31 f “A Good Thing I Practised!”
That might explain why he’s fairly good at this twangery stuff, we reckon. Over fRoots’ 40 years, Martin Simpson has evolved from the boy wonder of Britfolk to a global guitar and banjo hero. Jon Wilks takes him backwards and forwards.
career spans four decades, so every minute of interviewing time is precious. This half-hour spent sat motionless on these Birmingham New Street rails can’t be doing anyone any good… except, this morning, other people’s tardiness is none of my concern. Martin Simpson has recently discovered WhatsApp.
T
Out lost time is passed pinging links and pics across encrypted channels, basi- cally geeking out over music, guitars, tun- ings, traditional songs; everyone from Hedy West to Booker T & The MGs. By the time I descend the footbridge and embrace his non-virtual form, it feels as though we’re well into our stride.
This is both the wonderful thing and the danger of interviewing Martin Simp- son. I’ve done it a few times before, and, like his musical palette, his conversation is always sprawling. If you interview Carthy, the other great Martin of Folk Music, you’ll find that he sticks fairly closely to the trad path. Simpson, though… well, this could go anywhere.
As a way of trying to keep it on the straight and narrow, I’ve come armed with the fRoots interview from 1982 that fol- lows from Page 38. I thought it might be interesting to compare the younger Simp- son model with the ‘Matured Like a Fine Wine’ version. And, to an extent, it works, but I quickly remember that the key to getting the best out of Martin Simpson is to let him flow. Prod the conversation here and there just to keep it roughly on target, but generally… loosen the shackles.
The obvious place to start is with his next, as yet unnamed album. I figure it’ll lend us that tidy cinematic trick of starting bang up close before spinning back to where it all began, gradually building back up to a sense of coming full circle. But I get more than I ask for. The new album, now several months in progress,
he train into Sheffield is late. In times gone by, this would’ve caused me great concern. I’ve a major interview to do with a man whose
has become undetachable from a huge recent bereavement, and so we find our- selves plunging into Martin’s life at a par- ticularly poignant milestone.
Roy Bailey was a man of unfath- omable significance both for the Simpson family (Martin is married to his daughter, Kit) and folk music at large, so his recent passing has left nothing short of a crater. “It just made me not want to be away from home,” Martin says. “It made me not want to be recording at that point. I did the things I had to do – I did the tour with Martin Taylor, which started the day after Roy died. But I just wanted to come back here and be with Kit (Martin’s wife and Roy’s daughter) and Max (Kit and Martin’s daughter). I spent a lot of time with Roy, by his bedside, just playing the guitar for him. It made me change what I wanted to put on the record, and replace it with what I’d be doing with Roy.”
“There’s a Robb Johnson song in par-
ticular that’s an incredible thing to per- form – a beautiful song called More Than Enough. In the last days, just before Roy slipped out of consciousness, he was sleep- ing a great deal. I was just sitting and play- ing this song and he awoke, and he was ever the performer. He woke up and he sang the last verse: “Consider how little of life that we know / We bring nothing, take nothing, pass through and go / We’re all of us poor when it comes to the night / In need of the darkness, in need of the light / If we’d learn to want less and love more, there’d be enough for the poor / But there’s more than enough for us all.” He awoke from consciousness and he sang that beautifully. I was in bits. I suddenly realised someone else was in the room, and it was Steve Heap who used to run Towersey Festival. He was just standing there with his mouth open. It made me want to do that song, and it made me rethink a lot of the instrumental pieces.”
While he says that Bailey’s departure has put the album back considerably, it’s clear that he’s unable to down tools. Like most musicians, the process of spending
Photo: © Judith Burrows
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