With the new Oysterband album ‘Read The Sky’ (reviewed here) finding the band on top form, excited by and engaged with their music, switched on to the topical concerns of the day and sounding fired up and ready for action, it was a thrill to speak at length with frontman and founder John Jones about the new album and much more besides. As a preliminary side note, I should say, this conversation took place in more innocent days of February 2022, when the top news stories included Boris Johnson’s parties and Neil Young’s Spotify boycott, both of which crop up in the conversation. I began by asking, what have the Oysterband been up to in the eight years since the last full-band album?
I don’t know; we were just really busy touring, earning a living, going out and playing. I think albums get harder to make when you’ve been together for such a long time. It’s never easy; it’s always a huge challenge. We’ve just been busy with different projects; we did something with June Tabor, everybody has had their own individual projects as well. We celebrated our 40th, and we enjoyed that so much it lasted for two years. We sort of built up to that and did extended touring on that, and when we recovered fully, suddenly we just said, “look, this is all retrospective, and it’s great, we know it’s what fans want, but let’s see if we can make an album.” We set ourselves a challenge and a different motivation which was to create something new.
I am assuming the pandemic was a major setback?
The songs were developing naturally and then, of course, Covid. That just put a halt on the whole thing. We couldn’t even meet; we were all in different tiers, we were in different parts of the country and in one sense, it increased the challenge, but, in another sense, it really held up the songwriting. So, we just snatched moments when we were together, the odd socially distanced gig, a little work down in the studio in Brighton. But really, it wasn’t until last May that we all came together as a band. We had four days rehearsing the songs, throwing them together and then four days in the studio and two days of overdubs, so it wasn’t ever going to be a long time. We didn’t know what time we had really, whether a lockdown would come back in with new rules, and so it was pretty quick in the end. Lockdown had made it very difficult to arrange; we went residential to record at Rockfield up here on the Welsh border near where I live. It’s just a great studio, we recorded Ragged Kingdom there with June Tabor, and I think that brought us together; we were a band again. We were having a drink in the evening and sharing good times. There had been very little of that, and we were incorporating a new drummer as well, so there was a lot of uncertainty. But once we were together and you could feel the songs beginning to work, I mean we are essentially a live band, there’s just something about it, ideas kept coming, and it was just a fantastic few days. It set the whole thing up; we knew we were back as it were. There was an energy about it; whether lockdown created that? The sense of not being together and then somehow being back? I’m not quite sure; in some senses, I think that lockdown gave the album a sense of urgency.
Would it be a fair comment to say that the environment emergency is where the fight is right now?
Yes, I do think that is a fair comment. In a sense, the politics, which we’ve always been known for, got greener on this album. There is felt to be a sense of urgency; weirdly enough, as COP26 got closer and kept being mentioned, the recording of ‘The Time Is Now’ just got a harder edge. Ian added a couple more lines and verses and so on, the whole thing, the two electric guitars working together; I guess it was an outpouring really in that sense. It just needed saying.
Do you have any confidence that governments can wake people up to the gravity of the situation?
That’s a very different question and very difficult to answer. No, I think governments lag behind because they’re always so short term. We know that, don’t we? In politics, we hear the way they argue and present their case and so on? Really, with 24-hour media, I think they live just to get through the day. Sustained, long term thinking, in many senses with people like David Attenborough, the scientists, Greta Thunberg and so on, these people are ahead of the politicians. I’m hopeful and fearful at the same time.
What can we do? Do you stand with the actions of Extinction Rebellion, for example?
We have a friend Jas, and she’s been arrested three times. I hope they have made some impact; I can understand the strength of their feeling. I’m not really sure, sometimes it seems counterproductive. I mean, a song doesn’t change the world, but what it can do, a political song in its widest sense, can focus on an issue. It can just try and clarify as simply and directly as possible. That was the clarion call of ‘The Time Is Now,’ whatever we did, you don’t need me to tell you how; we know what the time is, the time is now. It was a song for everybody; I guess I should leave it to singing about it (laughs).
So, you’re firmly of the belief that political and topical songwriting can still have an impact?
It’s a good question, always worth asking, and I would have said unashamedly, quickly, yes. Years and years ago, when we were in a more radical situation, Thatcher was around, and whatever, I’m older, I see things in a little bit more grey, I’m less certain about certain things, but at the same time, I do believe that a well-aimed song can focus on an issue as well as anything, in fact, better than most things. Better than a speech, it’s just something about a combination of words and a tune that moves people. It certainly can make people think.
