Interviews

Colossus Magazine Feb 2014

http://www.colossus.fi/qso/

JUDY DYBLE
At the garden of humaneness

My first proper introduction to Judy Dyble’s 21^st century recordings was the album “Talking with Strangers”. I felt on that album both 1960’s oriented softer art rock dramatics mingling successfully with modern day’s progressive rock Pre-Raphaelistic forms. The key factor for this music to touch me was its sincerity, and lyrics opening window to the artist’s soul and thoughts. The second album “Flow and Change” continues the production quality and sensitivity of the poetic songs, perhaps focusing now to memories of the past, personal thoughts about the world, shrouded on melancholic cloak of autumn’s presence.

Though I find the early Fairport Convention, Giles, Giles & Fripp and Trader Horne interesting musical movements of the past, the work of today seemed much more fascinating even to a vintage oriented listener like me. The experience of life and kind emotions radiating from this music encouraged me to approach her with some questions via email.

Eetu: Dear Judy, I have understood you have done the album with your friends by doing recordings in different locations, and then mixing up the master tapes later. Based on your experience from the sixties studio work, what things would you see as good or bad factors in these two record creation methods?

Judy: There is no real comparison, recording in the sixties was analogue and involved studios with big machines and engineers as well as producers. It was expensive to go into one of the major studios and although limited by how much you could physically put down on the tapes, the engineers’ imagination and creativity was often the thing that made the wishes of the artist/producer turn into reality. There was a lot of physical work involved in recording, cutting and splicing were done by hand and ear, tapes had to be moved from one machine to another, master discs had to be cut and that was specialised again and then off to the factory to be produced.

Today it’s digital and the process is much simpler. A lot of the musicians (most of them in fact) recorded their parts and sent them via email to Alistair who mixed them together and created the master tracks. But it still required his imagination to decide what sounds he wanted and his good ears to put everything into place so that the mix was right. And then it still required Jeremy who mastered it to smooth over bits and remove the odd crackle that only his ears could hear and to make sure that everything was at the optimum for the manufacturing process. Same as in the sixties, but a faster process I guess. Made it far easier to produce the album on a shoestring budget.

Eetu: About the musicians, I think Alistair Murphy is a key figure, would you tell how you started to work, and how the process goes roughly?

Judy: Yes I would say that Alistair is key particularly with this album. He actually had all the hard work! With Talking With Strangers, I had a small bunch of songs and was talking by email to Tim Bowness, he introduced me to Alistair as he had worked with him in the past and the three of us began to work together, mostly via the internet but with a couple of real visits, and produced Talking With Strangers. Alistair and I used the same process for Flow and Change.

A rough idea of the process goes something like this; Lyrics are written or music composed, emails and mp3’s are exchanged and ideas are discussed either by phone or by email, musicians are added from various places and Alistair comes to my house for me to record the vocals… Other songs sent to other composers are added in to the mix and vocals sung for them. Contributions from other musicians are received via the internet, then Alistair has the task of stitching everything together and sending me mp3’s of work in progress. This all takes over a year to do and the artwork is put together in a similar fashion. Then the completed masters are sent via the internet to the mastering person and eventually the finished artwork and masters are sent to whichever record company I have persuaded to release the album with. And voila! A new album is released.

Eetu: On this album I understood your core musicians being Matt Malley, Julianne Regan, Pat Mastelotto and Mike Mooney. I recall you have worked with them on your earlier recordings; what factors from them you believe culminating from these players on the general tone of the record (personality, style, etc.)?

Judy: No, my core musicians are Alistair, Mark Fletcher (bass) and Jeremy Salmon (guitar) both very old friends of Alistair and who have worked with him for a long time. Phil Toms whose string arrangements are such an integral part of Flow and Change has now become a very valuable member of the live line-up when I do the occasional live gig.

Julianne, Pat,Mike and Matt are the main guest musicians along with the Steve Bingham Quartet' Julianne and Pat have both contributed to Talking With Strangers as well as Flow and Change, and Julianne composed the music for ‘Head Full of Stars’ Matt appeared just at the right moment as a facebook friend for me to ask for his contribution to ‘Letters’ and his voice was perfect for that song, Mike, I have known for years as he is the son of a village friend and he added the perfect lap steel guitar bit to ‘Black Dog Dreams’ All of the musicians just really happened along at the right moment when they were needed.. The songs came from all sorts of different areas of my life and times and Alistair has been able to pull them together into a cohesive whole.

Eetu: The string arrangements certainly emphases the romantic touch on the record. I believe there was a trend between 60’s & 70’s of doing rock records with orchestral support. However on this album, the scores seem integral part of sonic tapestry – were they included to record plan at early point, and if there’s anything interesting about implementing them to compositions and composing, would be a source of interest

Judy: It was suggested by Alistair that we include string arrangements when the songs were beginning to take shape. He had previously used Phil Toms’ arranging and recording skills on his own album and we thought they would enhance the songs. As indeed they have.

Eetu: I realize you have also been giving concerts on 21^st century with some scale. Would wish to tell anything about these venues, musicians, experiences…?

Judy: I have done precisely 4 live gigs as a solo artist (I think!) since my return to music. One in 2009, one in 2012 and two in 2013. I am apparently gaining in confidence at every gig, but I am still reluctant to do many.

Eetu: There seems to be a continuing relationship also with fine visual artists, not only musicians. Their works graced even your earlier album reissues with different cover pictures. How did you meet Catherine Hyde & Jackie Morris, and what stroke you on their work?

Judy: I met them all via facebook and they were kind enough to allow me to use their images on the inlay booklets. I just loved their work.

Eetu: The main emphasis on the album seems to be on sphere of emotions, ranging from memories of youthhood to later days of life, allowed to those who live a full life, garnished with dreams and myths of the imagination. I was thinking of the album title “Flow and Change” being something large and universal, like Mr. Sinfield once recited “Change, sang the sea goat, Is constant as the tides”, though seen from a perspective of a singular person (or a group of few). I felt life’s patterns and its alterations detected from mosaic of songs, forming this calm, deep vision to inner life and human relationships. I’m unaware how clearly I see to the point, but if my presumption of the context is correct or distorted, it would be enlightening to hear your thoughts on this philosophic context of this record (of course on level of your own comfort – some things are not getting better if explained too clearly I think)?

Judy: Not sure what you are asking me here. The songs come from my experiences and my life. What they mean to me is not what other people will take from them. Explanations can confuse.

Eetu: I felt the Crow Baby song being some kind of allegory of life situations and humanity, relating also to the song for you grandchild. What kind of feelings you have about the future when you think these young characters, facing the world we shall build to them for tomorrow?

Judy: Crowbaby is a justification of what all animal life is and does. They are what they are.

And Beautiful Child is just that. A song to a beautiful grand-child when she was born. Both songs are just what I felt at the time of writing and I hope they resonate with others.

Eetu: If this album gathers your expressions about your memories of childhood and life experience from post-second world war times, it presented emotionally on the album without needs of further opening up. But on general level, how do you see the world been evolved during your lifetime, what trends have made you happy and what sad?

Judy: I just observe and try to make sense of everything. An impossibility. I do think a lot of common sense has got lost in recent times.

Eetu: As a final question for a wise and talented artist; what things you believe are most essential for a human on his or her voyage through the western industrial societies, where we have emerged and which plane we share as platform of experiencing, living and doing arts?

Judy: A short answer to a long question. People know in their hearts what is right and what is wrong. The trick is to try not to cause pain and to try to learn and grow from whatever experiences one has. And to laugh a lot, to find something that will make you smile every day.

Eetu: Capturing these words to my heart I’ll thank you Judy for your time, and immerse myself to the sound realms of “Flow and Change”.

MOJO November 2013 Interview

The full article should be available at www.MOJO4music.com soon

Dmitry M Epstein-DME Net -Let It Rock - August 2013

http://dmme.net/interview-with-judy-dyble.html

Interview with JUDY DYBLE

May 2013

For many years and for many people, the name of Judy Dyble had been a mere footnote in the history of British rock – what with her fronting the first line-up of FAIRPORT CONVENTION and playing a significant role in the formation of KING CRIMSON, and that’s without mentioning the cult classic which is the only album by TRADER HORNE, a band she was a half of. Then, in the early ’70s, Dyble decided to quit music and dedicate herself to family, and it’s the same dedication which, for the last decade, sees Judy stomp her footnote status and smash it with a string of highly immersive albums. Arguably the best of them, "Talking With Strangers" – or, to be precise, its American release – restored the chanteuse’s glorious connections and led to this conversation but, during its laughter-strewn course, it became clear that Judy Dyble had a new record ready,"Flow And Change". All the more reasons to get behind the sounds to see a person hidden in the notes.

- How’s been your day, Judy?

Good. I’ve just cleaned the entire computer desk and half the room, so I’m feeling very noble. (Laughs.)

