As previously mentioned on Folk Radio, between Friday 13 and Sunday 15 March 2020, Folk on Foot will co-curate a weekend of live performance at Kings Place, the ever-popular London venue, a hub for music, art, dialogue and food in London’s Kings Cross. The event forms part of Kings Place ongoing ‘Nature Unwrapped’ series and this one includes both song and conversation. Eliza Carthy, Nancy Kerr and James Fagan and Martin Simpson will be performing as well as chatting to Matthew Bannister who will also be sharing footage from their appearances on Folk on Foot (https://www.folkonfoot.com/).
I recently caught up with Nancy Kerr to talk about the event, nature, lifestyle and folk music.
Yourself and James Fagan are performing as part of a special event called Wild Singing which includes an interview with Folk on Foot’s Matthew Bannister. As part of Matthew’s podcast, you performed on the Kennet and Avon Canal towpath which is in Wiltshire where you lived on a canal boat for twelve years. What was it that drew you to that life and how do you feel that has influenced your music…and do you miss it?
“I do miss living on the water but as any liveaboard would probably agree, it is sometimes very hard as well – so I’m grateful now for all the privileges of land-dwelling! For instance, I’m well aware how blessed I am to have a garden. At that time, I wanted to live alternatively in some way, mainly because we didn’t have much money, and had close friends on the canal, most of them musicians. We made and wrote a lot of music on the boats. Mainly in waltz time, 6/8 or 3/2, because for much of the time we had a 3-cylinder engine.”
Set in some of the most beautiful scenery I guess you became more aware of the changing elements and seasons around you? Did your own awareness and knowledge of nature deepen over those years?
“Definitely the proximity to changes of season dominates your life on the waterways. It’s easy to romanticise the dappled reflections of the river’s surface on your ceiling, the sound of owls at night and the smell of woodsmoke…but until you’ve taken all necessary action to ensure you’re warm and dry and safe (especially with little ones aboard) it can be hard to appreciate these.
“One thing I found really poetic about the canal, having previously lived both in big cities and in wilder countryside, was how it straddles both these worlds – the waterway can be a slice of nature in the most urban concrete mass, or an industrial channel through the greenest places. I still set a lot of my songs in a space that has that tension of city versus wilderness.”
What are some of your most memorable ‘nature moments’ from then?
“I would never ever take seeing a kingfisher for granted. But we also loved observing the prosaic daily lives of the magpies and the ducks and the rabbits in the neighbouring fields. Swans were a terror, especially en-masse and at close quarters: James took some fantastic photographs of them though. Water voles were a treat to see, every so often.”
…and the most rewarding aspects?
“As I mention earlier; I’m sure anyone who lives alternatively would recognise the deep joy associated with simply being afloat, warm and safe for another day – that’s a very grounding and connecting experience as well as a reality check as to what harder lives must be like. I strongly remember the weird sounds and sensations of when the canal froze – the lack of movement of the boat and how the ducks all sounded massively angry at the situation. Then the ice would start to break from some far-off boat’s movement and you’d hear it pinging musically off the metal of your own hull. In autumn, being able to get to patches of blackberries that no-one on foot could reach was a plus.”
The Wild Singing event also features Eliza Carthy and Martin Simpson. Now, I know Martin is a very keen nature lover and I can think of a lot of other folk artists that are also moved and influenced by the everyday wonders of the natural world. Why do you think nature has such a strong pull on folk artists in particular?
“Well if you’ve had even a passing flirtation with traditional songs from most places, you’ll have likely heard ways of situating the human experience into nature, whether it’s trees and flower mythology or birds that talk to you about your broken heart, or just descriptions of the less-trod environments of the past…so it’s an accepted part of most singers’ language even if, like me, they live in a city, and their experience of the wild might be imagined or much reduced. But perhaps it’s something to do with travelling too – the road can be pretty grim but the chance of spotting dozens of Red Kites circling like pterodactyls in Berkshire, badgers on midnight lanes, or a clump of ragwort that’s still managing to survive at the roadside, keeps you going sometimes – as well as the music-making, of course. Therefore if you’re a protest singer, protest-adjacent, or just singing about human experience in the present, I don’t see how you could avoid addressing the destruction of the environment and all of these things in your work. It’s the defining struggle of our time, for me.”
You released “An Evening With” last year, a live album which we covered as a Featured Album of the Month. You are both well-known for your high-energy performances, something Thomas Blake touched on his review of that album, what are the elements of your performance that you feel are a trademark of who you are?
“I think after many studio albums, we feel these days that the duo lives in its truest form onstage, in the moment – the live album captured this better than we even hoped, which is testament to the production team. I’d say arguably the power of the live presence is due to our voices being more vessels for conveying stories, than something perfect or smooth that you can tune into the background – or perhaps it’s that we try to achieve the sonic spread and the energy of a band with just two people, and it’s gratifying to be able to say “listen, that’s just us making that sound!”. Also, I’ve made singing and fiddling simultaneously one of my calling-cards, which is basically pointless to learn to do if you can just double-track it instead. So I like the thought that Kerr Fagan can exist totally off-grid without compromising our artistic stylings….”
You put on a fantastic show at Cambridge last year during which you were joined by some friends for a sing-a-long (including Maddy Prior). Was that planned?
“That was really really good fun! It was planned yes – we wanted to do 3 main things in that gig: a) flood the stage with awesome women’s voices (we had Ellie Skinner, Rosie Hood and Rebecca and Emily Hearne from our hometown of Sheffield and Karine Polwart as a guest too); b) revisit old musical friendships such as with Tim Van Eyken on box and Tim and Tom from the Sweet Visitor Band on bass and drums, and c) remind people how large the Kerr-Fagan duo can sound even just on our own. It was wonderful how the audience responded to an acoustic duo playing trad-style music on such a big stage. Maddy is one of our favourite people and I’ve spent a long time teaching voice alongside her so it was gorgeous to sing and play together.”
What plans have you in the pipeline that you’re able to share with us?
“Recording is almost complete for the debut album of The Magpie Arc (me, Martin Simpson, Adam Holmes, Alex Hunter and Tom Wright) and that’s a very pleasing band to be part of! I’ve also finished writing a complete new solo album which this time will feature me playing and singing almost everything myself – it’s been quite nice to rediscover myself as my own kind of instrumentalist as opposed to just adding parts for other performers, and a singer of course, so I’m looking forward to how different that will be from things that have come before.”
And you still lecture?
“I also continue as Senior Lecturer on the recently created folk degree at Leeds College of Music, which I find incredibly satisfying– my students are incredible: we’re about to have our first lot of graduates, so if you know anyone who might like to study global folk at a conservatoire, tell them to investigate us!”
Wild Singing Weekend
Wild Singing Weekend takes place between Friday 13 and Sunday 15 March 2020 at Kings Place.
Featuring Eliza Carthy, Nancy Kerr and James Fagan and Martin Simpson who will be performing as well as chatting to Matthew Bannister who will also be sharing footage from their appearances on Folk on Foot.
Also performing over the weekend are The Rheingans Sisters, Kitty Macfarlane and The Shackleton Trio.
In addition, you’ll get the opportunity to hear Rowan Piggott’s Songhive Project – a project comprising songs of ‘beelore’ and folksong of the British Isles, to raise awareness of the current plight of the bees; and The Wilderness Yet, an added bonus performance for those attending.
There will also be a showing of Folk on Foot on Film, telling the behind the scenes story of the podcast and featuring footage of many of the artists Folk on Foot have walked with.
Tickets and More here: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/wild-singing-nature-inspired-folk/