Tom to Lucy:
What did you grow up listening to, and how did it influence your music today?
I come from a family where most of us play some instrument or other, and everyone sings all the time, so I was lucky enough to have a great musical upbringing, although not necessarily within any easily definable genre or tradition. I grew up listening to all kinds of things. actually it’s probably more accurate to say I grew up singing along to all kinds of things, especially on the long car journeys that seemed to characterise my early years: The Incredible String Band, Kate and Anna McGarrigle and Kirsty MacColl spring to mind, and later Dory Previn, Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen. And of course, I’ve wanted to be Dolly Parton since I was about 8 years old (vocally, at least) but there was also lots of classical music and songs from the musicals – so folk music was just one of the things on offer. I didn’t go to my first folk festival until I was 16, and I started singing in folk clubs when I was about 17.
Having said that, my family have always been involved in folk music. Dad and my uncles made a record on the Topic label in the 70s – an album of Irish tunes on small instruments called ‘Lark in the Clear Air’ where they play jews harps in
harmony - proving it’s not an oxymoron! And I learned a lot of my song repertoire from my uncle Michael who made a home-recorded cassette tape in the early 80s that has become for me the equivalent of the Copper Family songbook!
When I started singing in public people said I sounded like I came out of the Irish tradition, I think because I use a lot of ornament, but it’s just the way everyone in my family sings. Since then I’ve listened to a lot of Irish singers and Sean knows and I’m a huge fan of Maggie Boyle and Paul Brady among many others, but in reality I think my singing style is the cross between the Wright Family and Dolly Parton!
You’re soon to gain the lofty title, “Doctor of Ethnomusicology” Do your studies of music influence the music you make?
Although I always played music for fun, I never studied it formally while I was at school. I was really allergic to exams so I think after acing my Grade 3 recorder at around age 10 I pretty well retired from music education! I was always very into art and literature so after A-Levels I studied Art History at York Uni, and I busked my way through my first couple of years in a duo with Paul Young (Blackbeard’s Teaparty)! But it wasn’t ultimately the subject for me and after graduating I was wondering where to go next.
I was invited to represent the UK at a big international jews harp festival in Amsterdam in 2005 and I was really struck by how varied the instrument is, played all over the world. I’ve always loved travelling and anthropology / sociology writings, so I enrolled on a Masters programme in ethnomusicology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and set off on a solo expedition to the far east of Siberia, to study the Yakut khomus with some of the great masters and shamans, and I documented my travels on video. I then got a scholarship to continue my studies at Manchester Metropolitan which is where I met the boys and Pilgrims’ Way was born.
In terms of how my studies
influence my music now, I’m a great believer in eclecticism and the benefits of exposure to all kinds of musics and traditions, so for sure being an ethnomusicologist has broadened my musical horizons, but from a purely practical point of view, it’s given me the opportunity to really think about ideas about tradition and transmission and authenticity etc. as well as the flexibility to go all round the country playing music with my band!
What are your first impressions of touring on the folk scene?
Really fun, really mad, really tiring!
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