O Drom interview

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But you are a world musician yourself aren't you?
I don't know,. It's a name, another label, that is marketable, where as 'Folk' isn't as trendy.
World music, is that like travelling without leaving your armchair? Or is it another name for 'Black' music? Or Music that comes from the 'so called' third world, the exploited world?
World Music, that label, the exotic. Doesn't everyone play World Music? Or is everything else from Mars? Maybe there has been some misappropriation? I am suspicious of music that tries to come from everywhere but comes from nowhere in particular. It's all world/folk music to me, from a Suffolk melodeon player to Argentines Bandonean player Astor Piazzola, to Zulu Jive, it's all music only two kinds to me and my taste, just 'good or bad'. but there may be a positive side to its popularization because part of this fashion, has led people to re-discover their own cultural roots in a 'World' context and revived an interest in exploring their own traditions and to keep them alive. singing in their own accents, dialects, re discovering their identity. i.e. Welsh, Geordie, Cockney, Gaelic etc, Which to me, has always been a battle against what I might call the "cultural colonialism" of the ruling class of corporate pop industry, etc.. It is something to do with reclaiming language and our own history or own truths about ourselves. It's realizing how rich we are with all that. Stuff that the church stole or appropriated some how, some centuries ago.
Travelling away, exiled made me want to know my own country, culture more, as much as I wanted to know the culture and lingo's of the countries I traveled and had to find work and survive in.
I always wrote and sang in my own accent, that was one way, perhaps, of retaining, holding onto my identity, even though some folks I sang to far away never understood my words, or accent, the rhythms and feelings were always there. In that search and discovery was also an internationalism for me, a feeling of being rich, encouraged by other peoples keeping their cultures and lingo's alive too, that common struggle, and celebrating our differences and our similarities, sharing the same journey, just different roads. All singing love songs and our histories in our own lingoes. All Fighting against dispossession, all, organizing against our poverty and bad living conditions etc. Folk, music everywhere just different labels. It's the same in the way Rap music all over the world, often has close ties to local, hometowns, posses, collective groups, uniting musicians. Singing words and rhythm and making their own local songs about local problems in local dialects. It's more natural. To me that's folk music.
Also immigration of peoples has affected our traditions in positive ways, I went to school with west Indians and Asians, and so grew up hearing ska and reggae at school youth clubs etc. Music has become a way of overcoming cultural differences fighting racial intolerance. New sounds and music were brought here, like food recipes and spices, by immigrants, like my Gran, and now people are being made aware of problems that occur when people of different nationalities live together and also the richness of their culture and arts. Maybe blending "British" sounds with those of immigrant cultures helps to smooth over the differences and reduce hostilities between ethnic groups? That's what emerging young musicians seem to be doing. It's a meeting too between cultures, jamming, a meeting crossing each others borders together and that's definitely a positive thing about the umbrella, or label that is 'World Music'.
Also personally, my own family, me singing songs about my mum, gran, dad etc, was the same for me, it was a yearning for community and also, since my folks had divorced, etc. My parents eventually became like friends of mine, as vulnerable and as lonely as we all get sometimes in our lives.
I sing and play for all ages. We are all young and old, childish and wise and ignorant at different times about different things.

I've heard you play the Bandorea, What other strange instruments do you play?
I love instruments for their color, texture and moods they can create, not because of where they're from or because they are exotic, but what they can do. I love Dobro, or lap steel pipes, Harp or Kora, hurdy Gurdy drones, musical saws etc (I don't play them all). It's their voices, it all comes down to the voice for me too, the pipes are an interpretation of the human voice and visa versa. Fiddle too, slow airs. etc lilting grace notes bending, sliding and quivering, fingering. I love the pipes, Voice of the fingers. A Pedal steel guitar can create angels, high stratospheric notes, floating, like a wash. That's why I used it on 'London Kisses.'
It is strange how things like 'folk music' are devalued here because they are familiar, because they are not from some remote exotic place. Our own culture. I love singing the songs I made about London, invoking place names, pride and love of place, of lingo, a nostalgia of a childhood growing up in London. Singing my truth fills me up to bursting sometimes, an overwhelming feeling, a connection is made for me when I sing those songs. Singing the memory of my Gran or people I know, I've met and love, all part of me, inseparable. It's become a mission for me now!

YOU PLAY TROMBONE?
I'm a trombone owner ! That's different. Yes, I've enjoyed playing sessions with my fretless bass Kazoo, my trombone. Sessions are my favorite, they're unpretentious and not "prestigious" at all, but like them best. In a session I'm a professional musician who plays amateurly as well, with everyone else, there is sometimes a clique at a session, But normally it is on the same level, no mikes etc, anyone can join in etc. I have a big appetite for them. it's a pleasure for me as I never play my trombone anywhere else! (The only thing I hate is the smoke. I prefer outside sessions, fresh air, sky and no passive smoking. I've become an asthmatic playing and singing in smoky bars.)
I've had folk coming up to me saying how they like the trombone on some reels and jigs, it is quite an effective big bodied addition to a sound, especially when the session is all strings or soprano melody instruments.
I try to make the traditional reels or jigs swing a little. Accenting the b parts or underpinning a drone underneath, as a piper might. Then I might pump the rhythm on one round and on the next round come in with a melodic syncopating swinging riff, that pushes the tune, at the same time as giving it a very simple counter melody. It might just be four or five notes, but because of the range of the Trombone, it can give a tune body. Also building up a set of tunes, just like when the pipes come in and stir, and lift the tunes up a notch.
I played a bass harmonica which was so wonderfully fat and resonant but just too quiet, it needed a mike. I bought the Trombone in a Leeds pawn shop for Fifty Quid. You don't have to plug in a trombone as a bass instrument it's very flexible, playing quietly and concentrating on tone is my ideal, also a trombone can play grace notes, slides and all! In the right hands (or mouth)!
Being in a horn section too is fun, wandering around festivals all night with my mates Bob and Richard we'd join in with bands, intuitively working out harmonic and rhythmic horn parts together, or we'd just play my tunes that we had brass arrangements for.
Some folks would rather hear me play harp than Trombone. They say that they think that it takes too much time away from my 'moothy' (Harmonica) playing. But to me it's like being BI-lingual, you want to communicate in either, English or Japanese, so I want to communicate with the bone, get a good sound and pick out the notes that sound good to me.
I can say a lot of things with music that I can't say just talking. Playing is like breathing, it might not make sense to you, but it's still communicating or trying to.

