by Peter Oxley

Peter Oxley: What is your earliest musical experience? If it’s a bad one you don’t have to talk about it.

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F: I can’t really remember what the first track I listened to was. I can remember actually playing with the record player we had at the house…not putting any records on, just putting things on and watching them spin round…and breaking it! Maybe that counts as a musical memory. But I’ve got memories from quite young of going to the folk festival in my village actually and going to see concerts with my Mum and Dad. I think I can remember that going quite far back, I’m rubbish with long term memory actually.

 

P: It’s funny isn’t it, if it’s many years ago.         

 

F: Maybe I was abused as a child and I’ve just repressed it.

 

P: Was it Guitar first with you?

F: No I started learning Saxophone, weirdly enough. I started learning Saxophone when I was 10 so at the end of year 5 so I think that was when I was 10 years old. I didn’t learn guitar until I was about 14 and my Grandma gave me a guitar I just played around at it. So that’s when I started lessons.

 

P: Did you enjoy the lessons?

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F: Yeah no I did, there was a moment and a certain time where I started enjoying it. I think at first Saxophone’s pretty hard to play, to just make a noise out of…I just wanted to do it because it was a bit exciting. I didn’t say to my Mum or Dad I’m going to go out and learn the Saxophone, it was because there was like a county council scheme where you could get subsidized lessons and a cheap instrument on the council.

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So that was offered and I was like ‘Yeah Saxophone that sounds cool’. And I think I was sort of kind of like a kid, and I had lessons with two other kids; they both dropped out of having lessons and I did find I was a bit more naturally into it than them and I kept it up...but I’d say there was a lull period over the next sort of 4 years or so where I was just going to the lessons, practising once a week, doing quite well in the exams but basically winging it until I started playing the folk stuff because I started teaching myself guitar when I was 14. And I found this tin whistle, again because of the folk festival someone left it in the lost property of the folk festival in my village, my Dad runs the folk festival in my village, so we ended up with this whistle and I played around with it and it was very similar to the saxophone.

 

And…then just before I turned 15 I did my first gig with my friend Alex who I play with now, we play as the Drystones. And that was nothing I’d really done before. I hadn’t done a 20 minute gig and that was at the festival just because there was a slot going and my dad said "Do you want to do anything?"… and then we really got into busking, I got more into playing guitar more into playing the whistle…was having guitar lessons but kind of teaching myself as well and kind of teaching myself whistle.

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P: Where did you start busking- in Priddy?

 

F: Yeah and there was a point where my saxophone teacher said to me, probably a couple of years after I started playing with Alex “you’ve come on so much”. He could tell I was just getting more out of music.

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P: Who was your main whistle inspiration?

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F: As a teenager my whistle hero was Brian Finnegan. He plays whistle with incredible rhythmic feel and impressively fast tongue ornaments, and he's opened his music out to take on funk and other contemporary styles. I found that really cool. I've more recently discovered Fraser Fifield, who is in some ways even more innovative than Brian Finnegan. He plays Low whistle more as well, like I do. His style is less percussive, but incredibly flowing and he has taken on jazz influences in ways I never thought possible. With an altered whistle design he can play chromatically with ease, and play these amazing solos. I think I can learn a lot from his playing.

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P: OK. What was the first thing you played with Alex?

F: First thing that we played?
 

P: Yeah

 

F: We used to play these pieces that Alex had been given by his teacher. Because he was you know playing classical violin, had been since he was 6… had been doing music all his life, longer than me. He was getting a little bit bored of classical violin and his teacher was giving him music of sheet music of like these really well known English folk tunes, so he would read from those and they had chords written on them

It was tunes like Rochdale Coconut Dance (demonstrates)

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P: Who would you take to a desert island? You can take 3 musicians with you. 

 

F: I’m allowed contact with the outside world?

 

P: As the land baron I would let you do that. No I just play piano in a bar on the island…living in hut made out of coconuts

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F: We’re getting distracted.

 

P: If you could have an iPod with one song?

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F: I don’t think I’d want to listen to it! I think I’d choose a very long song…I’d choose Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland, 1 track not movements…If I had that on repeat I could learn little bits of it by heart. But in terms of composers and artists…

 

P: Choose it musically; someone who you might even disagree with politically, like Wagner.

 

F: I’d have to take someone whose music I really admire. I think I’d take Zakir Hussain, because he’s basically the best Tabla player...like generally acknowledged to be, so that’s an obvious one I play table and he’s just an amazing musician. Also I’ve got a lot of respect for Indian musicians and the way they can improvise and their attitude to music; they never switch of, and that their life is music and that’s why their improvising musicians and they practice to the point that music is part of all of their thoughts so when their doing music it’s just like breathing.

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P: Do you think British Musicians could learn a lot from Indian Practices? 

