root salad f22 Ben Paley

‘Best fiddler in the world’ makes a CD with his mildly legendary father. Steve Hunt reports.

“W

hen I came back from the States in 1979, my Dad had been working a lot in Sweden – him and my

Mum had lived there before I was born. He was bringing back records and playing them to me, so that’s how I got into that music. I wrote Swedish Fiddle Music: An Anthology, because nobody else had done it, at that point. A friend of mine called Rowan Piggott has got a book out now too, called Swedish Fiddle Tunes.”

I recall my first sightings of an immensely hirsute Ben blasting out electric fiddle at some doggie-on-a-string festival in the 1990s.

“Yes, we moved to Brighton and I got involved with McDermott’s Two Hours, play- ing grungy folk-rock when their previous fiddle player took off and joined a theatre company. There were three bands playing that stuff in Brighton at the time – the Lev- ellers, McDermott’s and the band I was in, which was the Aardvarks. Out of those three, we were the awful, hopeless drunken rabble [laughs] but we all supported each other at different points. I played on stage with the Levellers a few times in the late 1980s and have deputised for Jon for a few weeks more recently.”

Following this Paley & Son pub gig, the

“Ben Paley,” repeats the Bellowhead man, approvingly. “Oh, isn’t he just the best fid- dle player in the world?!”

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24 hours later I meet “the best fiddle player in the world” at the Apple Tree, Clerkenwell, where Come Down And Meet The Folks are hosting a launch gig for the new Hornbeam Recordings release, Paley & Son. Whilst it’s Tom and Ben’s first duo album, the two have pl”Best fiddler in the world”ayed together since Ben was six, and worked both as a duo and in the New Deal String Band. Ben also continues to perform in his long-standing duo with Tab Hunter, with the Long Hill Ramblers, as one of Bon- nie Dobson’s ‘Boys’, and as an occasional Leveller, but music isn’t his sole occupation.

“No, I’m not a full-time musician,” he confirms, “I don’t make enough money at it, unfortunately! I do have a very understand- ing boss who is quite happy for me to take

hatting with Jon Boden at a mutu- al friend’s birthday party, I men- tion that the following day I’m going to see Tom & Ben Paley.

lots of time off, as long as I give him some notice. So I can do festivals in the summer, and that kind of thing.”

Born in London, Ben started learning the fiddle at the age of six. When he was nine, he moved with his mother and step- father to Morganton, North Carolina, where he was taught by Jim Buchanan – “a big deal Nashville session player who played with The Doors and Jim & Jesse” (and George Jones, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Garcia, and a host of others). “God told him to stop being a session musician in Nashville, go back to Morganton, and teach kids how to play the fiddle at about exactly the time when I was there. It was a strange, fortuitous thing which I didn’t appreciate at the time. I was just a kid, so I didn’t know who he was, but he was great and I learned so much from him – he just loved playing music.”

Having studied American old-time fid- dle at the source, young Ben next became captivated by Swedish music, eventually authoring a highly-regarded English lan- guage Swedish fiddle book.

duo’s next appearance is at an all-star Lead Belly tribute at the Royal Albert Hall. Tom played at Lead Belly’s last concert at Carnegie Hall in 1949, and at the very first Lead Belly tribute concert – in a duo with Woody Guthrie. I ask Ben if he ever feels apprehen- sive about filling the boots of legends?

“Oh, I can say my Dad played with

Woody Guthrie,” he smiles, “and hear what those words sound like to other people, but to me he’s just my Dad, you know?”

“I remember thinking ‘What do I actual- ly want out of this? Do I want to be famous and rich?’ And actually those things aren’t what motivate me. I think the idea formed when I first moved to Brighton that what I wanted was the respect of my peers – the respect of people whose opinions I value”

That he’s succeeded is further confirmed by a conversation with Nancy Kerr, who tells me “He’s an absolute favourite of mine! Authenticity can be a naff word, but his fid- dling is totally at one with itself whatever the tradition he’s playing from at the time. His technique is so internalised that he always sounds like him, while honouring the tune.”

I’ll leave the last word to Ben’s Dad, who declares: “I’m mighty proud of my teeny-tiny little sonny boy!”

www.benpaley.com F