Interview Seth Lakeman Wild West Hero he iconic images of Dartmoor – the prison, the Hound of the Baskervilles and the fabled Hairy Hands – do little to lift the spirit. Even the famous ‘clapper’ bridges that adorn the postcards are built from gloomy local granite. It’s the wildest landscape in southern England, and the many rugged stories and legends that haunt this area provide a rich source of inspiration for naturally instinctive storytellers such as the born-and-bred local hero Seth Lakeman. His subject matter may be mournful at times, but his music and his performances are fresh and powerful. Seth was exposed to live music from an early age. His parents owned the Hyde Park Folk Club in Plymouth, and he made weekly visits to see the likes of Richard Thompson and Martin Carthy. His own musical apprenticeship began as a child member of The Lakeman Family Band and its offshoot, The Lakeman Brothers, which teamed up with Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts to form Equation in 1994. Seth left the band after six years, and released his debut solo album, The Punch Bowl, in 2003. Seth was still an undiscovered talent when his follow-up, Kitty Jay, was nominated for the 2005 Mercury Music Prize. Recorded in his brother’s kitchen for £300 and launched in front of a captive audience at Dartmoor Prison, it demonstrated just how much could be achieved with enough dedication and ingenuity. By the time the rockier third album, Freedom Fields, had gone gold, Seth had scored two hit singles with ‘Lady Of The Sea’ and ‘The White Hare’, and picked up Radio 2 Folk Awards for He’s a folk dynamo whose energetic modern interpretation of a traditional genre has earned him a loyal, young fan base and a clutch of prestigious awards. Even more impressively, he’s the first artist to grace the cover of Acoustic twice! He’s the foot-stomping, fiddle-playing Devonian, Seth Lakeman… T Best Album and Folk Singer of the Year. Being mostly self-taught, Seth has developed a highly individual style as a writer and performer on the four-string tenor guitar and fiddle. He’s a popular live act and an obvious festival favourite, and this summer he’ll be ‘enjoying’ a hectic live schedule supporting the release of his eagerly awaited fourth album, Poor Man’s Heaven. Tell me about the new album. I’ve been working on it for a long time. It takes a few listens to get your head around what the subjects are and the styles of where we’re going. We get quite impatient with the same sound, so we like to move it forward but without losing the acoustic roots that we’re from. We pride ourselves on being acoustic. We’ve got a drum kit, but apart from that we keep it as ‘wooden’ as possible! Many of the songs on the album feature the sea and the coastline. Did you make a conscious decision to give it a theme? I did with this one, as I did with Kitty Jay and the Dartmoor concept, and Freedom Fields and that military/conflict direction. There’s definitely a coastal concept to this record. The coastal theme was largely inspired by the true story of a lifeboat called the Solomon Browne from Cornwall in 1981, and its brave eight-man crew who went out to try and rescue a vessel in distress. Then I started to delve a bit deeper and I discovered songs about a guy called John Coppinger, who used to put beacons up on the coast of Cornwall to lure ships in to salvage © Barrie Thompson 22 12 “... but I get excited at having a good concept and a good story behind each of the songs. Also I really like passion, energy and that driving rhythm which I’ve grown up with by playing the fiddle” 23 Interview Seth Lakeman What Is A Tenor Guitar? © Andy Whitton No, I’m definitely a musician. I quite like just sitting and mucking around with the fiddle like I used to. Musically, I do miss having the freedom to do that. If you’re fronting something, you don’t necessarily have the freedom to sit back and just play to a lead singer. The stories are obviously incredibly important, and the two go together. Over the last two or three years your career has really taken off. How do you cope with the attention and the workload? Having people who are interested in your music is a privilege really for me. I’ve sat in bars and tried to play these stories to drunken people – all ten of them – and they’re shouting out for covers. I find it a real honour and a privilege every time I get out and play, especially now people understand the stories and the style of music I’m trying to achieve. The workload is time-consuming, but this is a business now. I’m with EMI, but it’s still very much controlled from me and with a really tight-knit team around me. They bought into what we were doing. It’s like any successful business. It’s ongoing, and I’m quite ambitious, and it’s hard to have a normal life outside of it. Do you find that the music industry nowadays can be a hindrance as well as a help? It’s all changing. