In the crazy glamorous world of music journalism, where one day you’re drinking six quid espressos in the lobby of an upmarket London hotel, and the next you’re lying face down in a puddle of your own shame and vomit outside a bar in Vegas (so I am told), there is something really quite refreshing about an interview conducted at the stars mums’ house - though I am sure Mike Giverin, of British folk trio Jaywalkers, would balk at being referred to as ‘the star’.
Nonetheless I have to wonder if the young Bob Dylan might have been less surreal and more forthcoming, during interviews, had there been a chance his mum might appear at any moment carrying a plate of cucumber sandwiches and saying – Now then Robert, enough of that bollox and answer the young man properly!
Not that Mike’s mum is home and not that I am about to start drawing the usual hackneyed parallels at the first mention of folk music. In fact the very word ‘folk’ is where any relation between Giverin and Dylan ends.
Mike, for a start, is from Rochdale; he doesn’t sing (though, arguably, neither did Dylan) and he rarely ever mentions light bulbs.
What he does, along with fiddle player and vocalist, Jay
Bradberry and bassist Lucy Williams, is write original songs while helping to craft a superbly frantic and coercive mix of English folk and American Bluegrass.
And so, with the ink barely dry on the recording contract and a distribution deal threatening to put their latest collection of frenetic foot stompers, mournful blues, and mountain melodies into high street music shops up and down the country, Musos Magazine decided to find out, first hand, just what all the fuss is about.
Our journey took us all the way from Bacup Folk club, in darkest Rossendale, to the wilds of Healey – about a mile away - where, over sugary tea, I wanted to know how it all began.
“Well, we all go to the same jam session,” Mike explains, “so we’ve always known each other. Jay and I had the same teacher at school, and he happened to be Lucy’s brother. “
At this point it’s not hard to imagine some reinvigorated music teacher at Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar school telling his pupils - you see what you can achieve if you don’t pay attention in maths!
However, “We’re not a bluegrass band,” Mike tells me. He wants to make that absolutely clear. mean, bluegrass is great but it really all starts to sound the same if you’re not careful. “ Fair point.
“There’s that,” he adds, quickly, “and the fact that the Americans do it so well. You can always tell a British band playing bluegrass from an actual American bluegrass band. I can anyway.”
So bluegrass, it seems, is a label Mike is keen to shake; even despite the fact that it may be this intoxicating mix of cultures and rhythms which makes Jaywalkers such an exciting prospect. That said, with such a wide range of musical tastes it’s not surprising the band want to avoid being misinterpreted. Between the three of them they count such diverse personalities as Charlie Parker, James Taylor, Django Reinhardt, and Bruce Molsky as influences.
mention Mike’s personal love of Lancashire dialect poetry, or “stories from the Ye Olde days.”
But lots of musicians play lots of jam sessions. All over the country, every night of every week, there are talented little pluckers dreaming big dreams in the back rooms of pubs and working men’s clubs. Comparatively speaking very few of them make it to the finals of the BBC Young Folk Awards.
“Me and Jay wanted to enter the folk awards as we were the only two in the right age range– 14 to 21 – so we got together as a duo in the summer of 2008, did a little CD, and sent it off to Aunty.”
“I
And that is not to
PHOTOGRAPHY: TOM NOTMAN
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