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And when she took the tapes home, the family would be totally non-plussed by what they were hearing… her dad saying things like “If you get rid of that big noise in the background it might be quite good.”
Geoff Travis remembers the album took a long time to record… and even longer to release. ”I think we made a nice record, but we weren’t really making much progress and in the end it all sort of drizzled out… ”
So you weren’t on an eternal quest for the elusive hit single? “How can you have a hit single with Equation? They’re not Rod Stewart. I’m pretty clear-eyed on what’s commercial and what isn’t. Most of the things we do here are pretty uncom- mercial. We weren’t trying to shoehorn them into making a hit record. We might have just been trying to make the best ver- sions of the songs they had, which is some- thing completely different.”
So they weren’t eaten alive by the big,
bad Warners machine? “No, that’s nonsense. I don’t think the
Warners machine gave them any grief at all. You read interviews with the Jesus & Mary Chain and they talk about having to go these corporate meetings. I think they only came into the Warners building once in about ten years. Musicians love to re- write history. ‘Oh, we had a terrible time – they made us go on Top Of The Pops!’”
Equation did have a single, the pleas-
antly poppy He Loves Me – written by Dougie MacLean – released in 1996 which, with its catchy chorus and easy-on-the-ears delivery, picked up some airplay and may even have flirted with the outskirts of the charts; but the threatened new dawn led by the folk brat pack singularly failed to materialise. And that debut album seemed to have been lost somewhere in the swirling Dartmoor mist.
Indeed, we had to wait until 2003 when, with the horse well and truly bolt- ed, Geoff Travis took matters back into his own hands and quietly released Return To Me, that fabled album they’d sweated socks over seven or eight years earlier.
Listening to it now, it doesn’t seem to have aged too badly. Its chirpiness belies the rather bleak cover depicting a lonely bus shelter; and the singing quality of Cara Dillon and Kathryn Roberts is indisputable. And while its identity and folk credentials are obscured by dodgy arrangements and questionable production – and the sound is far too polite for its own good – some decent material lurks within, like Cross The River, the Tim Wood song they allude to in Sarah Coxson’s piece. Also notable are a funked-up version of Anne Briggs’ Song Of The Well, a slightly mystical Clannad-ish setting of W. B. Yeats’ love poem He Wish- es For The Cloths Of Heaven, and a very romantic title track.
It also featured their own early forays into songwriting, with Sean Lakeman emerging as the dominant composer with one song in particular, Strange Love, standing out; though the delicate closing track Wake Up, written by Sam and Cara and built gently around Sam’s soulful piano, is a real portent of things to come for those two.
The problem, perhaps, was that at the moment they appeared on our cover – and indeed Geoff Travis signed them – they were not a fully formed band, still searching for their own sound and identity, even as they pitched into Real World studios to make Return To Me. Their one common unifying factor – traditional music – was largely jetti- soned in favour of… they knew what not. They were all strong characters learning their trade with no shortage of ideas, but those ideas didn’t always coincide.
Cara Dillon and Sam Lakeman became close and, working on their own material together, began to drift away musically from what the others were doing. Eventu- ally they left the band to do their own thing; but they retained the trust of the Warners hierarchy, who still clearly had great belief that stardom awaited, dis- patching them to San Francisco for three months to record a brand-new album. So off they went, California dreaming, recording and mixing an entire album in proper West-Coast style. But the moment they got home and listened to the unerring gleam and shinily anodyne pro- duction values, they hated it. And it never saw the light of day.
and drummer. And in 1998 they released Hazy Daze, the first Equation album to find its way into the shops over three years later than a triumphant debut had been envisaged. It was okay. Ish. The album included a smattering of Seth songs, but mostly the songwriting credits go to Sean Lakeman – with a couple of them, Strange Love and Sad The Girl, res- cued from (and subsequently appearing on) Return To Me.
E
The album’s soft-rockery certainly found some favour in America, where the names of Fairport Convention, 10,000 Maniacs and even Fleetwood Mac were liberally bandied around as reference points. One interesting review described their music as “like a walk through wood- lands near a quaint seventeenth-century English village by a waterfall under a warm, summer sky.” Aah, that’s lovely, isn’t it? And they were now officially dubbed a ‘folk supergroup’ rather than a ‘folk brat pack’.
More recordings followed – The Lucky
Few in 1999, The Dark Ages EP in 2001, First Name Terms in 2004. We’ve got to vote The Lucky Few the best because it has the most interesting sleeve design of all their albums (not that the bar was set very high) and features a proper bout of classic Steeleye-esque folk-rockery on the tradi- tional song Sheffield Park.
There was constant touring in Europe and America, a respectable following with a multitude of experiences and stories to tell but it all gradually petered out. A suc- cessful failure, perhaps, as they came home to their roots.
“The family were always very nice and welcoming and supportive,” says Geoff Travis, reflecting warmly on it all. “It was all done in a very nice spirit. I don’t
quation, meanwhile, continued without them, Kathryn becom- ing the focal point, with Sean and Seth, augmented by an electric guitarist, bass player
remember any animosity. They were prob- ably disappointed they didn’t do better, but I’ve learnt that the folk world and the commercial world are very often two very different worlds. They shouldn’t always be. Sometimes things manage to bridge the divide and still keep their integrity and do well. That’s what you hope anyway.”
But hey, this is not a story of abject failure, but triumphant redemption and renaissance.
What Equation turned out to be was a fantastic education which equipped them all superbly for the next phase of their careers. From it all, they’d learned about every conceivable nook and cranny of the music industry. They’d talked to and taken advice from experienced songwriters, they’d had masterclasses in production and arrangements, they’d been privy to all the technical aspects of recording, and there wasn’t much they didn’t know about marketing, promotion or stage craft. And it all came tumbling out as they came home, took stock, re-organised, splintered off into their own units and moved on.
“The personalities in the group were so strong,” says Travis. “Everyone has shown that in all the things they’ve done subsequently. They’ve all really blossomed and done their own thing and done really well. Not always to my taste but credit to them, they’ve really made their own way. And they’ve become a sort of umbrella for a certain kind of dynasty. You’ve even got Geoff Lakeman releasing his own record!”
Cara Dillon and Sam Lakeman were the first to shed the robes of Equation. I remember a showcase event during one of the early Association of Festival Organisers conferences, where they stripped every- thing back to basics. Cara Dillon sang the traditional songs she’d grown up with in Dungiven, with Sam Lakeman playing blissfully empathetic piano, Seth fiddling away behind them, and they blew the place apart.
And in 2001, they released the first post-Equation album Cara Dillon. Record- ed at The Firs – the Lakeman family house in Devon – it featured almost entirely tra- ditional material produced and arranged by Sam Lakeman and released by Geoff Travis on Rough Trade. The folk world loved it, fondly embracing them as long- lost prodigals.
Indeed, Cara won the Horizon Award at the 2002 BBC Folk Awards, while the album’s opening track, a gentle treatment of an old Hamish Imlach favourite, Black Is The Colour, wound up as traditional track of year. It was ironic really that Kate Rusby – who’d already snaffled two gongs at the inaugural BBC Folk Awards (for singer and best album) in 2000 – went home with best original song (for Lullabye) the same year. Another sign of things to come – awards have tumbled freely on all the constituent Equation members ever since.
The most dramatic and public rebirth, of course, was Seth Lakeman. Playing his fid- dle in the background, rarely a featured singer and not too conspicuous on the writ- ing side either, the youngest member of Equation was the least heralded and to most intents and purposes the most unlikely
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