Luke Daniels: Artist of the Month Interview

Music reviewers sometimes talk about a song’s poetic lyrics. There’s nothing wrong with this: it’s true that some songwriters are capable of writing words that seem, at first glance, to resemble poetry, and it’s useful to have a kind of journalistic shorthand that describes these songwriters. However, it is rare for a song to achieve the state of poetry in its strictest sense. Poetry and songwriting are inherently different skills, and they are not necessarily transferable.

But poetry shares its roots with song, and the two have coexisted for centuries, so there are inevitable overlaps. Luke Daniels’ new album, Old Friends & Exhausted Enemies (reviewed here), is one such overlap. But this project is a little bit different. Daniels takes the whole of English-language poetry from Chaucer as his raw material and shapes individual passages from that vast oeuvre into stunningly crafted and meticulously researched folk songs of his own composition, songs that foreground the importance of poetry as a spoken (or sung) artform.

Eager to examine the thought processes behind such a unique and expansive project, FRUK spoke to Daniels. To begin with, we wanted to know exactly how he became so well acquainted with so many of the great writers of the last 700 years?

One anthology, in particular, served as a source for the poetry that’s been worked into the songs on this record. The Penguin Book of English Song by Richard Stokes is a really comprehensive volume for anyone looking to gainer a deeper understanding into the way poets have influenced composers and songwriters over the last seven centuries. Because of the way it’s set out chronologically and by author it also shows how poets influenced each other over time. Phrases and imagery that I’ve used were previously used by numerous poets (eg ‘nut browne hair’) which emerges in the 15^th century and then gets taken up by different writers in the same way that online memes take on a life of their own via social media today.

It is evident from the way he talks that Daniels has immersed himself in his material and that the concept that rose out of this immersion provided an important framework around which to construct an album. His recent albums – Singing Ways To Feel More Junior and Revolve & Rotate as well as the new one – all seem to grow out of concepts (children’s rhymes, an apparently obsolete instrument, English poetry. Do the concepts always come first, or are there some songs that are already written that influence the theme of an album?

Concepts are a helpful tool to help me maintain focus and keep working on a new project, they provide source materials for lyrical content. The way I create music though is less ‘project managed’ though and I seem to be able to rely on my subconscious to create coherently over time so long as I collect the bits as they come in they usually piece together in a way that makes sense and I don’t necessarily need to understand as I’m collecting them. There’s always a few screws left over too to help get me started on the next round of material.

So how did this particular concept come about, and how long did it take to complete?

My main motive for doing anything is to improve the quality of my work. My experience as a folk musician playing instrumental music on button accordion has taught me that writing one good tune is usually the result of having learned a number of them and allowing some of the shapes therein (not melodies as this is plagiarism) to reform and regroup as something new. ‘Referencing’ existing tunes in this way provides context for new ideas within any given musical style and should not be confused with copying. It’s a process perhaps, via which all music evolves. So the idea that a songwriter looking to develop their own craft could do by imbibing the best source material on offer before filtering it through their own creativity seemed like a good way to get better at what I do. It’s not the process I want to solely employ either: there are five songs on the album that don’t draw on the work of others in this way but I hope that even these are improved as a result of the time I’ve spent getting to know the work of better writers than myself. Having studied this source material in the beginning of 2018, I reworked it into drafts versions of during that summer and began recording in November completing the project in a little over a year this March.

Old Friends & Exhausted Enemies is an unusual album, and it required slightly unconventional methods to get it off the ground. So how did the challenge of fitting a pre-existing poem into a melody differ from writing a song with original lyrics, and how difficult was it to mix the two techniques?

Everything needed to be flexible at the same time, melodies, syntax and words to get the best outcome for each line, verse and idea. I had fun and learned a lot by using middle English versions of some of the words working on Chaucer’s Prologue to the Canterbury Tales upon realising that I had numerous vowel sounds or syllables to work with. For example he rhymes ‘root’ with ‘sooth’ by using the middle english ‘soote.’

And what about the album title? The ‘Old Friends’ bit seems self-explanatory, but who or what are the ‘Exhausted Enemies’?

I like the idea that we can invest as much time over the course of our lives in those we consider friends as those we feel are our enemies and at some late stage perhaps come to the realization that these people mean about the same to us. Reconciliation is a theme that runs through the record so it seemed a fitting title. The poets involved also could be viewed in this way too as I used to hate reading most of them at school but have come to appreciate their work properly having ‘submitted’ to it in later life!

Is it fair to say that Ways To Feel More Junior (Daniels’ album of playground songs) had a more explicitly political feel to it than Old Friends? Do you think that the old poems you have used can resonate politically today, and if so are there any instances of that happening on the album?

Yes, this is a fair conclusion to draw. Where We All Must Go on Old Friends comes close to the political songs that pepper all three of the last song albums but only this one. Historically high and low brow poetry that’s inspired composers (who perhaps were not afforded a political voice) tended to be about love, death and adventure as per much of folk singing too.

Daniels first came to prominence as an accordion player, but is now a formidable guitarist too. We detect the influence of Nic Jones in there…

Yes of course, Nic Jones, John Martyn, Nick Drake are all guitar heroes of mine. Though I fantasise about being able to flat pick like Tony Rice or Molly Tuttle and can be found in my man cave trying to play that kind of stuff too. I just think that fingerstyle comes more naturally to me because of my accordion playing.

For this album, he has enlisted some unusual musicians – Rihab Azar on the oud, Ale Carr on the cittern, Zi Lan Lao on Gu Zheng. Is there anything about these particular instruments that complement the album’s lyrical content? And how did you come to meet and work with these musicians?

I worked on a project with Zi-Lan, Abel and Rihab earlier this year called Kaleidoscope MusicMeme which used social media and mobile apps to create music drawing on our respective music traditions, Chinese, South African, Middle-eastern and British so I was looking for a way to get to know them better musically and personally. Using these unique sounds sparring across the album I think gives it a pretty unique sound and one of my favourite moments is when you hear the Chinese Gu-Zheng for the first time in track two. Ale Carr is such a brilliant musician that I had been looking for an opportunity to work together for some time, so when I knew I would be working on material from Chaucer the cittern seemed a good choice and his role within the music grew from there.

And what about future plans? Is there a full-scale tour on the cards, and does the density and complexity of these songs present make them difficult to reproduce live?

I’m performing up and down the country all the time but prefer to play short stints rather than prolonged tours. There’s plenty to look forward to in terms of live performances coming up. I’ve more duo dates with the brilliant Nancy Kerr in which I’ll be singing material from this album, I’m at Celtic Connections and then Derry International Music Festival with Rihab Azar in January and I’ll be on the Costa Del Folk roster next April. Festival appearances this month though include Cork on the 6^th and Hartlepool on the 18^th.

On the possibility of future projects, Daniels is refreshingly open:

I really enjoyed working with and reading Chaucer so have already begun work on a song adaptation of his Canterbury Tales and finishing the album with a prologue which points to my next major project seemed suitably contrary. I’m also working as part of a new folk quartet for festivals next year which (for want of a better description) will be a covers band.

Covers band or not, Daniels is one of folk music’s true originals. Whatever he plans to do next is unlikely to be quite like anything else.