Duke Ellington once said that all great music transcends genre. While
the hip songoscenti avoid the word folk like the plague, young
English singer Kate Rusby has embraced traditional folk song with a
vigor and soul that has won over fans far from the English folk club
and festival scene that nurtured her abundant talent. Rusby isn’t so
much a "folksinger" as she is one of the great voices on the planet,
singing emotionally direct songs in a pure, unaffected alto that emphasizes
the stories in her songs—heartbreaking love stories that anyone can
relate to, even if the characters in the songs have been dead for a
hundred years or more.
Rusby’s two solo CDs, Hourglass and Sleepless (both released
on her own Pure Records label in the U.K.), have garnered scores
of awards and sold more copies than most folksingers would dare to dream
of. A spare yet lush acoustic Celtic sound permeates her recordings,
which feature some of the most accomplished and inventive players on
the English folk scene. In concert, she accompanies her mournful, low-key
ballads with a strong, nuanced rhythm guitar and rippling piano and
delights audiences between songs with an effortless and loquacious wit.
Rusby’s popularity has soared since the release of her first recording,
Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts, a duet album that was named Folk
Roots Album of the Year in 1995. She’s been kept busy with a full
schedule of gigs and award shows in the U.K. and finally made it to
the U.S. in November 2000 for a whirlwind fortnight that included many
sold-out halls and an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition. For
this tour she brought along fiddler John McCusker, who has been Rusby’s
musical partner since the beginning, has produced all her CDs (released
in the U.S. by Compass Records), and is undoubtedly a large part of
her success.
I spoke to Rusby backstage at the Cedar Cultural Centre in Minneapolis
while McCusker and Rusby’s brother Joe adjusted the sound in the next
room.
You started out singing with your family. What kind of music do
you remember them playing?
Rusby My dad plays
mandolin and tenor banjo, and my mum plays piano accordion. They used
to play in this ceili band, which they would still do if they
had time. And me and Emma, my older sister, played fiddle as well. But
I put my fiddle in the cupboard the year I met John [McCusker]. "No,
I don’t think I play that anymore." But since I was 12 or something
we’d go along to the ceili band things and sit in and play tunes
until we fell to sleep, and then we’d just get in a sleeping bag ’round
the back of the curtain. It was English tunes, some Scottish tunes,
and some Irish tunes.
It was really a lovely way to be brought up. I thought everybody was
the same ’til I was 13 or something, that age when you wanted to make
a good impression on your friends. And people were coming ’round thinking,
"What the hell’s going on at this house? There’s something a bit strange
here." And then I realized I was a bit weird, but I still loved it.
Your dad has done sound for some English bluegrass festivals. Did
you ever hear any American folk or bluegrass singers there?
Rusby There are just two bluegrass
festivals that he did sound for. One of them was in a cow barn in Edale,
which is in the hills in the middle of nowhere. They kind of shoo the
cows out on the Thursday, give it a once over with a bit of cleaner,
and then have a festival in there from the Friday through the weekend.
It’s in May and it usually blinking snows or something. It’s really
miserable, but the music is just brilliant. And each year they bring
over a band from the States. I saw the Del McCoury Band one year. Alison
Krauss was there maybe ten years ago. Tim O’Brien was there with Hot
Rize. I’ve been a fan of Tim’s ever since.
And you just did Tim’s Crossing tour. Who else was on that?
Rusby Darrell Scott on guitar, Danny
Thompson was playing bass, Mairtin O’Connor from Ireland was playing
box, John was on fiddle, and I was doing . . . anything. I was making
tea a lot of the time! I was on about half of the songs. It was such
a good laugh. Everybody got on great.
When did you go from playing along with the ceilis to performing
yourself?
Rusby Well, I played fiddle a lot,
just tunes. But I was singing as well, separately. I learned all these
songs over the years, mainly by osmosis more than by sitting down and
learning them. When I was about 16, I was thinking, "I’d like to play
another instrument, and I’ll go for [looks around the room].
