root salad f22 Toby Hay
Mixing influences from John Fahey to British trad. Steve Hunt talks to a solo guitar explorer.
“After that I was off to university and both those bands naturally came to a halt as everyone went their separate ways. That’s when I really started picking up the guitar and seeing what I could do with it in my room, but I was then still completely unaware of John Fahey and Robbie Basho. I didn’t know that playing the solo acoustic guitar was even a thing! It wasn’t until I left university that I realised I could just play guitar to people.”
I tell Toby that The Gathering fortu- itously landed through my letter box at the same time as The Hired Hands: A Tribute to Bruce Langhorne – each record providing a perfect complement to the other. The inher- ently cinematic quality of his music suggests that he’d be the perfect choice to sound- track a film.
“I would absolutely love to do a film soundtrack!” he confirms. “There are some possibilities on the horizon so I really hope that something will happen. I studied film making for three years then, when I got to the end of it, I realised what I really want to do is play music. But it’s a world I feel I still know quite a bit about and may get involved in again at some point.”
M
y initial reaction on hearing Toby Hay’s The Gathering was to assume that it was the work of an established artist
whose previous work I’d inexplicably missed. From its memorable cover photog- raphy to author Robert Macfarlane’s liner notes, it’s an artefact that exudes an air of gravitas. A first listen revealed eight com- pelling and abiding evocations of the Welsh landscape by a consummate guitarist and composer on what, astonishingly, is actual- ly a debut, self-released album on Hay’s own Cambrian Records label. Toby kindly took the time to tell me his story.
“I’ve always felt that my brain doesn’t really work properly unless I’m moving!” he begins. “ I’m not very good at just sitting down and working on music, so what hap- pens is I’ll go out walking in different places and let the energy and ideas build up inside. Then, when I get home, something tends to come out on the guitar. I don’t tend to force it, it happens quite naturally. It might be immediately after I come back from a place – some little spark happens that leads to the start of a new composition. Most of them tend to start off quite improvised. I use
quite a lot of strange tunings on the twelve- string guitar. Some of the high pairs I tune to different notes which gives the instru- ment a harp-like effect. I’ll know when it’s right, and once I’ve got the tuning, the music usually comes very quickly. I keep new compositions very improvised for quite a long time and will even perform them live largely improvised. Then, if I find I’m repeating certain phrases and patterns a lot then that becomes the base of the song and it becomes more composed.”
“I used to play electric guitar in bands – post-rock really, with lots of effects and an epic sound. I started getting into folk music in my late teens – mainly American folk music. When I was sixteen I got a job work- ing at the Royal Welsh Show, bought a banjo and started learning bluegrass style. That’s how I started using my fingers to pick strings. That led me into an interest in British traditional music too, so alongside the rock band I also joined a folk group, backing two sisters who sang British folk songs. My accompaniments were quite sim- ple, but through that I learned a lot about traditional songs.”
for fingerpickers, Toby feels the twelve- stringers define his unique sound. “Right from when I was recording my first rough demo EPs I wanted a bigger, more atmo- spheric sound. I was getting into a lot of harp and kora music, and some Indian music, and I felt limited by the sound of a six-string guitar. When I tried a twelve- string it just felt like the possibilities were endless and that it could help me find my own voice as a musician.”
F Toby has recently been working as a
duo with Sheffield-based guitarist and singer-songwriter Jim Ghedi.
“We’ve been working together on that in between our own stuff,” he explains. The album’s finished, so it’s just a case of doing all the behind-the-scenes stuff, then that will be coming out early next year with a tour. It’s all instrumental with Jim on six- string and me on twelve-string guitars. We recorded everything live, with no overdubs – it’s quite a raw record!”
You can find Claerwen from The Gath-
ering on our fRoots 64 compilation that came with June’s fRoots.
tobyhay.com F
or solo performance, Toby uses two twelve-string guitars – a Taylor, and one built for him by Roger Bucknall of Fylde. Whilst fiendishly difficult
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