Maddy Prior has been captivating audiences since the mid 60s with solo projects and in pioneering folk-rock group, Steeleye Span. Jason Barnard catches up with her on her Spring 2018 tour, looks back at career highlights and to the future.
Hi Maddy, really great to speak to you. You’ve just started your Spring Tour with Hannah James and Giles Lewin. What material can fans expect to hear in the show?
Our new Spring Tour is mainly to cover the album that we have out at the moment called ‘Shortwinger’ which is largely about birds, but we’ve also included a piece about hares. So it’s a sort of field album, a lot of material in the show is from the album.
What are your favourite songs to play live and why?
My favourite songs. Well that’s really difficult [laughs]. I suppose one of them is got to be Steeleye Span’s version of ‘Tam Lin’.
Connected to this tour, Hannah James and Giles Lewin are phenomenal musicians and both accomplished singers. We’ve been doing quite a lot of acapella pieces which I really enjoy. When they really work, they really work, they’re lovely. Both of them as musicians are very skilled in lots of ways. It brings a variety of style so there’s lots in this show that I enjoy singing.
Both albums with Hannah and Giles, ‘Shortwinger’ and ‘3 For Joy’ have been very well received and have songs new and old to you, like ‘Doffin Mistress’, ‘Lock The Door Larriston’ and ‘Austringer’. What process did you go through to chose the songs that were on both records?
Choosing material for working with Hannah and Giles has been very interesting because they came thinking I was going to tell them what to play. Well that’s not how I work. I always work in collaboration and their skills have been brought in from all different directions.
Hannah has spent a lot of time in Ethno camps where you exchange music with musicians from around the world and learn lots of different national styles. So she knows music from Eastern Europe and from South America and sorts of places, whoever she happened to meet there. It makes it a proper world mix.
Giles has spent time in Arabia with the Bedouin in the Sinai, so he comes with a middle eastern influence. He is also very knowledgeable about early mediaeval music. So, as you can tell, we come with a unique sound.
So what we did in the very first album, we just decided to go on a journey to take in all these different places, and it has given me a chance to include songs I like but don’t seem appropriate in other musical contexts. Like ‘The Undoing World’ which doesn’t fit in any other situation I’m in.
So choosing the songs was a very complex and interesting thing to do. So we set it up as a journey for the first album, and for the second one we decided to look at birds, which has taken us on a different journey. I do like to have a theme and an idea, rather than song after song, to programs if I can. It’s not always possible and sometimes it breaks up and doesn’t work, but that’s the area that I like to work in.
Many folk songs seem to be as relevant now, as they were when they were first sung like ‘Four Loom Weaver’. Is that something you seek out when choosing material? Are there any other songs that you have recorded that you feel particularly resonate today?
That’s always been true for me. I’ve always found the relevance in old songs because people don’t change. The mode of transport changes and the clothes change but not much else. People are embarrassed, are hurt, get drunk, fall in love. All those things that we all do in everyday life, it was the same for them.
In work songs like the ‘Four Loom Weaver’, there will always be the strata of society that doesn’t get the outcome or the opportunities that other members of society achieve. It’s seemingly always been thus. There will be a small top elite that chews everything up and the rest of the population doesn’t do very well out of it. The song ‘The Undoing World’ is about refugees. It was written by two members of The Klezmatics from New York. It’s about the Jewish migration into America in the 1920s and 30s and it resonates very uncomfortably today.
What led you to form a trio with with Hannah and James?
Giles and I were working with Benji Kirkpatrick (who is now in Steeleye) but he couldn’t do a tour that was booked. I didn’t want to just get another guitar player, because Benji is a very particular type of guitar player for me, with great driving rhythm, so I thought “We’ll do something different”. So we asked Hannah.
When she arrived we sat around a table looking at each other wondering what to do with because her skills are very different. But it challenged us all, and I’m really pleased we went down the road of combining our influences, because it’s been it’s been a delight working with both of them. Hannah is so skilled and she’s got a phenomenal memory. You just wonder at people, how they work the way they do.
How does working with Hannah and James compare with working with the current line-up of Steeleye Span? Does the rehearsal/recording process differ?
Well it’s just a completely different animal. That’s the great thing about music. It can be about anything. It can be all about the words, all about the melodies, the rhythm. Steeleye has a sort of unwritten remit that non of us are quite sure about. But it’s based much more traditional material and it obviously has a drummer and bass rhythm section which was quite new when we started 50 years ago. It isn’t new anymore of course. Now with Steeleye it’s trying to find something to do with the music that’s slightly different but keeps true to this unwritten traditional remit. Tricky.
That applies to Hannah, Giles and myself but but we didn’t come with the traditional music remit. I expected it to be that way, but I put my expectations to one side because what’s interesting for me is to see where we can go. We began with no idea of what we had, so that left us open to go into all areas of music. So that’s just a completely different way of coming at it.
Also we have rehearse generally speaking more acoustically because there’s only three of us. Whereas with Steeleye we obviously rehearse in a rehearsal room of one sort or another, rather than somebody’s front room which is how it works with Hannah and Giles. So that’s a very different way of doing things. Also there’s only three of us to get it right and they’ve got good memories. So mostly it’s just really getting me up to speed.