Lets talk about your songwriting, your approach.
My approach has changed over the years. I decided, years before, that the songs I make should be understood by my Grandma, mum etc my own, background, soul music not to introverted angst ridden, too poetic, or intellectual but a celebrations of life. That doesn't mean to say I've never made songs that are soul searching. We need all kinds of songs, but at the time, there were always people singing those kinds of songs but not singing about people or politics.
I am very committed to my own songs, stubbornly, even when I busked, I only ever sang my own songs. It wasn't an arrogance as much as that's all I do. My identity, people do come to hear me sing my songs as no one else does sing them. I like to hear good original songs I've never heard before. I do lose interest hearing the cliche overplayed covers, maybe as they are never normally done justice to. I'd rather hear an original "good" song even if it wasn't performed as well. I guess that's because great songs are strong enough to stand up on their own. I do sing other folks' songs.( maybe I'm not the kind of Traditional musician or singer, Folks wouldn't come to hear the way I play or interpret a traditional tune. i.e. an inside audience who knows that kind of tune/song quality.)
I always joke, pretending arrogance, and say that I won't play any Dylan songs, as he never plays any of mine. (Joke) I have sung and still do sing other peoples songs live i.e. Woody Guthrie, Sam Cooke, Ewan Macoll, but haven't recorded many.
I write new songs mainly cause I'm tired of the old ones.
Some melodies are folk derivative melodies, simple chords I use.

It's quite unique the way you sing and using your own accent.
I'm not good enough to copy anyone else I don't have the technical skills required or the time to be bothered trying anyway. I just sing and play my own songs mostly, that's all I do. It's the telling of the story that's important to me, communicating the emotional content of my story. I taught myself the bad habits I play with!
I'm not that kind of interpretive singer. I just do what I enjoy and that is my secret, not pretending to be a black blues man or American country singer etc.
I can be stubborn sometimes, it comes from my dad telling me what to do maybe, and me defiantly going my own way. I came bottom in music at school so maybe I had something I had to prove.
Sometimes, I might make up a pretty tune but it doesn't always suit the subject or voice in the song/story. Even though I might like the melodic idea. It distracts from the idea of that song. It might be too clever, or too sophisticated with too many chords for the voice in that song, i.e. 'The Farming Woman's War', has just 3 chords, simple but stronger for the voice of that white farming woman.
The melody for my song-making springs out of the words and rhythm, but there are no rules to the creative process. Songs and tunes get constructed in completely different ways. Most of the work can be in editing, distilling, you might get too many ideas, details, images, words and then have to prune things away to get to the essence and focus. These days I like to make every line count. Then I like to work out melodic lines for the guitar or my voice in the song to make it richer, give it more variation, depth movement, or to decorate the story, or make it more fun for myself to sing. Or to give the listener a rest from all those words I might be using. Then I might stop myself and ask myself. Is this accessible to my grandma, am I being oblique, too clever? Am I being self indulgent at all? Does it move me to sing this song. I can't always decide, and I might chuck it away and abandon it for a year or two and come back to it if I remember. Then I might see what's wrong or right with it. see if it holds up. Some of my songs are long, so I try to create melodic changes to keep them interesting. Sometimes I fail.

Have you collaborated with anyone else in writing?
No, not really, I did, in an indirect way, with students I was teaching when I gave a songwriting workshop a few years ago. I did also work with a goal in mind when I was writing for a theatre group in Aberdeen. Songs were needed to move the plot or create a mood or express feelings of a character. Making up songs to that kind of deadline is easier because in a way the song is more functional.
Collaborating with someone else can make that process much faster, that weeding or editing. Someone you trust, who is objective can help to focus, and iron out any misunderstandings, unclear phrases or foggy poetics in a song etc. to help achieve a clarity and simplicity and directness. I have asked for a friends opinion before about a line or a verse, whether it made sense to them. It can be very helpful to ask someone who might hear or see things you have missed because you are too close to it. Being the creator, You know what you are trying to say, or what story you are trying to tell, but does anyone else?
I suppose that is what a producer does in a recording studio. But I am talking about songs that you are making to perform live. Not writing in an expensive womb-like studio, and then recording something that has never been tested on a live audience.
I do try to make the song interesting and give it richness, craft it so that it will reach more people, i.e. I like to make melody with surprises and a tunefulness that takes you somewhere, and makes you want to sing or whistle along too. There aren't always set rules though. Everyone works in different ways.
Maybe using a traditional tune for some words is helping to evolve the music, keep it alive, some old words might not mean anything anymore, so change them.
For me It's not enough to sing a song cause it's got a nice tune, it has to mean something to me, for me to connect to it emotionally.
Maybe I'm an avant-garde traditionalist! (Joke)
Maybe, You have to borrow something before you can develop.

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