encore, a member of the audience called out 'time for a Plea For a Good Night's Rest?' to which Devon and the band willingly concurred. The song, from Devon's third album UPSTATE SONGS, a significant album that saw the emergence of a truly original artist after a brief two album outing under the single brand name of 'Devon', still remains an audience favourite and was performed beautifully well tonight, augmented by Rogers' atmospheric percussion and Curreri's intuitive guitar accompaniment.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Sunday, October 11, 2009
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Category: Music
Just when my belief was being challenged by the abundance of poorly attended gigs in my part of the country, my faith in human kind was restored temporarily as the narrow corridor that runs between the front bar and the concert bar to the rear of The Maze in Nottingham began to fill with an assortment of characters, all eager to find a decent seat in the house as Eilen Jewell and members of her fine band sound checked up on stage. The air grew thin in the narrow cavernous corridor, the walls and ceiling of which were plastered with posters of the venue's previous triumphs, including the likes of Diana Jones, Martin Simpson, Steve Forbert, Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, Hayes Carll, Laura Veirs, Nick Harper, The Move and the list goes on; all from quite different musical backgrounds but all defined by their quality.
I was particularly pleased to see such a crowd at the Maze tonight, which made the night even more exciting than it was potentially guaranteed to be. Boston-based singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell took to the stage with her regular band consisting of Jason Beek (drums), Jerry Miller (guitars) and Johnny Sciascia (upright bass) and appeared to enjoy the banter that such an audience brings with it. It was guitarist Jerry Miller's birthday and so a party atmosphere was most definitely on the cards.
With sound checks out of the way and with bums on each and every seat in the house, plus the wall of standing figures at the back, silhouetted by the lights from the bar, I saw my way through to the backstage area and was introduced to Eilen by her drummer Jason Beek, who had guided me through to the backstage area. Once in the 'green room' I was face to face with the young singer-songwriter and set about my routine enquiries just as a series of strange rumbling and gurgling sounds emitted from the buildings heating system, providing a curious soundtrack to the interview that followed:
AW: This is not you're first time in the UK?
EJ: True, I think this is my third time. AW: Originally from Idaho? EJ: That's right, yeah. AW: I read somewhere recently that you were asked to name your favourite place on Earth and you said Idaho.. EJ: Yeah. AW: Can you tell someone from the UK what it's like to go to Idaho? EJ: Well Idaho is kinda unusual I think because most people in the US don't know where it is. There's not that many people who live there and it has the most designated wilderness area per square mile, more than any other state outside of Alaska and Alaska's as big as half the US anyway, so it's a pretty good contender. It's more wild in a way than Wyoming or Montana, those two places are the places that most people think of when they think of ranches and mountains and open space big sky country, but Idaho is that way but even more so, but it's great because no one's heard of it. It's like my own little secret, that's how I feel about it. AW: Well I think you'd be surprised, a few people in the UK have heard of it but very few of us have actually visited it, so after this you may get a big influx of visitors from the UK. EJ: I should watch what I say uh? (laughs) AW: Well you chose the path of a singer-songwriter performer, so that's obviously going to take you out of Idaho and you soon found yourself in Santa Fe, New Mexico. What took you there? EJ: I moved there when I was 18 to attend college, I went to St John's College and I graduated in 2002. It was in Santa Fe coming towards the end of my time there that I got into performing music at the farmer's markets there. AW: Did it have a thriving music scene there, or did you make it? EJ: Well there was a pretty good music scene in Santa Fe that I feel like I never really tapped into because I was too shy to really get on a stage at that point and I was just doing busking and strictly the farmer's markets so, I think maybe the music scene might be a little stronger now than it was back then. There's some good music that happens there and definitely some good busking. AW: You then went on to record your first album? EJ: It was a little while after that, about three years it took me to get from Santa Fe to LA back to Idaho, back to New Mexico and then to Boston. AW: So it was a real round trip wasn't it? EJ: Yeah, oh and before Boston it was Great Barrington in Massachusetts, out in the western part of the state, in the country. AW: So you'd had a lot of living by then, you'd done a lot of travelling around and your first self-released album BOUNDARY COUNTY came out, some nice songs on there it's a nice sort of low-key album.. EJ: Thank you, yeah it is pretty low-key. AW: ..and it did set up what was to come, you definitely found your voice on the album, it wasn't as if the second and third album changed dramatically, you still had that essential Eilen Jewell sound. The one think I must talk about on that first album, you're not known to be an overtly political singer-songwriter but on that album you did record The Flood, which you didn't pull any punches with that. