f28 Warning: contains violins
Sam Sweeney hasn’t been short of a project or two since leaving what’s-that-band, including releasing an album of straight British fiddle on a major label and directing the National Youth Folk Orchestra. Not to mention Leveret, the Remnant Kings… but Colin Irwin does anyway.
S
am Sweeney is dripping wet. “Sorry, I’m dripping wet,” he says. We’re at Sidmouth, see. And he’s been in the Sidmouth sea. It looks bracing, Sam.
“Quite refreshing actually…”
You wonder he’s got time for a swim, what with a thousand and one projects on the go – playing drums with Jon Boden & the Remnant Kings, artistic director of the National Youth Folk Ensemble, playing fid- dle with Leveret and now… and NOW… releasing his first solo album The Unfin- ished Violin.
It’s two-and-a-half years – ish – since Bellowhead made their teary-eyed farewell at Oxford Town Hall, and the band’s manic man of the fiddle and chief acrobat could have been forgiven for spending the intervening time in leisurely contemplation recovering his marbles. But he was straight back on that horse, continuing his adventures with Boden’s latest outfit, throwing himself into another twelve-piece outfit – Eliza Carthy’s Wayward Band – with customary passion and no little air of madness, while embracing the gentler climes of Fay Hield’s Hurricane Band and the Full English, not to mention helping to shape Leveret’s swift growth as one of the most important and influential champions of English music, along with accepting a mis- sion to inspire the next generation via the National Youth Folk Ensemble.
He’s a seemingly inexhaustible fireball of energy and enthusiasm… does this man never stop?
Clearly not. And while history has taught us to be fearful when a major label comes knocking, any thoughts that his debut solo album on the Island label will be a fireworks and meringue affair aimed at sucking in the great unwashed courtesy of the lowest common denominator does Sweeney a grave disservice. The Unfinished Violin is, from start to finish, an instrumen- tal album of pure, unfettered beauty. Sam wouldn’t have it any other way.
It’s a sort of postscript-cum-compan-
ion piece to Made In The Great War, the story of the violin he bought in an Oxford music shop while an 18-year-old A-level student. An inscription on the wood led to his discovery that it had originally been carved in 1916 by a Leeds stone mason turned luthier and music hall artist called Richard Spencer Howard, who was forced to abandon its creation after the call to fight for king and country with the Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment dur- ing the Great War. The story ended badly as Howard became one of seven British soldiers to perish at the Battle of Messines Ridge in June 1917.
Howard’s tale – and how his incom- plete violin was finally finished in Oxford nine decades later by Roger Claridge and ended up in Sweeney’s hands – became the subject of a brilliant touring show (and album), narrated by Hugh Lupton, along- side Sweeney, Rob Harbron and Paul Sartin. And if you missed it, well… unlucky, it was wonderful.
It attracted huge interest and got Sam a spot chatting about it on Saturday Live, Radio 4’s admirably folk-friendly Sat- urday morning magazine show. One of those reduced to tears that morning lis- tening to the story was Ian Brown, a record industry man affiliated to Island. The next thing Sam knew he got a call from Brown inviting him to make an album for Island.
“I don’t think he actually knew I was in Bellowhead – he said he wanted to make a follow-up thing to commemorate the centenary of the end of the war. I was- n’t sure. We’d finished Made In The Great War and weren’t going to tour it again. I’d put a lid on it and wanted to do other things. So when he said he wanted an album of war music I thought ‘crikey, I don’t want to do that.’ I didn’t want to do anything jingoistic or music hall, which is so sort of vulgar. But I said ‘Give me a few days’ and I went and found some incredi- ble melodies.”
Photo: © Judith Burrows
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