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S.R. He seems to have made a big con- nection between what he’s playing and what he’s singing, which wasn’t always quite there before.
M.S. I think that’s the case in many
people’s playing. There are a few things on Golden Vanity which I stopped playing because the guitar part was too complex for me to be able to execute it and sing the song properly, like Bitter Withy for instance. I don’t know if the back-up dis- tracts for the listener, but it does for the poor bleedin’ performer! I got it right one time in ten, the rest of the time my fingers would end up knotted at the seventh fret and my tonsils wildly flapping.
S.R. Is there any particular area of music you are wanting to explore which we haven’t heard you doing so far?
M.S. Several, really. One of the things I’m totally obsessed with at the moment is expanding the repertoire of the fretless banjo – it’s a tremendously expressive instrument, but many of them are not actually very good. Like National Steel gui- tars, the best are beautiful but the majori- ty are naff, old and bent. I’m having a neck made for an old Vega at the moment, and I’ve been listening a bit to koto music – the similarity in sound textures between fret- less banjo and koto had my hair standing on end. The thing about slide guitar and fretless banjo is that you’re not limited by those strips of metal. Not that my tech- nique is anything like as good as John McLaughlin, but he explored that sort of quarter-tonal thing by having great scal- lops taken out of his fretboard.
And I really want to expand my ability to play the slide, take it away from the blues field.
S.R. On the Fylde Guitar album, you did an Irish tune…
M.S. It fits , you see; the fluidity of the sound is not dissimilar to the pipes and things like that. And I can’t play anything that sustains, like violins or pipes, but I want to achieve some of that sound. The obvious way seems to be a bottleneck, or a lack of frets.
S.R. There was a rumour of an instru- mental album?
M.S.Well, I’m going to do a solo acoustic album for Topic – it won’t be purely instrumental, but an album of just me. That’s nothing to do with a certain magazine reviewer not liking drums!
S.R. Oh, I don’t think he dislikes drums, just didn’t think drums or that drummer fitted in the way they were used on that track. Obviously you’re more used to working with drums now, having done a stint in the Albion Band, but those par- ticular songs were still ones you were used to playing on your own, solo, live. The problem that strikes me is that you’re quite an intricate player and used to being solo, so if you do something with another intricate player it must be quite hard to get it tight.
M.S. That’s a very interesting point, because just recently I’ve been working with Duck Baker. I’ve never worked with another intricate guitar player, for those very reasons, and what I’ve found is that
1984
you’ve either got to do it virtually note by note, or not at all. What we’ve been doing is working out really careful arrangements of things – fiddle tunes mostly, American, Irish and English – we’d like to do some Scots stuff as well, but the strathspey really escapes me. I’ve been playing single string things, in unison, then we’ll introduce some bass lines, playing harmonies, so what we’re trying to do on two guitars is what would be impossible on one, but not over the top and busy.
I think the best way to learn is playing with other people, and to work with another guitar player like Duck is really interesting. It makes me think a great deal about what I do.
S.R. Considering playing fiddle tunes, dance tunes, do you think you’d gain something by playing in a subsidiary role in a dance band?
M.S. I’ve actually thought about doing
that with Webb’s Wonders. You can also learn a fantastic amount of discipline just playing a tight rhythm for three or four minutes – it’s something a lot of guitar players should be able to do.
S.R. I’ve certainly learned quite a lot sitting in pub sessions locally, just bashing out bottleneck power chords behind polkas and things. You can discover whole new ways of playing like that.
M.S. One of the great things about playing acoustic guitar with strident, loud things like melodeons is that you do have to adapt your technique in order to be heard at all. I’ve been using progressively heavier strings over the years. I now use a standard set of mediums, and by working on it can still do the things I could do on light-gauge strings. You get added sustain and whoomf.
S.R. What’s the ongoing Tabor situa- tion, with her having moved to the hairy- arsed north?
M.S. Tricky! Just before June moved, we worked on some new material and just about got it right. We’ve got a few gigs
coming up, but we’ve never done a great deal of work together – which in a way is a great advantage because of the freshness each time. A lot of the stuff that we do is tremendously emotive, which you can’t play too repeatedly.
S.R. Will the Civil War set ever get on record?
M.S. I hope so. But at the moment I’m more interested in my solo playing. In the last couple of years I’ve played with June, with Andy Cronshaw who is one of the few remaining great British musical eccentrics, and playing with the Albion Band – the theatre Albion Band was like a folk dance band a lot of the time, whereas the Albion Band I toured with was an American-type folk-rock band, really, doing Ashley’s greatest hits. The high point of that for me was being able to sing Percy’s Song off Unhalfbricking with Mat- tacks and Ashley pumping it out.
S.R. You’re giving lessons now, too? M.S. Quite right. I’m giving lessons
because… S.R. You need the money…?
M.S. …I need the money! But also, like everything I do playing-wise, it teaches me. I get asked about what other people play, so I have to sit down and think about it. It’s really good to be put into that kind of situation.
I find I can work out what other peo- ple are playing but I haven’t got the patience to learn a whole arrangement. That’s brought about by pure idleness, but it has quite an advantage, because you find other ways of doing things. There’s no point in sitting down and becoming Nic Jones or Ralph McTell or Martin Simpson – it won’t get you very far in the end. It’s important to have heroes, but not to take it too far. It’s good to look at somebody and think they are absolute- ly wonderful, and cop bits – I’ve stolen bits from everybody – but in the end you’ll never achieve anything by wanting to be somebody else.
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Photo: Ian Anderson
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