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I think Hurricane Katrina herself got let off lightly on that song, you did put all the blame where it belonged on the slow to respond government. Did you feel compelled to write that song? EJ: I did, I felt like that song essentially wrote itself and it demanded to be written and be heard. It was a very passive thing for me I felt and I'm not trying to just get out of being blamed for writing something so scathingly political but most of it was written by just reading newspaper articles about what was going on there and a lot of the lines in the song are just simple descriptions that come from first hand observers of what was going on there. So pretty much verbatim; I took some liberty with what I wished could've happened to the leaders that failed so badly and seemed to be so apathetic to the people who were suffering there but other than that it was pretty much just from newspapers. AW: I spoke earlier this year with Sid Griffin whose sister actually works with an organisation down in New Orleans to re-house some of those affected and I asked him how it was going and he said it's going okay but not as fast as they'd like to, so maybe with Obama settling in and getting his feet under the table something might be done there now? EJ: I hope so, because we were there recently and although it looked better than when we were there a couple of years ago, it still looks like, in certain parts, just like a war zone really, and that was a long time ago. AW: It was a long time ago. EJ: I can understand that things would take time, I know it was a really massive thing but it just felt to me so much like that the leadership at the time just didn't show that they cared, maybe they did care, but it didn't feel or look like they did care but hopefully that is a thing of the past. AW: Well it's good to have a song like that because it just shows that there are people out there that do care and they're watching what's happening down there, but I suppose a lot of your problems over there have gone now. EJ: I hope so. AW: You've had two albums since then, the album in the middle your 'difficult' second album, LETTERS FROM SINNERS AND STRANGERS, I thought you finally found that jazz sound which I actually love, especially on High Shelf Booze, a great song with the clarinet sparring with the guitar; you like jazz don't you? EJ: Oh yes some of it, I haven't listened to as much of it as I have blues of country. I like Billie Holiday, she's one of my favourite performers ever, I always think of her as a blues artist but everyone else seems to think of her as a jazz artist but really it has both of those things going on. AW: I think she rarely sang straight forward blues it always leaned towards jazz. I know you do a smashing version of Fine and Mellow and I first was introduced to that song by seeing that piece of footage, they say that Bohemian Rhapsody was the first ever pop video but people ought to look at that piece of footage with Billie Holiday, it's a black and white film and she's seated, she looks quite relaxed although a little bit nervous as well, and she's surrounded by the cream of jazz players of the time, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, did you see that and is that where you got the idea to sing the song? EJ: No, I actually just saw that on this tour. AW: Oh really? EJ: Yeah, a friend of ours over in the Netherlands showed us it at his place and I'd never seen it before. It was like in the 1950s maybe? Later on in her career? AW: Yeah. EJ: I think so. I fell in love with that from.. I think she recorded it earlier than that and I mostly listen to her earlier stuff and that's kind of where my heart is. I always loved that song and it always stood out to me and I didn't know that she wrote it until recently and then I pieced it together that all my favourite songs of hers are the ones that she wrote. AW: She was such an under-rated songwriter. EJ: She really was. God Bless the Child and Strange Fruit, didn't she write Strange Fruit? AW: Yes, that's astonishing that song, would you consider doing that? That's a little bit heavy that song. EJ: Strange Fruit is heavy yeah, maybe I could pair it with The Flood and really depress people (laughs). AW: Do them as a couplet (laughs) EJ: Yeah (laughs) AW: Well your new album is out and that's got a much more contemporary feel although it's quite rocking in places. You do one of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' songs Shakin' All Over and you do quite a faithful version of it, you've maintained the iconic guitar riff throughout; did you have that in mind as a jamming song with the band and it just fit or is it something you do love, doing that song? EJ: Oh I really do love it and it just kind of happened and in a way the new record SEA OF TEARS was actually formed around Shakin' All Over because the folks at our label Signature Sounds heard us perform it at a festival and we were just doing it for fun. We just kind of fell in love with Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and we’d been listening to them in the van and we thought Jerry would sound great doing the electric guitar part on that and we thought maybe it would be fun hearing a female interpretation of the song, there's no one that we knew of had really done that. So we started doing it live just for fun and when our label heard it, the folks there were saying okay, you really have to record that on the next album. We were kind of shocked and we said 'really, are you sure?' I mean so many people have done it and it was already a big hit but they insisted, not in a pushy way but in a flattering way, no it’s a really great version and you should do it. Then we thought that we can't really very well just have all these slow paced country songs on there and then randomly Shakin' All Over, and it worked out well anyway because we wanted to gravitate a little more towards the vintage rock and roll stuff. We were already naturally doing that in our live shows, so we put down I'm Going to Dress in Black by Them and that fits in really well with Shakin' All Over and Sea of Tears is inspired by The Kinks; we’d been listening to some of that kind or early 1960s, mid 1960s rock, I love that. AW: The Kinks are fabulous aren't they? EJ: They really are; they're just to me like the pinnacle of rock and roll. AW: Dave