I don’t really make very much money off it. You’re a banjo maker as well, aren’t you? Is that something you do to make a living?Ī very small part of it, yeah. I’ve always been a fan of her music-making.Ī post shared by Jacken Elswyth like the DIY, almost punk ethos that some of those people – yourself included – are known for. I did a little collaboration with Debbie Armour (Burd Ellen) for one of her Patreon episodes, and I’ve known Elspeth Anne for years. Do you know Elspeth Anne? Also Burd Ellen?
It’s there in the really repetitive structure that can go on for 16 verses.Ī number of people focus in on the drone, don’t they? It’s like there’s a ‘Drone Folk’ scene all on its own. Folk music kind of does that even when it’s not underpinned by an actual drone. I really like those bands that just hit a chord and let it ring for a really long time. That’s something that informs my Six Static Scenesalbum as well, although that’s not so long-form. I think I was always interested in long-form music that doesn’t really go anywhere. What is it about the drone and folk music? The appeal of the banjo was that droning quality combined with the discipline of traditional playing techniques that gave you a way into it, rather than just being stuck on the edge of the drone. It was really impossible to play, but it could make these beautiful long drones. Basically, it had a couple of pickups, and it was trying to be something like a kind of lap-steel guitar but with a bunch of synthetic strings. I built something that was just a plank of wood with loads of springs on it. I built a couple of instruments prior to buying my first banjo, and they were all about producing drones. The thing I always say is it’s the drone quality. What is it about the banjo that gets you? But I played it a little bit, got a bit frustrated with it, and then borrowed my mother’s banjo to play that a little bit. That was one of my first folk instruments as well. I stayed in the youth hostel and the next day I went to Hobgoblin Music where I bought a mandola. I remember that I took a little trip down to Bristol to see Billy Bragg. Yeah, I played guitar in a teenage band – a bit funky, a bit New Metal – just whatever we’d been listening to. Were you already a musician at that time?
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I still don’t have any music theory so I don’t know how to talk about it, but something about the kind of modal form that you find in English traditional folk music. There was something about the shape of folk songs that really got me. What immediately appealed to you about folk music? And then, for me, it was Anne Briggs and most of those easily-available folk revival musicians, I guess. There’s a big Irish session scene in Herefordshire but it felt like people playing someone else’s music rather than playing something from where we’re from.
I remember being really blown away by Please to See the King by Steeleye Span, which is maybe a slightly cheesy entry into English folk, but I think that was where my realisation that there was a wealth of traditional English folk songs and folk tunes came from. In the late 90s, early 00s, they started doing a lot more folkie stuff and I started looking for a lot more folk because they were. I guess maybe it was just something in the atmosphere. I don’t know when that shift came, really.
I think it’s always been there in their very broad listening, but when I was a child in the 90s I remember them being into slowcore indie bands. They were always in bands but only started seriously being folkies when I was already an adult.
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Ian from Sproatly Smith runs a series of gigs called Weirdshire and my parents are very involved in that and organising compilations. Yeah, my parents both play in Sproatly Smith who were mentioned in the recent J ames Hadfield article on Weird Folk, and also as the duo, Alula Down. I was reading that your parents are stalwarts of the Weirdshire scene. We had an afternoon to check that we were all playing the same tunes and then we did the show. The first time I met a lot of the members of Shovel Dance Collective was actually at our first gig. That’s more than enough to be getting on with. We met her on a balmy Peckham day in July to chat about her latest album, Six Static Scenes, her family background in Hereford Weirdshire, her love of drone music, the origins of her label, the emergence of “amorphous London folk groups”, the appearance of new folk clubs in London, and the search for proto-feminist narratives and queer histories in traditional folk songs. A member of the celebrated Shovel Dance Collective, she has been building a reputation for some time as a solo folk musician, an improvisational banjo player, and the brains behind the Betwixt and Between label. Jacken Elswyth is an increasingly recognisable name on today’s folk scene.
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