Shovel Dance Collective – Offcuts and Oddities
Independent – Out Now
As Steve Roud points out in his general introduction to The New Penguin Book of English Folk Song, attempting to define what a folk song is, “is fraught with difficulty”. There are though a number of characteristics, attributes to a song that could say whether it was a folk song or not and whilst it is about its transmission, interpretation and reinterpretation, there is also an element of common subject matter themes. Prominent amongst these, wading through the boggy lands of white horses, rivers full of dead bodies, and witches and demons, there are those that reflect real life and the pain and the suffering of the downtrodden, the subjugated, and the minority.
It is against this background that the Shovel Dance Collective search out and perform traditional songs and tunes. Not that this should be seen as some grey post-modern lament about previous cruelties. There are some cracking tunes in their album Offcuts and Oddities.
The Shovel Dance Collective grew organically from a couple of friends playing folk tunes in their bedrooms just for fun, to a train of nine performers who joined as the music required. The band name is a reference to a line in the song Byker Hill where:
Geordie Johnson had a pig
And he hit it with a shovel and it danced a jig
It appears that the Collective might have stalled thanks to the ubiquitous pandemic but I think that this has actually given them the opportunity and the reason to press ahead with collecting their music and putting out an album. The result is a scrapbook of tunes and songs that have been captured in the months before lockdown and then the early period of the pandemic alert. The venues for these tracks tells this story quite clearly, from Lewisham Arthouse in December 2019 to individual member’s recordings in their front room or their bedroom. The quality does not suffer, the edges adding to the sound, to the nature of the thing.
There are four ensemble tracks, three tunes The Bold Fisherman, Abbots Bromley Horn Dance and The Cherping [sic] of the Lark recorded in Lewisham Arthouse and the song The Foggy Dew recorded in harpist Fidelma Hanrahan’s living room. Scratch the surface of the Internet for information about the Horn Dance and you discover argument and artifice regarding its origin and its relationship to Abbot’s Bromley. However it got here, it is a great tune combining stateliness with elements of sombre unease. This almost Gothic feel can also be sensed in Nick Granta’s interpretation of The Demon Lover. Nick follows the AL Lloyd version in a way (and as far away from the Steeleye Span version of my youth as you can get) but the result is eerie and stripped for maximum impact.
Many of the Collective’s songs are concerned with working class culture. The Four-Loom Weaver, sung by Mataio Austin Dean, channelling the spirt of Ewan MacColl, is from the period of the Napoleonic Wars and illustrating the dire conditions imposed on working people. There is also a thread of exploration of feminist rights, and gender representation, revisiting the traditional canon to both work for today and as indicative representation of how people who were not ‘privileged white men’ suffered in life as in song.
The final track, The Cherping of the Lark, is a great ensemble end to this collection. Here is a simple dance tune, dating back to Playford or before, with each instrument having its day and the ensemble coming together, ebbing and flowing before finally fading, but leaving a sense of there is more to come. These fifteen tracks, large and small, full and in part, are strands from working together and separately over the period of lockdown yet they are not disjointed even though the separation is apparent, which is part of the strength of this album. There must be more to come – please. Excellent.
The Shovel Dance Collective are …
Alex Mckenzie: Whistle, Flute, Accordion
Daniel S. Evans: Bouzouki, Cittern, Guitar
Fidelma Hanrahan: Harp
Jacken Elswyth: Banjo, Shruti Box
Joshua Barfoot: Bodhrán, Percussion, Accordion, Clarinet
Mataio Austin Dean: Vocals, Shruti Box
Nick Granata: Vocals
Oliver Hamilton: Violin
Tom Hardwick-Allan: Trombone
Listen to an interview with band members Mataio Austin Dean and Daniel S.Evans with Arthouse.