In 2020, we interviewed Marlais, the stage name of Michael Culme-Seymour who has been living and working in Berlin since 2011. The interview took place on the cusp of the release of “Meeting Is A Pleasure”, his first release since his 2016 debut album “Warm at Last”.
When I asked him about where his love for traditional folk music came from, he shared:
“In my teens I was really into the Beatles and all the 60’s/70’s stuff, which was pretty uncool at the time. I had my Libertines and Strokes phase too, playing guitar in a band. I think I just drifted towards it, originally listening to Bob Dylan and to his influences, always digging further and further back till years later I found myself sitting in the library listening to the “Voice of the People” compilations. I couldn’t get enough of it and still can’t. There is an intensity to the music. I didn’t grow up listening to this kind of music so for me it was like unearthing a secret, it was incredibly attractive, for want of a better word. The history behind the songs was another part. Also the fact that these songs can encapsulate complex human emotions in a couplet completely floored me: “I went to church last Sunday, my true love passed me by / I knew her love was changing, by the roving of her eye” Insane.”
Today he has shared a beautiful a cappella take on My Bonny Boy, a popular folk ballad that’s been recorded by the likes of Pentangle, June Tabor and The Furrow Collective. Marlais tells us that his version “is probably most inspired by Anne Briggs (whom we interviewed here). There is sense of nonchalance to whole situation as the storyteller, even though she’s being cheated on, will ‘walk with him now and then’.”
The video is timely as he has shared that his tape of folk songs “The Nightingales Are Drunk” will be available from the July 10th on Bandcamp here: https://marlais.bandcamp.com/
It was filmed, recorded and edited by “Olle Holmberg one May evening in Templehof.”