The Ciderhouse Rebellion’s newest project, Words of a Fiddler’s Daughter – rúnian, is self-released today (CAT TCR02) as a CD of eight cinematic folk-tone poems set to spontaneously created music, and a book of ten poems. It’s available for purchase via their website here: https://theciderhouserebellion.com/discs/
Here the improv folk duo of Adam Summerhayes (fiddle) and Murray Grainger (accordion) who we’ve previously featured, become a trio, joined by Adam’s daughter, poet Jessie Summerhayes – a natural wordsmith who has been enveloped by music her entire life, at times even sleeping in her father’s violin case as a baby.
Jessie’s words are steeped in the same history and folklore that flows through the music of her father, inhabiting the protagonists and landscape of her beloved North East of England with her fresh and timeless voice.
As with all The Ciderhouse Rebellion’s work, every performance of Words of a Fiddler’s Daughter is unique, created in-the-moment – the version of Oars In The Breakers on the video below is different to the disc and no other performance of this track will ever be the same…
Oars in the Breakers – background: The entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 793 records the first Viking invasion of Lindisfarne and the preceding events: ‘Here were dreadful forewarnings come over the land of Northumbria, and woefully terrified the people: these were amazing sheets of lightning and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky. A great famine soon followed these signs, and shortly after in the same year, on the sixth day before the ides of January, the woeful inroads of heathen men destroyed god’s church in Lindisfarne island by fierce robbery and slaughter.’
Jessie “Working with Adam and Murray is instinctive and natural – their instruments and my voice seeming to create a cohesive whole every time we perform. In a time of such uncertainty I turned towards the constant – the natural world around me. Each poem starts from a medieval historical standpoint but is interwoven with stories from the land itself. The Ciderhouse Rebellion’s musical improvisation adds another voice to the conversation weaving through and enriching the tale that is being told”
Adam: This project was an accident, something entirely unplanned that grew out of The Ciderhouse Rebllion’s driven desire to continue to create live music during lockdown. Murray and I worked late into the night – night after night – looking for those elusive moments when our extraordinary, cobbled-together telephone system worked well enough to hear each other in real time and allow us to create real music. Jessie heard one end of these musical conversations as my fiddle echoed round the house, as well as seeing the finished results in our weekly broadcasts – and was struck by an idea … she wrote a poem, creating a folk tale based on the historical facts behind the earliest recorded cider making in England, a poem that also creates the legend of the ciderhouse rebellion’ itself – something that now feels like a story that is centuries old. Her idea was for us to weave music around it, though she did not initially intend to read it herself. We set up and recorded it – Jessie and I in one house, Murray 50 miles away – and the project was born. We loved it and the poems kept flowing, as they still are. It was an amazing experience to perform one at the Beardy Folk Festival this week; the audience seemed utterly entranced and their enjoyment was tangible.”
Murray: “It is always a supreme joy to play with Adam so it was with a huge sense of excitement that I approached this project. I was not disappointed. Jessie Summerhayes brings the same creativity and inspiration to her words that Adam brings to his music. To interact with them in such an uninhibited and expressive way conveys such freedom and spontaneous inspiration to my playing. I never know exactly what we are going to create but I am never in any doubt that it will be dramatic, sensitive, unconstrained and affecting. I am taken on a journey every time, the perfect synergy of word and music that always leaves me breathless.”
Order Words of a Fiddler’s Daughter – rúnian – https://theciderhouserebellion.com/discs/
Photo Credit: Catherine Summerhayes