Robin Beatty has been studiously shepherding The Old Dance School since his music student days in Birmingham. A seven piece, they're finishing up a live album, their fourth. Nowadays, their music is increasing expansive and flowing, and it presents an interesting contrast with the decidedly funkier groove-driven sound of their early days. Personnel changes have triggered part of that evolution; time the rest. And it has to be said that they have outlasted a great many of their contemporaries. The next studio album will, again, be different. Defining them? That's a whole other matter.We're looking at a band who now have a lot of miles and music on the clock, who command respect and can happily pull in large audiences wherever they play; their home town audiences are studded with fellow musicians and collaborators. Creativity, practicality, and the business of managing it all, after the jump....
Welcome 2014
additions to St Patricks at the
Custard Factory with Moseley Folk. There's some great local music, too, all free. You might have to move around a bit...
If you absolutely must
As of today, we're
two weeks away from St Patricks Day. In Birmingham, as elsewhere,
it's a huge deal. But it's especially important in Brum because of
the size - and roots - of the brummy Irish community. And it's the
third largest St Pat's party in the world, behind New York and
Dublin. Crikey.
Goodnight Lenin on a jetty; Old Dance School on the run
The web has rewritten the
way we hunt out new music, not always for the better. For a start, there's no road-map. Of course, that could be a good thing.
Old-school record shops have been crushed and swept away; their online replacements throw 'priority' acts at you. You have to step past that, and that is where I particularly miss the old way of doing things.
But instead we now have the power to
endorse and recommend, and this works in a lot of different ways. It’s changed things. Online momentum can build worldwide for any act that is able to reach an audience. Ironically, one of the music
genres that have gained most from this is one of the oldest: folk music. There’s been a huge
resurgence in folk and folk-associated forms in the past ten years.
Singer-songwriters are coming to the fore again; new bands are enjoying success
to rival the 70s veterans.
And this is, I think, down
to three factors.
Marketing: Bands build
great, direct, online relationships with their followers through the web. It’s
powerful and personal, and especially suits music people can get passionate
about.
Technology: Equipment has
never been cheaper, and, especially with acoustic instruments, musicians have far
more scope to record and distribute their own music in their own way. So,
creatively, that frees musicians to do what they feel is right, rather than
what a record company exec thinks is right.
The electronic oral
tradition: Folk and world music has always spread by the passing on of songs from
person to person, down the generations and across borders. That process used to
take years; now it happens in a heartbeat.
Robin Beatty and Laura
Carter are founder members of the Old Dance School,
who mix things up with a vengeance. The new album, their third, 'Chasing the Light', is just
out. The first album worked in some distinctly non-trade grooves in with the
guitars, fiddles, recorders and percussion.
Laura: "The first album
('Based on a True Story', 2008) had one piece we called the drum and bass section. We’ve moved away from that. Now we’re focussing on all the
instruments, rather than the rhythm section. "
Robin: "All folk music is
very modal – it’s all open positions of the fiddle, whistles in D. But we’ve
got a trumpet in B flat, and a bagful of whistles and recorders. We’ve had
loads of fun moving through different keys in different sections of a song.
It’s been really interesting."
Three albums in,
where you find yourselves? Is it progressing the way you think it should be
progressing?
Laura: "In some ways it’s been a
lot harder for us, because we’ve come from nothing. You start off doing gigs
for not much money, and then you have to work on your own profile. Maybe it’s
gone a bit slower than I anticipated. We’ve been together for five years now.
But in the last two years we’ve been pushing ahead. "
One of the reasons we’re
talking is to follow up on a post from the beginning of April, which noted how
much radio play West Midlands bands were getting, especially
on Radio 2.
Laura: "We’re doing really well
with radio plays on the new album. We’ve gotten a lot more interest from festivals… "
Robin: "We seem to have a good
loyal fan base now, which is nice. But we may even have missed out on one or
two things this year because we’ve been so – focussed – on our music and the
album."
Discussion shifts to the web, the power of the Facebook share, and on Spotify and Last-FM, the user playlists and the prompts from the programmes themselves.
