root salad Naomi Bedford


A childhood full of Hedy West and Shirley Collins, a hit with Orbital. Sarah Coxson hears a fascinating tale.


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aomi Bedford has one of those ‘old soul’ voices: one that has lived a bit. She inhabits the songs she sings, delivering them with a sweet open-throated sincerity, spiked with a country-edged Hedy West poke and a tremulous Emmylou longing. You get caught up in the emotional swell of her story-songs: some traditional, some new… but all deliciously miserable.


Described as a “late-bloomer” in recent reviews of the Gerry Diver- produced Tales From The Weeping Willow – Songs Of Murder, Death & Sorrow, Naomi has been quietly getting on with it in the wings for most of her life.


Performing since she was a teenager – from a debut live appearance with “new wave of the new wave” band S*M*A*S*H to busking girl groups with best friend Lisa Knapp to country rock/pop collective Jonah Hex – she even experienced chart success with Orbital. That and the day job: “You end up just living life, don’t you! I had a great job working for the Children’s Soci- ety in preventing child abuse. There I’d be, writing up minutes for some meeting in our manky run-down office, and they’d be playing Funny Break on Radio 1!”


You can’t help but be intrigued by her


back story. Her upbringing was in a joyful- ly chaotic house in Putney, filled to the brim with music, art, left-wing politics, film and characters: movers and shakers like Don Letts and Julian Temple hanging in the kitchen; Generation X, hip hop and Tammy Wynette pumping out of sibling teenage stereos.


Her parents were ’60s children with an extensive and enviable record collection – from Tom Paley and Peggy Seeger and Shirley Collins (amongst Naomi’s heroes) to Warren Zevon and Blondie. Richard Bedford, her dad, was a pop music video editor – bringing us iconic pop videos from the likes of Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Afrika Bambaataa, as well as those seminal Arena hip hop documentaries.


But it was her mum, Joy, an artist, who was the greatest catalyst for her musical development. Devastatingly, Joy died just two days after her recent CD’s official release. Naomi had promised her it would be out before she died. She had always been Naomi’s fiercest supporter.


There’s a definite sense that ‘without whom’ none of this would have hap- pened. When Naomi was six or seven, the family drove from London to Tuscany for a holiday. During the journey, Joy taught her, verse-by-verse, ballads like Lord Thomas & Fair Ellender, Beaulampkin (hear Hedy West’s version on this issue’s fRoots 38 compilation) and Cruel Mother.


“She was really into artists like Jean Ritchie and Hedy West (who was my favourite singer as a child.) What I really found magical was that she would play me lots of different versions of the same songs. She’d play a Jean Ritchie version, then Shirley & Dolly Collins and then Fair- port. Then she’d sing me her version.”


So began a lifelong love of story songs for Naomi: “They were like amazing fairy stories. Some were dark, some were really romantic and some were a bit bonkers – y’know, incest songs like Lucy Wan – but they were intriguing as well. They’re like mini-films or mini-novels, three or five minutes of a bonkers film in fantastical music form. If I’m singing, I try to watch the whole story unfold in my head.”


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On Tales From The Weeping Willow, this legacy is startlingly apparent with songs learned at apron strings – such as Lord Thomas & Fair Ellender – and story songs collected along the way, such as Warren Zevon’s classic Roland The Head- less Thompson Gunner or Paul Simmonds’ desperate modern ballad, Daddy’s Got A Gun, inspired by an Essex millionaire who killed himself and his family rather than face the prospect of poverty.


er musical interests have always co-existed with politics so it’s no surprise that early-onset adoration of The


Men They Couldn’t Hang and The Pogues developed: “I remember being absolutely blinded, thinking that’s what I want to do. To me, it was like all the folk music I had loved, but mixed with The Clash.”


One thing leading to another, she was expelled from school at 15 for leading a student strike, became active in organisations like Artists Against Apartheid and eventually embarked on a history degree in Sus- sex, to develop her political and his- torical knowledge. Here, a university friend hooked her up with Orbital. And, after that confidence-boosting top-20 hit, Naomi posted up a few songs of her own up on MySpace.


The reaction way exceeded her expectations, leading to dialogues with some musical heroes – Justin Currie, Paul Heaton and Paul Sim- monds from The Men They Couldn’t Hang (now her partner, both musi- cally and romantically). Finding her- self behind the mask of a computer screen enabled her to ask them to duet with her – to which they all agreed. “I would never have had the courage to go up to any of those artists and ask them to sing with me. The internet may have messed up


music in other ways but for me personally it was brilliant for getting through to these people.”


On her latest CD, she sings two songs with Alasdair Roberts, whom she contact- ed via Facebook: The Clouds Of Colwyn Bay, a heartbreaking tale of death and lost love by Paul Simmonds and a beautiful rendition of the traditional The Death Of Queen Jane (heard on last summer’s fRoots 36 set).


“When we did the recording, he stayed the night here and he took me to Lewes Folk Club to see Len Graham. In the morning, I was downstairs making some breakfast, and I remember hearing him upstairs singing, Two Sisters or something. I remember thinking: ‘That’s bloody Alasdair Roberts up there singing in my shower.’ “


“Lots of things that happened like that, I kept thinking it was like I’d entered a competition and won something.”


Her modesty, of course, belies the bel- ter of a voice that draws these collabora- tors in (and these are just the ones that made it to the album. Plans had also been afoot for duets with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Dick Gaughan and Kris Drever!).


www.naomibedford.co.uk F 13f


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