. . the guitar." It was like that. So I borrowed my dad’s--got it out
of the cupboard, dusted it off, and he taught me three chords or something.
I would just sit there putting all the songs I’d learned to these three
chords.
And I also started playing this horrible keyboard that they had in
the house, doing the same: just chords along with all the songs. This
keyboard was so stinky that they moved it into the garage, but I went
with it, and I’d sit in the garage playing away. A friend of ours who
runs the Holmfirth Folk Festival was ’round for a cup of tea, and she
asked them, "Who’s that in the garage?" And me mum said, "Oh, it’s Kate."
So she came in and said, "Do you fancy doing a spot at the festival?"
So I said yes and went and did this spot, but it was the worst thing
I’ve ever done in me life. I’ve never been more scared. And I thought,
"Right, I’m never going to do this again." But when I got off stage,
two people came along who have different festivals and said the same
thing: "Do you want to come and play at our festival?" So it went like
that, from people hearing me to more people wanting me to go and do
stuff. At that time I’d left school and I was deciding what to study
at university. But I just didn’t have a clue what to study. So I had
a year out. I thought I would do some work and decide in that year what
I wanted to study, and, all of a sudden, I became a folksinger.
Was that when you started singing with Kathryn Roberts?
Rusby That was later on. I did about
two years solo. I first started playing with Kathryn when we were doing
a record called Intuition with six young girls from our area.
Kathryn had just started playing as well, and the guy who was putting
the thing together, John Leonard, said, "Hey, Kate, why don’t you sing
on some of Kathryn’s stuff," and vice versa. She came from the next
village from me. It was just a mile down the road. So I toured with
Kathryn for about three years. It took us three years to get it together
to make a CD. The CD didn’t come out ’til just when we were going our
separate ways, which was a bit of a shame.
When you started playing the guitar, did you mostly learn from your
dad?
Rusby Yeah. But there were lots of
musicians who came through the house. Me mum and dad’s house is one
of those that everybody who’s passing by calls in for a cup of tea and
some cake. Dave Burland is a real good family friend. He comes from
the same town, and whenever he was about and I’d be in the other room
playing away, he’d come in and show me little bits of things to do.
So I picked up little bits from various people that came through.
There was a big session scene in Barnsley, the town I come from. People
would get together every weekend in various pubs and play. Most of the
Irish sessions are just tune sessions, but these people used to sing
as well. When you’re in a session situation, there are lots of people
to listen to and learn stuff off. People will go, "Oh yeah, you just
do it like this."
When you made the record with Kathryn it seemed like there were
a lot of young people in the English folk scene. Does it still seem
that way?
Rusby Yeah, there was a surge probably
six, seven years ago: the children of the original folk revival people.
You’d look down the line, and there’s Eliza Carthy and everybody else,
and we’re all exactly the same age. And the media picked up on it. Back
home the mainstream media don’t look at folk music apart from every
five years--it seems to come in a cycle. And when they had a look at
what folk music was doing, there were loads of young people, and they
were saying, "Where’d they all come from? What’s happening?" They were
splashing it all about, the "new folk revival." But it wasn’t. We just
all started playing at the same time. But it was great for the music,
really, that the mainstream media picked up on all these young people
playing. Since then there’s a whole load of musicians my brother’s age
coming out. There’s millions of young musicians now at the festivals.
It’s really healthy.
I’ve read stuff about you where there seems to be this undertone
of "She’s so talented. Why is she playing folk music?"
Rusby Yeah, I got a lot of that when
I first started doing interviews. People were saying, "What are you
doing? Here, we’ll just switch off the tape recorder a minute. What
are you actually doing? Do you know it’s folk music?" I guess
when normal kids get to be teenagers, they run in the opposite direction
of what their parents are listening to. But the environment I was raised
in wasn’t like that. It was never forced on me. It was just something
that we grew to love. And my best friends, that I still have now, are
friends that I met at the festivals. It just seemed really normal.
For a while there was a strange kind of crossover thing happening.
