Hearts & Minds is your fourth album, and it does sound somewhat dfferent from your previous work. What changed?
You’re always conscious about trying to move forward and experimenting with your sound, and that’s what I set out to do with Hearts & Minds when I approached writing it a year and a bit ago. Lyrically, I was inspired by events that were happening around me. It’s very much about people around me, hard working men, friends of mine losing their jobs, about corruption and such. But I also wanted to write songs that had a more personal perspective on life, so lyrically, I tried to bring it up to present day, up to date, with some sort of social commentary.


And musically?
I brought in a really talented multi-instrumentalist to join us. It really helped the sound, and as a whole, Hearts And Minds came out a bit more colorful than my last one, Poor Man’s Heaven, which was what I tried to set out to do.


Is there a limit to how much you can allow yourself to experiment while working under the folk banner?
I think that depends on whether or not you’re looking at it from a folk music purist’s point of view. I did experiment a lot with traditional folk music on my first two records, but on Hearts & Minds there really isn’t any re-workings of traditional songs at all. I tried to move forward to make it more contemporary. There was a conscious effort to move it away from the traditional side of folk music, but it’s still very much written with a viola, mandolin, banjo, tenor-guitar and violin in mind. The traditional folk influences just aren’t as obvious now. But that’s the funny thing when you talk about folk music from a purist’s point of view. Everything has to be a re-working of a traditional folk-song if it is to fit under the folk genre, but thankfully I think those boundaries are being broken down and music seems to be moving forward at a very, very fast rate. And that’s the exciting thing about folk music.


Do you think, in order to actually survive, folk music needs people like you who are willing to go against the grain?
Yes, I think so. I don’t think young people today, or even people at my age, are interested in re-workings of traditional folk music these days. It’s not a popular format, it really isn’t. So you need artists like Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling and Johnny Flynn, all these acts who’ve been bursting through within the last 18 months. They’re breaking down boundaries, and I think they can only help the more tradtional artists, who are coming through, experiment even more. I think there is room for all types of acoustic songwriting. I think folk music is really storytelling. I’m not sure how folk’y this record really is, I’m not sure. I’m definitely a folk artist, no doubt about that, cause that comes down to the stories I tell and the way that I play, but folk music is quite generic.


When Kitty Jay came out in 2004, you were credited as taking folk music to a new and younger audience. I don’t suppose that went down well with all the folk music purists?
Well, thankfully I wasn’t necessarily one of their chosen artists or whatever you want to call it. I came from the leftfield and sprung out from nowhere. Well, from the wilderness of Dartmoor, literally, and I think it was a shock to them. What I did was take a traditional song or a traditional story, a true story, and write my own lyrics around it. I didn’t think these traditional lyrics, as beautiful and well-crafted as they were, were contemporary enough for younger listeners to get their heads around, so I always tried to write my own set of lyrics to these songs. Also, the thing about these songs is that you rarely have a chorus, and unfortunately in the pop-sensibility of radio and the way music is going, people expect to be entertained within the first 30 seconds of a song. That’s just the way it is. I guess what I did was build a style of my own all while keeping with the folk genre. I don’t know if it was a conscious decision, it just seemed to happen.


The same sort of thing is happening in Americana music. You now have a lot of younger artists showing an honest interest in the legacy of classic American songwriting. In this case, it’s just British folk music, isn’t it?
There’s an awful lot of young people who seem to be interested in that again, and with songwriters like Laura Marling and Marcus Mumford, you now have artists writing in a sort of Steinbeck style. I can see where they’re coming from and I can relate to it. There are so many influences within that, and I think that’s really exciting.


Why do you think that is? I heard someone give the explanation, that since we’re all living in uncertain post-9/11 times where the world could basically go down the drain any minute, we feel the need to seek out what feels secure and safe to us, being in this case, traditional music.
Well, insecurity shakes you up, makes you look around to see what’s around you and try to grab on to something you don’t fear and which will make you secure again. I think that’s a psycological reaction from anyone in any format of life. A painter would say the same, and I think any writer would too. The insecurity of the way we’re living, living under terror, is always going to have an effect on music. I think there will be an increase in the amount of younger artists who now have something to say.

Seth Lakeman’s Hearts & Minds is out now on Virgin. For more on Seth, go to Sethlakeman.com

Day 1

What's the best festival you’ve ever played or been to?
It has to be a local festival - Beautiful Days at Escot Park near Exeter.

Day 2

Some info on festivals you have lined up for this summer, perhaps a bit about some of the musicians who’ll be playing with you and maybe something about anywhere you’re playing for the first time?
I'm playing on HMS Warrior at the weekend. This should really suit the theme of my last album Poor Man’s Heaven. I’ll be performing with Benji Kirkpatrick but also the fantastic percussionist Cormac Byrne which is really exciting. I am also doing a festival over in Denmark with them - I've played there a couple of times before but think the trio will go down really well.

Day 3

Dream line up of artists alive now, and dream line up of deceased artists
Dream line-up would be ACDC, Tom Petty, Paul Simon, John Butler Trio, Elvis, Johnny Cash & The Beatles

Day 4

Which festival would you most like to play and which festival would you most like to attend as a punter?
I would love to play Strawberry Festival in California and also would really like to hang out there in Yosemite Park.

Day 5

How do festivals compare to a normal gig?
It's always exciting to play a festival because of the other music you can discover. I've seen so many fantastic artists and bands at festivals.


SETH LAKEMAN