root salad f54 The Andy May Trio
They’re a bit of a Northumbrian music super- trio. Sara Barnard waxes enthusiastic.
W
hat to do when you and your best mates are professional musicians, live within a few minutes of each other, and
have a seemingly endless supply of great tunes? Start a band, of course. “Our friends couldn’t believe it hadn’t already hap- pened. It was so obvious to everyone except us,” laughs Sophy Ball, referring to the forming of the Andy May Trio with Andy May (Northumbrian pipes, piano) and Ian Stephenson (guitar, melodeon, double bass). Hence the title of their album, About Time (2015), the first record to be made at Ian’s Simpson Street Studios where they’re also recording their forthcoming CD.
Ian and his sister-in-law Sophy have been playing music together since the 1990s (The Pack, 422) and got to know Andy when they moved to Newcastle to join the folk degree course. With a healthy local scene and the influx of musicians from around the country, the sessions were buzzing. All those hours playing tunes paid off. “You can predict what each other’s going to do,” says Sophy. “It’s nice knowing on stage that everyone is going to musically come through for you. We know we’ve got each other’s backs.” Add to that the practicality of all fitting in one car and a shared love of fancy shoes and tea, and it starts to sound like a pretty neat situation.
Individually they’ve worked with numerous established names (including Kathryn Tickell, Jez Lowe And The Bad Pen- nies, Kan, Baltic Crossing), so “in terms of starting again,” admits Ian, “it feels like quite a big mountain to climb. You have to be cool with that.” Andy starts to describe the surreal moment at an early gig when he started to feel like they might be on to something: “It was Belgium’s hottest day on record, and our gig was in the hottest part of the day, under a marquee tent, under stage lights. In the photos we look like we were maybe gonna die.” The thumb pad disintegrated off Sophy’s bow, the backstage crew brought frozen towels that dripped all over the instruments. “Aside from thinking, ‘Jesus it’s hot’, dur- ing that gig it hit me: these people think we’re a real band, it’s a real thing, this is gonna work, it’s gonna be cool!”
Their enthusiasm for the work, music, and friendship is clear, along with a com- mitment to sharing the music of the North-east. “We’re trying to have some kind of theme or identity,” explains Andy, “by finding old tunes that have something to do with Northumberland or writing tunes that are at some level connected with those old tunes. There’s a whole array of manuscripts – like Morpeth-born John Peacock’s collection from the early 1800s
and the William Vickers manuscript from the 1770s – and there’s not actually that many bands at the minute playing the tunes from up here.”
Passing on the tradition is very much part of it. They all enjoy teaching: Ian and Andy with the Newcastle University folk degree course, Sophy in local schools, and all three with the Folkworks Summer Schools and other projects. “A few people in the generations above us did an awful lot of important work,” says Ian. “Without that we wouldn’t be where we are. It’s a respon- sibility, trying to live up to what’s gone before.” “It feels very natural to teach,” adds Andy, “I feel quite aware that it’s important that someone does it, that stuff that people have taught us should be passed on.”
here’s an added bonus to all their teaching work, as Ian points out: “We’re constantly on a search for tunes we haven’t heard before.” The new album is representative, evenly split between traditional tunes and things they’ve composed themselves or “nicked from friends”, like a version of King George The Third they got from Rob Harbron put together with a tune written by Sophy for her physiotherapist. The recording is made, says Ian, “standing close together. What you hear is what happened. It’s a harder process, but I think the result is more emo- tionally believable.”
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That interest in connecting with the lis- tener is part of their performances too. Ian describes knowing it’s been a successful gig as “when audience members come up afterwards as if they’re some long-lost friend. If they feel comfortable with us at the end of the gig it means they’ve been sitting at ease, emotionally and musically open to listening.” Andy finishes the thought: “Like continuing a conversation you haven’t had yet”.
Plans and ambitions as a trio include more festival gigs (Sophy: “We absolutely love being at festivals. We play in the ses- sions, stay as long as we can, go and see other bands”), collaborations with other trios and performers (like the recent tour they did with singer Rosie Hood) and con- tinuing to grow audiences on tours around the UK and further afield: “We have no expectations when we go out on tour. We just want to go out there. We always have a great time and we want our audiences to have a great time too.”
andymaytrio.com F
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