- So let me quote this from TRADER HORNE’s cover: “Judy Dyble is a semi fairy tale character”…

Yes, [it's by] the lovely Brian Patten. Do you know his works? He’s a very well known British poet; he was a part of The Liverpool Poets, with Roger McGough and Adrian Henri. He was also in GRIMMS, which is the ’60s band with Andy Roberts and various other people, but he’s an absolutely wonderful poet. And he happened to be living in the flat next door to me, and I asked him to write sleevenotes, and he wrote this lovely thing. (Laughs.)

- The interesting about this “semi fairy tale character” is that after all the years people still know who you are. How do you feel about it?

Oh, I’m amazed, really. I… I don’t have a huge amount of confidence, so I’m always pleased and delighted, when people say, “Oh yes, you were in that band, and you did this and you did that.” And I think, “Gosh, they remember!” (Laughs.) Because I did stop for so many years, but I guess the three or four bands I was working with were kind of well-known.

- Could it be so that your long absence turned you into kind of a legend?

Well, I wouldn’t say so myself, but that’s a PR type one gets. But there’s an awful lots of legends reappearing out of wherever they were. I really should have taken on a gypsy caravan and gone roaming through Europe or something like many of the other people who’ve returned – like Anne Briggs, Shelagh McDonald or Vashti Banyan. They always did a very romantic thing living in Scotland, and I just stayed in Oxfordshire making cassettes.

- I guess Ronnie Lane beat you to roaming in a caravan.

Oh, yes. But I don’t fancy going off traveling. (Laughs.) I just sat here, in this house, making cassette tapes with my husband [percussionist Simon de la Bedoyere], which was our business for almost 25 years.

- And it looks like that, let me repeat it, semi fairy tale character was an introvert up to 2004′s “Enchanted Garden” and then, almost suddenly, you turned into an extrovert, which is so clear on “Talking With Strangers.”

Yes. The difference was that I’d made three albums with Marc Swordfish, and he’d been really in charge of what was happening, how my voice sounded, how the words went and everything, which was fine, ’cause I was out of practice and didn’t know [what to do]. But with “Talking With Strangers” I had Alistair Murphy and Tim Bowness producing and recording me: they knew the importance was in the words rather than the music that surrounded them, so they pushed my voice to the fore and then created this wonderful music to go with it. It was the best of both worlds. Whether I’m an introvert or extrovert? Depends. It really does depend. If I’m just being normal me, I’m fairly introvert; but if I’m being Judy Dyble, then I can be quite extrovert, especially if I’m nattering on <a href=”https://www.facebook.com/judy.dyble”>Facebook</a> or something like that – I’m not actually talking to people directly.

- So the Internet provided you with a means to reach out and be there?

Yes. Yes, indeed, yes. I didn’t want to be on the Internet, but my daughter needed it when she left the university, to get jobs and things, and when she got a job and left home, I was left with the Internet. So I thought, “I’d better see what I can do with it.” (Laughs.) I discovered places like MySpace at first, and that if you’re careful you can do an awful lot of things with the Internet, and it’s quite a good fun. People do complain about the Internet – that it’s intrusive and that everything’s known by everybody – but if there’s something you don’t want everybody to know, then don’t put it on the Internet.

- What is there is pigeonholing you as a folk rock singer, which I know you’re not so comfortable with. To me, you’re one of those few artists who perfectly balanced folk and prog rock.

Yeah, I guess I have, but I never do anything intentionally, it’s just the way it’s turned out. I didn’t want to be stuck with the label “folk” because, to most people, it’s kind of a traditional English folk, and I never have been that – not in FAIRPORT, not with GILES GILES AND FRIPP, not with TRADER HORNE. So I’m quite happy to be prog folk. (Laughs.)

- Anyway, all of your last albums, since your comeback, had a folk element to them.

Well, they do, yes. But they have a story element – all the lyrics I sing have a story behind them, and I guess that’s what the folky thing is. But I try not to tell a whole story; I just try to tell something that means something to me and it might resonate with someone else, but it might not mean the same thing. I try to be obscure.

- Musical impressionism?

Yeah, yeah. Uh, Gosh, that’s a good one!

- And how much do you contribute to the musical side of things, not only lyrical?

It depends on what I’m presented with. If I’ve written words and I give them to someone else to write music, then I don’t have a huge amount to do with that – I’m quite happy for other people to just do what they want with the words. If somebody sends me some music to write words to, then I will probably – unless there’s a very definite tune within the music – create the tune that goes with the music, as well as the words. And quite often it’ll be something completely different to what the people have written the music for, so that’s quite interesting. Then, of course, I’ve done some words for people like SLEEPYARD, a Norwegian band, who do a lot of ambient music that’s difficult to describe, and I’ve just found a tune within his [Oliver Kersbergen] not-exactly-give-you-a-clue-music. (Laughs.)

- Does that mean that if you’ve written words you never try to put a tune to them and always give them away to somebody else to work it out?

Yeah, I prefer to do that, yes, because I don’t know what they’re going to fit. And because I have a rheumatoid arthritis, I can’t play the piano anymore and I can’t really play my autoharp, so I’m kind of stuck with what I can create. And I’m not very good at doing actual music – I’m better at writing words.

Judy And THE FOLKMEN, 1964

- Do you think that “folk” tag is a shadow that your FAIRPORT CONVENTION past casts?

Yes. Yes, it does, because they’re so known for taking traditional English folk music and adding a rock beat to it, and turning it into the beginning of folk rock, which is wonderful. And that’s exactly what they did. But when I was with them, we were inventive – or they were inventive – but in a different way, because we were taking American folk rock music and reassessing it, and making our own version of that.

- On the first FAIRPORT album, you wrote “Portfolio.” A singer who writes instrumental music?! How did that happen?

(Laughs.) I do like to be different! It was just a small tune I’d worked out on the piano, which was jolly. Ashley [Hutchings] added bass to it, and then everybody else added everything else. Just a small silly tune. It wasn’t made for words.

- And then there was Ian Matthews. On “Decameron” he seems to be getting on your territory vocally and singing high instead of letting you take that register.

It was a very odd thing, having Ian join the band. I felt he was brought in because they just wanted to extend vocal range, but Ian had been in pop bands, so he was a different kind of singer. I think he began to really find his own feet when he began to sing with Sandy [Denny]; his voice and mine kind of clashed a bit. Most of the songs that we did on that album, apart from the newer-written ones, I’d been singing for six months before he arrived, so I knew them off by heart. But it was strange, that’s fair.

- More so, he preferred to be calling himself Ian McDonald.

Yeah, that was the name he was using then, because I think his stepfather’s name was McDonald. But when I left FAIRPORT, I came across the other Ian McDonald…

- Yes, the founding member of KING CRIMSON and FOREIGNER.

People find this very confusing. This Ian is in New York. He’s a lovely man. I haven’t spoken to him for quite a long while, but every now and again he’ll be in touch. But FAIRPORT’s Ian McDonald changed his name to Ian Matthews, because he didn’t want to be confused with Ian McDonald who I was then working with.

- And then he added another “i” to his name and became Iain.

Yes, just I think to show his Scottish heritage. (Giggles.)

- You mentioned Sandy. The strange thing is, when I listened to “Reno, Nevada,” a bonus track on the “Fairport Convention” reissue, I was pretty sure it was her on it, but then I saw this video of you singing it and discovered I was wrong.

Sandy did sing “Reno, Nevada” when she joined the band, and she sang it differently, obviously, and I think by then they decided to work out a harmony instead of just singing it straight the way I’d done it with Ian. I think I only met Sandy once, and it’s quite interesting that people think I had lots to do with her, but I never knew her very well, and she was just someone else.

- Your version of that song completely knocks down the words of producer Joe Boyd who writes in his book that you had a “tentative” voice.

I thought that was a bit, um, unkind, shall we say. And he also said that something similar on the FAIRPORT CONVENTION documentary, and I thought he didn’t have to say that. But there you go – that’s what they felt. I know that I was in tune.

- That’s for sure. But what Boyd probably meant and what I mean is that your voice was becoming richer and richer as you progressed with FAIRPORT and beyond.

Yes, I think it did. It grew with practice.

- And still people seem to remember you more for knitting on-stage rather than singing. Isn’t it insulting?

(Laughs.) Well, I suppose that not many people did knit on-stage, and I only did that a couple of times. Silly, isn’t it? And the stupid thing is, I can’t knit. I cannot knit for toffee. Everything I knitted looks Eiffel Tower, because I’m useless at the tension of it: it starts very small and gets very big at the bottom, and I give it away as dish cloth. So it was just something for me to do while the big solos were going on.

- There are also not many mentions of you at the FAIRPORT web site.

There are one or two – but they had so many people in the band.

- But can we say that if it wasn’t for you they wouldn’t have gotten Sandy in?

No, I don’t think they would because, after they’d gotten rid of me, they realized that everybody was asking where the girl singer was, and thought, “We’d better find another one.” (Laughs.) It’s one of those difficult things: who knows what would have happened if I had stayed. But I always say, if I stayed with FAIRPORT they wouldn’t have done what they did and I wouldn’t have gone on to play with the fantastic people that I have played with since then.