Davies had that nasty sounding guitar, he was one of the first to do it and you couldn't go out and buy a guitar like that, he used to stick knitting needles into his amp to get that sound, this is what they used to do. EJ: It's amazing and now everyone kinda imitates that, the Punk scene was going for that sound. AW: We'll just talk briefly about your side project, you got involved with the Sacred Shakers, which is a kind of melting pot of Western Swing, Bluegrass and Gospel music of course, there's the Gospel thread going right through that.. fabulous album. How did you get involved with that? EJ: That was the brainchild of Jason Beek, the drummer in my band. The Sacred Shakers, this is a little known trivia fact, actually pre-dates my band and in a way is what made my band come together. Jason had this idea to start a country gospel brunch every Sunday at a local pub in Boston and he wanted to get together all his favourite musicians from the area, which he did and we would just play gospel songs every Sunday and that went on for a couple of years and that's how I got used to playing with Johnny Sciascia on the upright bass. At that time I knew that I liked playing with the band but I didn’t really have a set band, I was just experimenting with different people, I didn’t really know the sound that I wanted. I knew I had to record all these songs that I had written and so Johnny, because of the Sacred Shakers was a logical choice because we were familiar with him and we knew we loved his playing and then Johnny recommended Jerry Miller the guitar player, and there was Dan Kellar the violin player who is in the Scared Shakers and we asked essentially a mini version of the Sacred Shakers to do BOUNDARY COUNTY to record that and from there, that's become my band. It's a lot of fun but we couldn't keep doing them because this band started touring so much so I guess that's the thanks you get from us, for helping us form. AW: It's nice to fall back on though isn't it? EJ: Yeah, it's a fun hobby; it works out pretty well because the other Sacred Shakers can't tour as much as we can so when we go home we tend to do a show or two with them. We've only done a couple of out of town gigs. It's very much like gospel the way Hank Williams or the Reverend Gary Davis might have made it. AW: Well Gospel has the best harmonies. EJ: Yeah, we have a lot of harmonies on our record too and you know, we try, none of us are really trained singers so we don't know exactly how to perform the perfect harmonies to the rules of harmony or whatever, but we have fun with it, live especially and the spirit of gospel comes through for us. AW: Finally, I noticed that you had two signatures on your guitar at one point, I don't know if they're still there, Loretta Lynn and Lucinda Williams.. EJ: Yeah and there's a third now.. AW: Really? Oh I'm eager to find out.. EJ: The new arrival is Mavis Staples, she signed it over the summer. AW: I've seen Mavis play. EJ: She's amazing. So I got my three gals on my guitar. AW: So briefly sum up what it is about those three gals that you feel particularly inspired by. EJ: I guess to really over simplify it I would say that Loretta Lynn is a huge inspiration for me because her voice is so powerful and perfect in my mind and she's also an icon, a country music icon, I could really go on about her, I'm a big fan but I love how gutsy she always was and is. There’s a rumour that she's had more songs banned from the country music radio stations than any other country music artist and I think that's pretty great because she was singing songs that women were not allowed to sing, no one was really allowed to sing stuff about the birth control pill or divorce or women going bad, like I'm the Other Woman was sort of outrageous to sing about and how it's the woman's fault that she wasn't loving the man properly and so you can't blame her for being the 'other' woman. You know people weren’t singing that stuff so she's gutsy and really brave and wonderful and on stage she's really fun, she's very spirited and I like that in an artist, I like that spirit and generosity on stage and fun loving-ness, not taking yourself too seriously. Lucinda Williams I adore her song writing so much and as a person I think she's just stella, I aspire to be a lot like her as well. Her father is a great poet and I think that she inherited a lot from him. If there is a gene for being a wonderful poet and a wonderful writer then I think she has it and it seems so natural to her. I always hold her as the standard for song writing and Mavis Staples, is just.. I feel like you have to see her to believe her. Her voice is supernatural I think and as a performer every time I see her, I guess I've only seen her twice but both times I felt really really happy whilst I was seeing her yet I was crying, she just brings something out in my that's so powerful and you feel like she is just wanting to give her heart to everyone in the audience and she has this wonderful heart. AW: She owns the stage doesn't she? EJ: Yeah, in this wonderfully positive beautiful way that doesn't seem Prima Donna-ish, you know egotistical in any way. It's a very spiritual thing for me to see her. AW: So, you're here at the Maze, you're going to be going on shortly, who have you got with you tonight? EJ: My band, the guys who are always with me, Jason Beek on drums and he does harmony vocals and Jerry Miller on electric guitar and Johnny Sciascia on upright bass, they're on all my records, including the Sacred Shakers and they're always with me wherever I go for better or worse (laughs). AW: How long are you in the country for? EJ: We leave on the 19th (October) so I guess another week. AW: So you have some more shows to do ? EJ: Yeah we've been here for a week now and we have one more week to go and we're having a great time it's a really beautiful country. AW: Oh thank you. We'll have a great gig tonight.. EJ: Thank you, you too. AW: ..enjoy the rest of your tour and thank you for talking to me. EJ: My pleasure.