Robin:" Having all this stuff
recommended to you… the discoveries that are fed to you on the internet… You do
come across some great things. I just hope that it doesn’t extinguish that
hunger for exploration that you have for music. That is one of the biggest joys
on music. Being oversaturated and overfed with all these recommendations – I
wonder if it extinguishes your desire to explore. "
That’s more than fair, and
something I hope to dig in to in a later post. But back in the present, Old Dance School have
further fish to fry. Now, they’re also doing a festival. Robin Beatty comes from
high in the peak district, where the Edale Festival will take place. Delivering
this has meant years of discussions with the council, clearance for campsites,
staging, power and more, wrangling for support funding and so on. But, weather
permitting – Robin admits to being a bit ‘gripped’ by all this – Edale gets
underway halfway through the month (18th to 20th May),
with a very strong West Midlands presence, including the Destroyers, Joe Broughton’s Conservatoire Folk Ensemble, Abie's Miracle Tonic, and of course the Old Dance School.
Setting this up is the
indefatigable John Fell from Goodnight Lenin, who also play.
Why is Moseley Folk doing
this, given that the organisation already has two very successful but
labour-intensive operations going in the city already?
John Fell: The only thing that
Moseley Folk doesn’t have is camping! Obviously we don’t want to make it
exactly the same as Moseley Folk, but we do want to keep the same sort of
friendly vibe, but to bring that camping element in as well, so it becomes a
little bit more of a holiday, than just a day-by day set of shows.
But it’s tiny this first year,
right?
"It would be interesting
to find out if it is the smallest festival in the UK! It’s got a capacity of 500 each
day. So yes, it is minute. We wanted to start in a small way, and grow from
there."
But you’ve got room to
expand?
"Oh yes. The fields round
the site are vast… "
If I wanted to run a
festival, I think I’d be declared insane. You’re already in the business, so that
doesn’t apply. But how, exactly, do you go about it? Where do find a friendly
farmer, for a start?
"You need the right venue.
That’s key. You need a reason to do it. You can’t just say ‘I’m going to run a
festival to make money’… "
Because several festivals
have cancelled this year already…
"You can understand it.
There are so many festivals that are the same, that offer the same, on the
same weekends. "
And prices aren’t going
down.
"No, they’re not. That’s one
of the issues we want to address. With Moseley, we try to keep it at around £79
for three days, which is fair. Tanworth is going to cost £65 for four days
music – you can camp for five days if you want! "
But with only 500 paying
customers a day, you’ll be very lucky to break even…
"We’ve worked it to break
even. This is to try running a new event. We got offered a nice venue, which
was perfect for our interests, where we could try something new. "
For our interests…?
"It’s where Nick Drake spent most of his life, and where he is buried, two minutes down the road from the festival site. This is what I mean about not doing a festival for money, but doing it for an idea. A beautiful plot of land, and the associations with Nick Drake – and it all clicked. Over the last twenty years or so, he’s become more and more iconic."
Now that’s interesting. Back in the day, Nick Drake was not exactly a huge commercial success. Island Records certainly believed in him. Old hippies like me have memories of rootling around in the bins in record shops – remember them? – and coming across Bryter Later and Five Leaves Left. But, to me, the buzz wasn’t – really - there at the time. Now, it certainly is. And I think that credit has to go to the Moseley Folk organisers for riskily putting their money where their personal interests lie. The bill is pretty impressive too, and most of
the acts will be performing at least one Nick Drake song.
So give me a quick update
on Goodnight Lenin?
"We’re still recording, at Highbury Studio, where we were always meant to be. It’s great. To record analogue tape live is fantastic. I’m a song writer – I’m not technical. I write the song, bang it out, it’s done. So the delicate intricacies of digital – it’s very unreal for me. To just walk in the room, crank up the amp and play the song… it’s the way I want to record. We’re never going to go back (to digital). You lose a lot of warmth. You lose a performance."
Hmm. Now there’s an idea
for a future blog piece…. But that sort of brings me, full circle, back to the
start of this post. It’s ironic that folk, the most basic and direct form of
music has flourished because of digital and web technologies. The Goodnight Lenin video above has jumped into people’s awareness… and that could not have happened ten
years ago. But they still want to record their music the old way. Band Links Old Dance School Goodnight Lenin
