37 f Still Exploring
‘Independent’ and ‘demanding’ are just two words used by his peers to describe Chris Wood, one of England’s most eloquent songwriters. Cara Gibney finds out what drives him.
“N
eo-liberalism has infil- trated the BBC and most news streams that matter. Ignorance is peddled as ‘salt of the
earth common sense’. Data is to be disre- garded. Selfishness has, since Thatcher, been applauded as the natural human state and ‘post-truth’ is, well, that’s just humbug of the highest order.”
Chris Wood, singer-songwriter and per- former of folk, tradition and the daily mod- ern struggle, was talking about the state of the protest song. “Folk song has always been the raspberry seed in the back tooth of the establishment” he continued. “Anon delivers a considerably more compelling version of history than the version air- brushed and finessed by the likes of Churchill or Starkey. So, out of respect for the living and, for those who might be lis- tening in years to come, I aspire to that degree of candour.”
It all seems so far away from the choir- boy who spent his youth wrapped up in the world of Handel, Bach and Gibbons. So far in fact that it’s hard to appreciate how he veered so resolutely down the path of folk music – guitar and fiddle in hand, noted for his traditional Québécois and French folk music, decades of lauded collaborations and self-written albums in front of him, angry and easy and eloquent.
By way of explanation he told me “The short answer to your question is … The English Hymnal was edited by Ralph Vaugh- an Williams,” the English composer whose work was influenced strongly by English folksong. “I did a duet with Ron Sexsmith at Maida Vale,” he went on. “We’d only sung a few bars before we both realised we’d been choirboys. Loads of singers were choir kids.”
His collaborations over the years have been far reaching. From Billy Bragg to hip- hop artist Dizraeli. From his work with story- teller Hugh Lupton to Québécois music with Andy Cutting. The alliance that the young Chris Wood established with Martin Carthy set career defining markers. “All the while I was singing traditional songs I felt I was in his shadow. It was only when I started writ- ing my own songs that I felt I had finally moved out from under him. But even now, it is Martin who remains the benchmark.”
An explanation of that benchmark ran into a 250-word paragraph ending in “He knows the music is more important than
him. His preferred teaching method is the surgical use of the timely silence... and... he was a choirboy.”
“Well he is far too independent,” laughed Carthy when I put Wood’s words to him. “I am incredibly flat- tered and I’m delighted that he likes what I do, but he is a very demanding musi- cian.” Harking back to the early days when Wood would drive Carthy to gigs and then “do a couple of floor spots so that people can get to know what I’m doing,” Carthy could see the artist growing in front of him. “We talked a lot and he was experimenting
with writing.” At the time he was writing pieces of two or three verses. “They were sometimes very funny, and other times they were the sound of someone exploring. What I liked was that he was sort of inching towards something, and one of the things he was wondering about was accompanying himself on the fiddle, and I told him that not many people have done that before.” The rest, as they say, is history.
Photo: Douglas Robertson
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