Tonight's support was provided by Canadian blues singer and guitarist Rob Lutes, whose set was like a naked flame all set and ready to torch the place. His assured finger-picking blues style set a mood for the evening and judging by the amount of CDs he managed to shift during the interval, the crowd certainly seemed to approve wholeheartedly. Starting with The Only Soul from his current album TRUTH & FICTION, Lutes played a hyperactive set featuring Billy Mayhew's 1930s classic It's a Sin to Tell a Lie and part of Robert Johnson's They're Red Hot, played as an introduction to Lutes own I Knew a Girl, which was inspired by Johnson's peculiar ragtime tune.
The tiny figure of Eilen Jewell appeared on stage shortly afterwards, equipped with her regular guitar, the one emblazoned with the slightly faded signatures of her 'three gals' on the front, Loretta Lynn, Lucinda Williams and Mavis Staples. "We've come all the way from Boston just to join you guys tonight, and we're so glad we did" announced Eilen before the first number. "We’re so glad you did" came the first of many audience comments and heckles during the show.
Starting with Sweet Rose, the band warmed themselves up with a handful of songs from Eilen's latest album including the title song Sea of Tears, Rain Roll In, Fading Memory and The Darkest Day, which Eilen introduced as one of her favourite Loretta Lynn songs.
Eilen has a great stage presence and finds it easy to build a rapport with her audience. At times the singer tests the water by making fun of the way we speak over here, that the British have a certain way of making a song and dance out of such a simple word as 'no.' "You all say neeoouu" she said, seemingly out of curiosity. The audience also tested the singer by shouting out for songs that Eilen Jewell obviously doesn't have in her repertoire, such as Swinging Doors. I was flabbergasted when someone retorted "it's a George Jones song, you should know it." Unfazed, the wide eyed singer quipped "I see, I profess my love for you and then you start being demanding." Eilen and the band did perform an alternative George Jones song though, just to appease one or two of her more verbally animated fans, Taggin' Along from Eilen's side project, the Sacred Shakers album.
Responding to several requests from the audience, the band went on to play Eric Andersen's Dusty Boxcar Wall from Eilen's second album LETTERS FROM SINNERS AND STRANGERS before launching into one of the highlights of the set. There was no attempt made to even try to imitate Billie Holiday's vocal delivery on Fine and Mellow, yet Eilen managed to claim the song for herself and delivered a heart stopping-version of the old blues song whilst Jerry Miller's guitar fills perfectly accompanied the arrangement and the band pitched a moody groove to a momentarily silent audience.
Continuing to fulfil all the requests being called out from the room, the band performed Back to Dallas from Eilen’s first album BOUNDARY COUNTY preceded by an apology for running out of copies of the debut album. After the song, during which guitarist Jerry Miller started to grin like a Cheshire cat, Eilen pondered "sometimes I think he’s telling himself little jokes, he'll be playing and then he'll start chuckling to himself, it's the funniest thing." Rich Man's World was perfectly timed as Eilen grabbed her harmonica rack for vibrant reading of the song, which also opens her second album.
Concluding with the band's take on the Johnny Kidd and the Pirates classic Shakin' All Over, the band returned for a final encore of Hank Williams' I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love With You, once again fulfilling the audience's demand for a Williams song. I personally could have done with another Jewell original, making the most of the singer-songwriter whilst we have the pleasure of her company here.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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Friday, October 09, 2009
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Category: Music
The flags were out once again at the Wheelhouse in Wombwell as part of the Barnsley House Concerts series. As the red maple leaf fluttered above the wooden cabin, with its cosily decorated interior featuring signed promotional pictures and posters of former guests including the likes of Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart, Rachel Harrington and Zak Borden, Corinne West and Doug Cox and Carrie Elkin and Robby Hecht, and that's just the duos, the room filled once again with a capacity audience keen to be a part of another quality night of acoustic music here in the heart of South Yorkshire.
Canadian singer-songwriter guitarist Stephen Fearing totally missed the fluttering flag as he made his way down to the Wheelhouse from the main house, not once but twice, noticing it later during dinner at the Jones's. Hedley Jones, a local music enthusiast with one eye on the local folk scene and the other on what's coming over from across the pond, likes to make his guests as welcome as the audiences they attract and both of which are rapidly expanding in numbers. I arrived early and made my way down to the cabin to have a few words with the songwriter before his performance. Relaxed and talkative, Fearing was happy to talk about his new album THE MAN WHO MARRIED MUSIC, a life on the road and what it's like to have a Juno on your mantelpiece:
AW: Hedley (Jones), when he does these house concerts, he always likes to welcome guests from other shores by putting the flags out.
