Hack-Poets Guild interview
EFDSS chat to Hack-Poets Guild’s Marry Waterson about this exciting new project ahead of their gig at Cecil Sharp House on Thursday 23 March.
Tell us what inspired this new project and collaboration.
Sound UK invited us to the Bodleian Library to rejuvenate and reinvent some of the Broadsides and stories within the collection. There are 13 million printed items and a whole lot of inspiration and fascinating stories to be found in the inky archives.
We love how unique the music is! Was it a conscious decision for the sound to be more alternative, or did that just happen organically?
Thank you, we're pleased you find the music unique! As individual artists, our work tends to be outside the box, with Nathan’s soundscapes of pigeon whistles and musical axes and my songs which tend to be genre-less and shape shifters.
The artwork you've been using for your posters are also unique and vibrant, and so are your animated music videos. How important are visuals in your music projects? Will they be incorporated in your live shows?
Thank you. We were keen to reflect the illustrations that often accompanied broadsides, which were mainly pages of text. Generally, illustrations were made with crude woodcuts (ours are stamps cut from rubber) and would be used again and again for similar themed subjects. Printers of Broadsides hoped the more and bigger the images, the more copies they could sell. Early broadsides were printed in Black Letter print, which is referenced by the name of our album ‘Blackletter Garland’ - a garland being a collection of songs.
The videos also aimed to reflect the various themes, weaving broadside illustrations and texts within the stories. Nathan’s ‘Hemp & Flax’ takes its title from hemp beating, sung from the perspective of female inmates at Bridewell prison and is wonderfully performed with a hemp beating brake and mallet.
Tell us about your process for selecting the broadside ballads. Do you prioritise material which has more relevance to contemporary life, or will you sometimes pick a song simply because you like the story?
My selection was based on my interests in Folklore, customs, legends, ghosts and witches.
My song Ten Tongues was based on eyewitness accounts collected by Percy Manning in ’Stray notes on Oxfordshire Folklore’ around 1903. This short entry was a real find for me - fascinating. A robber named ‘Price’ was hanged from a gibbet for his crime. It’s said when the flesh dropped from his bones, the top of his skull fell in and birds built their nest inside. Out hatched eight young ones. Delightfully dark, but it’s a tale of rebirth too. This story I set to my own tune.
Be kind to Each Other is an existing ballad without a tune (that I could find), so I wrote one. This is a reminder to be all heart and keep your loved ones close, because the world can be a very cruel place, never felt more keenly than in the pandemic.
Is Cecil Sharp House somewhere you've visited often? Does it have special significance to you?
I’ve performed at Cecil Sharp house several times with my family; The Watersons. Mum Lal and Mike Waterson recorded the album Bright Phoebus there in 1972.
