Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman – Interview (Part 2)

We pick up part two (read part one here) of our interview with Kathryn and Sean with the latter recalling the inspiration for getting back to the folk club circuit as Sean recalls, “I guess around 2000 we felt we were losing touch with the more intimate and acoustic side of our music. Equation had lots of touring in the US where it was a very electric and loud outfit, plus we were playing self penned songs.” Whilst enjoying the experience, both Sean and Kathryn craved a return to their roots and Sean continues, “We purposely thought the most direct way to reconnect with our folkier side again would be to go out and play folk clubs as a duo. So that’s what we did and immediately became acutely aware of how much more ‘on it’ we needed to be to pull off a varied and entertaining night. If you’re doing it right in a folk club you should be putting yourself out there entirely.”

It served them well but as Sean also points out, life intervened, “Obviously we took a long hiatus to start a family which coincided with my work with Seth taking off big time.” Still the move achieved its purpose in rekindling a flame, and although the success of his brother proved mercurial and the effort to sustain it proved exhausting, the spark continued to flicker. As Sean explains, “Recently, since I’ve stopped my involvement with that I feel that reconnection more directly with folk once again and the need to sharpen up the playing and creativity a bit more. It’s a way to reconnect and sort of reassess in the most raw of environments. I hope that’s shining through on our recent record.”

They’ve been know for throwing the odd curve ball into a mixed set, drawing on one or two fairly obscure modern sources as well as the folk tradition for their set list. Sean admits, “Sometimes I don’t think we can perhaps be as eclectic as we may like to be in folk clubs as there is a sort of acceptable protocol with repertoire and such but that’s fine. We kind of like a few boundaries here and there.”

Kathryn is a bit bolder in telling me, “We always keep a few surprises in our back pocket. Lots of obscure covers we learn never get a public airing. We play to a wide cross section of music fans so it’s a bit of a risk to throw in a Warren Zevon song or whatever. Maybe a few people will get what we are doing but we also respect that for lots of others it’s just another song in the set. Although saying that the Tom Waits’ song The Ballad Of Georgia Lee is still one of our most requested songs live.”

Sean is also keen to play up the original songs that have made up a major part of the last two albums as he tells me, “Kathryn is a big reader and she is always coming across great topics for songs. She’s the spark really and has a tonne of really interesting lyric sheets lying around. Once in a while we sit down together and go through them and figure out what might come alive musically. I have always been more of a team player whether in the studio or on stage and I like putting flesh on bones.”

Kathryn explains how she works revealing, “It does tend to be in bursts. I find I get most lyrics together when I can just sit at the piano uninterrupted with a glass of wine and scribble lots of ideas. Then, when I have amassed a goodly bunch I throw them in Sean’s direction to see what catches his eye. Only then do we start fine tuning the lyrics and working on a melody together – the story of the song has to interest both of us. That’s a very exiting time when we sort the wheat from the chaff.”

I draw Kathryn into specifics confessing my love for several of the most recent compositions, A Song To Live By, is a powerful statement of motherly love. Kathryn is generous in explaining, “We are very fortunate to have great family and friends to support us and help out, but it is sometimes tricky getting the work/family balance. There are times when we might be on a roll of writing and have to stop everything for the school run or vice versa, be in the middle of a game of Twister with the kids and have to break off for a radio interview! Being part of a family unit is inspiring though, I never wanted to write songs for, or to, the children, but with A Song To Live By they just felt like words that I had to say, not just to my own children but to anyone who might not be feeling too great.”

She continues through my choices telling me, “Tomorrow Will Follow Today is our first foray into protest song and again it just felt like something we needed to say, maybe it’s to do with being parents and feeling worried about what the future holds for our own children. Folk music always used to have a strong element of protest to it but the population as a whole is so fed up with the current crop of politicians that apathy seems to be the order of the day, and they know it which is why they push to see what they can get away with. It sparked from a Terry Pratchett quote I read which said ‘They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today.’ It’s taken from the book Feet Of Clay and is prefaced by the line, ‘It was a cold and clinical kind of stability, but part of his genius was the discovery that stability was what people wanted more than anything else.’ Fitting for our time perhaps!”

I ask Sean whether the stripped back sounds of the new album were representative of their live sound and what fans might expect to hear on their current tour and he agrees, “Yes much of it is a good representation of our live sound.” But in some ways it works the opposite way around and he explains, “On stage we try and recreate the intimacy and immediacy of when we play at home and that was also what we wanted to get over with the new record. We have our own studio at home which is a blessing and a curse as sometimes it’s hard to drag yourself away when the ‘juices are flowing’.”

Sean continues, “There are a couple of more ‘produced’ tracks on the new record too. For example with the song La Moneca – Queen Of the Island of Dolls where we really wanted to paint a bit of a picture with the sound of the track. That’s the only song on the record with a guest. We got Pete Thomas from the trendy London based band Nightjar to come and play some gothic Accordion. He was getting married in our village church last year and the session acted as a good distraction from his vow taking. It also features a nice bit of improvised singing from one of our young daughters, Lily. I asked her to sing about playing with dolls and gave her a setting in her mind, the rest came straight from her into the microphone. She’s a very creative little person. Very expressive. It was a very satisfying album to make all in all.”

I ask Sean whether the new album needed a different approach despite or perhaps because of the success of the previous one. He acknowledges, “One of the most immediate things is that Hidden People was jam packed full of guest performances from our friends and family. Tomorrow Will Follow Today is basically just us two in a much more focused frame of mind.” There’s more to it however as he continues, “Also, Hidden People gestated for about 9 years or so. Some of the material stems back from the back end of Equation like the song Oxford N.Y. which we wrote about a town in upstate New York where we played a few times which had a spooky local legend about a boy buried in a glass coffin because he was afraid of the dark. When it came to actually recording Hidden People it took about a year to do. Pretty much one track at a time dipping in and out as time permitted. Tomorrow Will Follow Today was recorded in a much more focused time period which definitely helps with cohesion and momentum.”

We return to where we started as the duo embark on another UK tour and Sean reveals, “The gigs are definitely the most satisfying part, because we’re living a moment. I think as a duo we are as intuitive musically as we have ever been and more relaxed than ever about it all. For me the best gigs are always the most unexpected and often the strangest and more unusual.” He also admits, “I think winning the Best Duo folk award allowed venues who hadn’t previously heard of us to take a chance on booking us, because we had the BBC ‘stamp of Approval’ –I would say it has widened our reach.

There’s more to look forward to and Kathryn has some important news revealing, “I am very excited to be touring with the three original members of Fotheringay (Jerry Donahue, Gerry Conway and Pat Donaldson) along with Sally Barker and PJ Wright. We are heading out in June and December to perform songs from the two Fotheringay albums to support the release of a boxset on Island Records.” As she points out gleefully, “Lots of great Sandy Denny songs for me to learn.”

Sean is also positive telling me, “I am always being asked to take on production work. We have a constant pile of people’s demo CDs in the car. Last year was a really busy studio year for me with involvement in five albums including our own. That was the most I have taken on and I did have a bit of a studio tan for a while. When I take on a production it’s always 100% so it’s a big commitment. We already have such a lot of live requests for the future.” He teases, offering, “A few nice things on the Horizon though.”

So the immediate plans, “Probably a family holiday first and foremost,” Sean tells me. Kathryn reveals, “We are off to Scotland for a tour later this year for the first time as a duo which we are particularly looking forward to.”

Interview by: Simon Holland