Blame Chicago. Since Josienne Clarke sang about playing a deserted gig in the US city, she’s found herself at the receiving end of countless similar anecdotes.
“It’s a mixture of people, not just musicians, theatre people, poets, everyone’s got one of those stories,” she says. “They come up and tell you their experience, but they’ll also tell you ‘I saw (insert name of someone incredibly famous now) at (so-and-so venue) and no-one was that bothered.’
“Last night, someone was telling me about having seen Elliott Smith opening for Belle And Sebastian, and no-one was listening, no-one was particularly engaged in it, and they were missing the magic of it, and he was a bit annoyed about the people around who didn’t get it.
“It’s a common story and it isn’t one that’s just common to my area, my level of the industry, it’s right the way up.”
It’s a fact of performing that the singer-songwriter takes some comfort in.
“That’s kinda nice,” Josienne says, without any malice.
“I didn’t think that was just me … that was just my way of dealing with that experience, my way of making sense of it was writing a song about it,” she explains of the song, titled Chicago, which opens Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker’s latest collection, Seedlings All.
Although she’s never been the sole audience member at a concert, Josienne’s seen her fair share of “sparsely attended gigs.”
“I did see Amelia Curran, the Juno award-winning Canadian singer,” she recalls. “There’s wasn’t no-one there, but there was a lot less people – I was surprised.”
It might be a little depressing for the artist, but for the audience, it can have its rewards.
“That was amazing because it gave me an incredibly intimate experience with somebody whose work I love. So it was a win for me!” she laughs. “I could poke her if I wanted to!”
Josienne Clarke and guitarist/ arranger Ben Walker have been slowly peddling hushed acoustic melancholia since the two first worked together on Josienne’s sole solo album, 2010’s One Light Is Gone: “I think there’s still some in a garage somewhere, and I think we felt that we needed to change tact after that…”
And change they did, resulting in a Best Folk Duo win at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, a deal with Rough Trade, and the release a series of increasingly interesting albums that continue to push the boundaries “very slightly.”
Josienne reckons Overnight, their first for Rough Trade, gave them permission to explore new directions, indulge themselves if you will (hence the use of strings and more complex arrangements and instrumentation), and that idea has continued with Seedlings All. Surprisingly their first collection of 100 per cent original material, and arguably the least ‘folky’ of their catalogue, its hushed moment are closer to Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Sessions than anything with a ‘trad’ credit.
“There’s the people who say ‘can you just do an album of when you sing and he plays guitar?’ I understand that, and that’s something we could do really easily, but it would take us about an afternoon and wouldn’t give Ben a chance to do his string writing and all the arrangement ideas that he has … and the album is the only place you’re guaranteed to be able to have those extra musicians.
“The way the industry is, you can’t take a band everywhere, so that’s our opportunity to have bigger versions of things … when you come to watch us, it’ll be the two of us mainly.
“I feel that people shouldn’t be indulged,” she continues. “You have to say, as an artist, I know better. I know that means that not everyone will like what you do, but that’s okay.”
It’s an idea that has taken Josienne a while to accept.
“Yeah. I think that doing this as a career, which I have done for a few years now – before this, I also did silver service waitressing, which is a slightly different career choice – I think it’s bad for your mental health in a way.
“Because on the one hand, if you have a gig that goes really well, you’ve got people banding up telling you you’re the best thing that’s ever been; and on the other hand there are the Chicago-type gigs, where there is literally zero demand for what I’m doing, I have wasted my life and the world does not want to hear anything that I have to say. And you kind of have to make sense of those two experiences, you have to level those off and make something somewhere in between, and I think that’s what I’ve been doing, or that’s the place I’m trying to come to over the last decade.
“With the last record, particularly, I had to put to bed a lot of the stranger ideas about that stuff, and just make the thing and see what happens, and people will come and go, as audiences. You’ll lose people when you do this … but you’ll gain people when you do that,” she says. “Just let it be a natural ebb and flow.”
Josienne and Ben have a brief run of UK and European dates looming, including an appearance at Kenilworth Arts Festival (27 Sep 2018), where they’ll be returning to the historic castle’s Tudor Stables, before Josienne re-teams with fellow songwriter Samantha Whates for PicaPica next year (Twitter | Facebook).
“I’ve known Sam for over 10 years,” Josienne explains. “When I was going out as a solo singer-songwriter on the London circuit she was as well, and we used to end up being put together on the same bill all the time – ‘cos what we do is similar, but not the same. So it would be ‘oh, it’s you again!’ We became friends from that and we said, all the way back then, that we should do a project together, and if we did it would be amazing. But it’s taken us 10 years to get to it … and it’s been a thoroughly pleasant experience.”
An EP, Spring And Shade, was well received, and there’s a PicaPica album now on the cards.
“We weren’t sure that we’d have chemistry co-writing, but we do genuine both-in-the-same-room, can’t-remember-whose-idea-was-which co-writing. It’s been incredibly successful. I’ve got a tiny idea and can’t finish it, and she’s got a thing, and it becomes a whole song. It’s a very different way of working to the way I work with Ben, it’s more collaborative with a less clear definition between the roles.
“[It’s also] amazing to not be the lead singer as there are two lead singers. We have an album out in the spring – though that’s not been announced yet, but will be soon. So we’ll be out-and-about quite heavily next year.”
Discussing how it relates to the material she’s so successfully produced with Ben Walker, she says: “It’s rooted in the same ideas, at its heart it’s that same acoustic sound, but it’s vocal harmony driven, so it’s different from the outset.
“Our voices are used in a way that it sounds like one voice, so there’s a lot more going on. And the boys – Adam Beattie on guitar and keyboards, and Sonny Johns on bass, and drum machine – they’ve got loops, so they’re building up much more textures.
“It’s got more rhythm and pulse in it – it’s not bangin’, but it’s got a bit more …I guess it’s enabled me to express more joy,” she confesses. “Not that I’m unhappy doing what I do with Ben, but it’s bought out a different flavour of songwriting. Sam does quite melancholic songwriting on her own, but together it’s more joyful.
“PicaPica is the Latin for magpie and it’s that thing: one for sorrow, two for joy. It’s very much that. That’s the spirit of it.”
* Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker play Kenilworth Castle’s Tudor Stables, as part of Kenilworth Arts Festival (20-29 September 2018), on Thursday 27 September. Others appearing at the Warwickshire festival include Erland Cooper (26 Sep), Jesca Hoop (28 Sep), S Carey (29 Sep). For the full line-up and more details, see: www.kenilworthartsfestival.co.uk
For further tour dates visit http://josienneandben.com/
Also, visit https://picapicamusic.com/ (Twitter | Facebook)