There was this guy, Andy Kershaw, who used to have a radio program on
the main pop channel back home, Radio One. He used to play world music,
folk music, country music, everything, just good music, you know. And
he would read out tour dates that you were playing. So lots and lots
of normal people heard me on that and came along to gigs--some of them
were the folk club gigs, which I still love doing. But they’d come in
and sit down and go, "What the hell is happening here?" It was the weirdest
thing to be on stage looking at the different people. You could tell
who was very comfortable and who was thinking, "I’m not going to touch
anything." But they really liked it. I mean, some of the [ballads] just
break your heart.
You seem to be attracted to the tragic love stories.
Rusby Oh, yeah. I just love a bit
of tragedy [laughs]. I only do happy songs because I have to.
There’s no other form of music that can really move me in the way that
the old ballads do. I guess it’s because it’s such a simple form of
music. You just get lulled into listening to the story. It’s like watching
a good film. You can be in tears at the end.
I notice you’ve shied away from the gruesome murder ballads.
Rusby Oh yeah. But with Tim, we did
that murder ballad "Down in the Willow Garden." Hoy. Each night I was
on stage going, "Does he realize what he’s singing?! This is a horrible
song!" Well, it’s an amazing song but really gruesome. He’s down courting
in the willow garden, and she falls asleep on him while they’re courting.
And he gets really cross at that. And that’s why he does it. So we all
decided that was OK. She shouldn’t have dropped to sleep. A man’s pride
and all that [laughs].
You’re writing a lot of your own "old" songs. Are you thinking more
of yourself as a songwriter now?
Rusby No, noooo.
You know, a lot of songwriters really define themselves as . . .
Rusby As a songwriter. Well I don’t.
I’m the other direction, completely. In fact, I even forget that I’ve
written some of the songs. I can’t remember physically writing some
of them. It’s quite strange. I’m not somebody who can sit down and think,
"You’ve not written any songs for a wee while, Love, you should get
the pen out and start writing." It just kind of happens late at night,
like at three or four in the morning. I’ll write half a song, and then
I’ll think, "Well, if it’s still there in the morning when I come down,
I’ll finish it." But I write in the old style, story-based rather than
"I’m really cross with me life" or anything like that.
I’m curious about "Sho Heen" (from Sleepless). What does
that mean?
Rusby Well, the chorus is from an
old Scots Gaelic lullaby that I found in a book. It wasn’t a songbook,
but there was this bit of a chorus in there. I’d already started writing
this song that was kind of a lullaby, snuggle-down song, and I thought,
"I might just nick this and use it in that." So I learned it and spent
ages getting the accent just right. Two of the girls in the Poozies
speak Gaelic, so when I saw them I ran up going, "Listen to this! I’ve
learned a bit of Gaelic. Tell me what it means." But it turned out it
doesn’t mean anything. It just means "La, la, la, la. La, la, la, oo-hoo.
La, la, la." So that’s me bit of Gaelic that I’ve learned [laughs].
How about "All God’s Angels"? That’s a very tragic song. Where did
that come from?
Rusby Most of the songs I’ve written
that are story-based I’ve scraped from the back of me memory—stories
I’ve heard years ago in songs. And if I can think of the whole story,
I’ll go to somebody like me mum and say, "You know this song that’s
got this story in it? Can you teach it me?" And if I can’t find it,
I’ll rewrite something with the same story. "All God’s Angels" is just
a classic folk song really. The fella comes along and has a nice time
and leaves her in a bit of a state, and then she says, "Right, we have
to get married now, because I’m going to have a baby by you." And he’s
like, "No, I’m not going to do that because I’m already married. So
I’ll see you. Bye."
You’re also rewriting a lot of traditional songs. A lot of them
are credited "Trad/Rusby." What kinds of things are you doing to these
songs?
Rusby When I was starting with the
guitar and me three chords, I would change words in the songs or change
a bit of the tune to suit me. And when I first started playing, people
were coming up going, "That’s not how that song goes." And I’d say,
"Does it matter?" And they’d say, "Yes, you can’t just change things."
