Asking musicians about their influences can be a bit of a journalistic shortcut. It provides an easy way in, and is a simple trick for teasing out why a particular band or album sounds like it does. It also helps those readers who may not be au fait with the band’s output to position it in the musical landscape. In a manner of speaking, a list of influences is like a set of coordinates. But in the case of the Gigspanner Big Band, the question opens up a slightly different can of worms. Instead of narrowing down their sound or helping to put it in a neat little box, it leads the listener towards the understanding that their new album, Turnstone, exists in a tradition of sprawling and inclusive experimentalism, where variation and difference are celebrated and encouraged.
Bandleader Peter Knight, for example, lists progressive and improvisational jazz musicians (Phil Minton and Maggie Nichols, Trevor Watts and Veryan Weston) among his current favourites, along with composers like Bruch and Paganini, Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan, gypsy jazz moderniser Biréli Lagrène and baroque singers Philippe Jaroussky and Marie-Nicole Lemieux. Drummer Sacha Trochet adds Jimmy McGriff, Weather Report, Santana and Cuban music. Philip Henry is currently listening to Talk Talk, as well as country, gospel and early blues. John Spiers has a soft spot for Steely Dan, the Beach Boys and 80s and 90s pop, and guitarist Roger Flack leans towards the bluesy, funky side of fusion (Richard Bona, Larry Carlton, Liane Carroll).
That’s an awful lot to consider, and it tells you everything and nothing about the Big Band’s music. On one hand, it seems like a far cry from the traditional folk that underpins what they do, but on the other, it helps to explain the wild abandon of their ideas, the unpredictable nature of their recordings. This is a band for whom experimenting is never forced or planned, rather it is a necessary and organic part of music making. As Spiers is keen to point out: ‘It’s the whole reason for playing music.’
‘It’s the job of a musician to experiment,’ adds Henry, whose dobro and banjo lend an emotional depth and a country-ish flavour to Turnstone. ‘Being a musician is about experimentation. We’re not there to recreate something that’s already been done.’
The band seem keen to talk about their relationship with experimentation. For Knight, it is a way of trying to answer the big, existential questions. ‘My life in music took an interesting turn in the 80’s, when I asked myself the question “What is music?” Researching the question will lead to interesting reading. If a musician has the desire to truly express themselves through a sound source, it raises the question, what would you like to express, and how best to express it.’
Trochet explains how that impacts the band’s way of working in a practical sense: ‘A lot of traditional music that I’ve come across has such interesting quirky rhythms, time signatures and melodies. My own musical influence always seems to help me try and add something unconventional to the table. My setup helps me add some different flavours in there and it’s always exciting and challenging to bring pieces to life. Peter has a particular knack at finding a different route or wormhole to go down that really keeps things interesting but we’re not afraid to scrap and start again if we hit a dead end.’
That leads us neatly on to the subject of how Turnstone was recorded. The songs were captured live, then worked on in the studio. The resulting album feels vibrant and immediate but nonetheless full of intricate musical details. For Knight, the benefits of recording in this way far outweigh any potential difficulties.
‘Recording live concerts is the best of both worlds,’ he explains. ‘The recording equipment is studio quality, and a performance in front of an audience always has something that studio recordings generally don’t. In the studio, it’s normal to put down the basic track, maybe drums, bass and guitar, then the top line instruments and vocals are recorded separately, with the player trying for a good take. Recording live is of course all the musicians playing together, listening and responding to each other. Absolutely no downside. And it’s completely honest.’
‘Recording the tracks live was just a practical method to get the job done,’ adds Trochet. ‘We’d need a pretty big residential studio to record and the reality of what makes this band work is playing live and reacting in the moment to each other. Multitracking in the conventional sense would mean similar to playing live without the audience so it was a bit of a no-brainer to just record live and use the best takes.’
‘Live seemed the only way for us to record, for many reasons,’ agrees Hannah Martin. ‘So much of our approach is based around improvisation, capturing a live performance seems the only way to truly reflect our music – with everyone reacting in the moment, rather than everyone playing their parts separately. What is more, with so many of us and such in-depth material, we’d have to find a very big studio and an awful lot of time and money. So live was the way. And I think it has many benefits – the immediacy and reactivity of all the parts, creating one cohesive whole; the electricity of the live atmosphere – it’s so hard to communicate that energy on a studio recording. However, the difficulty was of course the pressure it put on the live performances. Every night we’d come to the stage very aware of the parts that we still hadn’t quite got right. The nearer we got to the end of the tour, the harder it became! There was one song in particular – Hind Horn – which has a lot of verses, and every night I’d be singing, almost waiting to mess up the words. Funnily enough, a lot of the album has ended up coming from the very last gig on the tour, and I think that’s because we all agreed that by that point, if we hadn’t got it, we hadn’t got it – and probably all relaxed a lot more, therefore delivering a better show!