FAIRPORT CONVENTION,
Savile Theatre, October 1967

- So you joined forces with GILES, GILES AND FRIPP. Did you see any glimpses of future KING CRIMSON in the band while you were there?

No. Actually, I don’t think I did. They were very, very, very tight threesome – musically very tight. But – how to say this? – they were very into being eccentric Englishmen at the time, and it was only when I left and Pete Giles left that they began to loosen up and get loud and do what they did. I mean I was at the beginning of it all, but I can’t claim to have had a huge amount of influence, really.

- But wasn’t it you who brought Ian McDonald together with Robert Fripp?

Oh yes, that’s true, because I was going out with Ian at the time and I had been doing some playing with him musically as it were. And we thought it might be good to try and find some more musicians, and put an ad in the paper with Ian’s phone number in it, because Ian was better at talking to people about music, and I knew nothing [about it]. So Pete Giles rang answering, and that’s how we all got together.

- Was Pete Sinfield already writing for them?

No, no, no, he was writing with Ian, he hadn’t met GILES, GILES AND FRIPP. I don’t remember him being at any of the meetings we had with GG&F.

- There we go: if it wasn’t for you, there wouldn’t have been “I Talk To The Wind”!

Yeah, I suppose, I guess… (Laughs.) I hate to take credit for it!

- Why didn’t it work for you and GG&F?

I think it was probably because I’d split up with Ian and it was difficult. (Pauses.) I also think it was because I’d been asked to leave FAIRPORT, I didn’t really want to put myself into the position of being asked to leave another band, so I left before they had the chance to throw me out. (Laughs.)

- How did you feel about Sinfield’s lyrics? Save for “The Wind,” you also covered “C’est La Vie” on your latest album, and it’s the best version of this song I’ve ever heard.

Well, I’ve always loved that song. My husband and I, we knew Pete and his then-wife Stephanie quite well; we would go to visit various relatives and used to stay overnight at Pete’s house. And he’d just finished doing that Greg Lake album [Lake's side of 1977's "Works Volume 1"] and he played it to us, and that and “I Believe In Father Christmas” were the two standout tracks I thought. And I thought, “I’d love to sing that because the music is so great.” So thirty-odd years later I did!

- It has the “crystal” feel that the original didn’t have.

The arrangement was done by Alistair and Tim, and they wanted to make it different. I said, “I want to do that song,” so they took it away and came back with a different version, using piano instead of guitar. And because I wanted extra female voices, I asked Julianne Regan and Celia Humphris to add some vocals to it. That’s why it’s so sweeping and wonderful.

- You also invited Jacqui McShee from PENTANGLE.

Yes, but she wasn’t on “C’est La Vie” – she was on “Dreamtime” and parts of “Harpsong.” I love to gather my ladies! Celia, I’ve known forever; the same with Jacqui because FAIRPORT and PENTANGLE’s paths used to cross at various gigs that we did up and down the country. Julianne, I’ve only got to know reasonably recently, but she’s become a good e-mailing friend and she’s actually written a song with me on the new album.

- And you worked with ladies, if briefly, in THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND?

Actually what happened was, because Joe Boyd was managing THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND and FAIRPORT sometimes our visits to the studio would coincide with THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND being there. I’m not quite sure how, but for “The Minotaur’s Song” they wanted a choir, so they rounded up everybody who was in the studio who could sing, so that was all of FAIRPORT and me and various other people, and we were kind of Greek chorus. It wasn’t quite that they invited me to sing. That’s the way it works often: you’re in the right place at the right time, and you say “Yes” and you end up doing something that ends up being quite good. (Laughs.)

- Another episode of your career was “Mouseproof,” an album by G.F. Fitzgerald – whoever he is.

I spoke to him the other day – he’s a lovely man. He shared a flat with my late husband long before I was ever on the scene, and his room was full of electronic equipment, and he was forever taping stuff, everything that was going on, the whole day. He was the original… I don’t know how to describe it.

- Sonic hoarder!

That’s the word, yes. He was making this album, “Mouseproof,” and because I was [already] there he said, would I do vocals? So I did, that was how I had gone on to that. The thing was, I had left TRADER HORNE, and Pye [Records] would not let me be credited on the album, because they were cross with me, as I was their artist. And I wasn’t allowed to be credited until very recently.

- TRADER HORNE was completely your creation – with Jackie McAuley, of course. You were on an equal footing there, right?

Yeah, that’s right. Actually, it started off as trio…

- …and let me quote Pete Sears: “Judy is still a wonderful artist and has been recording some very cool new material in the UK, which she occasionally sends my way.”

I do, yes, indeed. I’m very fond of Pete, and we have an odd e-mail or Facebook conversation, and we’re talking about doing some sort of reviving the original TRADER HORNE with the three of us: Jackie, Pete and myself. Maybe we’ll get around to doing something.

- But there were only two of you on your only album, “Morning Way,” and it sounds like you had a greater empathy with McAuley than there was with Matthews.

Eh, I guess so. Yes, yes. It worked well with Jackie because we weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, we were just musicians working together, even though when the press photographs were taken it was always, “Put your arms around Jude” and “Put your arms around Jackie and pretend you’re…” We were both quite uncomfortable with that because we both had a boyfriend and a girlfriend. But I don’t know… We just managed to work well together, and who knows why? That’s one of my mysteries! (Laughs.)

- And still there’s a feel as if you were cast in a supporting role to Jackie, even on “Morning Way,” which was your song.

Yeah, but he was the one with the musical ability, and he is a terrific musician and a lovely person. It would not have been intentional, but he was so excited with his music and how he could present it, and I was just the singer. I’m quite happy… (Pauses for thought.) I suppose those weren’t my songs – “Morning Way” and “Velvet To Atone” were the only tunes I’d written – and I guess I must probably be happier singing the stuff I’ve written.

- There are songs on your albums hinting at your love of vaudeville or music hall: “If I Had A Ribbon Bow,” recorded with FAIRPORT, “Rivers Flow” from “Enchanted Garden”, which is reggae but…

Well, I quite like things like that. (Laughs.) I don’t like to always do the same kind of stuff. With FAIRPORT, some of the songs we used to do were jug bands songs: they’re a huge fun to do because they’re light-hearted, LOVIN’ SPOONFUL type of stuff, wonderful stuff! I’d always liked jazzy, swingy bits, so when we heard “Ribbon Bow” – because FAIRPORT were always good at picking stuff that was completely out-of-character – we decided that’d make a good single. It didn’t do very well, but then I think we were far beyond the time, too early for that.

In TRADER HORNE
with Jackie McAuley

- Speaking of “far beyond”, I feel like Eric Clapton’s take on “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out” might be heavily influenced by your version, as neither you nor he did do it in a traditional bluesy style.

No, no, no, no, I just did it because Jackie was… is a very good blues guitarist, and that was his arrangement of it. I know he’s quite happy to do that that way.

- Another song that’s throwing a bridge from the past to the present is “Velvet To Atone” with its modern sound.

Yes. It should have been played with Martin Quittenton who composed the music for it, but he’d done that disappearing thing – I think he had a breakdown – so I played on piano and sang. It’s quite a stark piece, really, and I don’t know what it meant. (Laughs.) Martin played in STEAMHAMMER then, and that was how I met him, because he started going out with my best friend Sue whom I shared a flat with. We got on very well, and it was lovely, but he wasn’t cut for the rock music business: he was great, he would have been very good with guitar craft – that sort of Fripp thing – because he used to spend hours just playing his classical guitar.

- By the way, was that TRADER HORNE album a concept one?

Eh… Nope! Not to my knowledge, no. [It was] just songs that Jackie had written: it didn’t have a theme at all. The only theme was the music that was played in between the tracks, which kind of dragged it all together. Jackie played the bits on one side, and I had another piano tune that I’d worked out and that was played in between the songs on the second side.

- Who played most of the piano there: you or Jackie? It really stands out.

I played piano on “Velvet To Atone” and on the bits that run through the second side, but mostly it was Jack, ’cause he’s such a very talented multi-instrumentalist.

- And after that you worked with DC & THE MB’S.

Yes, DYBLE, COXHILL AND THE MILLER BROTHERS. That was Steve and Phil Miller from DELIVERY. Phil Miller went on to work with HATFIELD AND THE NORTH and various other bits of Canterbury scene that they’d come from. Lol… Lol was just amazing, a one-off. Such a shame he became so ill and recently died. He also did a lot of work with Gerry Fitzgerald; they had some albums out, and Gerry played with him in various combinations of musicians.

- But how did that combination of you and Lol come about?

I can’t remember, I must have met him somewhere – I think he may have had something to do with my husband who was at the time writing for various music magazines. It was just another thing I fell into.(Laughs.)

- Were you really called PENGUIN DUST at some point?

