A duo that teamed Will Pound’s virtuoso playing of the harmonica with Eddy Jay’s accordion (I love Tom Robinson’s description of Eddy as the wild man of the accordion), didn’t immediately seem an obvious pairing. But their first album, Ignite, was exceptionally well received, as I said at the time, it leaves you marvelling at the virtuosity of two astoundingly talented musicians. Since touring with Ignite in 2016, the demands of their individual workloads have kept the duo relatively quiet, but this summer they’ve bounced back with a hectic schedule of festival appearances. Having wowed the Cropredy crowd earlier on Friday, I caught up with a still buzzing Will.
Wickham last weekend and now here, have you played Sidmouth in between?
No, not the two of us. I was down there with my Morris team, did a bit of playing. In fact, I played percussion all week, it was great. Gave my arms a rest from the melodeon and the harmonica.
What does the future hold for the Will and Eddy duo?
It’s been really interesting; this summer has been really busy. We’ve done, something like 7 festivals in the last 2 or 3 weeks. It’s been great and we’ve got a new album coming out next year, hopefully. We’ve got some brass guys that are getting involved, which is really good fun. What has been interesting about that, I sent them the recordings that we’ve made already and they transcribed the accordion parts into brass parts. So, they weren’t just going par-da-parp over the tune. They knew the music and when they came to rehearsals it was just amazing what they’d done with it. They’ve enhanced the sound; they haven’t just played over it. We did a gig at Warwick with them, a couple of weekends ago, a sort of test run. We’re hoping to tour with it next year, we’re just starting to book in dates.
I noticed at Wickham, compared to when I saw you a couple of years ago, Eddy seems to be taking on more of the melody.
Yes, it’s just developing all the time. So, I would like to do a bit more accompanying stuff, chordal stuff. And it’s nice because it means I get to accompany as well as Eddy, and I actually like doing that. I get a bit of a buzz. Some people wouldn’t because they like being soloists but I take the view that I’m a musician and I should be able to do both.
It must be quite tricky on the harmonica?
It’s not easy! Especially with reed instruments because you’re trying to stay out of each other’s way. But you’re in the same registers a lot of the time. Yeah, it’s not easy being an accompanist to an accordion player. But it’s do-able with practice. I was saying earlier that I do about 2 hours on the harp and 2 hours on the melodeon every day. I didn’t today because I was busy doing the gig but when I’m home and practising, that’s what I aim for. But you have to because you have to get better. So, for me and Eddy, we’re really enjoying it, and it’s developing. We’re trying other styles of music. Today, for the first time we did a Latin style piece. It was the first Purcell piece and we put it into a Latin style, why not? Eddy came up with a technique for that on the accordion. I’d never heard it before, playing the Latin backing.
What about your work outside of the duo with Eddy?
I’m doing a tour of the European Union next year. It’s going to be an interesting tour, with a band and a performance poet. Along the lines of Through the Seasons, it’s that kind of idea but with a lot more music, I think. We’re recording an album along with it (more here). We’ve got some good people coming on board for that. We’ve got Liz Carroll for fiddle and hoping to have Evelyn Glennie as well for percussion. On tour, we’ll have a house band, Jen Butterworth and a few others.
I’m also doing a lot more session recording work. I’m just doing this thing, it’s a TV comedy coming on Sky 1 next year called Breeders. I think it’s starring Martin Freeman. I’m playing harmonica on that. I did the Warburton’s advert recently with Robert de Niro, quite bizarre. I felt a bit naughty, playing for a company that donates to the Tory party. Least said about that the better. So, it’s quite busy at the moment and I’m enjoying playing, practicing a lot and rehearsing a lot at home.
Also, the team that did Through the Seasons, we’re planning on doing another show.
We’re looking at things, potentially with the British Council, with a view to taking it out across the world, hopefully! But, also, we’re planning to develop another show, about mumming.
Did Through The Seasons change much during its run? I saw it very early on and I think you did a second tour in the end?
The structure of the show stayed the same, but we did slightly different things in the story. Debs (Newbold, the story teller) developed it as we went along, so yes, it changed a bit but not too much. I think you saw it at, like, the fourth show, so we were learning our lines still! It was good fun, we really enjoyed it. And it was successful. With the Arts Council, if you tour it again without their help, they deem that a success.
We’re hoping the European thing will (work out) the same. So, we’re going to tour it next year in May and do some festivals as well. And, hopefully, we’ll tour it again the year after. It depends if we’re still in Europe by then (Laughter).
It’s a very tricky question. We’re going to tour whatever happens. It’s important to do it. And it’s been interesting for me because, usually, you’d find a project like this would be done by a singer, you know, a political singer like Billy Bragg or Grace Petrie. It’s quite unusual that I’m an instrumentalist. I never used to be political, that’s the interesting thing, and I never wanted to be a political musician. I was just very interested in getting as good as I could on the instruments. But I think, in times like these, you need to make some sort of a stand for what you believe in. So, with this project, I wanted to try to bring people together, rather than separate them. We’ve deliberately booked shows in areas that voted leave. I wanted to bring people along who are leave voters and remain voters but I want them to chat with each other and we’ll present European culture in a musical way. Make them think a bit about what Europe is and how people perceive it, over there as well as over here. We’re going to go and interview EU citizens and get their stories. How they feel about living here, about identity, all that kind of thing. We’ll see how we get on.
Read more about Will’s new project and album ‘A Day Will Come’ here.
For dates and more information, visit http://willpound.com