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et’s take a question from current Albion Band member and Sheffield exile Gavin Davenport: Do you think that the post-skiffle English revival folk scene has been embar- rassed about acknowledging the influence of America on its music, in its search for English authenticity?
“Well, I haven’t! When I look back at Ewan MacColl and his attempts to… straiten English music, I find that far more embar- rassing than the fact that America had an effect on English music.”
“But I’m very proud to say that I went back to the States and altered the way that Americans regard the guitar. Some of those records that I made while I was living in the States actually had a huge effect on the acoustic guitar in America. I don’t think Ameri- cans would be going, ‘I’m really embarrassed I’ve been influenced by an English guitar player’.”
You cover Bob Dylan’s North Country Blues and Blind Willie
McTell on the album. What is it about his songs that make them so malleable?
“Well… North Country Blues, the fact of the song impresses me so much. He was 22 when he wrote that. He was writing about exactly what has happened and is happening in the north of England right now. He was writing in the character of a woman. And I think he nailed it. And that particular song comes from The Times They Are A-Changin’ which is just the most aston- ishing collection of songs.”
“Those songs are musically incredibly simple. And like all of his songs, because of the way that they’re initially presented, you can do whatever you want with them.”
Your bandmate Andy Cutting has asked the question many musicians dread: Who has most influenced your guitar playing? But I’m going to add to that by asking, isn’t it true that you don’t really rate many guitar players?
“Now that’s set me up nicely. I don’t really. I’m hyper-critical of guitar players in the same way that I’m hyper-critical of songwriters. I’ve grown up with Blind Willie Johnson, Doc Watson, Robert John- son… massively influential. Then in my backyard I’ve got Carthy and Nic Jones and Dick Gaughan – all of whom were there for me to watch from the front row of the folk club, when I was a kid.”
“But then… Pat Metheney, his solo on Amelia on the live Joni Mitchell record Shadows & Light, that had a massive influence on the way I look at the guitar.”
“But the ‘modern world of acoustic guitar’… I want to run screaming from it. I really don’t enjoy it at all. I don’t think it’s very musical. I don’t think it’s interesting. And I think it’s kind of pre- posterous in a lot of ways.”
Here’s modern acoustic guitar player Ben Walker: How did you stumble on CGCFCD?
“The tuning Ben’s talking about is actually an altered banjo tuning. And almost all the tunings I use, even when I think I’ve been massively clever, I will always find that it exists on the five- string banjo which was tuned in all these different ways because originally it was a homemade instrument, fretless, massively diffi- cult to intonate, so the whole idea was you end up with as many notes of the scale as possible on open strings.”
Katherine Blamire of the band Smoke Fairies has a related
question: You seem very candid with your audiences – discussing and explaining tunings. Do you worry that this approach detracts from the mystery and magic of music?
“No I don’t. I think people enjoy it. I’m not trying to be myste- rious or magical when I’m talking to the audience. I’m trying to get them involved in what I’m doing, specifically in the stories and the songs. That’s why I got into this in the first place, because lis- tening to people sing songs made me cry.”
“I think the mystery and magic is writ large in the tunes and the songs and the history of them. So I don’t worry about it. I think people should be generous with their ideas and techniques.”
Back to Sheffield and a question from Fay Hield: What is your practising regime? Is it different to playing?
“Not really. My practising regime is to get lost in arranging or writing material. So I’m forced into my relationship with the instrument by the music. At which point there’s no muscle memory involved in that particular new thing you’ve just come up with. And very often when I write I write things that I can’t play. So the practice element is just repeating the passages I can’t easily do. But I play because I just love finding the music on the instrument.”
What’s the extra bit, the bit that practicing can’t achieve?
“I think it’s soul. It’s transmission of emotion. I mean, there are people who play stuff that’s way harder than what I do. And I’m
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