Yeah, that’s right. We had a song: (sings) “Oh we are known as Penguin Dust, and this it is our song. / It really isn’t very short, but then it isn’t long. / We’ll sing it in the morning, and we’ll sing it every night. / If you have a pint of Penguin Dust, you know then you’ll be all right.” It’s a very silly song but we did sing some very strange songs in PENGUIN DUST. “Stout-Hearted Men” [from "The New Moon" operetta] which is a kind of union song (sings a march in low tone): “Give me some men who are stout-hearted men”. And then Lol would do one of his strange, wonderful improvisations, and we’d do “Violets At Dawn”, but people seem to like it.

- Was that your last band before you went into family life?

More or less, yes. I did a couple more things that didn’t do very much, but I kind of gave it up, particularly when I had children, because I don’t think I could have brought up the children and be on the road.

- You could have worked from home, like from a studio.

We couldn’t afford a studio. The studio that we had was just a basement and a Revox [tape machine]. But it just didn’t seem to be the right thing to do, so I stopped doing music.

- Weren’t there times when you, say, read about Paul McCartney taking his family on tour with WINGS, and thought, “I’d love to do the same”?

No, I didn’t. The only times I thought something like this was when I did a couple of reunion concerts with FAIRPORT, at Cropredy Festival, in 1981 and 1982 or 1980 and 1981. And my children were very little: my son was three and my daughter was 9-month-old. And because I’d stopped, if only for a few years, you get out of the habit of doing live gigs, and people’s lives had moved on, so although you know who they are and what they’re doing it’s… It’s hard to describe, but I didn’t seem to fit anymore. But we did continue to go to the festival every year, and sometimes they’d sing – FAIRPORT or Iain Matthews – some song that I’d sung with them, and I’d think, “Oh, I used to sing that,” and I’d be a bit melancholic. But then I’d take the children home, walk the dog and everything returned to normal.

- But did you miss music or you were just singing around the house?

Oh, I wasn’t even singing around the house much. I’d be too busy. I kind of shut myself off from it, because I didn’t want to feel like I’d missed out, so I did village pantomime instead and sang at those a couple of times for a couple of years. That was fun.

- Wasn’t there a session with Mike Batt?

Yes, but that was before I left London. He was a friend and had done some recordings of me with his musicians , but nothing came of it, so I was left with an acetate of the song. Mike is a very top man; now he’s a deputy head of the BPI. He’s something to be reckoned with. I was talking to him the other day, as you do, ’cause we reconnected on Facebook.

Judy in 1972

- Any chance of you working together again?

I don’t think so. He’s so incredibly busy with everything he’s doing, and he likes to concentrate completely on what he’s doing, which is sensible, and he doesn’t like to diversify his concentration. I can only say that I’m here if people want to work with me, and some people do and some people don’t. And that’s all right.

- When you returned from, let’s call it so, retirement, you worked with the TALKING ELEPHANT label.

Yes. They introduce me to Marc Swordfish, and from that came “Enchanted Garden” and the two other albums, “Spindle” and “The Whorl”.

- Spindle and whorl being a part of the loom, do those two albums make a duology?

Yes. We’d done all these songs, and there was too much for one album and just about enough for two. And because Robert [Fripp] had gone to the trouble of doing a little guitar part and soundscape for one of the songs, Marc wanted to do a couple of different versions, ’cause he’s very into remixing stuff, so one of the songs, “Shining,” has a version of it, “Forever Shining,” and there’s another version again on the limited edition vinyl that we did, which, of course, nobody hears now.

- Are the titles of “Spindle” and “The Whorl” somehow related to the homespun feel of some of your songs?

No. We were just trying to think of the titles, and Marc came up with these. So I’m sorry [there's] nothing so deep. (Laughs.)

- There’s a shift between those two albums, where you sound nonchalant and spectral, and “Strangers”, where you’re being very emotional. Why so?

I think it has to do with the production more than the songs. Every single song that I’ve written – particularly with “Enchanted Garden”, “Spindle” and “The Whorl” – has something close to me in it, but Marc – because he was with ASTRALASIA, a kind of trance, dance unit – used the voice as another instrument rather than supporting the voice.

- But that made the songs very immersive.

Yes, and he also used quite a lot of treatments on my voice, which I was not terrifically happy with, but that was the way he wanted to do it. But that was all right: I was learning, I was trying out stuff that hadn’t been available when I stopped, and I was really pleased that I could actually record without the expense of going into a studio, because Marc just came up and recorded it on a laptop.с

- You covered “See Emily Play” and “I Talk To The Wind”, effectively reclaiming the latter, as you sang it and phrased it the way you did way back with GILES, GILES AND FRIPP, not like KING CRIMSON did it.

I can only sound as I do, but it was always a lovely song, and I did want to sing it again, and Marc was very keen for me to do that. And it was okay, it was good, it’s a nice version. As for “Emily”… In-between, one of the things that I had done was work with a man called Adrian Wagner who was connected to Robert Calvert from HAWKWIND and was also the person who brought the Moog synthesizer to the forefront, as he was involved with Robert Moog. He was doing a lot of synthesized music in the ’70s-’80s and was making an album of stuff for Philips or something; and he’d done this version of “See Emily Play” and wanted me to sing it, so I did and it was wonderful. But it didn’t actually go onto that album, and all those years later I’d really loved the way Adrian had arranged the song: (sings) ta-da ta-da-da-dee… [It was] much more forceful version, so I said to Marc: “Why don’t we use that as a basis for our ‘See Emily Play” and I’ll sing that again?” That’s how it came about.

- There’s also a song called “Misty Morning” that seems to hark back to both “Morning Way” and FAIRPORT CONVENTION.

Yes. “Keep your wellies and vest on when wandering in the dew…” That was sort of my version of a traditional song, a warning thing.

- One refrain from your song that keeps ringing in my ears is “I am lost for words,” but you have this knack for what Lewis Carroll called “portmanteau words” like “starcrazy”, “jazzbirds”, “harpsong”… So is that librarian in you speaking?

I don’t know… I tend to mix words together when I can’t think of another word which would describe what I want. One of the new songs I have is called “Featherdancing,” which is a sweet song about how me and my sisters, when we were little, were dancing in a room with no light on – in the moonlight, with no tune: you make it up in your head and dance bouncing off the chairs.

- Do you like to write epics like “Harpsong” or “Honeysweet”?

With “Harpsong”, Tim and Alistair said they wanted a really long song, so I wrote a song, or poem, of my life, and Tim adapted it to fit the music that they were creating: it was kind of a joint effort for words for that one… That was quite interesting.

- How hard or, vice versa, easy was it for you to create such an autobiography?

Oh, easy. Easy-peasy. All I needed was to think of something that I could hang the whole song on, and that was playing of the autoharp, because it’s my instrument, the one I played forty years ago and I’d continued to play it with almost everybody. Once I thought about it, the words came quite easily.

- When you looked back, did it bring any forgotten memories?

Um, yes and no, because Tim’s adaptation of the words wasn’t what I’d actually written, not quite what actually happened, it was one step removed what I’d done. But forgotten memories? I’m always doing that. If I’m talking to somebody like you, it’ll turn on a train of memory of something I’ve forgotten about, and the songs do that as well. But I’m trying to put myself into the song when I’m writing them so that I know… I don’t know where they’re going to go when I start them. (Laughs.) But you know when they’re finished, you absolutely do know when they’re finished. Occasionally, with some of the songs I’ve written on this new album, Alistair would say, “We do need other middle eight here. Can you write something?” and I think, “Oh, that was finished.” But then suddenly I’d think, “Ah, right, we can add this little bit in here and the words will come.” I always think that if the song is going to be a valuable one, it writes itself more or less. It’s very difficult when people want to change a line, and they would change it to something else, and I say, “Okay, I’ll change it. You can’t do that.” If the wrong word is written, it changes the whole meaning of what you’re trying to say, doesn’t it?

- As you said, “Harpsong” has been changed, but it still is your creation, and you stepped back from it to let the other performers shine alongside you. Were you aware that, while creating an ultimate selling point by having Fripp and McDonald there, you were stealing spotlight from yourself?

No, it didn’t occur to me. It didn’t strike me that it was that important. They were part of my musical life, and I wanted them to be a part of the music. There’s also Simon [Nicol] from FAIRPORT playing on it, although I didn’t have anyone from TRADER HORNE. But I don’t mind stepping back if that’s the way the music needs to be.

- Have you been in touch with Ian and Robert through all these years?

Every now and again, yes. I email them and I get a reply, which is nice. I saw Robert at the reception of the Estonian ambassador a couple of years ago. I met Toyah [Willcox, Fripp's wife] for the first time: she’s so sweet, she’s lovely. But it was nice to talk to Robert again. Musicians’ lives change so much, and we just go on, and if you’re not completely there all the time… It’s like trying to keep friends from school: you divert, and there’s only a certain amount of reference points that one has, and that’s good in some ways.

- Did they readily agree to play on your record?

Yes, they were happy to do so. Robert sent us a soundscape, and Ian recorded his bits in America, so they weren’t actually in the same place at the same time, but it was all stitched together by Alistair and Tim, so it worked really well.

