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ered to them in one go. Rob and Andy have spent thirty years accruing this expe- rience and passing it on, which is helping them to get good very quickly. I didn’t really know what to expect when I went into this but it has turned out ten times better than I anticipated.”
“T Leveret – Andy Cutting, Rob Harbron and Sam.
A comment which makes me contrac- tually bound to ask if there’s any likeli- hood of a reunion.
“I’d love to do it another few times. It would be wicked to reform, but I’ve gen- uinely no idea if it would ever happen. I’d like to think we could do a Cropredy or something. Get 20,000 people in a field – people would go mad for it! We could just get together for a weekend, rehearse a bit, get pissed, have a lovely time, do a gig, cry, go home and do it again two years later or something.”
H
e continues to work with Jon Boden’s expanded line- up of the Remnant Kings, dispensing with his fiddle for a while to get behind a
drum kit. As a schoolboy he did have two years of drum lessons but admits most of his drumming tuition was gained from lis- tening to Weezer and Jimmy Eat World tracks on his iPod.
“It fitted Jon’s whole post-apocalyptic
concept on Songs From The Floodplain to get people in who couldn’t play their instruments very well,” he says wryly.
The expanded post-Bellowhead ver- sion of the Remnant Kings had an uneasy beginning, garnering a puzzled reaction on their Cambridge Festival debut. “Jon had a lot riding on it and it was very diffi- cult. It was too tentative and not rocky enough but it’s brilliant now and people go mad for it. Now we’re a real band with a wide variety of material, doing the Kate Bush song and the Whitney Houston song and trad songs and Jon’s songs and I get to hit the hell out of the drum kit.”
He’s also undertaken the nearest
thing he’s ever got to a proper job, after being appointed to a three-year post as artistic director of the National Youth Folk Ensemble – he had to fill in an application form and go for an interview (“the first of my life, I was terrified”) and everything. The characteristic pride and passion he’s brought to the role has already made a significant mark, evident in an impressive performance by the Ensemble at Cam-
bridge Folk Festival, among other places. He’s now into his third and final year as artistic director and has a fervent belief it will eventually go a long way to improving the standard of English folk music.
“The idea was to bring together twenty of the best fourteen- to eighteen-year-old musicians we could find to play predomi- nantly English music. We had three missions: to raise the standard of English instrumental music, because in comparison with Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, America, whatever, we are quite a long way behind in terms of stan- dard. Also to raise the standard of teaching and to spread English music.”
From ninety or so applicants, they are gradually whittled down via auditions to the final twenty and Sam makes the point that he’s not necessarily looking for the most accomplished players, more for potential, irrespective of their experience and knowledge of folk music.
“You might get a total whizzkid who has won millions of competitions, but the course may not be right for them and they won’t get a place. There’s a young fellow called Alex who auditioned the first year and his bow hold was awful and his pos- ture wasn’t good but there was something in his soul that told me, ‘I’ve got music in here’ and I could see it. On paper he wouldn’t have got in because he wasn’t ready but now he’s one of the most extraordinary fiddle players I know. We played a session with him and at the end of it me and Rob Harbron looked at each other and said we can’t wait to be in a band with this guy.”
“Nobody ever believes me but the music played comes from them. We sit in a circle, seventeen of them and six tutors – bless the Arts Council – and we find the repertoire mostly and explore it together and they make all the arrangements. The tutors are just there to help and mentor them. And they’ve made music way beyond my expectations. Even though some of them have only been playing folk music for a year, it’s better than a lot of professional bands.”
He adopts the philosophy absorbed from the Chris Wood summer school that it is more productive to supply the tools and know-how to allow young musicians to find their own style.
“We’re not trying to create people to become professional musicians but hope- fully they learn a lot, make some amazing friends and can play folk music forever. They only get a year, after which they can re-apply, and some of them have gone off to study music and others have gone to do different things. But there’s no doubt in my mind that some of them will be head- lining at the Ham (Sidmouth) in a few years. There is a guitarist who is a genius. I don’t know if he’ll go into folk music because he’s in an indie band and he’s gone off to study classical music, but he’s an absolute genius.”
Even after his tenure as the Ensem-
ble’s artistic director comes to a close, he plans to go further into the world of musical education to lift English music to a level where it is on a par with Scots, Irish and the rest.
“The key is having things to aspire to. It might sound offensive, but there aren’t any English fiddle players really to look up to. There’s Eliza Carthy and Chris Wood but they are modern. Before that, I didn’t get a lot from listening to source players. We haven’t yet had the greats. We don’t have a Tommy Peoples or a Martin Hayes or whatever. Who is there who I can look up to? Chris Wood, but he doesn’t play fid- dle any more and there’s John Dipper and there’s Eliza’s records before she became a rock band, but there’s not a lot there to help you on your way. So it’s a slow pro- cess. I’ve no doubt the popularity is on the rise but it will take a long time.”
everet, of course, is already playing a huge role in all of this and he’s particularly gratified that some of the cream of Scot- tish instrumentalists, including Aidan O’Rourke, Laura Beth Salter and Lauren MacColl, were out in force to check on Leveret when they played their sell-out concerts in Scotland.
L
Formed with Rob Harbron and Andy Cutting to play informal, unarranged instrumental music without too much thought of where it would lead, Leveret’s intuitive rapport and sheer joy of playing together has connected with audiences in an emotional way they never expected and is proving to be something of a game- changer in the way we view English music.
“We were told by a few agents and music professionals at the start that no-one
hey are getting all of my experience, all of Rob Harbron, Andy Cutting and Saul Rose’s experi- ence distilled and deliv-
Photo: © Judith Burrows
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