37 f
With Jackson C. Frank’s old guitar.
“This was Jackson C Frank’s guitar,” he says, fully aware of the effect that sen- tence will have on this particular inter- viewer. He was made aware of its contin- ued existence after a gig a few years ago, when a fan came over and invited him home to look at what he had under his bed. While such an invitation would send most people running, Martin was intrigued. The dusty old guitar that they subsequently pulled out, probably still home to Frank’s DNA, was offered to him at a price he couldn’t justify, but a friend made the purchase and – for the time being – it’s living a comfortable and loved life in this room.
I ask him for a line or two of Blues Run
the Game, but he’s not having it. He says it’s not in the right tuning for his own arrange- ment, and he won’t play Jackson’s version on it. “Since I was in my teens, when I was just a kind of human sponge and I would hear or see something and think ‘right, I’m having that’, I would never ever attempt to play just like somebody else. I know that people do, and I think it’s great that they do – many of them become killer players – but I always thought, ‘nah, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to learn anything of Carthy’s, I’m not going to learn anything of Jonesy’s, I’m not going to learn anything of Gaughan’s.’ It would be like a painter sud- denly going, ‘Oh, I think I’ll do a van Gogh today.’ Why would you do that?”
I suggest that this might be the reason he has developed such a distinctive style of his own, and he concedes that this is proba-
bly the case. That, and unending practice. “The better you are able to play the instru- ment, the less you have to think about it; the better your performance is, the better you’re able to get the emotional content across, and the more you’re able to rise to the occasion when you’re asked to do something different. At the moment I have all this electric rig set up [gestures towards a couple of expensive amps and an impres- sive pedal board] because I heard someone playing electric slide and I thought, ‘I want to be able to do that. I can play killer acous- tic slide, but I can’t do it on electric.’ I just really like pushing myself. I mean, I know I’m very lucky, but as I like to say, ‘The hard- er I work the luckier I get’.”
ing album. Instead, I put the word ‘legacy’ out there, just to see how it makes him feel. Does he realise the effect and influ- ence that he’s had on other guitarists and folk musicians over the last four decades?
N
“I’m always uncomfortable when that question comes up. ‘Do you realise who you are?’ Well, I’m him. But it’s nice. I sup- pose, really, I’m just so conscious of how lucky I am, and that I can surround myself with all this.”
“I think the really interesting aspect of ‘having an influence on people’ is this. I have friends who are really, seriously com-
o career retrospective feature is complete without a nod to the future, but it feels as though we’ve covered that in the subject of the forthcom-
mercially successful in a way that I am not. I make a comfortable living and I have done forever. I’m very proud of that, and I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved in my family life. But I have friends like Jackson Browne who is a one-man industry. Richard Hawley is my immediate neigh- bour, and he is immensely successful and does extraordinary things in writing and film work – he’s even got a musical com- ing up. They have a big market, and I don’t have that at all. But I am aware of the fact that as a guitar player – this thing that is me as a guitar player – is influen- tial. You look at all these funny articles – the stamp collector approach to music – The Top 100 Guitar Players – and I con- stantly see myself in these lists next to Doc Watson or Chet Atkins. I love that. That, to me, is fantastic. Part of it is complete madness and means nothing, but on another level it’s really nice.”
As we set out for Sheffield Station and the evening Intercity back to London, I glance down at my phone to check the time. As the screen flickers into life, I swipe away from this morning’s WhatsApp con- versation and notice that my Spotify app is open on the Martin Simpson page. I hold it up and point out that he has 29,000 monthly listeners – certainly nothing to be sniffed at. His response is about as Martin Simpson as it gets. He smiles and his eyes twinkle with a humble pride. “Well,” he says with warm satisfaction, “what a good thing it is that I practised.”
martinsimpson.com F
Photo: Jion Wilks
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