- The “Strangers” American cover illustration looks like “1001 Nights” with an English flavor to me.

That’s the one by Jackie Morris, she’s a brilliant illustrator and artist. She illustrates children’s books and books by a science fantasy writer called Robin Hobb. Her work is beautiful and she kindly let me have it. She’s done one or two things for the next album but mostly I used there the pictures by our mutual friend Catherine Hyde. As for “The Strangers”, Jackie had this picture hanging around, it was already done – she didn’t do it specifically for this album but, because I had a greyhoundy type dog, I thought it was wonderful. As you may know, I tend to rescue greyhounds, so anything with a greyhound is my Favorite Thing.(Laughs.)

- Interestingly, after all these years, after FAIRPORT and HORNE, you invited another male singer, Tim Bowness, to share vocals with you.

But Tim’s such a fabulous voice! And it works well with my voice. That was the one time when I could actually choose a voice, and I was delighted that he sang with me.

- Pat Mastelotto: did he come through Fripp’s connection?

No, he came through Tim, because Tim used him on one of the NO-MAN albums, and we decided to try him when we were looking for some drumming work. The connection was nice because he was part of the current, at the time, KING CRIMSON, and Ian was part of the original band, so that was another link in this chain of people.

- Then, Simon House provided a HAWKWIND connection.

I did quite a bit of musical work with Simon, but he won’t let me use any of the stuff that we created there, no demos, but I have used one of the songs that he wrote music for on the new album. You meet people, you talk to them, you work with them and then they go away again.

- You mean “Newborn Creatures”?

No, “Newborn Creatures” was the album that I made with two people. And there was a problem right after I paid for the mastering and got everything organized; they decided to take the music away. So I’m left with an album that I can’t release.It was a horrible and very sad time. But they wrote new words for the music and released it as their own album.

Back on-stage, July 2013

- And you can write your own music to your words!

Yes, I can and I’m doing so, but it’s quite hard to actually to do that, it’s taking quite a while to get it, to be able to want to sing those words again.

- Now you’re well into your next record, aren’t you?

It’s finished. It’s ready to go, we’re just finishing off the artwork. In fact, one of the songs that was on “Newborn Creatures” is on this new album, with new music. The album is called “Flow And Change”. This time the key writer was Alistair Murphy, and I’ve used one of the songs that was created with Simon House, “Black Dog Dreams”. And I continue to work: I’m writing some stuff with Oliver Kersbergen from SLEEPYARD, who is a lovely Norwegian musician – a couple of things are going to be released in America soon – as well as with Matt Malley, the ex-bass player with COUNTING CROWS. And I’ve done some stuff with Sand Snowman. But I’ll have to see what happens, if I could find the heart to do the business side of an album at the same time as thinking about music.

- So you’re not stopping this time?

I’m sure we will start again. I’ve probably worn poor Alistair out. I never know what I’m going to do next, actually. I’ve spent my entire life waiting for something to see what turns up. And it’s usually something very interesting…

Photos from the Judy Dyble personal archives

Rock6070 interview 2009

http://www.rock6070.com/Judy.html

Judy Dyble : The following Fairport Convention

Judy Dyble in Fairport Convention is sign that Anderson was Jefferson Airplane: a great singer too quickly overshadowed by the reputation of one who succeeded him. Yet it is Judy, not Sandy Denny, who was there when Fairport Convention took off, it was with the group that she carved in 1968 an album that many fans consider the most musically rich.Often psychedelic, less oriented than those who follow traditional folk. Judy certainly immediately after leaving Fairport Convention, but it remains one of the legendary figures of the legendary training.

Who is Judy Dyble?

Judith Aileen Dyble was born on 13 February 1949 in London. Very young, she learned to play the piano and flute. At 15, she began her singing career by founding the first group, Judy and the Folkmen. They all gave a single concert in 1964. However, it allowed Judy to become familiar with the scene. Thereafter, accompanied by her sister, she was sometimes in one or other of the many London clubs where folk musicians were invited to come and perform. Sometimes he then dare to go on stage and sing there. His sister noticed the frequent presence of Ashley Hutchings in these clubs, she knew because they attended the same school. Judy thus came to know him, then that of Simon Nicol, Richard Thompson and Martin Lamble. When the four men decided to start a band, they thought it would be nice to incorporate a girl. "I guess I was the nearest of them, so they asked me to join them and I accepted," says Judy. And she continues: "I'm pretty sure Ian Matthews (who was also known as Ian MacDonald) joined us while we were recording our first album. He added voice talked to If I had a ribbon bow and harmonies of the songs I sing solo or with Richard, and everything seemed to flow naturally. The single bow Ribbon has been published, and we continued our journey by giving concerts and having a lot of fun together."Richard and Judy maintained a relationship before the formation of the company. This is probably the cause of an illness that led musicians to ask Judy to leave the group. It had to resolve to do even before the first album by Fairport Convention comes complete record shops in London. Dark rupture, certainly, but the musical adventure Judy does not stop there.

We then met another singer Ian McDonald, with whom she had an affair. He played the saxophone, flute, guitar and a million other instruments. Together they sang a few songs and decided to place an ad to find other muciciens in order to form a group. Peter Gilles replied, and met them with his brother Mike and their friend, Robert Fripp. They had recorded an album titled The cheerful Insanity of Giles Giles and Fripp. Judy and Ian went to spend some time in their apartment in Brondesbury Park and there enregistrèrent few songs with them.Then Judy and Ian parted, and Judy decided to go his own way. The musicians form shortly after King Crimson without it.

Then came a hodgepodge human-artistic Judy that led to its fourth group: Trader Horne.Attention hold on tight to the ramp is that complicated tourneboule. Judy had a friend, Soup, with whom she shared an apartment. They met the musicians of Steamhammer, Soup and fell in love with guitarist Martin Quittenton, it went well. Soup, Martin and Judy moved in together in Notting Hill. Martin then offered to work with Rod Stewart and Pete Sears. Pete himself shared an apartment with Jackie McAuley. This is how he met Judy Jackie, phew, the ah, and together they launched the adventure Trader Horne. It only last time an album.First taken under the wing of Barry Taylor, who was the manager of Steamhammer, the duo seemed to have a promising future. Concerts and TV appearances followed another, as Judy remembers that they were exhausted. Especially Jackie, which often led when Trader Horne was pongue ping from one corner to the other country. The Morning Way album was recorded and released, then came the inexplicable. While Trader Horne should occur at the Hollywood Film Festival, Judy left the party, which she apologized today. Stress, perhaps.Or desire for another existence. Judy was living with her husband, Simon Stable (Count Simon of Bedoyere his real name), a DJ and musician we may hear bongo playing on albums by Bridget St John and Ten Years After.

A break of 25 years

In 1971, Judy was still embark on a short-lived musical project he seems to exist no sound track. By her husband, she became acquainted with Lol Coxhill and Steve and Phil Miller.Together, they form a group called the Dyble & Coxhill Miller Brothers (also called Penguin Dust). They give a few concerts in Holland, then separate. And seemed to end the career of musician Judy Dyble. We now know that this decision will finally a long hiatus of nearly 25 years. 25 years during which Judy will renew with the music very occasionally. First to record a single tape, Satisfied Mind, with two guitarists way. The group named Septic Tank ("No, I do not know why. A stupid name," Judy said later humorously). Then she was invited to sing at Cropedy Festival in 1980 and 1982 ("I was terrified both times, I'm sure it was noticeable," she recalls). Outside the few artistic adventures, Judy lived like millions of other women do. She became a mother, raised two children, worked as a bookseller (the job which she was destined before going on stage). Then, in 1994, the Simon died. Sad event which suspended the time for a few years. And the children grew up, left home to go to college.

Fate then found a gap to engulf the music back into the lives of Judy. In 1997, he was asked to participate in the 30th anniversary of the festival Cropedy singing with Fairport Convention. She tells us: "I agreed without thinking. And I spent the following months biting my nails and wondering how I might escape it. The first rehearsal Woodworm was pretty awkward. I had not seen a single member of the group for 20 years, and they all continued to play music, it's been ages since I had not sung a note. I lacked training and I felt very intimidated by all these musicians became famous for. It was difficult to spread two words one after the other, and I seriously thought it was a mistake for asking me to join them. I learned then that I would go on stage with them for the warm-up gig at the Mill. Terror! I would have to do this twice! But it happened something special during this first concert. I got on the stage at rehearsal, and suddenly the years have flown. I remembered where I had to stand, how to sing. I think the others were a little surprised. While I was really scared, but happy, and when we gave our concert in the evening, everything went very smoothly. The audience was so warm, and above all, it was wonderful to sing again with Richard, Simon and Ashley. Like the good old days. "Five years later, in 2002, Judy will be invited to perform with Fairport Convention's 35th anniversary festival Cropedy again. This time, Ian Matthews is the beautiful part. Ian Judy had not seen for 30 years ...

