35 f
been there for some time, revolving around the Highwood String Band. The next generation was this band called The Horse Flies and they were using old-time music as trance/dance music. It was really hip. Then there were the jazz players, the guys that played in all the bar bands… There was a jazz cellist called Hank Roberts who was absolutely mind-fuck- ing! These were the guys that I got to work with. It was absolutely fantastic.”
“I
His journey went on to include spells in California and New Orleans, and it was during this time that he became known for the guitar workshops that he puts on each year. “I’ve always taught, even dur- ing a time when it wasn’t the done thing – when people refused to teach and kind of looked down their noses at it.” Again, ref- erencing the 1982 interview that you’ll find reprinted elsewhere in this issue of fRoots, he says, “I learnt early on that teaching is efficacious for oneself. And when I went to the States, I found that teaching is absolutely part of the culture. There were all these amazing guitar work- shops that I embraced. It was fantastic. And because I wanted and was willing to be involved in all that, I suddenly got a reputation as somebody who could teach. That put me on the National Guitar Sum- mer Workshop and all these very high- profile things. I’m really pleased and proud of that. It brought me in contact with some great musicians and it really helped my career. I have a string endorse- ment with D’Addario, and I’ve had it since god knows when, basically because of teaching – because I was enormously visi- ble to lots of people who were absolutely mad about guitars.”
With the new album pressing for attention, we return to the subject of songwriting. Having given himself the per- mission that he spoke about earlier, was he quick to get started? “I say I gave myself permission to write,” he laughs, “but it doesn’t mean I was suddenly churning out the hits! I have lyric books that might have two lines that I thought were utterly bril- liant at the time, and then… oh no!”
The lyric books he speaks of are stacked on shelves, table tops and chairs around us. Most of them are the uniform black cover, red string-bound, line-printed, standard-issue notebooks you might find in a WHSmiths. “I write albums down in these books like projects,” he tells me. And then, with a Willy Wonka-like glint in his eye, he hints that one of them is “The Book of Prodigal Son.” Fans of his songwriting will know what this means, for it’s on Prodigal Son, being re-released in de-luxe version with an extra live CD as part of Topic Records’ 80th birthday celebrations, that you’ll find the song he calls “my only hit”.
“Topic Records asked me to do a huge interview on the subject of Prodigal Son for its new release,” he tells me, “and in doing that I took another look at the work- in-progress pages for Never Any Good. It was shocking to me to open it up and look
went to Ithaca, New York, in 1988. The level of musician- ship in the town was fantas- tic. There was an incredible old-timey scene which had
at it. It puts me exactly where I was: I know what the book was sitting on when I wrote it; I can see and feel the whole thing. I think there was a verse and a half that I crossed out as not necessary. Most of it was like, BANG! BANG! DONE! BANG! I look at it and go, ‘Woah! You better have a lie down!’ It was written in a single sitting. It all came out and then I went back and crossed a few things out. That was it.”
It’s so clear what Never Any Good means to him, although it’s important to understand that he sees it as part of a duet of songs completed by Dancing Shoes, the song about his mother’s life that accompa- nied Jasper’s Waltz on last year’s Trails And Tribulations. They’re both songs that will stop you in your tracks, but his “only hit” is one of the most heartfelt pieces of song- writing you’re ever likely to hear, detailing with great love, weariness, poignancy and admiration the life of his veteran father, a man who struggled with society-enforced responsibilities but came alive in nature and song. It won him the Best Original Song accolade at the 2008 BBC Folk Music Awards, and must’ve done wonders in cementing the idea that he might have something to say after all.
How did he feel when it was all done and dusted? With visible pride, he allows himself a gentle pat on the back. “I thought, ‘I’ve got something here’.”
“Writing is really exciting to me, but
it’s also really gruelling,” he says. “I don’t find it nearly as easy as some of the other stuff, but sometimes it pours out and that’s a great feeling.”
“I’m finalising the lyrics for the new
album, and it’s been really exciting. It has been a long trip for a lot of these songs. When I worked with Dom Flemons, one of the things that happened was that I had to re-approach stuff that I used to play when I was in my teens – old blues and ragtime stuff. I went back to playing in standard tuning, and I enjoyed it so much that I did- n’t stop, and I just thought, ‘Right, I’m gonna get better at this’.”
“So I was sitting down one day and I was practising these various ragtime tunes, and something popped into my head – a song called Ragtime Millionaire that I learned from Paul Empson [formerly with The Clegg Hall Bogarts]. It had a chorus: ‘Well I’m a rag, I’m a rag, I’m a ragtime mil- lionaire / All you little people better listen
Simpson 1977
to me / I’m a ragtime millionaire.’ I started playing it, and I suddenly stopped and thought, ‘Woah! This is too good. I went, ‘All you people standing around / Come and taste some of my trickle down / My trickle down, that’s what I said / I been made pissing on your head / All you little people better listen to me, I’m a neo-liberal billionaire!’ It’s a Richard Branson song!”
It sounds suspiciously like a protest song
to me. “Well, yeah, very definitely. Not that I haven’t always been interested in the con- cept. And, what with good old Brexit…”
“I’ve always loved the song, Who’s
Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot? I was playing that and thinking this would be a perfect Brexit vehicle. Just those questions: ‘Who’s gonna shoe your pretty little foot? / Who’s gonna glove your hand? / Who’s gonna kiss your red ruby lips / When I’m in a far off land?’ That sets it up. It’s really interesting. I was touring with Martin Tay- lor and he meditates, so we were dis- cussing various Buddhist concepts. He mentioned the Three Poisons, which are illusion, greed and hate. And I’d already partially written the lyric, so I just changed one word and wrote, ‘What makes a coun- try rich in truth is not illusion, greed and hate / But open minds and doors and hearts, that makes a country great.’ You know, I’m just trying to express it without going, ‘Chris Grayling’s a cunt’. Which he obviously is. But that doesn’t scan.”
I
wonder if he feels pressure when it comes to making records, or whether – after such a long time doing it – it’s something that comes naturally to him. He says that while
he’s “always on, musically,” there are defi- nite times when he finds himself switch- ing into ‘album mode’ (“a great sigh goes up around me,” he laughs).
“You start to accrue material on tour. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy on writ- ing for this record, and in my lyric book there are some very big pieces of writing which I had intended to finish for this record. And they’re not finished. It’s not because they’re not good. It’s because they’re just not done yet. There are already three or four songs waiting to be on the next record. You’re always doing that. I try not to feel too pressured going into making a record, but actually you have to feel pressured. You’re trying to record your creativity, and you’re trying to do it to the best of your ability. You’re try- ing not to repeat yourself, and you’re try- ing to make statements that needed to be made. If you think about all of that, there’s a great deal of pressure.”
“You become so involved in the process of making the record that everything else drops away, really. I’m also conscious of the fact that it’s a record. It’s not just a physical thing, but you’re literally recording your thought process and the moment and what you do, and that’s exciting. It’s slightly daunting, but it should be. If you go into it thinking whatever, then you’re doing something wrong. You should just care.”
As the day draws to an end, the gui- tars and banjos begin to hold more of his attention. One in particular – a fairly stan- dard-looking creature – is introduced as being “particularly storied”.
Photo: Ian Anderson
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