f26 I


f any film directors are considering optioning Olivia’s life, it might be worth noting that the 1996 bomb- ing of central Manchester by the Provisional IRA coincided with her


attending the open day at the nearby school, accompanied by recently divorced parents.


What did you think you were going to do with your life?


“I’ve been very lucky that I’ve never wanted to do anything else. But it was also difficult because I’ve always had really broad taste and loved so many different styles. I was quite stressed as I wanted to do everything. But those institutions are not really about creativity. They are a bit factory-like. It is incredibly unhealthy, potentially. And I say that as someone who believes in rigour. What happens in institu- tions like that is they lose the essence – which is to move people.”


We’ve still not talked about folk music. But we will. A conversation about folk music will almost definitely occur in the next few paragraphs. But I’m won- dering how much of Olivia’s ability is innate and how much is learned. Or if one without the other is like a skier with- out skis. For some, music seems to come easily but for others it only appears easy because of the work they’ve put it. Which one are you?


“That’s really interesting. When I left The Royal Academy of Music, which I went to straight after Chetham’s, I did years of teaching before I had a big break [touring as the vocalist with woozy beat-tinkerers Zero 7] and then just this year I’ve been teaching again. And it’s been a real eye- opener because the kids who are the most talented seem to be the ones who aren’t excelling. And the ones who are excelling are the ones with this slightly fearless drive. One boy in particular, he has some- thing but it’s more about his character than his actual musical ability.”


“I still haven’t got to the bottom of that philosophically and in an egalitarian sense, because of course I like to believe that everyone has a talent and everyone has a voice. I still don’t think I’m a great teacher in that sense, but I try to keep a balance and get them believing in what they’ve got. But he’s finding his voice through hard work. And it’s been a poignant lesson for me.”


But what about your voice? Where did you find that?


“Me, I think I’m lucky. It’s always come naturally to me. I don’t come from a mas- sively musical family. But they are all incredibly aesthetic – they’re all in art his- tory or writers; my dad was originally a painter then became an academic. But they have a really lovely reverence for music; I’ve grown up with that ease. But I’m also slightly over-analytical about things. I get quite tortured about it. I feel like I’m learning that really late in life. Just recently I’ve been like, ‘You’re 31 now and actually you’re really good. You’ve got a sense of craft. You’ve worked bloody hard all your life. You can play lots of instru- ments. Just on a really basic level you’re a good musician.’ And it’s just about trusting that and then letting, dare I say it, the more mystical and inexplicable side of things come out.”


I’m glad you mentioned craft. It’s something I thought when I first saw you sing – that here was a musician who understands that art comes from craft.


“That was quite a long time ago but even then I think I had intellectualised it. But in terms of everything I’ve just been rambling about, yes. More and more it’s important to me. And partly because of just who I am, and because I’ve had this education, I’m always kicking against something. I hope it’s not a negative thing. I don’t know. But there was a time when my listening was so intense and really con- sciously broad. And I wanted to hear every- thing that was out there. I was obsessive.”


I’ve never understood musicians who


don’t feel that way. How can you not want to hear everything? I think it’s your job to be obsessive.


“At the Academy, because I was an


improviser and a songwriter I ended up on the jazz course, which was a total disaster in a way. And so I became obsessed with exper- imentation and the underground. And it served me well but I don’t think it came from a particularly healthy place. In that sense craft has become all the more impor- tant because my ethos at college was break- ing barriers. And I think you can afford to do that if you’ve got the training.”


“But now I just don’t want to make it so complicated for myself or for the audi- ence. I want to do what comes naturally. But paradoxically I feel, in a funny sort of way, less appreciated – certainly in my peer group. And I think, beyond that, in terms of what people want to hear, it does still need to be seen as anarchic or breaking a genre. The irony for me is that I already thought of myself as being like that, but now it’s like I’ve seemingly come round to being more trad or classical – whatever those terms mean.”


How did traditional folk find its way


into your jazz and classical barrier breaking? “Forget the jazz!”


If we had a pound for every time someone told us that. But we were start- ing to talk about folk music. How, where and why?


“I think my dad had heard Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny in the flesh. And he was quite ahead of his time in that, I think. He got quite obsessed with it all at boarding school but by the time it had become more mainstream he’d moved on to other things. So I had a heavy dose of the revivalists when I was growing up. And also Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and Bert Jansch, I grew up listening to them a lot.”


“And then, and this ties in very nicely with what you were saying, getting frus- trated with craft… I was writing and per- forming and improvising and collaborat- ing, just as I was leaving college. But I was trying to write and I hit a bit of a wall with what I wanted to say. And so I went out to Tuscany and had a very isolated but healing time. And the family I was staying with very sweetly got me a gig. And the gig was my usual bizarre mix of things which included a Sephardi hymn which I’d learnt from a really lovely teacher when I was at college. It was outside, on a piazza, with a lovely little audience. And I just remember shutting my eyes and singing that hymn unaccompanied and, it sounds cheesy, but it was a turning point. Even though I’d studied music all my life, within the classical world you don’t get to feel that. You lose some of the essence of what it should be.”


“So I came back and there was some- thing in that earthiness – the human voice unaccompanied. And the simplicity and directness of an ancient song, a religious song that would’ve been sung in syna- gogues – which I culturally have no con- nection to, but I love that about it. Then combining that with the Anne Briggs and Joni and Sandy and Bert… It was like, ‘what were they tapping into?’ So I quite consciously started exploring that reper- toire more.”


“And frankly I still need to. I don’t feel like I fit into the folk world because it’s just one strand of what I’m interested in. I’m not even a tenth as learned about it as other people in that world are.”


S Don’t be so sure about that.


elfishly I’d always wanted Olivia to make the defining English folk record of her generation. She seemed capable of it. And it seemed like there was a hole


there. A hole that could be filled by Olivia Chaney. But it’s wrong to assume some- one wants to fill a hole just because it’s there. Still, I had high hopes.


“And then I went and fucked it up!”


Well, it has been three years between your first EP and this one.


“First? This one is the first. The CD you bought was just a bootleg I made – hand printed. So there hasn’t even been two…”


And it has one of the same songs on it. I feel ripped off. But shouldn’t we really be talking about your debut album by now? Good grief, what’s taking you so long?


“It’s men… Emotional trauma takes up a lot of time.”


Every breakup should be an album. It worked for Adele. But of course, I was assuming you wanted to make an album that would somehow fit into the folk world. Which perhaps you don’t.


“I don’t want to make an album that fits into any world. That’s the thing.”


Commercially it would help if you did.


“Yeah, it would mean I wasn’t tem- porarily living in a basement in someone else’s house. As lovely as that house is. I


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