These two concerts have been beneficial. Judy, contacted later by Marc Swordfish Astralasia group finally embark on a solo career and record with her first album in 2004: Enchanted Garden. A disk space folk surprising and enchanting, where tabla, sitar and electronic effects dress perfectly the voice of Judy, always fair and beautiful, who won in emotion over the years. Two other albums will follow in 2006: Spindle and The Whorl superb on which it takes I talk to the Wind. And finally, in 2009, Talking with Strangers album is off the real solo career Judy Dyble. Almost unanimously praised by critics, this album is a wonderful return to folk sources which more later. But up first in the interview that Judy was kind enough to grant us.

The interview

Beatrice: For your latest album, you're surrounded by Jacqui McShee of Pentangle, Celia Humphris of Trees group, Robert Fripp, Pat Mastelotto and Simon Nicol. How these collaborations are they doing? Are you all close friends?

Judy Dyble: I have known all there are at least 40 years, but not all are great friends for a long time. Simon Nicol knows Jacqui McShee, of course, since his companion, Gerry Conway is the current drummer for Fairport Convention. And, of course, Robert Fripp and Ian McDonald know, and Pat Mastelotto is now the drummer for King Crimson, so they also know. But I think overall, I am the link between all these musicians. There are some others that I have not personally met only virtually through the Internet. They all agreed to work with me because I asked them, they are all adorable.

Beatrice: Criticism of Talking with Strangers are very positive. You expected?

Judy: Well, naturally, I was hoping they were, and I am delighted to be so, but it is never a certainty, no one should ever expect anything ... I am very happy with the way whose album was allowed.

Beatrice: Is it true that you're working on a new album that could come out in 2010? Does it have a musical orientation similar to that of Talking with Strangers? With, also, prestigious collaborations?

Judy: Yes, I am currently working on two musical projects, one with Alistair Murphy and Tim Bowness, and the other with Lee Fletcher and Markus Reuter. I have no idea what it will, the only thing they have in common with Talking with Strangers is that it will be my words. Yes, there will be staff too, but I still do not know which. While the songs have not taken shape, we do not know which is most appropriate. I hope as new songs come out in 2010, we are working on.

Beatrice: In recent years, there seems to be a real resurgence of interest in folk 60s.Pentangle was reformed last year, and many young musicians cite Fairport Convention and Bert Jansch among their major influences. What do you think is the reason why the new generation discovered a passion for British folk yesterday?

Judy: I guess the reason is that their parents were those who loved these groups at the time and that they should listen to their music to their children when they were young. Thus, the young musicians were asked to listen to these old bands and appreciate their artistic sense and their songs. I'm sure there are many young people who would not know that they listen to these old things, even dead. At the same time, there are many who do and want to return to the roots of their country folk and revitalizes. This is a very exciting thing to do.

Beatrice: Let the past. The first album of Fairport Convention was more psychedelic than the following discs, less folk. Were you influenced by psychedelic rock groups at the time?Do you think it's Sandy Denny who gave this more traditional folk group orientation when she replaced you?

Judy: The first formation of Fairport Convention was not at all folky. I'd say we were more influenced by American bands such as the Byrds and the songwriters whose music came to us from the United States, as Phil Ochs, Tom Rush, Judy Collins, who not only sing their own songs, but also those of their colleagues, but so they do not make simple occasions, dressed different arrangements. And that's what Fairport Convention was also we take great songs from other musicians, and we gave them our English touch to Fairport, singular.As we all begin to compose our own songs. I guess Sandy knew the best traditional folk repertoire, but I think she wanted to write and sing his own songs. I've never talked to her.

Beatrice: Fairport Convention Joni Mitchell took over in the first album. Who had the idea of recording do not know where I stand?

Judy: Our manager at the time, Joe Boyd, Joni knew while living in America. He had some demos that he wanted to publish it in England. There we played it, and we decided that we would like to take a few.

Beatrice: Is it true that you sing in The Minotaur's Song Group Incredible String Band? Joe Boyd produced the first album of Fairport and The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter Incredible String Band. Is he the one who brought you to this collaboration? Your name does not appear on the album cover.

Judy: Yes, I sang on The Minotaur's Song, but in fact all Fairport was full choruses of this song. The reason is this: our manager, who was also the one of Incredible String Band, organized a recording session for both groups at Sound Techniques Studio. ISB recorded before us. They needed additional voices to the chorus, so they asked us to sing for them.We have not been credited because it was just an anecdotal collaboration.

Beatrice: Why did you leave Fairport Convention?

Judy: They thought my voice was not strong enough, and I guess they wanted to go forward.If I had stayed, they would not have taken the path that led to what they have done, and I would not have met the musicians with whom I worked thereafter. So this was what it was.

Beatrice: You joined King Crimson embryonic thereafter. Have you worked on a few songs with the musicians of the group before leaving? Are there songs from King Crimson that were created with you?

Judy: I met the nucleus of what would later become King Crimson Peter and Mike Giles and Robert Fripp. I went out with Ian McDonald, and we were looking for other musicians with whom to collaborate. We worked together for a while, and I sang on some demos of their songs, as well as other Ian and Pete Sinfield. Ian and I then broke up, and I decided not to continue my journey with them. Peter Giles is gone too, the remaining musicians found Greg Lake. And the rest, as they say, is history. CD The Brondesbury Tapes Giles Giles and Fripp, there are recordings made in the apartment where the three musicians lived, I sing on some songs. Robert and put my version of I talk to the wind on the album The young person's guide to King Crimson.

Beatrice: Why did you record one album with Trader Horne?

Judy: Because I left the band shortly after the recording of the first album, we did not do so on the other. I hope I can meet with Jack this year and, perhaps, give a concert with him.

Beatrice: You played with two different players with the same name: Ian McDonald. Is not this fun? Have you ever not know which one you talking about when the discussion revolved around a Ian McDonald?

Judy: The Ian Fairport was called himself MacDonald (note in a Mac) until the release of the first album of Fairport Convention. Then he changed his name to Ian M. Matthews What we About did on our holidays and, subsequently opt for Iain Matthews, the name under which it is now known. Probably because Ian McDonald of King Crimson began to make themselves known. I rarely had to ask what Ian is talking to me, but sometimes it's a bit irritating when people think that it is one and the same person.

Beatrice: What was the relationship between different groups of English folk in the 60s?Pentangle, Fairport, Trees. Were you friends or rivals instead?

Judy: Our paths crossed when we performed on the same stage. Trees began his career after my departure from Fairport Convention, so I have not rubbed shoulders with Fairport, but I probably played the same places they with Trader Horne. We did not really have time to socialize on the road. I was brought very familiar with Celia Humphris after I left Trader Horne, and we are still friends today. Jacqui McShee is a person with whom I stayed in contact, and I usually encounter at Cropedy Festival. We were not rivals, the music was different enough that it is not necessary.

Beatrice: In your opinion, what was the major difference between the English folk and American folk music in the 60s? Number of American musicians were influenced by Fred Neil. Did you know when you were part of Fairport Convention? Or was it little known in England?

Judy: A difficult question for me. I really did not have much to do with the English folk scene, if you speak of traditional folk. There was not a strict line of demarcation at the time about what you could sing or not in the folk clubs, as it seems to be the case today. Many American musicians across the ocean to play in clubs, people liked Clarence Ashley, who was a country blues banjo player, and Tom Rush and, of course, Paul Simon. But they mingled with the traditional local folk singers and songwriters who were starting, or Davy Graham, John Renbourn. And nobody seemed confused by the variety of genres that was then available. I do not think Fred Neil was really known at this time in England, not before the film Midnight Cowboy and so that people begin to discover his music Everybody's Talking.

Beatrice: What kind of music do you listen to today? What is the album you've heard most in 2009?

Judy: I do not listen to much music at the moment, and when I do, I hear strange things that few people know, like No-Man, Tuner, a kind of musical poetry. The album I've heard most of mine, to be sure it is as close as possible to my ideal. It is very rare that I listen to music when I'm working on a disc. I get too impatient to return to the mine.

Beatrice: Is there a question I forgot to ask and where you want to meet?

Judy: You did not ask me what will happen next, but I'll say it anyway ... In 2010, there will be a reissue of the album Talking with Strangers with a stunning new design, and the album will be distributed in France by Virgin Media, Scandinavia by Termo, the United States by Pied Piper Records and in Australia by Blind Faith Entertainment. In January or February, there will be the release of an EP of four tracks including three songs that were too different to be added to Talking with Strangers, and another Sand Snowman I sing. Grey october day also released as a single. And, hopefully, there will be two new albums in late 2010. And I should sing in a few festivals and I also hope, reform Trader Horne Jack McAuley time a concert.And it will be already the end of the year ...

Talking with strangers

If two of the three previous solo albums Judy Dyble were already highly attractive (Enchanted Garden and The Whorl, Spindle likely to confuse its orientation by more pop times), Talking with Strangers envelops us in a warm bubble gently from the first notes .Judy's voice, sip emotion, marries beautifully melodies that form a backdrop to the divine piano and acoustic guitar, on this very beautiful album. Jacqui McShee and Celia Humphris are singers luxury on several songs. And on the last album, Harpsong, the duration and style reminiscent of the great moments of progressive rock too distant past, Judy has the wonderful collaboration of Robert Fripp and Simon Nicol on guitars, Ian McDonald saxophone and flute, in addition to the two singers mentioned above. Also found on this disc a very successful recovery This is the Emerson Lake & Palmer life. Certainly one of the best albums of the late decade.

