Hummingbird sees John Smith finally releasing his ‘folk’ album, and it’s his sparest and strongest set yet. We spent some time discussing stripping these songs of arrangements and the futility of the chase.
The first thing I noticed about John’s new Hummingbird album, I tell him, is how restrained it is and all the more effective for it. That’s not to say that he is ever guilty of throwing unnecessary walls of sound at songs or needlessly fleshing out already strong pieces, but the ten songs on here are particularly considered and skilfully crafted. “Well, Sam [Lakeman, producer] and I went in with the idea of less is more for this one and anything we heard that we felt would fit the track, we would try out, but then half the time we just took it away. I wrote a nice string arrangement for ‘Hummingbird’, recorded it and tried it and we both just said that it wasn’t necessary.”
The title track is one of three original Smith penned songs used on the album, along with a cover of Anne Briggs‘ ‘Time has Come’ and six traditional pieces. One of the main strengths of the set is maintaining a cohesion throughout, with the old and young tunes blending seamlessly together. “I think the choices of original songs used had to feel like they were in the same wheelhouse as the traditionals,” John explains. “’Hummingbird’ was the one that brought it all together, actually. I had ‘Axe Mountain’ already and I’d written ‘Boudica’ and recorded a version of that with Headlong in mind. That ended up being a very different album, but it was still on my mind and I felt that I really wanted to get it out, so I re-recorded it for this. And then ‘Hummingbird’ came along and I wrote that in about twenty minutes. It was one of those unusual things where a song just pops out and when it did I knew that it would be the glue that held the rest of it together.”
Having such an immediate piece of writing kick off Hummingbird is apt and in harmony with the attitude of the project as a whole, it being built from songs that waste little time away from their essence. “The thing with a folk song is that it has this clarity and purpose that transcends that hundred or two hundred years, or however old it is, and still makes its point all this time later like any good song should,” John explains. “It felt like everything we did had to be in service to the song, which you do consider when you’re making any record, but some of these songs are well told and have been told many times. I didn’t want to add any dressing, I wanted to keep it as lean as possible while putting my own stamp on it.” The stamp is there throughout in the delivery of the songs, both vocally and through the excellent acoustic guitar playing, but there are adornments here and there that are surprising, like the choral singing lighting up the end of ‘Lowlands of Holland’, which is so effective and unexpected. “It was all instinctive this time,” he says. “When you’re in the studio looking for something to be revealed, it either happens naturally or it doesn’t and when it’s not happening naturally, you have to step away from it and make the decision to either can it or return later. With this, I just decided that if it didn’t feel good straight away, I wouldn’t do it. Sam and I both ran on instinct for most of this album.”
As John mentioned, Hummingbird is a very different album to Headlong and perhaps to anything he’s done before, did that mean the process differed dramatically? “Sam and I have been talking about making a folk record for a long time,” he answers. “When we came to it, I got the songs together and he suggested a couple, like ‘Hares on the Mountain’, which was new to me and is a song that I just love now. So we went into the studio and put four tracks down on the first day when we were just throwing microphones up and testing the sound. We had pretty much half the record together straight away and just thought we’d run with it and see how it felt and it all just happened very quickly; we were only recording for a week’s worth of days, including John [McCusker], Ben [Nicholls] and Cara [Dillon]’s parts.” It is widely agreed that the immediacy of completing songs in very few takes certainly helps maintain the energy of an album, in this case on both the original and traditional songs. “I learned from Joe Henry that if you’re aware that you’re chasing something, you’ve probably chased it too far and it’s time to move on,” John says. “It’s taken me five or six records to figure that one out and I decided to fully apply it in the Hummingbird sessions. I’ve performed ‘The Time has Come’ live a lot and knew that I had it in me, it’s there and I didn’t want to hit it more than once. ‘Axe Mountain’ was the same, I wanted to present it as lively as possible.”
The live element is there throughout the album, but there is also a freshness present, even on songs that have been sung for centuries, which is a point John feels strongly about. “I think it’s very important to keep singing these songs and to maintain this tradition, but I don’t really think it’s important to present things the same way over and over again,” he states. “To me, that’s not exciting and I know that it’s just my opinion and there are people who disagree with me, but I wanted to sing these songs the way that I hear them.” There are artists who would assume that bringing a new interpretation to an old song would mean throwing more sound at it, but as we discussed, Hummingbird manages to achieve its goal through minimal means. “I’ve made a career out of travelling around with a guitar and playing quite a restrained version of folk guitar music,” he explains. “I kind of felt like I’d never really got that onto a record before and that this was the time to do it.”
European Dates October – December 2018
04 Oct Aberdeen The Lemon Tree
05 Oct Ullapool Guitar Festival
10 Oct Cork IE Coughlan’s
11 Oct Cork IE Coughlan’s
12 Oct Limerick IE Dolan’s
13 Oct Dublin IE Unitarian Church
14 Oct Bangor NI Studio Theatre
17 Oct Chipping Norton The Theatre
20 Oct Whitby Musicport Festival
21 Oct Liverpool St George’s Hall
22 Oct Gateshead Sage Gateshead
24 Oct Leeds The Wardrobe
25 Oct Sheffield Picture House Social
26 Oct Thames Ditton The Ram Club
30 Oct Newbury Arlington Arts Centre
01 Nov Bury The Met Arts Centre
02 Nov Scunthorpe Cafe Indiependent
03 Nov Halifax Square Chapel
04 Nov York The Crescent
07 Nov Middlesbrough Town Hall
09 Nov Bristol Rough Trade
10 Nov Plymouth Barbican Theatre
11 Nov Dartmouth The Flavel
12 Nov Exeter Phoenix
14 Nov Southampton The Brook
15 Nov London St Pancras NEW Church (Bloomsbury)
16 Nov Brighton Unitarian Church
17 Nov Guildford St Mary’s Church
20 Nov Paris FR Le Point Ephemere
21 Nov Leuven BE 30CC
22 Nov Waregem BE De Schakel
23 Nov Beveren BE Cultuurcentrum Ter Vesten
24 Nov Evergem BE Cultuurcentrum Evergem
28 Nov Zurich CH Bogen F
29 Nov Leopoldsburg BE Cultuurcentrum Leopoldsburg
02 Dec Berlin DE Kantine am Berghain
03 Dec Munich DE Ampere
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Photo Credit: Rose Cousins