27 f
that went alongside songs like Rufford Park – poaching and gamekeepers. Hard- hitting folk material. We’re always brod- dling in the seamy side…” quips Alan. But does the rage still propel them?
“I think the dark side of things has always been attractive,” John continues, “to a catchy new wave beat, as we used to say. I do believe in many ways, if you’re going to make radical song and political song for the time, I think the voice needs to be youthful. You have to wear your heart on your sleeve, simplistic songs that really rock, with a hard edge. You’ve got to see things in black and white and as you get a bit older, you tend to see too much grey. And you try to do too many things in a song. You can’t do that with political song. You have to nail the thing and let the emotion of the delivery carry it.”
Their songwriting these days is more complex and layered, more crafted. Ian points to Richard Thompson: “He is bang on the nail to call songwriting a craft. That’s exactly what it is. If you call it a craft you don’t have to worry about whether it’s ‘art’ or ‘artful’. It’s a thing you can make well…if you’re lucky!”
These days their energies are directed into real, natural music-making. The band has come full circle and moved back into a more acoustic, musical realm. John contin- ues: “I think the band has rediscovered its musicality, coming back to playing not too hard. We’ve always played very hard on stage. People are into natural raw sounds. They’re into very naked music… and also into harmonies. That’s the context that we’re making music in at the moment.”
I suggest that this is a context that suits them: at ease with themselves musi- cally. Ian agrees: “I think we probably are. There are more subtle pleasures in playing subtler music. It ties in with that idea of needing a youthful voice to be angry in a simpler way and the actual physical tone of the voice singing. Now, we want to explore beyond it and wider aspects of it. It’s been such a pleasure. Certainly Chop- per and I have gradually done away with all of our amplification. We just go on stage with the instrument and a monitor. It’s more pleasant to play that way.”
John continues the thread by discussing a comment he made in a recent blog about an acoustic tour where he rediscovered the joys of an old song: “I said that I listened to it for the first time in 20-odd years… mean- ing that I could hear it and that we played it empathetically and sensitively. We probably blasted it for such a long time that you just get through it. It’s just a matter of project- ing a delivery and just giving it out. In that sense we’ve rediscovered some songs as well as moving our music on.”
It has also allowed them to rethink arrangements: “It’s a great way of getting away from electric guitar, bass, drums and electric fiddle; of being a different sound- ing band. We’ve been exploring different instruments within the band. Chopper now brings a Scandinavian element to the music. He’s gradually becoming imbued with that. Just recently with Ragged Kingdom, Chop plays less electric bass and more cello, but also guitar and mandolin and kantele – which Alan plays too. It’s great exploring that musicality, finding other voices. “
John – maybe through all of those curative lungfuls of fresh air he takes dur- ing his Reluctant Rambler tours – has been rediscovering what his own voice can do within this new acoustic context.
“W
e’ve been working on our harmonies and enjoying our harmony singing again – which we’d
neglected to a certain extent or it’d got very rough-edged. I have rediscovered the upper range of my voice which I got very frightened of at one point… ’cos it always seemed to be rather folky. The northern soul boy is coming back out…” “God, I thought we had him locked in the cellar,” interjects Ian.
It is clear that this banter – the long- standing friendships and working relation- ships – between the band is impressively functional. Knowing each other’s breaking points is useful. But just how do they go about that challenging creative process of writing songs together these days – particu- larly given their geographical distance – Chopper in Sweden, John in Wales etc? John thinks that, if anything, they speak more “through music” because of the geographi- cal barriers. “We can communicate through mp3s. Stuff gets sent to Chop in Sweden and it can come back in 24 hours. He’s working in his studio out there. We know each other so well that we have less to say.”
John continues: “As an example, at the end of January the three of us stayed at a little coastguard’s cottage in Portland, down amongst the limestone quarries over- looking Chesil Beach. Basically for most of the day Ian was locked away in a room upstairs trying to get as much quiet as possi- ble to write lyrics. Alan and I toiled away with ideas downstairs and about 6 o’clock we lit this open fire and then we were allowed to make noise. Ian came down and we sang and played for the rest of the night until we got too drunk to do anything else and fell over. ’Twas ever thus!”
“Or some permutation of that,” con- tinues Ian, “Everybody has contributed verbal ideas, tune ideas, arrangement ideas… every possible permutation of that has happened at one time or another. From Chopper and Dil to Al Scott, our favourite producer.”
Al, whose musical range extends from hip-hop to The Levellers, is a trusted sixth member of the band, joining them on gui- tar and bass during some of the Ragged Kingdom tour dates. With his worldliness
and experience, “he makes us aware when we fall into other peoples’ clichés. I think that’s a very important function that a pro- ducer can have. He knows us and we know him and there’s a certain amount of fluster that just gets cut out,” Ian summarises. “We accept his judgement.”
Alan expands: “The classic line that I remember from Ragged Kingdom, in ref- erence to Al, was June saying: ‘It’s wonder- ful really. He listened to all of us and ignored us all!’”
And so to that Ragged Kingdom, another set of career-changing wheels set in motion. Legend has it, of course, that fRoots editor Ian Anderson introduced the band to June Tabor in a notoriously uproarious night at The Dove during Sid- mouth Folk Festival in the late ’80s. The subsequent ecstatically-received collabora- tion on Freedom & Rain in 1990 came out of that night’s meeting – marrying con- temporary songwriting gems with tradi- tional balladry – and set the tone for the more recent runaway success of Ragged Kingdom. The plaudits heaped upon the 2011 release speak for themselves.
John: “I don’t think we would ever have imagined two years ago that this was going to happen. June wouldn’t have either. You daren’t imagine reviews like that and awards, the full thing. It’s why we’re keeping quiet at the moment. We’ve done enough shouting in our life!”
“I can remember being in the dressing room backstage at the Roundhouse for the fRoots 30th party. It was a communal dressing room. A lot of people came in and just listened to us as we sang Bonny Susie Clelland acoustically at the back. People just stopped and came and listened to us do it and I just thought, ‘Yeah, it’s still there.’ We were a little nervous that night. But we did it and there was that feeling that harks back probably to those thrilling moments of coming off stage on tour 20 years ago in America when you feel that little frisson of excitement. ‘We just did it again!’ type of thing.”
And what is ‘it’? “Something about the stillness in June’s delivery and a restless- ness in the way that we play, that works together,” reflects John. Or the “tension” as producer Al Scott would say. Or as June herself would have it, “a glorious sound.”
Jones and Tabor presented with the fRoots Album Of The Year award by actor Stephen Mangan.
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