In an exclusive interview FFA talk to Ian Anderson, Alt Folk performer extraordinaire, founder of Village Thing Records, editor of fRoots Magazine, curator of a very special event at this year’s Bristol Folk Festival, and all round good guy.  

FFA started by asking Ian about returning to his home and old stomping ground of Bristol; “I was born in Weston and moved to Bristol in the late 60’s … I started here as performer, and we started the first country blues club in the country in 1967. I subsequently signed to a major label as an artist and started making records and what have you, but very quickly got disillusioned with the major label part of the music business. So in the mid-70s we started a label here in Bristol called The Village Thing which for a while became the main, what was called at the time ‘Contemporary Folk’, labels of the day. Today people tend to use strange labels like ‘Psych Folk’ to describe it… what does it mean….. no idea – those tags didn’t exist at the time! But we’ll go with it – I’m happy to milk anything!!!” he joked. “Funny enough the ‘sub title’ if you like of Village Thing Records was the ‘Alternative Folk Label’ – so we also seem to have invented ‘ Alt Folk’ too – 30 odd years ago…… basically I kind of like this notion of invent a genre a week.” He chortled.

“At that time The Troubadour, an incredibly successful club in Bristol, got shut down in the early 70s and everything went a bit flat really, so as a performer I decided to go somewhere else and eventually ended up in north London for a long time. Then last year I decided I did not need to be there anymore. Funny enough it was coming to the Bristol Folk Festival last year, which we attended because we presented the fRoots album of the year award to Bellowhead, and we did it at the folk festival. Well I came down for that and I was wandering around all my old haunts and going ‘I’d forgotten how much I liked this’ and so decided I’m moving back… that was last May and I was back in Bristol by August!”

“I was keen to get back into the local scene so when Bristol Folk Festival asked if we’d like to do this concert within the festival I thought it was a great idea.”

So what are you doing at the festival, FFA eagerly enquired; “2010 was the 40th anniversary of the Village Thing and I did quite a lot of archaeology and put together a compilation of the best of stuff from the label. I was asked to curate some gigs and I suggested a 40th anniversary celebration day of the Village Thing. We managed to get together practically all the surviving people who recorded good stuff for the label. Also there are a lot of younger performers who are influenced by it and there is particular label called Riff Mountain with artists like Jason Steel and Nancy Wallace… they jumped at the chance of making a Village Thing tribute album with mostly young artists performing songs associated with the old label. So they did that which coincided with the London day and it was really good because all the younger performers got to meet the older ones and we had a really good after-party!  So to cut a long story short what we are doing at Bristol Folk Festival is a mini version of that. It’s a three hour concert within the festival… BUT we are going to do it with everyone on stage! It will be like a semi-circle & we’ll go round and people will do stuff together, swap anecdotes, have a good time … it should be really fun. We’ll try & keep informal but good at the same time.”

Will there be an element of improv then, FFA asked; “They are all collaborating – even if it’s just emailing mp3’s to each other!  I’ve got as far as working out a rota but I’ve no idea who’s going to play what!” he laughs again. “Some the performers will be doing songs by the artists who are no longer with us – like the sadly missed Derroll Adams and Al Jones….the idea is to get all the ‘absent friends’ represented.” This sounds splendid and there are more details HERE.

You’ve actually been away from the music scene for a long time until fairly recently, FFA commented; “It’s odd, when fRoots got really busy by the end of the 80’s and I’d been a working musician for 20 years, I’d got sick of the sight of roads and crap eating places and all the other stuff which goes with being a professional musician. Nothing happened intentionally but I did this smooth transition from musician to running a magazine. To be honest I did not miss it for quite a while. Things popped up every now and then, and of course I’d still practice at home but what finally did it was Bob Copper of the Copper Family, a famous English traditional singing family. They put on a birthday party for him when he was 85 at his local folk club. It transpired that Bob was actually a secret lover of the blues and on his 85th birthday he said he was going to come out of the closet!  He asked me and Ben Mandelson to get up and do a couple of songs, which we did, and people seemed to like it."

"A couple of years later we did similar for Shirley Collins at a celebration night for her receiving her gong for services to English folk music. Another friend, Lu Edmonds (Public Image Ltd), who was staying with Ben at the time also joined up and we decided to do it as a trio. It was kind of a bizarre Balkan World Music version of the songs” he recalls laughing. “We did a set for Shirley which was fun, but three days later we were approached to make an album! We thought they were bonkers! But we said we’d do it but never tour. We ended up doing a three week tour! That kind of got me back into it. Lu is now so busy with PIL and their forthcoming new album, so Ben and I said OK then – we’ll be a duo. As of this year we are back under the name of the False Beards! We are doing four festivals this year – how did this happen!”

Ian is also busy organising an one-dayer in Bristol in June called Weirdlore (crazy name crazy guy!), where the usual suspects and more will be appearing at the Folk House in Bristol. Artists of the calibre of Telling The Bees, Kearney & Farrell, Three Can Whale, and Boxcar Aldous Huxley will grace the stage. It would appear that all Alt Folk – Psych Folk – [your label here] Folk roads are leading to Bristol over the next few weeks. Brace Yourselves – it should be all rather jolly!

Details of The Bristol Folk Festival are available HERE.

More info on Weirdlore can be found HERE.

 

Article by Barrie Dimond