Music > Interviews

Interview with Emily Portman

05/09/12

Throughout our chat, sadly omitted from this short excerpt, Emily Portman reveals herself to be a Folk laureate. Talking of folk songs being exported in their purest form from England to America along with Cecil Sharp, it’s as if Emily charted those vessels herself, protecting that quintessential folk, for delivery back to us later through her two beautiful albums. Folk’s protector talks to us here, ahead of her Norwich date this month…

I was going to ask you actually, how, being a lady on the road fits in with a small lady needing your attention? Yes, well, Lily is eleven weeks so it‘s going to be her first tour. We’ve done a couple of gigs so far; we had my album launch back in July and we had her first festival as well at about a month old. She did very well: we’re just taking it as it comes at the moment. Luckily she’s a pretty, chilled out, relaxed baby so far, and, yeah she’s great. I think it’s one of those things, I’ve seen a couple of people on the folk scene who amazingly manage to do it and sometimes with two children and I’m in awe of them. I think it’s really heartening to think that it is possible. It’s probably easier for the blokes who often leave the kids behind.  But we’ll have fun and luckily I have a band who are really supportive and who really love Lily and are going to hopefully enjoy it.  

So you are coming to the Arts Centre as Emily Portman Trio rather than on your own, I was wonder what kind of different dynamic having the girls with you allows? Oh, well, Rachel plays harp and Lucy plays viola and they also play – well Lucy also plays the musical saw, which she will bring out on this tour - and we all sing three-part harmony, and it’s one of my favourite things to sing with other people. I love making up harmonies, I always have done since I was little making my two sisters sing with me. So for me it’s just a real treat to be able to sing with them. And I really love going on the road with them, as well as it working musically, it’s also loads more fun to go on tour with other people.

So you mentioned the instruments that the girls play, but at the beginning of writing the songs, are you able to note out all these parts yourself? Well, the way we work has kind of evolved over the years; when I did my first album the ‘Glamoury’ it was very much a matter of experimentation and I do make up the harmonies but I don’t notate them or anything. I make them up in my head and record them down on to a multi-track just on my computer and then teach them to them by ear. Sometimes I’ll give them an idea, because I play a little bit of piano and so I’ll give them I little bit of an idea of chords and then they go – ‘oh no, that doesn’t work on the harp!’ You know, it’s evolved as we have continued to play together. It’s really interesting, by the end of this tour I’ll probably be playing things differently as we get used to them. We’ll realise this core structure works better or this instrumentation. We’ve already had about three arrangements for one of the songs and we are going to try another one for the tour so, I think it keeps it interesting for us as well.

Was ‘Hatchling’ more of a group process? Was the ‘Glamoury’ more insular in its creation? Yeah, with the ‘Hatchling’, I wrote a lot of the songs with the girls in mind so in that way it’s been much more of a group project and we recorded it all together within the space of a week - I was heavily pregnant as well. So, I think having that amount of focus and time really helped us hopefully bring together the sound, whereas the ‘Glamoury’, we recorded over many months; it was a very different way of working really. Yeah I would say it’s more of a group thing.

What’s similar is that you, with both albums, create these beautifully woven fables. I was wondering when it comes to writing an individual song with a strong narrative based on something else, is there a long period of research and how immersive are these stories to you? I would say that quite often there will be a long period of mulling over and musing over the story, so I might, for example with ‘Hatchlings’, the title track, I first came across that probably about three years ago on holiday in Pompeii. I saw these frescos of a woman and a swan on the walls and was intrigued by the pictures so I looked up the myth and that was the myth of Leda and the Swan. So I’ve known about it for a few years because of that and I think it was in my head for a long while before anything emerged. And then I would write about it, in a journal, lots of different ideas. It slowly comes together and yet sometimes it’ll be that I’ll find a story and I’ll write about it shortly after or it’ll just come out in a dream. Sometimes they emerge really quickly. But yeah, things like ‘Hatchling’ definitely took a lot of mulling over.

I can imagine that they are the kind of stories that keep tapping you on the shoulder that you feel you’ve got to make your point on. When they intrigue you once it’s hard to let go, isn’t it? Yeah exactly, and I think sometimes multiple songs have come out of one story because there are different aspects that capture your imagination.

I read that you studied folk music, was that a BA by itself – folk music? Yes it was! Yeah I did I studied it for four years and I did a Masters in it, haha, I couldn’t get enough of it really. It was a brilliant thing to study, and there are so many aspects to look at. There are courses, and there is a course in Ireland and a course in Scotland and this course in England is the one that I did, in Newcastle and that’s what took me to northeast. 

I remember interviewing Midlake, and they were absolutely fascinated by English folk and they felt that there’s more depth to it than American folk… Well partly, but there has also been a lot of dialogue between America and Britain and Cecil Sharp went out and collected in the Appalachians and he actually thought, because songs travelled out to America in the Appalachians and then stayed there, sometimes you’ve got more untouched forms of the songs that stayed in little pockets of the Appalachians. So there has always been a crossover, and you’ll find versions of ballads across the water and I do find that fascinating actually, the way that ballads change depending on where they go and what communities they are taken on by. I think there are a couple of ballads - there’s ‘Hollin’; I don’t think you’d call it a ballad but it is a folk song - on the album this time, which I found in book called ‘Songs of the North’ and put a tune to it and stuff, so there is a little bit more traditional influence that has crept through this time and also the lullabies are traditional on the album.

I was going to ask you what ‘hollin’ meant actually? Hollin actually means holly; it’s an old word for holly. The chorus actually goes ‘hollin, green hollin’, and then ‘birk and green hollin’, and ‘birk’ is an old word for birch and it’s all about the joy of living out in the woods. They’re beautiful words.

Before you were dragged northwards, you were born and grew up in Glastonbury; did having that grand festival on your doorstep inspire you to one day be part of the line-up there? Ooh, well I’m not sure really if that influenced me, because of course Glastonbury is on during school time, haha! So actually the first time I went to the festival for the full festival, because you can go for the week beforehand, was when I was 16 when I left school. I was brilliant and I did actually manage to play there when I was 17, on the bandstand and that was definitely the realisation of a little dream! I do miss the festival and I think it is pretty amazing to have it on your doorstep. We used to have Michael Eavis come to our school and give out prizes in assemblies!

So Emily, you’re coming to the Arts Centre this month – you’re going to bring us a beautiful show, but what, as an audience, can we bring for you? What makes a perfect show for you? Well, I’d say turning up! And I always love it when the audience engages and we have a great gig when we know the audience are there! We often get a lot of really attentive, listening audiences, which is lovely, but sometimes we have to ask for the lights to be turned up so we know that they’re still there! So yeah, just letting us know your appreciation is good, to have a bit of give and take, haha!

Emma Garwood

The Emily Portman Trio come to Norwich Arts Centre on Thursday 6th September. For tickets go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk. Read the full interview at Outlineonline.co.uk