Beatrice

Interview with The Oxford Times abou 13/11/2014t the Armistice Pals Project

http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/leisure/music/11599916.Disarming_dynamite_f...

She was the first singer with Fairport Convention.

She was in Giles, Giles & Fripp, and was one half of cult-duo Trader Horne. Now Judy Dyble retrospects it all on a magical triple-CD set,‘Gathering The Threads’.

There’s a lot to talk through…

Judy Dyble has her own blackbird. It waits impatiently on the gutter by the kitchen, waiting for the door to open, so it can steal inside and theft a grape, or maybe two. While Judy sits by the window in a pink room, where – through the window, the crystals are dancing on the Crystal Tree in the garden. Greyhound Betty Blue lies on the floor in a tousled heap, recovering from a walk around the Teenage Wood.

‘Like the single groove of a beautiful black vinyl record, the music spins out through my life and my days…’ oozes Judy Dyble. Today, she’s ‘delighted to natter.’ But it must be strange to have journalists quizzing her cheeky questions about things she did way back in 1968…! Me? I’d be pushed to recall many details of what I was doing in 1968! ‘It is strange’ she agrees. ‘It’s amazing that I can remember anything really. Even stranger when they think they know more about what I did than I do. Yes, I’ve had that phrase ‘I think you’ll find you didn’t do-weren’t there…’ thrown at me from time to time. I just wonder whether someone was hiding in the cupboard somewhere.’

Judy Aileen Dyble’s current ‘Gathering The Threads’ 3CD-digipak is subtitled ‘Fifty Years Of Stuff’, and it’s a stash of lost gems strewn across English Folk-Rock’s most vibrant decades. There’s a twenty-page booklet too, charting her music all the way from her earliest 1964 Judy & The Folkmen home recordings of the Appalachian tune “Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies” and “Spanish Is A Lovin’ Tongue”, into her 1966 improvisations with a young Richard Thompson, then a teasing glimpse of Fairport Convention demos. There’s Giles, Giles & Fripp – but no Trader Horne, leading up to her enigmatic step back into rural Oxfordshire seclusion with her dogs. And a rich trove of her more recent solo work, in various innovative configurations.

Yes, she muses ‘vinyl records have always been a vital part of my listening ears, the records my Mum and Dad had, and listened to, from scratchy Caruso and the Student Prince. Then the singles of my teenage years, when those small black discs held the magic of the Beatles and the Stones.’ But wasn’t there ever a teen-fan phase in her native Bicester? ‘Bobby Vee was my favourite of all time’ she admits. ‘Him, and Gene Pitney. And the Crickets. Not Elvis though! My tastes were very eclectic, my sisters and I listened to Radio Luxembourg on crystal sets, and fell asleep with the headphones on, and woke up with dents in the top of our heads! We listened to trad jazz and modern jazz – the strangely wonderful timings of Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis, Pop and Country and film music and whatever anyone who bought a record would play us.’

Surely the earliest tracks on the compilation must have been done when she was… what, fifteen or sixteen? On one of those big Grundig tape-recorders on the kitchen table? ‘One of the band had a tape-recorder running at the flat where Judy & The Folkmen were messing around at Christmas in 1964. He recorded us all playing and singing, then – out of the blue, he sent it to me about six years ago. It needed to be turned into a listenable CD, but a friend of mine managed to get a passable sound out of it.’ So where did a song like “Spanish Is The Lovin’ Tongue” come from – Tom Paxton or Ian & Sylvia, the Dylan version didn’t emerge until later? ‘‘Spanish’ was one of the songs Bruce (West, of The Folkmen) taught me, along with much of Leadbelly and Doc Watson and Woody Guthrie – all the songs of those old Blues and Folk guitarists, because they were his heroes.’

Now Fairport Convention are a veritable Cropredy tradition, back then – with Ashley ‘Tiger’ Hutchings who lived ‘around the corner’ in Bounds Green, Simon Nicol and eighteen-year-old Richard Thompson on Gibson, they were as much part of the emerging counterculture as ‘It (International Times)’ itself. ‘I guess you’re aware that my late husband – Simon Stable (Simon de la Bedoyere), was a contributor to ‘It’ in the early seventies?’ she points out. ‘Those were the days of incomprehensible printings of yellow on blue. Almost unreadable it was!’ A tradition worth continuing, maybe?

‘It was an exciting time to be alive’ she enthuses. While she was still doing her ‘A’-levels, she was fronting the group and keeping the press suitably confused. The early Fairports with – first Shaun Frater, then the late Martin Lambe on drums, were frequently compared to Jefferson Airplane. Not as strange as it seems. The original folkie Airplane vocalist, Signe Anderson, did their 1966 ‘Takes Off’ album, before stepping aside. Same with Judy. Many chanteuse in the Folk-zone have that pure almost featureless vocal perfection, Judy adds a certain uncertainty, an edge of distinctive character, merging harmonies to Iain ‘Matthews’ McDonald’s lead voice on Tim Buckley’s “Morning Glory”, or on Emitt Rhodes ‘Merry-Go-Round’ composition “Time Will Show The Wiser” with Thompson’s stinging upbeat guitar. Check the clips on YouTube.

There are two 1967 Fairport Convention demos on ‘Gathering The Threads’ – a stand-out “One Sure Thing”, in a voice to stick to all your senses, and Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” (Judy sings entrancing lead on a studio version of her “Chelsea Morning” on the original LP). Then Iain would chart a no.1 with his easy-on-the-ear cover of Joni’s “Woodstock” later with his Southern Comfort. Meanwhile, Judy adds a solo 2014 ‘Live At WM Jazz’ version of the group’s debut single “If I Had A Ribbon Bow” as a bonus on the third CD, supernaturally tuned to the moon.

Was she nervous on stage in those early days, or the anticipation to going on stage? Or was it just a natural progression from playing Pub music-lounges to larger venues…? ‘Always nervous. Was then – still am. We didn’t play pubs so much with Fairport Convention, we went from church halls to hippy clubs and ‘Middle Earth’ and ‘UFO’ then to universities. And it all happened in a matter of months. There were many more small venues in those days, I think. It seems we were in the right place at the right time. But then, as now, in my case, there was no way to not go on stage, despite the nerves. I just went on stage and did it…’

There was a recent BBC4 rock-umentary about groups on 1960s tour-buses. Sonja Kristina was featured, talking about being the only girl on the road with the sweaty unhygienic guys of Curved Air. It must have been similar for Judy on those early Fairport dates? ‘Yes, I saw that documentary, my experience was very similar to what Sonja said, but we were very polite and just got on with driving around and playing. No concessions were made to me, as a girl. It was assumed that I would just get on with it. And I did.’

Coolly bespectacled, she plays recorder and she plays autoharp, between numbers she sits and knits. Joe Boyd produced their album, his ‘Witchseason’ management was also responsible for the Incredible String Band who also recorded at the same studio, so she and Richard found themselves singing back-up on “The Minotaur’s Song” on their charting ‘The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter’ (1968) album. And the group was playing live alongside Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd – she includes a previously unissued 1982 demo of her doing “See Emily Play” on CD2.

Maybe impressions were stronger back then because the events were significant? Or maybe that’s just hindsight, perhaps they didn’t seem significant at the time? Did she feel she was caught up in something amazing? ‘It was certainly fascinating, the people we met and interacted with were quite extraordinary, but to be honest, everything happened so quickly and we were rushing around the country, there wasn’t really time to sit back and think about what was happening, or how it must appear to others.’

From the start, the Fairports were a shifting constellation. And after recording their first group album together Judy was already moving into her next phase. Peter & Michael Giles had picked up virtuoso guitarist Robert Fripp through a ‘Melody Maker’ small-ad, to form Giles, Giles & Fripp. Signed to Deram they add Judy, and recruit multi-instrumentalist (a different) Ian McDonald. They rehearse and record together on a Revox machine. Four tracks – including Peter Sinfield’s ethereal “Under The Sky”, originally rejected by Deram, was issued as a 1992 bonus track on their ‘The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles And Fripp’ CD.

With Fripp’s metamorphosis into King Crimson some of the rehearsal tracks were carried over. Judy updates her own version of one of them, “I Talk To The Wind” on CD2. To further complicate the history, there’s a Judy-vocal version on the compilation‘A Young Person’s Guide To King Crimson’ (1976), a track which first saw light on the Giles, Giles & Fripp ‘The Brondesbury Tapes’ (1968), from which Judy’s smooth Prog-Jazz “Make It Today” is also lifted. Meanwhile, although Ian stayed with Crimson, she didn’t. Yet they’d work together again much later, on Judy’s 2009 ‘Talking With Strangers’ album.