SF: Yes. AW: Has he got it right this week? SF: Oh yes he's got it right and of course I came down the drive and I didn't notice it, back and forth twice and I was sitting in their front room having dinner and I looked out the window and I went oh there's a big Canadian flag, it's a very lovely thing to do. AW: I think the last time Hedley put the Canadian flag was out was for Doug Cox who was here a few weeks ago. SF: Oh yeah. AW: Okay well you're from Canada, from Vancouver originally? SF: Yeah originally from Vancouver, grew up in Ireland, lived in the Sates for a couple of years and moved back to Canada in 1982 and I've been there since. AW: Were you very young when you went to Ireland, do you remember anything about your formative years in Canada before moving to Ireland? SF: Yeah, not a lot but my folks split up and you know when that happens you tend to, you know it's a bit jarring and so you remember it, so yeah I have some strong recollections, it was a much smaller place in some ways, some of the highways hadn't been built yet. I was only six when I left but, yeah I have some pretty strong memories and certainly when I moved to Ireland I hung onto my Canadian-ness, it was a sort of nostalgic thing I guess, nostalgia for a six year-old. AW: Well I like to think of Ireland as a hotbed for great musicianship, there's such a wealth of traditional music in Ireland and I think of Canada as a hotbed for songwriters and so there is a bit of a mix because you are a songwriter but also a fabulous guitar player. Do you think you got most of your influences from that Irish upbringing in
Dublin? SF: It's funny, because I totally agree with your assessment, like I think of
Canada as songwriters as well; I think of the States as being a lot of instrumentalists but there's such a culture of the arts in general in Ireland, you know playwrights, dance, theatre and certainly music. Traditional music when I was living there, first of all it was mandatory to have Irish studies, we learned to speak Gaelic and Irish dancing, of course we hated it, it was late Seventies, it was punk rock, new wave and all that coming through and the music from England and the English culture and then the music from America and the American culture was so prevalent that Irish music at the time seemed so parochial and old fashioned, it was always either some fellows in the pub singing Black Velvet Band or a guy on the pier playing the pipes really out of tune and what my mother would call 'diddly-dumpty' music and when I left Ireland and moved to the States, I was there off and on for about two years and that's when I started playing and I realised it had sort of seeped in; not so much learning traditional Irish music or playing Irish music but the choice of chords, melodic ideas and maybe even subject matter. You know there's a melancholy in a lot of Irish music that even when they're playing what you might think was party music it still has that melancholy about it and think that really influenced me. AW: I think it did I mean your first album OUT TO SEA has Dublin Bay on it. SF: Dublin Bay yes. AW: I mean that's straight forward traditional Irish music, it's got everything in that song and it sounds authentic, was there ever a time when you thought I'm into this music so much that was the way you'd go, doing that kind of music, or did you always have this hankering to be a songwriter? SF: Honestly there was never any decisions really being made it's more that you are sort of aware of things that have influenced you and the way they've woven in and sometimes disappeared from what you do. Like, I used to have a strong Dublin accent, which people have accused me of deliberately losing my Irish accent so I could fit in with American culture, which is just preposterous because if I wanted to be more successful, having a strong Irish accent is sometimes a positive, you know there's lots of professional Irish people as my friend Andy White would joke. But it's one of those things, to be philosophical, you don't necessarily choose the path you're on you just realise that you're on it. I was born in Canada, I was very aware of that when I moved to Ireland and then when I left Ireland I realised that I loved Ireland and that there was very strong influences just in the way that you go to school, you learn to study arithmetic and the three Rs, all that stuff it makes up who you are and so it becomes a part of what you do. I never really had the facility or the root to be a traditional Irish musician, you know I think that takes generations and the stuff that we were listening to at home both in Ireland and certainly before my folks split up, they were deliberately playing classical music to us as little kids and jazz and stuff like that so it was quite broad. When I was living in Ireland again it was top forty, I was listening to what my stepfather had his record collection, a lot of Frank Sinatra, James Last non-stop dancing and then what we were buying ourselves, you know pop music so it was just another one of the musical things. What was interesting was just before I left Ireland, Guinness as I recall started running commercials in Irish. It was very radical and I don't think it sparked it, but I think it was indicative of what was going on, which was bands like Stockton's Wing, Moving Hearts, these bands that where coming out, even Horslips, that were very clearly flagging their Irish heritage if not being very strongly traditional, it was always front and centre of what they did and I think it started to become hip and in to have a strong Irish root but for a long time and certainly most of the time I lived there it wasn't, it was thought of as old hat. So it wasn't really an option for me but later, as a writer, and I guess I've always been drawn, to answer your question in a very long an round about way, I've always been drawn to words and I think the desire to express myself, songs in particular, I was always drawn to singer-songwriters so it came out in that way. The instrumental part of it, I quickly realised that to be in a band was difficult and financially very difficult so I made a decision, and it's one of the few decisions I clearly made to myself, I had to figure out how to do this on my own and if I was going to do this on my own, to not just sit and strum all night long but to come up with arrangements. My friend Roy Forbes calls it a band in