Atwenty-minute
conversation with
Adrian Edmondson about his punk and new wave covering folk band was never going to neatly fit onto one page. Our sardonic British icon spills into how most festivals are ‘shite’, how he disturbs his wife’s TV watching with excessive wrangling of his mandolin beside her and his dislike of internet music recommendations, all of which can be read online – for now, a snippet of the unbridled character we love…
You’re bringing Bad Shepherds to us this month, which we’re excited by. It was something that was meant to be a hobby for you, I read… All my work’s supposed to be a hobby. I try not to do any real work; I think if you have something you feel passionate about, it’s not a job to make other people feel passionate about it. You can’t feel passionate about work, can you?
I was reading a review of the Bad
Shepherds recently and someone had written “punk music was ferocious, angry and energetic – folk music is the antithesis of this…” I don’t agree with that at all, and I’m fairly certain that you wouldn’t either… No, folk music covers a wide spectrum, as does punk and new wave really, I mean there are some horribly twee bits of folk but a lot of folk music is protest music. It’s just not loud because it’s un-amplified. Doesn’t mean it’s not energetic. I think a reel or a jig kicking off is as violent as any kind of punk gig I ever saw. Tere are an awful lot of new folk artists at the minute… I don’t know why I say that in a disparaging way, haha! I don’t think there’s anyone who does what we do. I think a lot of people could play harder, d’you know what I mean? We generally change our sets depending on how it’s going and who’s there and what’s happening, you know. So we’ll play a kind of morning set in front of a lazy, field of people lying down and that will be low energy, and then in a hot, sweaty tent we’ll ramp it up. It’s horses for courses really, isn’t it?
Te whole mechanic of taking on cover songs is a huge mantle for you to take on; has there ever been a song that’s been too difficult, that’s wriggled away from you, that can’t
be tamed? Oh, hundreds of ‘em. Loads of ‘em. Yeah, we try loads of stuff and what we do probably represents about a quarter of what we try to do. Primarily they fall down on lyrics because I’m a middle-aged man and they’ve got to suit my age, and most folk and most punk songs surprisingly do because they’re surprisingly adult in content, most of the punk canon, y’know. Tey were written by people who were really thinking; they’re not just solipsistic, selfish kind of ‘ooh, I’m in love, I’m not in love’ songs. Tey’re about social commentary and social protest and things like that and it’s very exciting.
Now Adrian, folk, like jazz in some respects can be quite a cliquey genre – have you ever received criticism from die-hards? We’re aware of the folk nazis. Hahaha. I’ve hung about the edges of the folk scene for ages, as a punter, so I think they’re less afraid of me than they could have been because they know that I’m genuinely in to it and not just kind of doing this project as a kind of joke. Actually, I don’t think it’s the folk nazis that come to our gigs. People that come to our gigs are people that get the concept.
Emma Garwood
Adrian Edmondson and the Bad Shepherds come to Te Waterfront on 10th November. For tickets, go to
www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk. Read the uncut version of this interview at
Outlineonline.co.uk
26 /November 2011/
outlineonline.co.uk
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