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love the ease of her singing and the inti- macy of her voice. It’s like she’s chatting to you in a shop.
“I really like listening to voices which have their own sounds and different tones. I love Irish sean nós singing because of the way they throw sounds around and the accents really come out. You get trends in singing styles. At the moment it’s all quite jazzy – that Amy Winehouse style is in vogue right now. But there are so many different sounds in voices and I do try to experiment a bit. The most important thing is to be sincere about the way you present it; it has got to be real.”
Lisa’s immersed herself thoroughly in traditional music but in the wink of an eye she veers off to somewhere else entirely; and while names like Björk and Kate Bush do spring to mind when you scrabble around for comparative vocal forces, no box yet invented will easily contain her determined individuality. She has such a free musical spirit you do won- der how and where she fits in with what’s going on around her, but that’s the least of her worries.
“I never think about that side of it,” she laughs. “I just approach things the way I like. In any case the folk scene has grown so much. Alasdair Roberts has done so much yet is still very much entrenched in traditional music, and plenty of others cover a big span of folk and whatever comes under that umbrella. A lot of singers in traditional music are writing their own stuff: Eliza Carthy, Emily Port- man, Kathryn Roberts, Bella Hardy, Karine Polwart. It used to be unusual for a stal- wart traditional artist to do original work, but not any more. Things have changed.”
Gerry Diver, of course, has played a huge part in her evolution, virtually every step of the way, but… living with, writing with, rehearsing with, recording with, touring with and seemingly spending every hour of the day with him, you won- der how much pressure this puts on them as a couple.
“There are certainly a lot of different facets to our relationship but we manage to stay together so we must be doing something right! I think we both know where each other’s buttons are so we man- age that. Music is something we have in common as part of our relationship and in a personal way we have interests in similar things. Bonnie soon tells us to shut up if we start going on about work too much and that’s good. It’s very grounding when you have kids.”
And in terms of the music...
“It varies. With Shipping Song we were both there when that came out but mostly the tune and words are already there when Gerry comes in with his input. If ideas come up and they work then I go with them and sometimes Gerry is part of the creation of the music and sometimes he’s part of the overall sound. He produces all the time, which is a very different art to writing and he always has lots of ideas.”
Does he ever tell you something you’re working on is crap?
“Oh yes! I might not always agree…” And then what happens?
“We do it my way! No, that’s not true at all. When you do anything musical you often have to do it for a bit and then go away and leave it and then you do a bit more and then say no, I’m gonna rub that out because you think you’re going up a
“L
blind alley and decide to start again with a different instrument. Occasionally you’ll have such an amazing idea that it works at the first session but more often it’s a labour involving craft and time. I think the time in between is where the art is when the unconscious processes are working away. When you leave it, that’s when the work is done.”
earning traditional songs is very different to writ- ing your own things. Then it’s a question of interpretation and that’s
a different discipline. Some songs you need to have in you for five years before you can really play with them or feel you’re getting them. Sometimes it’s a case of getting out of the way of the art. When you’re writing there’s a tendency to overthink and obsess and there is a place for that as well. I’ve never been wordy so it’s a new thing for me to do that.”
Is there a sense that you always have to try something off the wall deliberately to be different?
“No, not really. I don’t do it purposely. I’m not trying to be the weirdy one. I just do something and do it and do it and do it until it’s right for me and then I just hope other people get it. I just get it to a point where I like it and hope others like it too. But if they don’t… that’s fine. If you start doing stuff for a certain market, you will disappoint yourself and you will fail.”
And the future?
“Oh, lots of gigs hopefully. Then another May EP. And I think the next album will be a traditional album of quite minimal stuff. So it will be different again. I never want to do the same thing twice.”
And will we have to wait six years for that?
“Noooo… of course not!”
www.lisaknapp.co.uk
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