71 f New Tunes For Old


By adjusting songs to work for them, Cath & Phil Tyler fit seamlessly into the never-ending tradition. Steve Hunt investigates.


ath and Phil Tyler are hardly what one might call prolific recording artists but, by jove, their stuff is worth waiting for. They first ploughed their par- ticular Anglo-American neo-traditionalist furrow with 2008’s Dumb Supper and fol- lowed it up with the following year’s The Hind Wheels Of Bad Luck. A sustained period of radio silence was broken by the six-track EP The Song-Crowned King in 2015. Three years on, they’ve finally rewarded the patience of the faithful with their third full-length album The Ox And The Ax, released on LP by Thread Recordings and CD via their own Ferric Mordant Records imprint. I met up with the Tylers at Phil’s parents’ home in Devon before they played a mesmerising joint show with the utterly splendid Dia- mond Family Archive in Totnes.


C


“Lee Jones (Thread Recordings) is a friend of ours who’s really keen on vinyl releases,” Phil begins. “He’s also doing the promotional work, so we just do the CDs and the music. It’s all working OK so far. The album title is just a phrase that came up in a conversation that I made a note of. I keep a collection of things like tune names and made-up band names that I might want to use at some point. It doesn’t have any specific relevance to this album…” “but it sounds good!” con- cludes Cath. It looks good too. “David Hand (of Lancashire & Somerset Records) did the artwork for The Ox And The Ax,” continues Cath, “and it’s just beautiful. It’s really simple screen printing but it’s come out stunning.”


In my review of the album (fR417) – you can hear a track on this issue’s fRoots 68 compilation – I burbled on about how seamlessly Phil’s newly composed tunes cling perfectly to the texts of ancient songs and ballads, so I seized the opportunity to quiz the man about his process.


“Oh, that isn’t a plan,” he states, with disarming candour. “Nothing’s planned! I make up tunes and we’re not lyricists, so what do you do with your tunes? An easy solution is to just find an old text that


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