And ultimately, it’s better than doing nothing, I guess?
Absolutely, there’s enough naff love songs in the world. I like songs that have got some grit in them.
Which political songwriters are a particular inspiration to you?
Billy Bragg, Ewan MacColl and in a sense, Neil Young, I think as well…
Can I ask what you think of his Spotify stance?
Yes, you can, and I think it’s wonderful. Good on him and Joni Mitchell for doing it, and it seems to be having an effect. There are moments when I despair with the media that we are using, but I have to put my hand on my heart and say it’s really useful. Putting gigs on Facebook, getting in touch with people, of course, like everyone else, I make use of it, but when I see some of the shit and the really vile stuff that’s put out there, the conspiracy theories, I do despair. I think it’s unleashed the worst side of people as well.
Could Spotify be useful in breaking a topical or political song into the mainstream?
The Dylan songs in the sixties must have had an impact, but even then, they weren’t mainstream. People just want happy music in the charts; it’s very difficult to get anything in there that’s provocative or profoundly serious. It’s like music for outsiders sometimes. Nevertheless, I think it’s always worth doing. There’s a song called ‘Strange Fruit’ [by Billie Holiday]. Subsequently, people look back on that and realise the depth of that song. I think occasionally songs can almost slip through unnoticed, and then suddenly you realise the power of them. Sometimes you pick a song that will say something, and the record company will say, “do you really want to make that a single? Do you really want to just say that? It’s going to limit your audience; it’s not going to sell” or whatever. There are all these wider marketing constraints; you’ve got to be a really bloody-minded individual artist to say I am going to just put this out regardless, I’m going to finance it, and I am going to make it.
Back to the new Oysterband album, ‘Born Under The Same Sun,’ is it too simplistic to say that this song is on the same environmental theme?
Well, the way I started that one, I was fascinated by home. How home is for people you know? You can have the same roots as someone, like me and my brother, the same hometown. You can be from the same family, and some people stay while people like me can’t wait to get away. So, what happens is you go back, in my case, to West Yorkshire; it just looks rundown and sad, but it’s still home, and in a sense, that was me just trying to reflect the ambivalence. That strange emotional attachment you have to a place; yes, its industry has seen better days, but it’s still your home.
Is ’Corner Of The Room’ about someone in particular or more general good-times nostalgia?
It’s sort of a combination of two things, really; one is that place that you always remember when you first start your drinking in your hometown, and you always used to meet and dance. Whatever happens, whether it’s you and a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever it is you remember them, and you wonder how life treated them, and I guess it’s saying he stays on this occasion, or me as the singer and she goes off, the partner goes off, and it’s “did you find what you wanted? And by the way, if you’re ever this way, just check us out; we’ll be in Malley’s Bar where we always would meet.” Yeah, it’s nostalgia, but for good reasons, you know?
‘Roll Away’ was written by Davy Knowles and features the line “maybe I’ll return to this island someday.” What was it about this tune that fitted the song cycle?
There’s something about the song that appealed to our folky sensibilities. The rolling feel was shanty-like, and it’s like a timeless story. Leaving the safety of your home and venturing into the big wide world, the exile leaving and departing is so much a major theme in folk music and in some of our own songs as well. The idea of not being afraid to leave your island and reach out into a bigger world, it seemed important. Maybe more important than ever with Brexit and as countries like England seem to retrench into like a narrow nationalism and make it more and more difficult to actually travel. I thought that perhaps it commented on that as well.
‘Wonders Are Passing’ talks about the treasures of the earth slipping through our fingers?
That ties in with what we were talking about at the beginning, you know? Just acknowledging the treasures we have around us, natural beauty, and the fact that we’re in danger of losing a lot of it.
With the current political news story (Boris under intense scrutiny for rule-breaking), I am sure you couldn’t have intended the line in ‘Fly Or Fall’ “never too old to break the rules” to resonate quite how it does today? Before talking about the song, though, I have to ask, should Boris have resigned?
Boris should have gone by now, oh yes. Even some of his party want him gone; I find him bombastic in a posh public-school way and thick-skinned with it; he’s just not my sort of person. But I would like not to be rude and keep the interview relatively clean and good-tempered, so [of ‘Fly And Fall] no, I mean we could still break a few rules. But it was just, I was in a hotel room, and I was looking at what I thought were three songs and I suddenly realised it was just one song. Quite literally, I ran round to our guitarist Alan Prosser’s room, and we had the song in twenty minutes; it was such a simple thing. Seven stars that need you, seven ways to get to heaven, seven whatever it was, and he just did a fantastic arrangement of it; it was just about the ups and downs of life, I guess?