But you only have to open one of the ballad books, like the Childe ballads,
and there’s probably 80 versions of the same ballad that has just been
changed here and there. Because each time it’s been passed on to somebody
else over the years, they’ve changed it to suit themselves. Robin Morton,
who manages Battlefield Band, is a song collector. One of his books
says that lots of young people are changing the music, but he says that
"an unchanging tradition is a dying one." Because if people aren’t going
to make it how they want to sing it and how they want to listen to it,
it will just die out. So I’m of that same thinking. But with some of
them, I’ll have found a story in a book but it won’t have the tune to
it, so I’ll write a tune for it, and then it becomes like a co-write.
Or some of them have lots and lots of verses and I’ve thought, "I’d
like to do the story, but I’m going to have to squidge it all down."
So I rewrite it, carefully, so the story is still there.
Do you remember where you got "The Fairest of All Yarrow"?
Rusby I found that in a book. I’ve
got this habit now when I’m on tour. When I get time, I go into secondhand
bookstores and look in the dirtiest, darkest corners for all the ballad
books and songbooks. I’ve got loads of these songbooks that I flick
through every now and again. I had the song in my head--the words were
still stuck in my head. And I was quizzing my dad on it, wondering if
he knew it, because there wasn’t a tune in the book. And he said, "Yeah,
I’ll sing it for you if you want." But I said "No, don’t. Because I’d
like to just try something." I thought it would be interesting to write
me own tune for it and then say, "Right, give me your tune." See how
close they are--if they’re anything to do with each other at all. Also
I changed the story a bit. In the original, he dies. But nobody dies
anymore. There’s only crying now. There’s no dying. Which is quite good.
All your albums, from the one you did with Kathryn Roberts to Sleepless,
have a distinctive sound. They’re very spare and yet the sound is
very full and rich. How do you and John go about arranging the songs?
Rusby I always have a basic arrangement
in my head, because I like to play a song out before I record it. John
and most of the other musicians that we use, Ian Carr and Michael McGoldrick
and Andy Cutting, all have a similar love for folk songs as well as
the tunes. They have this ability to play on something but not cover
up what’s happening in the story--so your ear’s not taken away from
the story. John’s brilliant at it—being the one standing back and making
sure it’s all falling into place so you don’t lose sight of what’s happening
in the song. I’m drawn to nice, simple, flowing tunes rather than weird,
bizarre tunes, music that’s not too complicated for your brain to appreciate
what’s happening.
Do you think that has contributed to your success outside the normal
folk club scene?
Rusby I don’t know why I’ve been successful,
other than very good luck. Somebody must be looking down on me and smiling.
People keep saying, "Oh, take it while it lasts." And they’ve been saying
that for the last eight years. But people have a different outlook on
success. People who I was involved with in my not-so-distant past thought
that success was, you know, ten million in the bank and splashed all
over the TV, massive house, big racing car, and they wouldn’t feel like
they’ve achieved anything until they’ve got that. Which is the most
unrealistic thing, especially singing folk music. I mean, it’s just
not going to happen. I feel very happy the way it’s going. My
parents and my older sister, Emma, work in the record company, and my
brother tours around with us doing sound. We’re not living in a massive
mansion or anything, but we’re all really happy. I don’t strive for
much more than that. We’re all making a living from this music that
me mum and dad used to sing to us in the car.
Discography
KATE RUSBY
Sleepless, Compass 4277 (1999). Compass, 117 30th Ave.
S., Nashville, TN 37212; (615) 320-7672; www.compassrecords.com.
Hourglass, Compass 4255 (1998, released by Pure Records
in 1997).
Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts, Compass 4270 (1999, released
by Pure Records in 1995).
Excerpted
from
Acoustic Guitar
magazine, April 2001, No.100.
That
issue also contained a discography and a transcription of Rusby's new
setting of the traditional song "The Fairest of All Yarrow."
Click
here to read about Kate Rusby's instruments and gear.