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s good to be a signed artist. Having been in both camps, I think it’s important to be honest and true about what you’re representing – that’s live and on record. You can fake a lot of recording stuff, a lot of people know that, but live you can’t really, and I think people are realising that. I guess the cream rises to the top in a way, and all the great acoustic artists are coming through, like KT Tunstall and Damien Rice, and I think that will continue. A lot of it is to do with marketing. It opens doors to supermarkets, to television, to radio. Sometimes it’s very difficult to get a door into Radio 2 unless you have a heavyweight label behind you. It’s important to be realistic about where you are and what you’re doing. I think we are. We work very hard as a live entity and we’re always out there doing it. We take it very seriously but enjoy it every night when we’re there. We’re looking at the long game, we really are. A tenor guitar is a fretted, four-stringed instrument with a small body and a typical scale length of just 23 . It was originally created to enable tenor banjo players to double up on a guitar, and various designs were massproduced from the 1920s to the 1970s. Acoustic models are usually fitted with bronze strings, with steel strings preferred on electric models. The standard tuning of CGDA is in fifths, so the chord voicings are more spread out than the six-string and give a more open sound. The many alternative tunings include GDAE (the ‘Octave Mandolin’ tuning) and DGBE (the ‘Guitar’ tuning that mimics the top four strings of the guitar). Seth Lakeman prefers the ‘Irish’ GDGD. their cargo. That’s the song called ‘Feather In A Storm’. There’s a song called ‘Crimson Dawn’ which is based upon another true story about a hero going to save a woman and cutting her free from the rigging when her hair gets tangled up, and he ends up marrying her. It’s a lovely story I discovered down near The Lizard. ‘I’ll Haunt You’ is about an angry sailor who’s had a letter that his lover has decided to leave him, and he’s basically just cursing her through this song! I always put a little introduction to each of the songs in the album notes so people understand a bit about the story. Do you think your strong image will work against you, and you’ll get pigeonholed? No, hopefully it’s given me confidence in the style that I’m writing in. I understand my limitations as a songwriter, but I get excited at having a good concept and a good story behind each of the songs. Also I really like passion, energy and that driving rhythm which I’ve grown up with by playing the fiddle, which I really enjoy and I really get excited about. In that way it should encompass all of that. Hopefully it’s not put into a pigeonhole. I guess it would be good if people would say: “Oh, that’s one of his songs”, because it means it’s got a certain sound. It’s quite a dark album. Did you have to put yourself into that mood to write it? No, it was just where I was. It was about 12 months ago and I was down here on Dartmoor for a couple of months. I’ve listened back to it and sonically it’s by far the best thing we’ve done, and musically it’s the coolest thing we’ve ever done, definitely, as a record. We’re going back to a Kitty Jay time of darkness, and that was a dark record! Sometimes you’re a bit closed off from things when you write, and that’s what I came up with. It’s a good representation of where I was. Do you think of yourself as a songwriter more than as a musician? 24 “... you’ve got to have a long vision of how you want each individual song and the whole record to sound, and I’m always really careful to keep this very ‘acoustic’, and to keep it really wooden and organic” © Andy Whitton Interview Seth Lakeman © Barrie Thompson Seth Lakeman Gear • Two Martin tenor guitars • Stuart Ketchin tenor guitar (called ‘Kitty Jay’) • Martin strings • Fishman single-coil pickups • No amps or preamps Why no amps or preamps? “We’ve tried all sorts of stuff, but the tenors are really good just straight in. If you’ve got four pedals on an acoustic guitar you do lose a lot of level. It doesn’t mean anything because they can just push it at the front, but if you’re switching from one to the other it can get a bit confusing. I know a couple of guys who do that and they do scratch their heads! It depends how you use it, and what type of musician you are. Some people use the loop stuff incredibly well.” You’re due to play approximately 25 festivals over the summer. How does a festival slot compare with a gig of your own? The changeover is crazy, but apart from that you do a slightly shorter set, you do one a bit more ‘up’ and you might not do as many ballads. Festivals are about being quite energetic and ‘in your face’ because you only get a slot, so you have to cater for it in a different way and hit it quite hard. On your own gig, you can go on a bit more of a journey. Last year we were playing the V festival. We played after McFly and before The Sugababes! We’re playing the pop stage in front of 15,000 pop darlings in fashion wellies and we’re playing hoedown music! It was probably the best moment of last year for me because they were going nuts. I think they were a bit shocked! I think that was V trying to mix it up, which was great. A lot of those people would never have seen a fiddle played in front of them before. Instruments like the double bass, the banjo and the mandolin can be played in a way that is cool and exciting. Do live and studio work complement each other or get in the way of each other? For this record, four or five of the songs were pretty well set out before we went into the studio. We play them exactly the