a box, to try to sketch out a full band, so a drum sound, a moving bass line and counter melodies and stuff and gradually the guitar starts to adapt to what you're doing and you adapt to the way you can get things out of the guitar and you have a style. So I think a lot of it is just the desire to keep people's attention without one colour and one texture. AW: Well I think that's a good point. We've always said that to be a good songwriter or a great songwriter you've got to have the songs, you've got to have the melodies, it's also nice to have a good voice, it's also nice to be able to play the instrument. If you've got all three, that's it, that’s all you need. I mean England's got Steve Tilston who does just that, he's got all three. SF: He's great, absolutely, yeah.. AW: And you have this too. You are obviously a songwriter as well as a guitarist and you've just released your current album which is a retrospective of your career as a solo singer-songwriter, THE MAN WHO MARRIED MUSIC, this is the best of and I notice you've had seven released albums out and I notice on the CD that the first seven songs are from each of the individual albums, so it’s quite a democratic choice you've made there to open the album. SF: (Laughs) I didn't even know that, that's great.
AW: And also, there’s a few others obviously that you've put on there including two brand new songs that you've included on here, do you think it's a little bit like choosing your favourite child when you're putting all this together. SF: Yeah. AW: You've only got about fifteen songs to choose and you're quite prolific, was that difficult? SF: It was terribly difficult and pretty much every show, certainly already on this tour I've had people come up to me and say 'why on Earth didn't you put this on or that on?' You might as well put out a box set if you want to put them all out. I resisted the idea even doing a 'best of' for years; True North was started and run up until two years ago by my ex-manager and my dear friend Bernie Finkelstein and Bernie suggested this before YELLOWJACKET came out and I felt that it was way too early for me to consider something like that. I was terrified by the whole idea. When True North was sold I thought okay now's the time to do it, it really marks a line in the sand because it's really the end of an era. Bernie Finkelstein has been in the business since 1969, he's managed Bruce Cockburn since 1969, which is amazing and True North is the oldest independent label in Canada and a very very respected label and when he sold it, that was the end of that. It's now an imprint for another label and I totally understood why he sold it, he should’ve sold it ten years ago when masters had some coin to them. I really wanted to mark something in the sand and the idea of putting two new tracks on was partly my own neurosis that people would look at it and say oh that’s it, he's finished but it's not at all. I wanted to try and mark this end of a chapter and then with the two new ones point the direction I might be going. It was terribly difficult though to come up with them. There's songs that I play every night that aren't on there so I could relatively easily think of an alternate best of. It's a little like putting seats around a dinner table for a dinner party when you think of what song goes with what song. There has to be a flow to the album too, it can't just be some kind of a document, it has to have some highs and lows. AW: All your favourite songs might be slow ballads.. SF: Yeah, but you can't do that. I couldn't decide on my own. Just as I was really floundering so I contacted Colin Linden who has produced several records for me, he's one of my best pals, Bernie as well and a couple of fans and I said what would you put on this? When I looked at everybody's choices and their reasoning behind it, I started to put together my own. AW: You've worked with quite a few people over the years, BLUE LINE was produced by Clive Gregson, I hope you don't mind me saying this but I'm a big admirer of Clive Gregson and I've followed him for a number of years. You are both alike in a way, do you both realise this? SF: (Laughs) Well it's funny I'm doing a gig with Clive coming up in Biddulph towards the end of this tour. I haven't seen Clive, as far as I can recall maybe once in the last two decades. It's just the way it works, you go in different directions. When we worked together and when he produced me I was so green, I didn't know what I was doing. I'd made one record on my own, you know the joke, you get twenty years to make your first record and twenty months if you’re lucky to make your second and so BLUE LINE was the difficult second record for me. We got into the studio at Topic in London and the clock started to tick and I sat there not really knowing what the hell I was doing and at some point I think Clive realised that we were running out of time he grabbed the ball and ran and I spent the rest of the record chasing him, trying to figure out what was going on and there was a few technical things but mostly it was an awkward situation for me making that record, so much so that I made the absolutely stupid decision to re-make parts of that record when I got back to Canada, so I wanted to keep things like Clive's parts and all the original musicians but I just got this guitar, I re-did my guitar parts. I had a throat operation and so I re-sang my vocals. You can't undo a record partly and re-make it so I ended up with a slightly different record with different issues than the original. Clive's influence on me would have been that of a way way more seasoned player and certainly a finger-style guitarist that I really admired. His association with Richard Thompson was really important to me, Richard is somebody I admired a great deal. AW: You've also worked with him. SF: Yeah I've been lucky enough to work with Richard. Clive turned me onto two really significant artists for me while we were in the sessions, at one point he mentioned The Band and I sheepishly said I didn’t know really much of The Band and he was absolutely shocked. He basically sent me out of the studio right away, like stop the session, sent me out to the local record store to buy the box set and similarly with Nick Drake, I didn't know Nick Drake's stuff and he suggested strongly that I get my hands on erm, it was a box set that came out way back then.. AW: FRUIT TREE?