There’s a beautiful message of compassion and pacifism in ‘My Son’
Yes, I mean, just thinking of how little my Dad spoke to me, and I was imagining a conversation if I had a son, which I don’t, I don’t have any children. What would I say? What would I hope? That’s what emerged; I guess you could say the pen is mightier than the sword or whatever. It’s a very unusual song for Oysterband, quite an unusual subject for us to write about, but the others really like it, and there it is.
Alan Prosser takes the vocals on ‘Hungry For That Water.’
Alan does the vocals, and it is a song that Ian and Alan had written, and yes, he wanted to, so I said, well, do it. I think he makes a really good job of it. There’s a sense of humility and fragility in the song [which suit Alan’s vocal], and that’s how it was written.
In ‘Star Of The Sea’, Dolores gets her flute back in Hong Kong…
(Laughs) that actually happened! We were at the Hong Kong Folk Festival many, many years ago. The great Dolores Keane, a famous Irish singer, was there with her partner John Faulkner, we were drunk and in and out of bars and restaurants, and things like that and Dolores left it. It was her pride and joy; she was absolutely devastated to lose it, lots of drunken tears. Then in the middle of this urban jungle, high rise blocks, air conditioning, really hot, suddenly there was this glimpse of humanity, and the flute is being delivered to the hotel. I didn’t know it at the time, but Ian just loved the story and started writing the song in later years, and there it was. A really intriguing story, you know? Just me on melodeon and Alan on guitar, that’s all it is, and that’s all it needed, really.
Ever mislaid your melodeon?
Oh definitely! I have thrown it about, mislaid it, stripped it and done all sorts of things with it. Sometimes I didn’t even know where it had ended up. I think I probably have seven melodeons; I have three here, and the other four are with different people in different houses. We once flew out to play in Croatia, in what was Yugoslavia, and our instruments went to a completely different place. A different airport. We were encouraged to play on borrowed instruments. I borrowed a melodeon, and it was a disaster; it had keys and notes in the wrong places, and I just made a thorough arsehole of myself by trying to play; anyway, we got away with it.
‘Streams Of Innocence’ is almost mantra-like
There’s a curious element to the song that I hope people will get. As kids, we did play by the stream in a beautiful wild valley in the Pennines. Downstream we built dams, played cowboys and indians and stuff like that and downstream was a mill. My Dad worked there; below the mill, the greasy bales would come in and then they’d clean it up and make wonderful material out of them, but the dyes were leaking into the stream below. There would be dead fish, and I remember the stream and the dam being all sorts of colours. So, the innocence is above, as below, the colour changes. My Dad died of cancer, and around the same time, three of his workmates all died of cancer, and they all worked in the mill. Some people said it was a coincidence; some people said it was a conspiracy, and others said the mill was cursed. It was a subject that I could never have written about while my Mum was alive; I just had this thing of the colour changing below the mill, the innocence above and the dark colours below—a strange thing to make a song about.
I’d normally expect something with as much punch as ‘The Time Is Now’ at the front of the album, but it demonstrates what a strong record this is that you were happy to close with it.
We spend a lot of time on track order, and we argue about it. Usually, Al Scott, our bass player, who is also our producer, will do a final thing, and I think in all our versions, ‘The Time Is Now’ was up there near the start, and he just felt the songs are strong enough upfront and this will make a real statement at the end. Also, there is enough with those ten songs that it just finishes it really well. I think everything we wanted to say is on there; when you’re bringing different songs in from different things, still, the album coheres, there is a coherence about the approach and the songs. You’re just not aware at the time; you hope it is going to be there. I hope it’s there anyway!
I love the album artwork; the empty boat is rather a bleak image, isn’t it?
I think it’s a very striking image; I liked it instantly as that. We’d written a song before called ‘After Rain’ and in it was the line “all my life I’ll read the sky” so Alan came up with the idea of ‘Read The Sky’ as a title, which sort of fitted in with the climate, the environmental thing and so on, what’s out there? The boat on the beach has a relevance for us that people won’t know because it is the same boat, on the same beach that we used for the album called ‘Meet You There.’ We were filmed against it in videos and whatever, then Ian discovered in an archive a photograph of it that’s just got resonance. I think the fact that the boat is empty and it’s beached is one impression of it, one idea behind it. But the fact that it’s still there, it’s still wearing, and it still looks good. It’s just an image that we liked, and I like it when people read different things into it.