same and there’s nothing really overdubbed. When it comes to live, it’s really helped. There’s other songs, like ‘Feather In A Storm’, that were created in the studio and are hard to translate live because of the amount of ‘stuff’. We got too excited in the studio and we were trying to work out who’s going to play what! We needed another five members! They are very different processes. When you’re in the studio it’s very patient and you’ve got to have a long vision of how you want each individual song and the whole record to sound, and I’m always really careful to keep this very ‘acoustic’, and to keep it really wooden and organic. It’s at the heart of the style of music I’ve been doing and what I want to achieve, and I don’t necessarily think you have to get an amp and plug it in to get a certain passion, energy and level. Why do you play a tenor guitar rather than a common or garden six-string? It’s the sound, really. What I do is always quite modal and rhythmic. My voice is hard and high sometimes, but it lets it drift over the top – or ‘wail’ over the top! It gives a great layer, whereas a six-string wouldn’t do that unless you tuned it in a different way. It’s slightly 26 DADGAD like Irish, but even more towards that mandolin sound. It’s a different starting point. It’s just GDGD. It’s very straightforward and you use a capo a lot. It’s more about the right hand than the left. I think about it like I’m a fiddle player and I’m bowing. It’s all about the rhythm. There’s a lot of ‘four on the floor’ driving rhythm, always pushing forward throughout the song, so with a click it’s a nightmare because I’m always in front of the click. That’s why it has that Celtic sound. On ‘Blood Red Sky’ it’s really driving, and it kind of works with the kit as well. I’ve tried an electric tenor and it was all right, but to be honest, the way I play and with that driving rhythm, it doesn’t work. It works with the slower stuff, but no. It’s all about the acoustic Martin tenors at the moment. I guess you’ve got a liberated style because you’ve experimented for yourself. I think it’s more about being aware of sounds and being realistic about what works with you. The tenor sound was quite different. It’s not complicated, no, I’m not going to say it is, but it’s stylistic of what I do, and the fiddle element and the wailing over the top with these dark stories, they all work together. Yes, it’s about being realistic, especially with what we’re doing now. Is there anything you don’t like about your guitars? No, not really. They’ve suited me so well, those little Martins. I’m quite a small guy and they make me look bigger! So is your guitar just a means to an end? Absolutely. A lot of people collect guitars, but to be honest it’s more about being able to play one, really, and finding one that suits what I’m doing. It’s a different passion to music. If I go into a fiddle shop or a guitar shop, I can spend a good hour in there, but I’m not going to get massively excited. But when you’re playing, doesn’t it take over? A little bit. It’s a hard thing to explain, but each one’s different. Sometimes it just feels a lot easier and sometimes it takes a long, long time. There’s a point of zoning out where time will literally disappear. You’re working on a song all day and you’ve completely lost track of time. That’s great when that happens, but it doesn’t happen all the time, otherwise I’d have made a lot more records than this! Graham Hazelwood Seth Lakeman Poor Man’s Heaven Available from: www.play.com Seth Lakeman has always been inspired by the rugged beauty of his home turf, and this latest collection of modern folk is peppered with four tracks which feature the coastline around it. This amounts to a thread rather than a concept, and the album’s real identity is the passion and rhythm in the music and lyrics of these acoustic-based folk songs. There’s a musical continuity from Kitty Jay and Freedom Fields, and despite the addition of a dedicated drummer to add extra ‘thump’, it’s the added gusto in the playing that has pushed the music towards the rockier end of the spectrum. Lakeman exhibits a musical schizophrenia as he swaps between tenor guitar and fiddle, though these contrasting textures are bound by the style of the voice and the stories. Many of the tracks are already familiar to Lakeman’s live audiences, and appear on the album having been weathered by months of public performance. Lakeman inhabits a curious world where fact and fiction merge, and the true story of the 1981 Penlee lifeboat disaster is commemorated alongside the (presumably!) fictional tale of the hurling players who skipped church and were turned into stones on Bodmin Moor. The title track of the album is based on a traditional song from the Depression, but it’s far from being a gratuitously morbid album. In our sanitised modern world, it’s a refreshingly blunt reminder of the fine line between light and dark. Graham Hazelwood COMPETITION To win two tickets to see Seth play live at this August’s Mosely Folk Festival, (performing on Sunday the 31st) please answer the following question… Question. Please give the names of Seth’s two other brothers. Visit: acousticmagazine.com to register your answers. The winners will be announced our next issue. Closing date for entries will be August 10th.