Monthly Archives: July 2024

1^st 3 – How do you find the songs? How much of what you write starts with the germ of an idea from an original song?

E- The songs I have written are all slightly different in their origin. The traditional songs that I song have come from a lot of different sources (where I find the songs) and I would say that now is a really good time to be a folk singer and to get into folk songs. So many archives have been digitised, whereas when I first started I remember travelling up to Cecil Park House (just up the road from here in Camden) and looking at their archives which are now online. There’s also the Roud index; Steve Roud is a librarian and author who has catalogued a lot of songs- all the different versions. There’s a big set of book called The Child Ballads- Professor Francis James Child catalogued these.

1^st 3 – Are they just words or has any notation been recorded?

E – Child was interested only in the poetry so he took them just to be great poems and just recorded the text. Since then, Bronson (an American scholar) took the Child ballads and pit traditional tunes to them. His view was, “What’s a ballad without a tune?” So, those are two kinds of seminal collections – but there are loads of other books- and amazing array of archives! My personal favourite source is Field recordings. In the 60s and 70s there was a big Folk revival and a lot were collected then. Topic records and Mustrad are also really good places to look for inspiration.

1^st 3 – And how does it work? Do you pick a poem and go from there or are some ideas completely new?

E – I think there are no rules about it. I would often be looking out for particular themes or different kinds of songs, so it depends on the project. I will start to listen, and if I like something, if it needs a little bit of updating I will do that, because otherwise it might mean the song will be left and not sung anymore at all.

It can be part of the fun, slightly changing the words, finding a version that you like and then finding a tune for it. The possibilities are limitless!

1^st 3 – We can tell that you absolutely love it! I was thinking that some of the themes are dark and wonder if the songs you record are a reflection of what has happened to you in your life. For example, did becoming a mother affect your song writing or your performance?

E – I think I was too busy to notice! I think my song writing was really affected by the whole process, by being pregnant. It’s a big life event that ended up weaving its way into the songs I was writing, and continues to do so. Although I don’t have this big desire to write songs about myself, I do want to tell stories. I’ve never felt the need for those stories to be autobiographical but I think I’ve continued to write songs, my own experiences do tend to find a way in, unconsciously. It’s a cathartic thing to process things that have happened to you through song writing.

1^st 3 – There has been a bit of a gap between song recordings- is that when you were having your babies?

E – So, ‘Coracle’ came out a decade ago and that was just after the birth of my daughter. A lot of those songs came from her being born, from processing that and also from my stepmother who died just around the same time. In the meantime, I had my son and it was then that I did take a conscious decision to step back from solo work.

1^st 3 – Why was that?

Emily- I thought that perhaps there might be a natural pause but I did keep playing and singing with The Furrow Collective. We’ve recorded and released 3 albums. I’ve also recorded work with Rob Harbron, so although I paused my solo work, I did carry on performing and also lecturing at Newcastle University.