Following the launch of their charming fourth album The Sea Is My Brother, Harbottle & Jonas show no sign of slowing down – I invited them up to Dartington for a chat to hear some of the stories from their recent extensive touring and to find out what’s next in their packed schedule…
William Kemp: Your latest album is called The Sea Is My Brother, sharing its title with a novel by beat writer, Jack Kerouac. Is there any connection?
Freya: Yes, there is a bit of a link. I read the book years ago and enjoyed it but more than anything the title really stuck with me. I feel it sums up humans relationship with the sea well and encapsulates the feeling of familiarity and comfort that I find from the sea. The song also loosely draws on the story of Kerouac’s time in the navy as written about in the book.
WK: You launched it in Totnes quite recently?
Freya: We launched at the Barrel House on the 22nd February and after that we went on a tour around the UK playing all the new songs, which was really nice because we’d sort of been holding onto them for ages, so it was nice to play them live and get them out there but yeah 18 gigs in 18 days. So it was quite a busy month was March.
WK: Tell us a bit more about the album itself then – people might expect sea shanties!
Dave: More sea songs really – songs about the sea. We love writing about anything that’s related to the nautical. There’s a few traditional songs on there that we’ve learned from singer songwriters we’ve played with or just come across, and there’s a couple of songs based on poetry about for example Hall Sands – a poem by John Masefield – but yeah we just well… Freya, you say it better than me…
Freya: Yeah, they’re mostly original songs and through travelling around the country you hear of tales from the local towns and cities and things and so yeah I suppose we were inspired by the people and the events that have influenced or been influenced by the coast around England and put those stories into song form for a sea-themed album.
WK: How do you compose – what is the song writing dynamic like?
Freya: We don’t do it all together – we’ve tried before but we can’t write together – so it was sort of equal on this album – equal writing of words and music – but Dave does all the arranging so all the string parts and trumpet and are all Dave’s vision.
WK: You’ve worked with some other musicians on the album – tell us a bit about them.
Dave: The past two albums it’s basically just friends, which is very nice because we like to do skill-shares and things like that. For example, Daniel Preston who did the album artwork and cd artwork is a good friend and just incredibly talented – and on the album they’re all friends – so the trumpet player is my old boss when I was a teacher – the drummer is an ex-student I used to teach music technology – and the double bass player I was involved with at the local secondary school in Totnes, KEVICC – I used to run a folk group there with him – he was in year eight I think at the time and now he’s at the Royal College of Music, not the Academy I think (that’s important to him, it’s not important to me!) – and Jude and Mark our friends from Yorkshire – Kris Lannen who we play in another group with now called Brother Sea, obviously another sea themed project.
Freya: My mum!
Dave: Yeah Freya’s mum on oboe and operatics – so yeah, just friends – we’ve accumulated a talented bunch over the years so now we just use them and pay them very little to be honest, but they’re behind what we’re doing.
WK: Would you say that’s what folk is about, playing with people that who you like and who you know?
Dave: Yeah, it’s not about creating a really produced album, its more about the feel of it and the songs. We’re really pleased with it!
WK: And how has it been received in all these places you’ve taken it to?
Dave: Well, we did a pre-album launch tour in January in Germany for a month and where we were mainly based in Bremen and Bremerhaven. There’s actually a huge culture of sea songs and shanties there – people don’t necessarily really realise – so it was really well received. I think people just loved the stories anyway, that’s what they were most interested in. There were some fellers who work out at sea so they had a particular interest in what we were doing.
WK: So what next… time for a bit of downtime after so many gigs?
Freya: Well, we’re still gigging pretty regularly and have been working on stuff for a conference in Bristol marking the 100 year anniversary of the conscientious objectors being released from prison after the First World War. We’ve been given funding to reimagine three songs from the Conscientious Objectors Songbook, keeping the words exactly the same but changing the music to make it appeal to a modern audience so we’re busy working on that.
Dave: We’re going to the Scilly Isles soon which will be very nice.
Freya: And then getting ready for festival season and the Summer School in August. So we’re very busy.
Dave: Well, in fact, in June were away for a two and a half weeks in the North East mainly –
WK: Which is where you are from?
Dave: Yeah, we have good networking community and a lot of people that follow us up there, they love the music – we did a week in Scotland at the end of March too, based in the Cairngorms. It’s an amazing place even if we did get caught out in the snow.
WK: And then you’ll be heading back here to Dartington for the second year running.
Dave: We’re mainly involved in the folk choir in the summer school this year – teaching nautical songs.
WK: What can people expect to sing?
Dave: Ah, that is top secret – because we haven’t decided yet.
Freya: No, we’ve got some ideas.
Dave: And we’re involved in the folk collective again this year, which will be led this time by Emily Portman – we’ve heard very good things about her so it should be fabulous.
[Dog barks].
Dave: Murphy thinks so [laughs].
Harbottle & Jonas will be teaching on the Dartington International Summer School’s Folk collective course this August. They will also be performing in the Great Hall at Dartington on 6th August. To find out more about the summer school and to book, click here: www.dartington.org/summerschool
https://www.harbottleandjonas.com/
Photo Credit: Matt Austin