root salad Topette

Yes, they’re this month’s statutory new band featuring Andy Cutting. Tim Chipping hears how.

t starts with two sustained bass notes, somewhere in the near dis- tance. They are not nice notes. If they were legs they’d be planted wide apart in dirty boots. But they’re not legs. We wouldn’t write an article about legs (for that you need to seek out our sister publication fOots.) It’s the start of a tune called Almond And Olive by a band that several of us here are pretty giddy about. They’re called Topette and what they play after those two notes is the sound this magazine makes if you mould it into a conch shape and hold it up to your ear.

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Topette are a new five-piece formed by Barnaby Stradling, bassist for Blowzabella, Eliza Carthy and False Lights among many others. With him are his Blowza-bandmate Andy Cutting on melodeon, James Delarre of Mawkin on fiddle and two French musi- cians who Barnaby will now tell you about by way of an introduction to a group who’ve only had four rehearsals but barely needed one.

“There’s a fantastic festival called De Bouche À Oreille in Parthenay. Andy and I went there about four years ago with Blowzabella. It’s a brilliant little festival; very local and one of my happiest, most ecstatic musical experiences. So my wife and I went back the next year just for a jolly. We ended up working in the bar as volunteers and a couple of the people we worked with were Tania Buisse and Julien Cartonnet, who we’d met the year before and had a few tunes with.”

“Julien and Tania play together in a couple of bands in France called Lost High- way and Shelta. Julian’s a big cheese in the world of French pipe playing; with Duo Egrelon-Cartonnet. Tania is an extremely brilliant and funny woman who plays the bodhrán with a sensitivity that I’d never thought was possible on the bodhrán. It’s not really my favourite instrument but it’s a lot to do with Tania’s personality and also the fact that she’s an amazing player. She’s just really gentle and listens to the tunes. I don’t know how to do Irish music but they really know how to do it. They do it in a French way.”

What is the French way? “They just play quite naturally for danc-

ing, and it’s very appealing to me. That’s kind of what this group is about. For people like us who like playing tunes and repetitive music it’s great to play for dancing. And they know about that in France because it’s very free over there; everyone just dances, no one’s embarrassed about it. It’s not like in England where you have to be told what you’re supposed to do. They just do it.”

Topette are launching their EP Chez

Michel at Sidmouth Folk Week on August 7th. Prior to that the excellent Kerry Fletch- er will be running dance workshops for those afflicted by not being French, the idea being that everyone will be able to throw themselves into the gig without needing a caller. A kind of dance anarchy, all to the unlikely combination of pipes, electric bass, fiddle, bodhrán and even tenor banjo.

f I was gonna sit down with a piece of paper and make up a band it wouldn’t have been this group of instruments at all. But it came about through friendship. I was working in a bar and playing in a bar and spending a lot of time in a bar. A few months after the festival I was Facebook- ing with Tania and Julien and saying, ‘It would be really nice to see you more often. We should play some music.’ I just thought I was making idle chitchat but they got really excited by the idea. And when we sat down for the first time in my kitchen in Bristol in January 2014 it imme- diately sounded really weird and good.”

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Weird is an apt word to describe Topette since their musical selection process is unfet- tered and eclectic. Taking in everything from a North African traditional tune called Hamouda, to Swedish fiddler Ola Bäckström’s Meatballs Whiskey And Beer, to self-penned numbers like the European-leaning Spot’s Tail, written for James’ dog. What they have in common is a refreshing air of impoliteness to the way they’re arranged and played.

“That’s maybe my influence. I like things to be quite balls out. I’m not really up for prissy and genteel and nice. I’m a bass player and I like grooves and gnarly edges. Andy’s used to playing very understated beautiful stuff but a lot of the time support- ing what other people are doing. In this we get together, we get a bit tipsy and just play. I’m trying not to be too weird, I just want to be weird enough.”

www.topette.uk F 23 f