Spiers says of the recording process: ‘It does add an extra pressure to the gig, but I really like working like this. When taking brand new material to the studio without it being played in a live situation means that you often find the tracks change once you take it on the road. This way means that our material is already played-in before we record it.’
This ‘played-in’ quality is evident on the final recording, an eclectically-sourced series of traditional tunes and songs, unfolding with equal parts grace and energy for over 73 minutes. Was it always the band’s intention to make something so big?
‘Not really’, says Trochet. ‘It’s just an assembly of various pieces that were brought to the table and like the planting of a seed they seemed to find their natural shape and form. As a band we all instinctively feel when a piece takes a journey a bit like going for a walk when it’s time to take it home and conclude. They just end up with a shape that feels right. There’s a lot of respect and trust involved and usually no clock.’
And Spiers agrees, explaining how the length of the individual songs – and consequently of the whole album – comes about as a result of the band’s working methods: ‘When we get in to the groove of a track with room to improvise then we try to make the most of it, both live at gigs and on our recordings. We don’t set out to make music of any particular length, just to make it so that we’re all happy it’s the best it can be.’
‘There was so much good material!’ adds Henry. ‘The idea is to bring in plenty [of songs] so that you can maybe lose one or two of the weaker ones, but they were all good. So, we kept them all!’
Henry’s words speak of a self-confidence which is written all over the album. Part of this confidence must stem from how comfortable the band are in each other’s company, both musically and personally. The lineup has been fairly constant for a few years now, and I’m keen to know the secret to their longevity. Spiers is keen to credit the audience as well as his fellow band members.
‘I think we all get on pretty well, but for me it’s the way the band works together and the response from the audience in addition to the musical freedom I have within this line-up. The way we work requires a lot of fairly intensive rehearsals which doesn’t make it easy, but the rewards of that truly collaborative approach are plentiful.’
Knight is quick to put that question into context.
‘Compared to the 40 years or so with Steeleye Span, it’s not that long. Of course, when passionate people are working together, stuff kicks off and has to be dealt with. The bottom line for me these days is that the music is the star of the show and not those who make it. If the music is good, then find a way to carry on playing the music. This is where we have to separate the person from their art. Lots of creative people have been a problem. There are fellow musicians who probably don’t like me because of something that occurred at some point. Does it matter? Not really. They are fellow humans surviving in this world, and they make the world of music that bit richer.’
So, is Knight still in contact with any of the old gang?
‘[I’m] still in touch with a few from that time, and at that time I was influenced by their music. Although it was Irish traditional music that first seduced me into exploring traditional music, playing in Irish pubs around London in the 60’s, I began going to a few folk clubs, learning and playing some tunes and songs from the British Isles.’
He is especially enthusiastic about the influence of The Young Tradition. ‘[They] recorded the song What Wondrous Love is This, and I always loved it. I didn’t know what the song was about, but they delivered it in the way they delivered most of their songs, with harmonies that were true to their love of the tradition. Peter Bellamy, Royston Wood and Heather Wood. Thank you.’
More generally, there seems to be an extended and constantly shifting dialogue between the traditional and the experimental that runs through the whole of the Big Band’s back catalogue. On previous albums they have delved deep into the archives to come up with unexpected material, and the musical treasure trove of Cecil Sharp’s collection has proved particularly fruitful in the past. On Turnstone, they seem to cast their net even wider, as Spiers explains.
‘The library at Cecil Sharp House is an incredible physical and online resource for English traditional music and there are precious few alternatives. However, for this album the traditional pieces I brought to the table were ones I knew in advance just from playing in folk sessions plus a morris dance tune from a really obscure morris magazine from 1982!’
Hannah Martin’s contributions also came from some unusual sources, including songs from A Secret Stream, a collection of gypsy/traveller songs compiled by Nick Dow.