SF: Yeah, it had everything (on it) and Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, the band that I'm in now is so heavily influenced by The Band and Colin actually worked with The Band and they recorded on of Colin's songs on one of their later records JERICO. Robbie was a huge influence on him, he sang and worked with Rick Danko a whole bunch. So it's a small world, the way it goes around, but I’ll be seeing Clive in Biddulph and I'll tell him what you said. It'll be interesting to see if we can manage to play anything together because we're supposed to be onstage at the same time. AW: One song I'm glad you included is of course Expectations; Sarah (McLachlan) is such a fabulous player. SF: Yeah she is. AW: Have you ever bumped into her since? SF: Yes I ran into her at the Junos. I produced an album for Suzie Vinnick, it's one of the few records I've produced and it was nominated for a Juno, which was amazing and I went as Suzie's guest and ran into Sarah in the lobby. Everyone was in the main room, you know the pre-televised awards, a slew of Junos that don't make it onto the TV show and that show always goes ridiculously late, it's just endless awards. So Sarah was pacing around outside and we ended up hanging out and chatting. When she went internationally massive the way she did we lost touch because our circles just separated but Sarah sang at my wedding, she was a pretty close friend and it was really great to run into her and feel there was you know, no time between us.
AW: She has a family of her own now, this takes over as well as the career. SF: Yeah. She's got a record coming out, first in seven years, so that's pretty exciting. AW: Talking about the Junos, you actually won one for YELLOWJACKET, best roots album? SF: I finally won one after being nominated eight times. AW: You must tell us a little bit about the Junos. SF: Sure, well people always say it's the equivalent of the Grammys but I always feel that's really stretching it because it's Canada right, where you can disappear our population into California, so the scale of the event, it’s become a very glitzy televised event but it's the same idea. It's a national music award with all the different categories and they have a roots traditional solo and roots traditional band category and I finally won, roots traditional solo and the Rodeo Kings won as well a couple of years prior to that for the band, so I’ve got two of them now, stuck on my mantelpiece. AW: That's excellent. SF: Yeah, it's great. It doesn't make any difference to your career whatsoever but it's a nice piece of hardware to have, no doubt about it. AW: Well long may it continue; you’ll soon have a mantelpiece full if you carry on the way you're going. SF: I hope so, I mean I hope I get to keep going, that's the part I hope about. AW: Well you're here for the rest of October just about. SF: Yeah there's twenty dates total and there was a sort of mystery date, where I got to open a show for Martyn Joseph right at the start, so that made it a full twenty, the last two are one in Belfast and one in Dungarvan of all places, in the south of Ireland. AW: Okay, finally any new recordings on the horizon? SF: Well yes I just got a really exciting email from Colin Linden. Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, which is half of what I do now and sometimes it's all I do, Tom Wilson, Colin Linden and myself, we formed fourteen years ago to record an album of Willie P Bennett songs. Willie P Bennett, good friend, mentor to me, now sadly shuffle off this mortal coil a year ago now. He used to be in Fred Eaglesmith's band for years, some of your readers might know him that way, anyway we put this band together to record some of his stuff, it was never meant to be anything more than that and fourteen years later we're back in the studio for our sixth record I think. So it's, I can't tell you too much about it 'cause I don’t want to jinx these things but the idea of the album which is called KINGS AND QUEENS is mostly original material but the idea is to have a female guest on every song and we put together a list of people we have worked with and people we'd like to work with and it was phenomenal. I mean Colin toured last year with Emmylou Harris, so obviously being able to try and get Emmylou on the record. So we've put all our feelers out, a lot of people have said yes and we've actually recorded tracks with Pam Tillis, Emmylou, Rosanne Cash, Levon Helm's daughter Amy Helm from Ollabelle and erm.. that's all I'm wanting to talk about because the rest of the people have said yes but until they're actually on the tape you never know right? But I just got confirmation from Colin that one of the people we were really hoping would say yes had said yes, so hopefully KINGS AND QUEENS will be out on Mother's Day 2010. That's the plan. AW: That sounds great. SF: I think it'll be a really interesting record, I think the story behind it is really interesting and hopefully the music will be really good too. AW: well we'll look forward to its release. SF: Cheers. AW: Well enjoy the rest of your stay in Britain, enjoy your gig tonight at the Wheelhouse.. SF: I'm looking forward to it. AW: ..and thanks for talking to me. SF: My pleasure, thank you for doing this.
