27 f
don’t know… I’m so deeply un-commercial in my spirit. I overthink lots of things about my music but the moment I try to think like that, that’s the end really. You’re laughing like, ‘No, that is what you’ve got to do, woman!’”
Or someone has to do it for you. “I’m such a control freak artistically
that I don’t know whether that would work. But I am open to that. I mean, inter- pret it as you want: that I’m so single- minded or that I’m arrogant enough that I think I can make an album that doesn’t fit into any genre. I do just have a totally naïve passionate side. The musical child in me is really the most important thing for me. But genres… Who cares?”
So why are we putting you on the front of a magazine formerly known as Folk Roots?
“Quick, stop the press!”
If you can bear to be commercial for a moment we should talk about what I now know to be your debut EP. Like they do in proper interviews.
“Oh god.” The last track is my favourite this week
(Olivia’s rewriting of George Brassens’ and François Villon’s Ballade Des Dames Du Temps Jadis).
“That’s really nice that you say that.
It’s also quite traumatic because it was a really last minute addendum. It was recorded about two years after every- thing else. And recorded much more in the spirit of what I just talked about, in terms of allowing things to just flow freely – in relation to trusting one’s ability
and hard work. And all of the wider impli- cations of that; in rediscovering the joy of music making.”
If I just read the titles out will you tell me about each song?
“T
“I do feel a bit bashful about that. I just feel like I’ve got so much more in me to say. And that EP, I’m not saying I’m not proud of what’s on there, and the process that went behind it, but it’s more the pro- cess of actually putting something out there and struggling to do it yourself... Practically, and not just emotionally. Because I’m not the most practical person in the world, let’s face it.”
he symbol of putting the EP out there was massive. And the launch gig was massive in that sense. I mean, it
was only a couple of hundred people. And I’ve sung to thousands of people before and that’s been OK. But this was daunting and petrifying because it was the first time in my life that I’ve done it entirely myself. I’ve had support from other people but I haven’t got a label, I haven’t got an agent, I haven’t got a manager. So this really was me rallying round and pulling favours from people who, thank god, have faith in what I do. And going, ‘This is it. I’m 30. I’ve suffered. I’ve done music all my life. I’ve worked really hard. It’s a bit late and there’s only five songs but here it is.’”
“That other CD you’ve got, the only way you could get it was by coming to me in person at a gig and me selling it to you. There was no other way. And I’d get lots of people writing to me in the days of My -
Space, asking to buy it. And I just couldn’t get into the whole mailing system. Because I’ve only very recently started showing real wholehearted self-faith. Or… maybe was a few years ago, which is when you heard me play at Café Oto and when I’d just begun singing trad songs and play- ing harmonium. I think I was at a really good stage then. But lots of shit hap- pened, as it does. And I do feel wiser and richer for it.”
It seems as if you’re purposefully avoiding talking about the songs on this EP? You wrote them all, bar the aforemen- tioned French ballad. Why the reluctance to discuss them?
“Well it ties in to the folk thing vs writing songs. I don’t spend too much time dwelling on it. I mean, I think about it intellectually but emotionally I don’t get bogged down in it. For example, when I’ve visited Shirley Collins and spoken to her, she’s confidently opinionated about it. And she’s basically of the opinion that she’d rather hear anyone singing tradi- tional songs than their own songs. And I think that’s really interesting and thought- provoking for me, because I’ve had ele- ments of feeling like that about other styles of music.”
“And then I do love Sandy Denny and she never felt like she was a folk singer. She never felt like she fitted in to the folk world. But she was there singing trad songs, and yet she wasn’t learned about the trad songs she sang. I think it was much more natural… ‘Oh that’s a nice song, I’ll sing it’. It wasn’t much more for her. And yet they’re iconic wonderful recordings. I think there’s a lesson in that.”
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