‘We didn’t consciously go out with an intention to choose songs from specific collections. It’s more a case of which songs came to light at the right time. With Turnstone, I’d recently performed at Chester Folk Festival (with SykesMartin), and Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne was also performing there. He had copies of A Secret Stream with him, as he notated the tunes. I can’t resist a good song collection so swept up a copy, and so that was the resource I was enjoying digging through at the time we needed songs for the Gigspanner album! I’m afraid I’m no authority on music from the Gypsy and traveller communities, but there were certainly a lot of versions of songs I’d never come across in Nick Dow’s book.’
But whatever the sources, the themes of folk music – romance and sex, death and deceit – remain consistent. ‘Personally I think this is because they speak to the universal human condition,’ says Martin. ‘We can all relate (ok, hopefully not too much to the mass murder type ones, but certainly to the general melancholy!). Turn on the news and you’ll hear a load of folk song stories really.’
And Spiers has a similar take. ‘If you think of the times that folk songs developed, there was no cinema, no television and no recorded music let alone streaming! Movies are full of doomed romance, death and deceit. So I assume those forms of engaging entertainment have always been popular.’
The themes may be consistent, but the way music is consumed is always changing. So, do any of the band have concerns about the way contemporary media, streaming platforms or meme culture are shaping our listening habits? And do we, as listeners, have a duty to engage with a piece of music in a particular way? Spiers thinks not.
‘I don’t think that streaming services can be blamed for people only listening to their favourite single tracks rather than whole albums, I’ve certainly been doing that with my own physical albums as far back as I can remember. People can do what they like, but I’d like to think that our music is engaging enough that they would give it a chance by listening to the end of the song!’
‘The listener owes nothing to the creator,’ says Knight. ‘Some people will sit and listen and enjoy the music that way, and others may put the cd on, and the chip pan. It doesn’t matter at all to me. Once the music is out there it’s on its own. I certainly didn’t think about the length of our songs in terms of too long or too short. Back in the day, when singles were the thing, we knew that three minutes was the length, and the first few seconds had to appeal in that pop catchy way. Not now. It’s good being a grown up.’
Henry has a similar perspective. ‘It’s up to them how they listen to it. I personally listen to music on vinyl. I like to put the record on, sit down and absorb it fully. But sometimes I want to have an endless playlist in the background when I’m doing other jobs and that, so that has a place as well.Turnstone is the kind of music that is not intended to be put on in the background. It should be listened to and appreciated for what it is. There’s a lot of detail, a lot of attention going into it. But it’s up to people what they do with music. It has been devalued a little bit in modern times by streaming. I think challenging people with longer form songs and arrangements is no bad thing. To try and pull it back the other way a bit.’
Trochet’s take on the subject is succinct but enlightening: ‘We’re just musical cooks. We cannot and should not tell the listener how to eat.’
In simple terms, if you want people to engage, you have to be up for the challenge of making engaging music. The trick is to remain relevant, which might seem more difficult in the world of folk music, but as Hannah Martin explains, the process tends to happen naturally.
‘I really like “early music” and music that tows a very traditional line, but when I’m making music myself I’m not trying to sound like a historical enactment. I’m trying to communicate the essence of what I’m singing about, and for me, in order for that to sound true and authentic, that means bringing something of my contemporary self to the singing. Inevitably that means drawing on my modern experience of the world. I think folk songs survive and thrive when they have relevance, so in a way the modern folk repertoire has self-selected because it remains relevant.’
With that in mind, what does the future hold for the Gigspanner Big Band. Well, quite a lot, it would seem.
‘We’re hoping to further collaborate with the author Raynor Winn following the success of our Saltlines show,’ says Spiers.
‘Lots in the pipeline,’ confirms Knight. ‘New projects that we can’t talk about at the moment. It looks like I will be playing until I drop. I hope someone catches my fiddle. It’s been good to me.’
Turnstone (11th April 2025) Self Released
Pre-Order: https://www.gigspanner.com/shop
Gigspanner Big Band ‘Turnstone’ Album Launch Tour
April 2025
11 Teddington/Landmark Arts Centre
12 Cranbrook/St Dunstan’s Church
13 Canterbury/Gulbenkian Arts Centre
14 Colchester/Arts Centre
15 Bury St Edmunds/The Apex
17 York/NCEM
18 Hexham/Queen’s Hall
19 Kendal/Brewery Arts
20 Bury/The Met
21 Liverpool/Philharmonic Music Room
22 Buxton/Pavilion Arts Centre
24 Bath/Christchurch
25 Falmouth/The Princess Pavilion
26 Ivybridge/The Watermark
27 Topsham/Matthew’s Hall
Tickets: https://www.gigspanner.com/live