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“So just to be clear” Chris Wood said, between sipping tea and munching on pre-gig olives, “Just what sort of website is ‘Americana-UK’ and who reads it?”
After mumbling some garbled answer about Country and ‘Americana’ with a smidgeon of folk probably being the broad concept. I sat back comfortably in the chair, but there was no time to relax, sucking on a pickled pepper, he quickly retorted, “So, do we actually have a working definition of ‘Americana’ then?”
“Phew” I said, and resisting the temptation to break out into an unaccompanied gospel version of a hanging ballad at that point, I ploughed on, “I guess it’s a bit like . . . erm, dark American folk music commonly steeped in tradition . . . some of which originates in the Appalachians”
“A bit like Gillian Welch then?” he responded knowingly, as the air slowly began to clear. Noting his inherent suspicion of ‘music journalists,’ I opened up quickly with a few questions of my own.
Having been dubbed by the Irish Times as the ‘renaissance man of English folk music’. . . When and how did you get started and who were your early influences - other than the previously quoted ‘Anon’?
When I was nine I started singing church music, old fashioned English hymns Bach, Gibbons, Tallis, so to be here inside a church, is like home from home for me. The other thing I’ve always held dear from those early days, is a love of serious harmony, you know the idea of different voices following different lines. Plus the sheer space of church music and how you can evoke an image in song. You will hopefully hear a little of that in the song John Bull which is about a man who thought that men and women should be equal and got executed for his views.
It appears that folk music is coming back full circle. We have Paolo Nutini dipping into the tradition. We have Mumford & Sons and the Unthanks on everyone’s lips and then Sting of all people, turns up in a woolly jumper doing traditional songs, not least a Robert Southwell poem with music by none other than Chris Wood . . . tell us about that?
I was just leafing through this book of English poetry and the poem leaped of the page and I made a little tune for it and I then recorded it as a song. Kathryn Tickell took a liking to it and it seems she played it to Sting when they were all out at his Tuscan villa in the sweltering heat. The irony of that being . . . that it’s a Christmas song! I always have a titter at the thought of them singing it, sweltering under the hot Mediterranean sun
I know you spent some time touring with Martin Carthy amongst others, what do think you learned from him?
Blimey! . . . The thing about Martin is that he never spoon feeds an audience. He never delivers the song into the lap of the audience, rather he constructs the song in the literal ‘no mans land’ which exists physically between the artist and the audience . . . the audience would have to come and get it. That way everyone gets to keep their integrity – the artist the audience but most importantly the song keeps its own integrity, it is a fascinating thing to watch night after night.
At a time of economic down turn; it comes as somewhat a surprise to me that there are not more protest singers . . . where have all the young protest singers gone?
Neil Young and Joni Mitchell have been asking exactly that same question in America. I have talked to a number of young artists over here. It’s as if they feel that a number has been done on them by the music industry and that the concept of music as a vehicle for dissatisfaction is simply not on their radar, they haven’t even thought of it or considered it. Furthermore the industry doesn’t really sanction it or desire either as a sellable product.
You have certainly been one of the more outspoken of the folk genre . . . I particularly took to your song . . . from Trespasser . . . The Cottagers Reply . . . tell us about that song?
That again started life as a poem, by a fellow from the Cotswolds called Frank Mansell and I sing an adaptation of his poem. I treated it like a traditional manuscript and wanted it to live again. The line about the guy in the 4 x 4 . . . it just had to be said! What is interesting about that song is the reaction it gets. In some places it just gets a little titter, in others you can almost hear the audience hiss, but in some places they virtually stand up and cheer . . . it is fascinating to observe.
The new album Handmade Life also has a couple of crackers . . . Hollow Point sends a shiver down my spine and has to be one of the most chilling songs I have ever heard. What made you decide to tell that story?
Well one thing the English are fantastic at is tokenism and whitewash – that’s what the Empire was built on – that incredibly selective writing up of history and I could see they were going to do the same thing with the murder in broad daylight, of Jean Charles De Menezes. When it came to the inquest, there was a premeditated whitewash, you could see that the authorities where going to do what they have always done, all throughout history. I thought OK you do that and I will put the story into song and then, if the song is any good, it will last for hundreds of years. When I wrote it, it was important to me to that I could sing that song to the officers on the ground on the day, or the family of Jean Charles It wasn’t a finger pointing exercise, rather just a story from the facts that were available to us at the time.”
The other song that particularly took my fancy was The Grand Correction where you have a long over due dig at the Margaret Thatcher and her politics, as the genesis of the trouble we are all now in . . . give us your thoughts on that?
Well she is! . . . she is the genesis of it all as far as I am concerned! Thatcher aimed her policies at those baser instincts within us – she sanctioned greed – she turned greed from one of the deadly sins, to actually a way of life for everyone – greed and speculation, gambling – that is her legacy and even her supporters would have to agree with that, except that they would see it as a good thing and I don’t. What has happened recently in politics and the economy, was inevitable . . . it was bound to happen.
I am writing for what is essentially a Country, Americana magazine/website . . . I heard you had had a bit of a dabble in your earlier days . . . are there any Country or traditional American artists or songs that you ever listen to?
I play in the pub every Thursday night with my mates and I asked on of the lads, ‘Why are we singing all of these American songs?’ and he said, ‘well, we’re just bringing them back home!’ I think this is where the English struggle a bit. Where do they all think that loads of that American stuff comes from in the first place? Yeah, you can see the black influence from the slave culture and it’s beautiful . . . all that blues and soul, but what about all the white influence? Lots of it comes from the British Isles, England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. There is a great thing that Bert Lloyd once said, ‘When it comes to folk music, England has stolen a great deal, but it has given a lot more, than it has ever been given credit for.
Various artists have been very critical about T.V shows like ‘Britain’s got talent’ and ‘X Factor’ and their effect on music and attitudes to music . . . What are your thoughts?
Those programmes have nothing to do with real music . . . X-Factor is a fascinating business model and Alan Sugar should take his hat off to Cowell and the rest of them. The way I see it is like this . . . you’ve got classical music on one side, where a composer writes something and other people play it, then you have the industry or the music business, at the other end of the spectrum where men in suits generate ‘the product’. Everything else, absolutely everything else after that . . . is folk music. You just don’t get people playing instruments at the camp site after a pop festival, but go to a folk festival or an Americana or Bluegrass festival and there is music being played in every corner of the camp site and that is REAL music . . . . Long may it continue.
Chris Wood’s Handmade Life is out now. More info at Chriswoodmusic.co.uk
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