Tim Edey is a busy man. The multi-instrumentalist, originally from Kent, but now living in Perthshire, has had an incredibly productive few months, despite Covid-19. With a new album to be released early in 2021, and fresh from celebrating his win as Musician of the Year at the MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards in December 2020, Folk Radio UK got the chance to have a chat with Tim about his recent work and new charity release ‘Fields of Gold’.
Hello Tim, and thanks for taking time to talk to us. First of all, congratulations on winning Musician of the Year, a well-deserved honour! How did you react to the news?
I was absolutely delighted to get the news that I would be talking to you and the Folk Radio team, love the website and social media things you guys do for our folk scene, yes absolutely in shock still about the BBC Alba award, even though I’ve played up here in Scotland for many many years, I guess going on twenty now from when I first hooked up with Charlie McKerron and the Session A9 band which Charlie asked me to join when I supported Capercaillie in the year 1999 with Mike McGoldrick in Spain.
Living back in Scotland in Perthshire now, this last two years, the award really does make me feel incredibly honoured and an adopted Scot which is really lovely! I am so astounded by the work that Simon Thoumire does and his team with all the traditional music here in Alba, he deserves a medal for his work for youth, adults, and promotion of the trad music here.
The Awards ceremony was supposed to take place in Dundee’s Caird Hall, my own hometown and not that far from your home in Perthshire, but sadly due to Covid-19 was broadcast online this year via BBC Alba. It was still a great ceremony, but so sad people couldn’t gather for this. It’s been quite a year for everyone, how has Covid-19 been for you?
Goodness Billy I have amazing memories of that wonderful hole in Dundee! I first played on it with Charlie and Session A9 around 15 years ago and I love your city I’m a huge fan!
It was really really sad I felt as I must admit even though I’m not the best in large gatherings, I was so excited to maybe be going to the actual awards, but I have to say they did an incredible job online! Incidentally, my filming of the acceptance speech was quite a challenge, with our daughter Nancy who is three trying to join in on the speech every time I filmed it!
It’s been a hell of a year in so many ways. I must admit probably the most challenging I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some challenges in the past. Practically in the space of two weeks I lost my entire income and worldwide touring. But thanks to my partner Isobel, who is from Perthshire and a great singer herself, she encouraged me and really channelled the Sleeping Tunes show on Facebook. We first started doing these in 2016 and the audience has built up. This same audience I’m proud and lucky to say has just grown and grown and grown during Covid-19, and it’s been a regular Saturday night concert for me every week since lockdown. I sell downloads and CDs and I am incredibly happy to have made lockdown perhaps a tiny bit more bearable to some of my music fans.
I have missed seeing my family down south in Kent of course and all the friends and fans you meet when travelling normally, and our family and friends in Ireland. But we are so lucky living in the hills here in the Ochil’s, loads of walking and social distancing is pretty easy! We did have a crazy flood one night when our wee burn burst its banks. It was a mental night with two metres of water level outside the front door pretty much, no guitars were lost!
In a year where honestly, I thought about becoming a delivery driver with my regular touring old Toyota van. I am amazed to have been as busy as I have been with online music and teaching and the Saturday night shows. I do it every Saturday now in a slightly different format because we have had the most awful problems with the upload speed here in our village. I currently pay for three different services each month just to allow me to do my Saturday night show. It’s pretty crazy to be honest and expensive but so be it, folk can watch it at 9pm Scottish time from.
https://m.facebook.com/tim.edey/
You have a new album out in 2021 – what can we expect?
Billy it’s really exciting to tell you about this record… So as anyone who knows my music will know it’s incredibly steeped in Irish Scottish and Celtic folk, but I’ve always been somebody who improvises and plays gypsy jazz and swing I grew up listening to the Chieftains, Capercaillie, and Django Reinhardt. I am entirely self-taught so don’t have jazz training, but I love so many types of music and this album, I got rhythm, is 100% instrumental and guitar based but with some button box and amazing special guests that I’ll tell you about in a sec. All recorded in our wee upstairs cottage flat in a 200+ year old building in Dunning village during lockdown on a basic studio set up, amidst the kids toys in my corner of the living room/kitchen room, is where I recorded my parts of this as usual in my preferred way… one or two takes max and off the cuff arranging and planning as I record. Yes, it’s a weird way to work I know but it suits me I am someone who plays music spontaneously NEVER planned! I simply can’t mentally do that I have to feel it.
The tracks range from Bee-Gee’s classic “How deep is your love” to Django classic and title track “I got rhythm”, a version of Sting’s “Fields of Gold” featuring my amazing buddies Natalie MacMaster & Patsy Reid, which we just released as a charity single for Sands UK. And then a fun swing tune set of the song “The rare old mountain dew” with another close buddy of many years Michael McGoldrick. We then venture to Paris for a version of the waltz written in the 1930’s “La bourrasque” with special guest incredible Canadian virtuoso fiddler Donnell Leahy from, some readers might remember, Canadian Celtic supergroup ‘Leahy” from the 90’s, and old favourites “Danny boy”, a jazzy version played with Perthshire brass maestro Tom Burnett, and we visit Autumn leaves and then head to the US for Stevie Wonder’s classic “Isn’t she lovely” and lots more!
It’s an album of you could say easy listening and popular song classics with stunning strings throughout by the incredible Patsy Reid who although only 10 miles from me I haven’t seen for months off course. I really am excited to introduce the man who is being sent all the audio wav’s and mixing it and producing a Perth born fiddler & recording engineer/producer Dave MacFarlane who Scottish listeners may remember from the local band The True Gents who played the Dundee, Perth scenes regularly.