And the recording process well that’s not very different nowadays, everybody records on computers. It’s just finding a good room that works. That seems to be the main way that we all record now. Usually Steeleye starts in the studio to get the drums and bass down.
Do you have a clear idea of how you want to arrange a song before going into the studio?
Before we go to the studio we do. Before he start rehearsing we don’t. That’s the fun bit in many ways, figuring it how to arrange a song. Rehearsals are quite often the best bit.
You have collaborated with many musicians from across genres. Which artists have you enjoyed working with the most, and what have been your favourite tracks resultant from them?
All of Steeleye of course. In the early days, it was great fun. I did enjoy it. We fought and it was manic and crazy. But also we did laugh a lot. Musicians tend to laugh a lot. I think that’s one of the delights of it. Because everything is up for grabs. ‘Lark in the Morning’ is a favourite track from the early days.
Working with Bowie was an experience. He just came in for the day with his entourage which was great. Rick, our bass player from Steeleye, knew him and Mick Ronson from Hull, so it made for an amazing day. He played on ‘To know him is to Love him’
Peter Sellers! That was just ridiculous. We sat around and said “This song needs a ukulele.” And this was in the time when ukuleles were not popular. Bob Johnson said “Has anybody got a ukulele? Does anybody play one?” We all said “No… no”. Then Bob said “Peter Sellers plays the ukulele.” There was this long silence and someone said “Well it’s worth a try isn’t it.” So we did. We asked him and he came and played on ‘New York Girls’. I don’t think anyone had ever asked him to play the ukulele before, so he was delighted.
I worked with Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull on my first solo album. He was fantastic, a great musician. Knows what’s going on, a very aware person. It was exciting to work with him over several different projects. He played a great flute solo on ‘Gutter Geese’.
Steeleye were out on tour in America with with them and that was brilliant. One of the most unexpected gigs we ever did, was five nights at the LA forum back in the 70s, it was something like 20,000 people. Five nights was like doing a residency in an arena. It was on the first tour we did in America so it was quite extraordinary.
How do you think your music has evolved since you first began singing professionally?
I do understand the theory of music more than when I started out. I certainly understand how the voice works better. I did some training in CVT (Complete Vocal Technique), so I now have a more conscious knowledge about it, which does not always make it necessarily easier. But it is different. It’s like with anything in life. Whatever job you do, you start off with one idea in your head and idea of what it is you do. But by the time you’ve done it, and in my case for 50 years, you’ve gone through so many computations that it comes back to the start really. You just do what you do.
What music inspires you currently?
I saw ‘Wind Resistance’, Karine Polwart’s show recently. That inspired me. She’s just a very creative person, very intelligent, but very low key. She’s not flashly, she tends to get a bit embarrassed with any praise, I gather.
You’ve toured across the world over the years with different bands. What have been your most memorable live shows from across your career?
Probably the LA Forum was one of the most extraordinary.
In terms of memorable, we did one show at the Hammersmith Apollo, back in the 70s, when we had a lighting rig. Health and safety demanded that the safety curtain had to be lowered, but when they raise the curtain it tipped the lighting rig back towards us which was really scary. We had six lighting spot operators behind us as well, who were pretty shaken. But nobody bothered telling the audience what had happened. So for an hour and they tried to right it, with the audience not knowing what was happening. Happily most of them stayed.
Another time at Hammersmith Apollo we decided to give the night’s takings back and it was showered down from the roof, which gave us fantastic publicity. It was amazing. They said you couldn’t have bought the publicity for that money. I remember the manager made one of the guys go up into the roof in his underpants so he couldn’t take any money [laughs] What a trusting soul!
After your Spring Tour, what are your plans for 2018 – Steeleye Span, Stones Barn?
So after the Spring Tour, I’ve got Steeleye Span in October around England. I have the the Carnival Band in December when we do our carols which is a such an engaging tour. Andy Watts chooses carols from around the world, though mostly from Europe, and they are beautiful. There’s something about the simplicity of carols that is absolutely endearing.
Stones Barn continues. Stones Barn is where I teach singing. We run singing and poetry courses. They are the two things we seem to have established. We run a ‘Singing for the uncertain’ which is always very popular. Lots of people were told when they were 9 or 10 that they couldn’t sing and they believed it. After a decade or two they finally decide that they sing alright in the car, so they’re going to give it a whirl.
Also other tutors come and lead weekends. Martin Carthy, Faustus and Karine Polwart are with us later this year.
Also we do vocal technique, which is for any level of singing. If you want to improve and work on your voice, we (that’s with Rose-Ellen my daughter) can give you tips and systems to work and improve your singing.
So that’s 2018. Cheers!
Further Information
Maddy Prior In Concert With Giles Lewin & Hannah James 2018 Tour Dates can be found at: parkrecords.com/artists/maddy-prior
Maddy Prior can also be found on Facebook and Twitter
More information on Stones Barn can be found at: stonesbarn.co.uk
