root salad Kacy & Clayton
They come from a remote town in the middle of Canada, and they’re quite remarkable. Devon Leger on a young duo.
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ou have to understand that today when you look at the music of one traditional artist, you’re looking at one ripple in the blossom of impact caused by a much earlier pebble dropped into water. So when you want to know where someone’s music comes from, you have to look back ripple to ripple, reaching to the point of impact. These days the waves move across the world, not just over a small region. So when you hear something you’ve never heard before, like a seventeen-year-old girl from rural Saskatchewan rebuilding an archaic song like The Cherry Tree Carol with a voice that ties heaven to earth, what you’re really hearing is one of the furthest ripples from the source. And that source is the British folk revival.
“A big influence for us was hearing people like Shirley Collins. She would take American songs and change them up a lit- tle bit, change the tune a little or change the words. Lots of folk musicians do that; it’s part of the genre: trying your best to change what you can and keep the good parts.” So says guitarist and multi- instrumentalist (and nineteen-year-old) Clayton Linthicum, one half of the duo Kacy & Clayton. The other half is seventeen- year-old Kacy Anderson, Clayton’s second cousin, childhood friend / musical partner, and lead vocalist in their duo.
Kacy and Clayton both live in the tiny town of Glentworth, a mere twelve miles from Saskatchewan’s border with Mon- tana. It’s a town so small that its Wikipedia entry is just one sentence: “Glentworth is a community in Saskatchewan.” Clayton’s talking on the phone from his home on the ranch that his parents own. When asked how large this ranch is, he replies “We have about 400 cows.” He’s just back from tour with his other band The Deep Dark Woods, and isn’t home long before he’ll head out again with them. Clayton joined this pop- ular Canadian indie roots band a few years ago as their guitarist, and has been touring internationally with the group.
He’s dedicated to pushing forward his duo with Kacy Anderson, however, even though her young age makes touring diffi- cult. He knows, as well as anyone who lis- tens to them, that there’s something very special happening in their music. Much of it comes from his inventive and beautiful guitar and instrumental work, but the standout feature is certainly Kacy’s voice, rich far beyond its years, seemingly tem- pered from hard iron. Together, there’s a kind of synergy to their music that clearly comes from growing up together.
Kacy & Clayton started playing music together when Kacy was a mere five, and Clayton seven years old. They had a band with Kacy’s older sisters that mainly cov- ered classics from Creedence Clearwater Revival, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Bob Dylan. Dylan, in fact, is another point of inspiration for them. “We’re both big Bob Dylan fans,” says Clayton, “and being a Bob Dylan fan, you find out about a lot of early recordings, like Mississippi John Hurt. You start looking for people that influenced the people you like, and then that just leads to lots of discoveries.”
The early band with Kacy and her sis- ters was organised by Clayton’s grandfa- ther, who was also a primary inspiration for them. “He was a real good musician,” Clayton says, “a country dance band musi- cian. He played in a lot of the old ‘orches- tras’ (they called them) when they would go around and play at school dances and rural events. He had a lot of musical knowledge and he taught us everything he could. He was the driving force.”
When pushed, Clayton struggles to define what a Saskatchewan orchestra was (polkas were a main staple). “Not country music, it was old time. It’s hard to explain because I don’t know of any popular band that played in that style. Just bands that I’ve heard of from my grandpa, who has
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them on cassette tapes. I don’t know of any popular recordings.” There are no polkas in Kacy & Clayton’s music, but there’s a reverence for open space and a deep love for old traditions, two things that must have been influenced by ranch- ing life in Glentworth, Saskatchewan.
istening to Kacy & Clayton’s album The Day Is Past And Gone, it can be hard to distinguish the traditional covers – which include glorious
reworkings of Green Grows The Laurel (heard on last issue’s fRoots 49 compilation), Pretty Saro and Blind Willie Johnson’s Let It Shine On Me – from the originals, which have the weighty heft of old ballads. “We want them to sound old,” says Clayton. “The lyrics are written in that old language and the melody is similar to other melodies. It’s part of the folk process, I think, trying to not copy but borrow from.”
That folk process is at the heart of Kacy & Clayton’s music. As the ripples of Collins and Dylan and Hurt spread over this small corner of rural Canada, music of great depth and beauty has sprung up in the hands of two kids. Under their care, the water of these great sources is now feeding a new garden, a new generation, a new sound for these old songs.
www.kacyandclayton.com F 19 f
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