It's quite right that THE MAN WHO MARRIED MUSIC collection should be released at this time in Stephen Fearing's life. Twenty years is a good enough career span to take into account; to look back upon and in a way, re-assess. The songs that make up the collection are intelligent but at the same time instantly accessible and even though a couple of decades in an artist's career would normally see vast changes in style and attitude, Fearing has remained true to his craft and has maintained a consistency in the high standard of song writing, recording and live performance over the years. On this, the new retrospective album, many of the songs included sit well along side one another despite being separated by many years.
Tonight in the intimate setting of the Wheelhouse, Fearing appeared relaxed as he began his set, selecting a handful of songs from the album as well as a number of songs that may well have made up an alternative retrospective CD. It's nice when you have so many 'keepers' to choose from. Seated upon a high stool with his acoustic guitar slung across his lap and plugged into an elaborate device, which Fearing confesses, is only there to serve as a tuner, with no further amplification required, the singer songwriter started his first set of the night with one of the new songs included on the new album, The Big East West.
Fearing speaks of travelling as if it has always been a part of his life. "I've been travelling since I was very young" he said, recalling his formative years in Canada before moving to Ireland as a child. The song Born to be a Traveler was inspired by something his mother said after Fearing invited her on tour with him. "I get it now" she said 'you were born to be a traveller', a phrase that would not be missed by any songwriter worth his salt. Speaking of the travelling life as if it makes up the very fabric of his bones, Fearing goes on to point out that this is not only a genetic thing but also a geographical trait that reflects the very nature of being a Canadian musician, applying the Descartian theory, "I tour therefore I am." Originally recorded for his regular band Blackie and the Rodeo Kings' album BARK, Born to be a Traveler sums up life on the road pretty well.
The theme of travelling weaves a thread through much of Fearing's work and the sense of homesickness is nowhere more prevalent than in The Longest Road, a beautifully evocative song from Fearing's 1993 album ASSASSIN'S APPRENTICE. His wanderlust calls out to Canada, just as Joni Mitchell did in her gorgeous A Case of You back in the late Sixties. The song still packs the same punch as it did back the 1990s and recalls the live version to be found on Fearing's live album SO MANY MILES of 2000, the choice cut for the new compilation.
Fearing is almost apologetic about releasing a best of collection, even after twenty years or so in the music business, comparing such a thing with the likes of David Soul or Bread. His record company originally wanted the collection to be called Stephen Fearing's Greatest Hits, but as Fearing rightly pointed out, in order to do this surely you need first of all to have had a hit. The songwriter tells of how he finally decided upon the song choices for the album, whilst he was in the process of relocating to Halifax, Nova Scotia on the East Coast of Canada from Ontario on the West Coast. Fearing had a two day drive across country and during that time, he listened to everything he ever recorded and imagined initially that the songs would just stand out. Unfortunately, all that really came out of that experience was the title song The Man Who Married Music, which he stuck with; the rest was up to friends and associates.
Aside from the songs, Fearing is also an accomplished guitar player and tonight he demonstrated the art of finger style guitar playing with a short piece called Whoville, short due to the fact that he originally recorded the tune for an album which carried the stipulation that no track should be longer than one minute. Describing the instrumental piece as a Morris Dance in the style of Dr Seuss and John Philip Sousa, Fearing took command of his instrument and played with the assurance of a seasoned guitar player. In the second set of the night, Fearing tagged his impressive James Medley onto the end of Dog on a Chain, which revealed an accomplished playing dexterity, with a medley of well known ragtime, jazz and blues tunes.
Not known as an overtly political songwriter, Fearing's Man of War, originally from INDUSTRIAL LULLABY (1997) tackles the troubled days of Northern Ireland but tonight, the edge was softened by a gorgeous coda as the song segued beautifully into John Martyn’s timeless Don't Want To Know in tribute to the late musician.
The so called 'hurting songs part of the set', which Fearing explains is all about 'love gone completely wrong', included three poignant songs, Vigil from Blackie and the Rodeo Kings' KINGS OF LOVE album, a brand new as yet unrecorded song Hungry For Love and If I Catch You Crying, a song co-written with Belfast's Andy White, all showing a more sensitive side of Fearing's work.
Concluding with the requested Beguiling Eyes, probably the songwriter's most celebrated song and certainly the song most covered by other artists, Fearing brought the evening to a close, with a sublime instrumental version of Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now sewn into the song midway through, once again confirming Canada's credentials for providing the world with first rate songwriters.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
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