 

F: Well.. I definitely did, so I suppose the answer yes I do! A lot of western musics (possibly with the exception of jazz) have very little focus on rhythm, which is surprising as it is in many ways the most important part of music. Rhythm organises music, and gives pitch its space and form. I think if music is a pot, then rhythm is the space inside the pot that makes it useful. I think even jazz tends to emphasise harmony over rhythm. Indian music has allowed me to understand rhythm the way scales and chords allow me to understand harmony. It provides a system, and takes you out of your comfort zone. It's good to get out of your comfort zone I think!

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Dead or alive? Do you want more composers or bands or artists?

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P: An artist would count as one person. But not a symphony orchestra. You can have a band; you can’t have the Berlin Philharmonic.

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F: I would choose Radiohead. It’s a bit of obvious one isn’t it? The Beatles are amazing but Radiohead’s music is really cool. Classic music nerd thing to say…

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Who else would I take? Someone that I could actually play with; Zakir Hussain would be running rings round me, Radiohead I’d love to play with them but they’re too cool for me.

I’d take Michael McGoldrik, he’s a whistle player and a pipes player and a good Irish musician, and I could play some tunes with him if I wanted to.

 

P: What do you think it is about Radiohead that people respond to? There’s a lot of social commentary in Radiohead…do you think people like them as much for that?

F: That is part of their appeal definitely…there’s probably people who just like them as a statement.

 

P: Or their time signatures.

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F: There's Pyramid song, which is just in 4/4 but has great rhythm. I like their music and that’s what I respond to but yes that’s part of their image isn’t it they are a sort of counter cultural statement in a way…the way they sell their album for any given price…they are a mainstream act who don’t operate by the usual channels.

 

P: Did you like Radiohead’s music at school? Do you remember the first track of theirs that made an impression?

 

F: Yeah I think I’d heard (plays ‘No Surprises’) on the radio or something.

But I was listening to the folk show, Radio 2 show and there was a band called Foursquare and they had a cover of ‘Everything In Its Right Place’…and I heard that and thought it’s really cool. So I ended up listening to the Radiohead version as well, that song is just great the chords and the time signatures and like the groove, the 5 groove, it’s still a really groovy song. And then I ended up listening to Kid A, then I ended up writing an essay on Everything In It’s Right Place in 1st year.

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P: This leads us nicely onto the last 3 years. I remember in 1st year doing a lot of different stuff, and finding out what you’re good at, because sometimes you think you know but you actually don’t. Did you have a similar experience… did things at university surprise you?

 

F: Yeah big time…I did come to Sheffield because I sort of wanted to get a range of stuff out of the degree, so I did come to Sheffield expecting to be surprised. But yeah while I was there I did stuff there I didn’t set out to do, I just sort of followed my nose with. I got into Indian music basically because of John Ball, but I didn’t know about it before I joined, it wasn’t the selling point…it should be a selling point by the way for Sheffield University that they do Indian Music but they don't really sell it…and I would have been like YES that’s my University.

I never thought I would learn to play Tabla, but John’s really good at gauging people at what their strengths are and sort of helping them along.

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P: Yeah.

 

F: So…I definitely started (a lot) in first year and some of it stuck I guess.

 

P: I came across this quote from Louis Armstrong sort of saying…

 

F: …“It’s all folk music, I ain't never heard a horse sing a song!” (edit: I had sent this to Ford pre-Interview)

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P: There’s people like Wynton Marsalis in Jazz who make out that Jazz shouldn't necessarily spawn new styles. Are there similar people in Folk?

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F: I think, yes, but not to the same extent, I mean you do have big folk legends equivalents to Miles Davis, I mean you’ve got people like Martin McCarthy who’s still going actually, and people from the early revivals; Pete Seeger and all these people.

 

I think maybe like the difference with them, Miles Davis and the famous jazz guys they were all pioneers and came up with new sounds and stuff…and that’s true of the folk people but to an extent they are considered for what they did is represented is a tradition…

…people don’t say folk music isn’t developing any more, it’s dying, because, some people don’t want it to develop!

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P: How do you respond to that?

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I think it is developing, so much…and what people are doing nowadays is so different from the 60’s revival.

 

There was a revival in the 80’s which is kind less publicised and people started playing tunes, on a vast scale, and people started forming folk rock bands like Wolfstone and stuff… and really what people are playing now, in Folk music goes as far back as that most of the time. Most of the jams and the sessions that people have, a lot of the time they’re playing Folk tunes written by these big bands from the 80’s, or even more modern, and the tradition of tunes they’re playing, they might know because someone else has played them or someone famous has played them.

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I think nowadays people are actually trying really hard to keep it alive, it’s one of the only scenes where it’s got so many festivals that will pop up; give it a go festival people with real amateur enthusiasm and it makes it a scene where professionally musicians, sometimes it makes it hard for them to be taken seriously. But it does mean there’s kind of a lot of interest in it and the scene is just supportive actually…whereas if you play rock music, if you want to play a rock club in London you’ll have to set everything up and do all the promotion, and if you don’t get enough of your mates in they’ll give you a bill at the end!

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Conducted over Facebook call with sections added from a Facebook messenger conversation

Interview Length: 31 minutes

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 [DA1]