root salad Rheingans Sisters
Slipped out quietly earlier this year, their duo album is a subtle gem. Colin Irwin investigates their story.
W
ell, knock me sideways it’s nearly Christmas and any second now a barrage of emails will arrive demanding
nominations for albums of the year. Timely, then, to draw attention to a dark horse lurking seductively under the radar… Glad Gold Hearts by the Rheingans Sisters. Estonian waltzes craftily mingle with Swedish tunes, Norwegian Hardanger fiddle pieces, old-time Americana and the English tradition amid vocal harmonies to die for on an album performed with compelling conviction and disarming warmth by Rowan Rheingans and her younger sister Anna.
You might be forgiven for missing it. Shortly after recording it, Anna disap- peared to France to study music in Toulouse, while Rowan’s main focus has subsequently been on Lady Maisery, the group she shares with Hannah James and Hazel Askew, and whose profile has shot skywards on the back of their recent sec- ond album Mayday. Rowan’s fiddle, banjo and voice is also currently much in demand for session projects, but we even- tually pin her down in the badlands of Aldershot, where she’s playing with the Emily Portman Trio.
“Singing with Anna is just a joy and that CD is very precious to me,” she says. “It was almost our last chance to collate a record of us playing together like that. With the experiences we’ve both had since it would be very different if we were to make it now. It’s very natural and spontaneous…we just decided to sit down and play together. I don’t even mind what happens to it really for wher- ever we go and whatever we do, it’ll always be there. It’s very us.”
Hailing from Grindleford, Derbyshire,
just a stone’s throw from England’s self- styled folk capital of Sheffield, both Anna, 23, and Rowan – eighteen months her senior – grew up surrounded by music. Their father is a luthier who came to Eng- land from Germany in his twenties, his prowess as a violin maker and box player ensuring regular family visits to festivals and summer schools. Their mother Cathy, a clog dancer involved in folk music edu- cation, is also a singer, who was often to be found at rallies performing with women’s and political song groups; so there was no shortage of impromptu kitchen sessions in the house or calls for the family to play at parties.
“The four of us don’t get much chance to play together now with Anna in France but it’s very precious when we do,” says Rowan. “We’re a close family and music is a way of connecting.”
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heir father’s fascination with the weirder tangents of folk song – the Incredible String Band in particular – strongly influenced them (they include a lovely version of Robin Williamson’s October Song on Glad Gold Hearts); but the most profound experience for both was a gap year studying folk music at the Bollnäs Folkhögskola in Sweden under the tutelage of Jonas Brandin.
The school catered for many styles, encouraging collaborations with musicians from different countries, notably Estonia in Rowan’s case. She also formed the duo Fidola with Norwegian Låtmandola player Marit Fält (now with VAMM) but returned from Sweden to study politics and sociolo- gy at Newcastle. A smart move, as it hap- pens, affording ample opportunity for endless sessions at the Cumberland Arms with students on the city’s folk degree course: out of that came Lady Maisery.
The Rheingans Sisters and Lady Mais- ery albums are poles apart in both style and attitude. Full of political undercur- rent, the Maisery album is carefully consid- ered and, from the thematic material selection to vocal harmony arrangements, intricately structured. Rowan and Anna, however, just busked it, playing whatever felt right at the time.
“I am very proud of both CDs. Bruce Molsky has been a big influence on Anna and I, for different reasons. There’s no fuss
and he gets straight to the heart. That’s the way I feel about the album with Anna. I love playing banjo on October Song. I like the repetitive patterns. I haven’t listened to too much West African music but I can hear some of those patterns there and the banjo is obviously an African instrument. It’s very pleasurable to play.”
There are some bold choices on the Maisery album, too, including the epic ballad from which they take their name. “It’s massive, both for gravity and length. We saw Chris Foster sing it with such grace and storytelling ability that we did- n’t know if we could manage it. We mulled it over for a year and tried various ways of doing it until we tried it in unison rather than harmonies and felt that was the closest we could get to the feeling we had listening to Chris’s strong, solid voice telling the story.”
There’s plenty more on the horizon. Maisery tour again through the autumn and the Rheingans Sisters go on the road together in the spring. Rowan is currently working on ideas with Maz O’Connor, while there’s a brewing collaborative pro- ject between Lady Maisery and some of the elder stateswomen of folk – Maddy Prior, Chris Coe and Frankie Armstrong among them. And, whisper it, there may even be a Rowan Rheingans solo album somewhere down the road.
Nobody leave the CD player…
www.rowanrheingans.co.uk
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Photo: Elly Lucas
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