So yes, in lockdown it’s been quite a challenge recording for me. We live in a pretty small flat, albeit a cottage of half of one, in a very old building where close neighbours are incredibly patient – imagine living below an accordionist and two young kids! But picking your time to work for me when the kids are in bed and my neighbours aren’t playing Call of Duty: gun shots and war noises are always a funny one when trying to record a classical guitar! But it worked well.
I often recorded after the Saturday gigs and I am very much a one take man, not spending more than two tries on any track, you lose the magic I feel. The very best recordings and funniest ones I have been involved in with Natalie and The Chieftains and Brendan Power, have taught me this over the years. Music is emotion based and if you record something trying to perfect it 20 times…. You lose all will to live let alone play!
But I am lucky they’re pieces I have played for years so they ought to be pretty polished by now!
Recordings were sent and swapped from rural Ontario, where Natalie the true queen of the fiddle in Canada and her husband Donnell live on a working farm while raising seven kids and home-schooling and teaching them music each day, so the fact they made time for me is just so amazing. I have worked with them for years and they are very dear friends I am proud to say, we just have a musical connection and Natalie’s last album Sketches I played on every track was one of the last International albums I played on before Covid-19!
How did the recording of ‘Fields of Gold’ come about?
I have loved this classic by Sting for years, although in essence a pop song I guess, it’s got a Celtic emotion I’m sure you’ll agree, and this version, I was sitting one night in early lockdown and thinking of our little baby son Griogair whom we lost in 2015 at just two months old, I had his photo and for me music is my therapy it’s a way to process grief, feel sadness and also deal with it for me, I just played it straight and pressed record, then sent to Dave in Perth who cleaned up my own mixing and I had this idea of Patsy and Natalie on the track and sent it out many months after the initial recording in the flat to Canada and Perth and goodness these girls Natalie and Patsy are in a league of their own, they sent back pure gold, just perfect! Dave mixed it and played some bass parts on fiddle and bang it was done. I was talking to Mike (McGoldrick) one night, we talk regularly and often during lockdown would spend hours on WhatsApp swapping guitar chords together and just chilling with our guitars (he’s a fine guitarist too) and I said to Mike should I release a rushed album before Xmas? Mike suggested why not release a single from the record, and then the charity idea came about.
100% of every sale of the single goes to the Sands UK Stillbirth and neonatal death charity, I know that is a very personal association for you. The charity provides some wonderful support. Can you tell us a little bit more about the charity and what it means to you?
Yes, the proceeds of each single downloaded is 100%, I am so proud to say and already I think we’ve managed £450 for Sands and building, I hope. They really do Billy, they provided my partner Isobel and I when we lost Griogair in Kent in 2015, the local team gave us a beautiful memory box and emotional support and meetings with other parents who had lost babies.
It’s for many a very, very tough thing to talk about, and in truth and I mean this in the best possible way, many people who have never experienced or known anyone who’s been through anything like this simply just will never really get it and I find talking about it a great therapy as does Isobel it helps us process the grief and remember him as the incredible brave wee boy that he was.
The journey from him being born so early at 26.5 weeks to being rushed to Brighton to a highly specialist baby unit, the Trevor Mann, to taking him off his life support and taking him home with us and his wee sister, and passing away in our arms on 1st September 2015 in our home at the time, which was in the marsh village of Oare near Faversham. I had to cancel so much work at the time and with no funding or support from any outside thing or crowdfunding we relied on family who helped so much financially and emotionally. The unit and hospital and the Ronald McDonald charity that provided us accommodation in Brighton in the hospital was just … incredible.
There were times during those dark weeks, when he was between life and death, nearly every day a true rollercoaster for this wee baby boy who had, as they all do, such an incredible character. I remember driving the two hours back to Kent to see our young daughter, who of course couldn’t stay with us in hospital and was with my family in Kent who were just … incredible, seeing her for a few hours then driving back along a packed M25 and getting a call from Isobel who was saying we are needed ASAP, his main line or oxygen sats have dropped very badly, or his brain bleed (sadly very common in this age group born prematurely) had spread, it was a massive test of us both, of anyone. You are powerless, your bundle of joy is literally in the hands of the experts who are beyond experts they are incredible people the nurses and Dr’s in NICU.
I am not religious but there were times I prayed all night when we thought we would lose him. He incredibly he was off oxygen again and doing really well, a glimmer of hope… but he was too sick and died in our arms at two months old at home loved and held. It’s an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone not your worst enemy even, but it happens, and Sands raise so much awareness of it. Most people, as I say, thankfully never experience this, but I tell everyone the next time you’re in a hospital waiting room or baby scan area and see others you don’t know what they are going through, it taught me that you should NEVER EVER judge a book by its cover…
2021 is hoping to be a better year. If all is well, what are you hoping to achieve next year?
I dream of continuing the Saturday shows I feel the music industry has now changed … forever I feel. I believe live work may come back but it is not sustainable for so many, the scene is simply oversaturated and regardless of Covid-19 in a way I feel it couldn’t continue as it was, so many bands, so many people trying to do the same thing… make a living from one thing, you have to diversify, Covid-19 has taught us that. I hope to get this album heard by non-folk fans, that is my dream, and for all to stay safe and appreciate what you have already done and have. Also, I dream of the single making more national airplay and being on Classic FM!
Thanks so much to Tim for talking time to have a chat with FRUK, and we all look forward to hearing the new album in 2021.
In the meantime, ‘Fields of Gold’ is available to buy as a download via Tim’s website, and as mentioned 100% of sales go to Sands. A wonderful charity, very close to Tim’s heart.
Order the single ‘Fields of Gold’ via Tim’s website: https://timedey.com/track/2572289/fields-of-gold-sting
Or Bandcamp: https://timedey.bandcamp.com/track/fields-of-gold
Sands | Stillbirth and neonatal death charity