29 f
out them, they’re providing them for oth- ers, in their newly published Bellowhead Song Book, encouraging and enabling oth- ers to participate in the music.
ments’. Spiers points out “we’ve never felt inhibited about bringing in other musical genres. The sound we make now is approaching the kind of thing the band is capable of: it’s fulfilling its potential.”
A Paul
and understanding what’s going to make people want to dance in that particular way.” He explains this comes from the morris tradition where the musicians take their directions from the dancers and that’s “worked backwards into the music”.
“Johns’ very focused on the dance and its relationship to the music and that’s what we do as a duo. Bits of that come through in Bellowhead but it’s almost like it’s referenced rather than it being the main thing. It just can’t be when you’ve got eleven people playing and you’ve got a drum kit.”
“Now the band,” says Spiers, has defi- nitely “grown into itself. With the first gigs there was a lot of enthusiasm but we were quite nervous. Now we understand each other’s instruments and how we play them – and we need to know how every- one else in the band plays so that the music dovetails. What we have to play is compli- cated.” They use ‘dots’, but prefer not to and as they always work to perform with-
Justin
Oboe and fiddle player Paul Sartin (also half of popular folk duo Belshazzar’s Feast), explains: “I’ve got feet in several camps, folk, classical, theatre, community. This array of influences can be heard in the arrangements and style of playing. We feel very comfortable treating English music in this way – we have much respect for the tradition, and some of us are immersed in it. There’s a confidence in the English music
ll the band say how much they’ve improved as musicians and learnt about different types of music and the ‘little nuances of the other instru-
John
scene, to experiment perhaps because the tradition is in safe hands, with lots of younger people involved and the immedi- ate future of the tradition assured.”
Both Spiers and Boden have always looked towards commercial viability. For them ‘commercial’ is not a dirty word. Lau- rel Swift tells me that “Bellowhead are great, they’ve really worked hard at the press, PR and business side. They’ve been on Radio 2, they’ve made their music accessible to a whole new bunch of peo- ple. They’ve been on mainstream festivals with English tunes and songs. They’re exciting on stage, a real party band. They’ve succeeded because they’ve worked at it. Music is not ‘just accessible’ if you’re not someone who seeks out excit- ing new music that no one knows about. You need to find it accidentally – on Radio 2 or local radio. Folk is not the stuff you chance across. Bellowhead have started to cross the big divide of finding an audience outside folk music.”
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