Jim Ghedi and Toby Hay both make music so deeply entrenched in a sense of place – such as their homes in Rhayader and Moss Valley – that the landscapes of those environments run through their records like gushing rivers or rolling hilltops. But what happens when one is removed from such a sense of place? Plucked away from the dark skies, savage weather and isolation of a Welsh town or the community at the heart of a village on the border of South Yorkshire and North East Derbyshire, and onto an open road of hours spent in cars and dining in service stations, when life on tour brings about a new sense of place daily? The answer for the pair was to make a record about it.
The Hawksworth Grove Sessions – Duets for 6 & 12 String Guitar will be released on October 12th via Cambrian Records. Listen to a track from the album Night, Moon, Dance below.
“We became really good friends during this time and have spent so many hours stuck in a car together,” Hay says about a self-booked tour that the duo went on together across the UK. When living in Belgium, Ghedi sent his music to Hay and he then released Ghedi’s debut album Home Is Where I Exist, Now To Live and Die on his label, Cambrian Records, in 2015. The pair, whilst both possessing distinct musical personalities and traits, soon bonded through their shared guitar virtuosity and blended exploration of classical and contemporary folk music.
“There are so many situations on the road where you are waiting around and you have a guitar in hand. It was natural really,” Hay says of the beginnings of their collaborations. So they started playing in downtime more often, as well as on stage. “We both realised we had something quite unique away from our own music,” Ghedi says. “Musically, at times, we’re quite different from each other and have different approaches. However, it seems to compliment the whole when brought together.” The longer they played and toured together the more the pair began to think about expanding on what they were doing into something more than loose jams and on-stage collaborations, as Ghedi explains. “The whole thing happened very quickly and naturally, there wasn’t much of an aim other than wanting to discover what might happen between the two of us and two guitars.”
Wanting to capture the simplistic essence of their shared performances and time-killing jams, they went to Hay’s brother’s house in Leeds for a weekend and set about putting something to record. “We both wanted the record to sound very live and minimal,” Ghedi says. “It was a very relaxed affair over a weekend where we stuck three mics up in a room, drank lots of tea, went for walks and recorded over two days. It was important to keep things really basic and all about the performances.” The pair would improvise around one another, letting the intricate guitar work twist, turn, snake and collide. Although it was also an exploration of reduction and restraint where needed too. The process was not a dual for authority but a deeply ingrained understanding of the space needed between them. “There is something about playing music with other people which forces your hand and ears to move and play in ways you wouldn’t normally,” Ghedi says. “With this duo project, I learned a lot particularly because of there being two guitars, learning how to do less, being creative with rhythm and repetition, complimenting melodies and really utilising space within composition.” Hay echoes this less is more approach. “We just wanted to make a record that showed what we do. No overdubs or studio trickery, just us in a room.”
The result is a record that, across ten instrumental tracks, moves from tender, gently plucked guitars that slowly purr to vivacious bursts of energy as the two dash in and out of one another. Whilst the record has the notable input and personality of both individuals – individuals who have both released critically-acclaimed solo albums in the last year via Ghedi’s A Hymn For Ancient Land and Hay’s The Gathering – combined they create something new; a flowing, considered and ever-moving record. “That sense of motion and moving through different areas played a role in shaping how things came together,” Ghedi says, with Hay adding: “I think that sense of movement definitely left its impression on the music.” So even when Ghedi and Hay are travelling across the UK and moving from place to place on a daily basis, the pair still succeed in capturing the nature, essence and landscapes of places that some take for granted or simply ignore.
The Hawksworth Grove Sessions – Duets for 6 & 12 String Guitar will be released on October 12th via Cambrian Records
Pre-Order here https://cambrianrecords.com/album/the-hawksworth-grove-sessions-duets-for-6-12-string-guitar