So still having a physical product with attention to the artwork etc., is still important to the band?
Yes, for those of us that still like the artefacts, that still like a CD, even remember long-playing records, I’ve always felt that an album should come as a package. It should have pictures; it should have images; it should have things that convey different elements of the band and other dimensions; I like that.
Your early days of record buying and music-loving included a Northern Soul phase, didn’t it?
Absolutely, there was a period of time, around the sixth form, a couple of my mates left and they got themselves a van while I stayed on at school, they were going to the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, the Mojo in Sheffield. It was in the days just when Wigan Casino was starting, but we had one place called Plebs Club, a Jazz club in Halifax. I’d listened to white music, I’d listened to Beatles stuff and other Rock music, but I heard Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, Solomon Burke, Sam & Dave, and it just electrified me. I guess I wanted to sing like them, really. Yes, I absolutely loved early Northern Soul, the dancing and going to the clubs, taking the odd pill. It was really going away to university where I think I had decided by that time that there was no way I could sing soul music. It was black music, and they were just ten times better at it than I was going to be; I had to find my voice somewhere else, and I found it in British folk music.
So, what was your entry point with folk music?
I loved singing; I used to go to a folk club where they let you join in the choruses, and I just loved singing in the choruses. I already played the piano, and I thought, well, if I learn the accordion or the melodeon, I can get into this; I just went for it. I loved the stories. I loved the history behind the stories, and I like music with roots. Blues, soul and folk music, so I guess it was giving me my roots, and I just fell in love with the tunes and the stories.
You formed the Oyster Ceilidh Band and presumably had no idea it could turn into a long-running concern?
I think we got together so that we could make some money for the folk club, and we just enjoyed playing for dances with this incredible group of musicians. Canterbury was a very fertile ground for great musicians, Prog Rock and all sorts of things; you know, people stayed there. We had thirteen people in this great big ceilidh band just having fun playing at the weekend, then it became more serious, and we started to write songs. We had no idea, really, until about 1984-85. What happened was Pete Lawrence, and Martin Goldsmith started Cooking Vinyl; Pete approached me to be the first act on the label, then Billy Bragg put on a folk gig at the ICA and asked us to go on that with him, so a friendship began there. It just took off, by then The Pogues had arrived, The Waterboys too and we just knew that we wanted to make folk music as exciting as possible and to take it to as many people as possible. We were coming from the folk scene, and those bands were from the rock scene and embracing folk, which gave us the feeling that it was all possible. I remember the NME finally covered a folk band, polkas and leather jackets are a powerful combination! We were just rocking up polkas and going for it; it was plugging into something that was quite intoxicating really.
What are your most treasured memories of the Oysterband onstage?
There are several, luckily most of them are good, there are one or two horrors. One in particular; a track of ours called ‘Granite Years’ we had the good fortune of having a radio hit with it in Spain, partly because it had on it a guy called Jesus Cifuentes from the band Celtas Cortos who became our friends, we did a sort of half Spanish half English version of it. So, there we are, we were in Las Palmas in Grand Canarias playing on the beach for Womad. They estimated there were thirty thousand people there towards the end of it. They stretched from the sea; in fact, they were in the water splashing about right in front of this promenade. We finished with the song, and they got right into it, we started this clapping, and it was just a sea of hands. Then I suddenly saw myself on the screen at the side of the stage, and I thought bloody hell, I want a bit of this! It was intoxicating, likewise just going over to Canada and playing the Edmonton Folk Festival, which is a huge festival, taking the stage there and seeing them get up. Sometimes when people are not really expecting what you do, and you just see that effect on them, I still love that. It’s so great; luckily, there are so many of them.
What is next for the Oysterband? How far forward are your plans?
Well, we’ve yet to finally emerge from Covid; our immediate thing is to come to rehearsal prior to touring Denmark and Germany, then a UK tour. I would like, while I’ve still got my voice, to sing as much as possible this year, next year and so on. Probably we’ll just do two years at a time; we’ll tour this album now for two years, then we shall do what we always do in Oysterband, we will meet and decide if we still have any unfinished business. What is it that we still want to do? I can’t see much further than that; I daren’t let myself see much further than that; I think the days of me making five-year plans have gone (laughs), I think we just need to stay healthy, stay alive, and we should just play more.
Read the Sky is out now.
Order via Proper Music and all good record stores.
Oysterband are on tour in the UK from April. Tour dates and tickets here: http://www.oysterband.co.uk/tour-dates/