Many of the physical details of who did what and when are now on the internet, although they’re not always correct. There’s even some web-confusion concerning the two ‘Ian McDonalds’. ‘Yes, no matter how often I say they weren’t the same person the lazier people never bother to check, they just use the first bit they find. Really frustrating when this kind of idiotic info appears on a CD sleeve-note, as it did with the ‘Esoteric’ Trader Horne reissue. Grrr…!’ She’d linked up with Jackie McAuley, formerly of Them, for Trader Horne, yet that 2008 ‘Esoteric’ reissue of the duo’s only LP, ‘Morning Way’ (with two formerly singles-only bonus tracks) makes a nice package… despite the sleeve-note error!

‘Actually, the re-mastering of Trader Horne was non-existent on that re-issue, apart from compressing the sound and making it louder. But I had no control over that.’Despite – or maybe because of this recent reissue attention, and a reactivation of the duo for new live dates, there’s no Trader Horne on the CDs.

Meanwhile, she became – to quote “One Sure Thing”, ‘a leaf without a tree’.

— 0 —

Judy Dyble has her own blackbird. Or, from another skewed perspective, maybe the blackbird has her? She watches its ‘flappingness’.

Today, she’s ‘delighted to natter. Because other people’s questions always seem to elicit things I have forgotten.’ The only problem I forsee is one of interface. ‘I assume iChat is something to do with iPhones or something similar?’ she queries. ‘As you might be able to tell, I don’t have it! I have an ancient mobile – which just does texts and calls, and not much else. But I do have Skype if that’s a help…’ Yes, that’s great. ‘…but no video cam! Old-fashioned moi. A bit of a Luddite. I usually do interviews by email or phone, or meet up somewhere if that’s convenient…?’

Photos on her website show her now. With round blue-tint spectacles. Judy in disguise, with glasses. She’s a mum-of-two and grandmother of two (Freya Boatchild and Eleanor Spellcaster). In the seventies she married, stepped back from music, and ran a cassette-duplicating business in Launton. Although she did the Cropredy Festival thing, rejoining the Fairports onstage for anniversary gigs (she’s there doing “Jack O’Diamonds” on the 1999 ‘The Cropredy Box’). But it was dance-group Astralasia – using samples of her voice, which lured her back. Subsequent work, scattered across limited editions and collaborative efforts, reveal Judy as an innovative experimentalist edging into ambient-jazz and world-music even where the roots remain, both elements coming together in her reworking of “One Sure Thing” with the Conspirators. ‘I was never a ‘sensible Folkie’’ she agrees, ‘if indeed, I was ever a ‘proper Folkie.’

And there’s six solo albums, count them! I wonder how her onstage mindset back then, compares to her ‘come-back’ to performing now…? Is it different…? Is it more considered and thought-through now…? Is it more relaxed…? ‘No, more likely it’s exactly the same as then, even though I have the comfort of a superb band (The Perfect Strangers) behind me. There’s still that desire to run away before I go on. But something won’t let me do that. My sense of honour won’t let me let people down who have travelled to hear me sing, or let down the band who have come to accompany me. So I go on stage, and open my mouth, and hope something listenable comes out. First song is usually a bit rubbish, but after that it’s OK.’

The ‘Gathering The Threads’ set must be kind-of like browsing a Family Photo-album, each track sparking off different unique memories and reactions. ‘It is indeed, that is what it was supposed to do. Dave Thompson, who did the sleeve-notes, is now co-writing my biography because he now knows more about my life than I do.’

Unlike the Trader Horne re-issue, she actually had control over the selection of tracks… within the limits of copyright, so it’s very much a personal project. ‘Oh yes. It really was everything that I could find that I’d had something to do with. Some released officially, some released privately, and some that were just recorded and not used. The other reason for not wanting to licence Fairport Convention or Trader Horn material was really that they had been released and re-released so many times officially on compilations etc, that I felt they were over-used. Plus, if I had put those tracks on, the whole anthology would have been unwieldy. I wanted to have the rare and unknown, and un- and under-released stuff. And, as you say, I had control, so I could do what I wanted… Mwah-ahahah (evil chuckle)…’

The standard answer for an artist is to claim that ‘all my albums/ songs are my children, and it’s impossible to choose one over the other’, but are there tracks on ‘Gathering The Threads’ – especially from the ‘second career phase’ material, which has a special resonance or affection? ‘Yes, indeed there are. “Wintersong” is definitely one. All my songs are personal, they all have a relevancy to my life when I wrote them, and in turn they do seem to have some sort of resonance for many people who hear them.Possibly – and I hope, because they are honest, but not so personal that people can see their own lives mirrored in them. “Wintersong” was written about the loss of someone dearly beloved, but knowing that as long as they remain in memory, they are never quite gone.’

That song came from her ‘Flow And Change’ album, which looks back to her childhood with her sisters on “Featherdancing”, and then into the future with her first granddaughter on “Beautiful Child”, implying an element of ‘flow and change’ in the genetic continuity that this represents. ‘That’s a nice thing to say’ she concedes, ‘and I think you are right.’

Despite her professed techno-primitivism, these new-phase albums use ‘cut-&-paste’ computer technology, so all the musicians credited on the liner notes aren’t necessarily present in the studio at the same time. Like Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney weren’t actually physically together when they did those ‘duets’ on ‘Thriller’…! ‘All done that way, yes, and seamlessly joined together. Bits were recorded in Alistair (Murphy)’s tiny studio shed, bits recorded here, and the rest sent by the internet (via ‘Myspace’) and mixed in.’

It’s amazing to consider that Judy started out recording with Joe Boyd at Chelsea Sound Techniques on… what would it have been – eight-track? yet now she’s working in this new-age way. Which, in a sense is the fulfilment of the old hippie idea of being both high-tech and a ‘cottage industry’ at one and the same time. ‘Yes, it is extraordinary’ she considers. ‘I have been interviewed on this exact subject for an academic paper, having been recorded on analogue equipment, then returning to music by recording digitally.’ She pauses to consider. ‘Much more relaxing, digitally.’

BY ANDREW DARLINGTON

——————————————————-

JUDY DYBLE: THE SECOND PHASE DISCOGRAPHY

‘GATHERING THE THREADS’ (Starcrazy)
CD 1:
1. ‘Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies’ – Judy & The Folkmen home recording, 1964 
2. ‘Spanish Is A Lovin’ Tongue’ – Judy & The Folkmen home recording, 1964 
3. ‘Improvisation’ – Judy Dyble and Richard Thompson edited home recording, 1966 
4. ‘Both Sides Now’ – previously unissued Fairport Convention demo, 1967 
5. ‘One Sure Thing’ – previously unissued Fairport Convention demo, 1967 
6. ‘Make It Today’ – Giles Giles & Fripp, 1968 
7. ‘Passages Of Time’ – Giles Giles & Fripp, 1968 
8. ‘Under The Sky’ – Giles Giles & Fripp, 1968 
9. ‘Murder’ – Giles Giles & Fripp, 1968 
10. ‘May Four’ – GF Fitzgerald, 1970 
11. ‘Better Side Of Me’ – unissued baroque-Pop demo of Marianne ‘Jade’ Segal’s song with Mike Batt, 1972 
12. ‘ Hear A Song’ – previously unissued demo, 1973 
13. ‘Satisfied Mind’ – cassingle, 1974 
14. ‘See Emily Play’ – previously unissued demo with Adrian Wagner, 1982 
15. ‘Mirror Master’ – advert for cassette tape by Judy and husband Simon Stable, 1982

CD 2:
16. ‘Going Home’ – from Judy’s CD ‘Enchanted Garden’, 2004 
17. ‘Rivers Flow’ – from Judy’s CD ‘Enchanted Garden’, 2004
18. ‘Star Crazy’ – from Judy’s CD ‘Enchanted Garden’, 2004
19. ‘Lost In Fingest’ – from Judy’s CD ‘Spindle’, 2006 
20. ‘Shining’ – from Judy’s CD ‘Spindle’, 2006 
21. ‘I Talk To The Wind’ – from Judy’s CD ‘The Whorl’, 2006 
22. ‘Seventh Whorl’ – from Judy’s CD ‘The Whorl’, 2006 
23. ‘In The Moment’ – previously unissued from Electronic Voice Phenomena ft. JD, 2007 
24. ‘Little No-One’ – previously unissued demo from ‘Songs From The Blue House’, 2007 
25. ‘One Sure Thing’ – single by The Conspirators ft. JD, 2008 
26. ‘Noh Kro Poh’ – previously unissued by Joxfield Project ft. JD, 2008 
27. ‘Looking Glass’ – with Colin Harper from ‘Freedom & The Dream Penguin’, 2008 
28. ‘Every Sentimental Moment’ – single by King’s Cross, 2009 
29. ‘Still Shining’ – from Judy’s vinyl edition of ‘Songs From Spindle & The Whorl’, 2006

CD3:
30. ‘C’est La Vie’ – Greg Lake’s song from Judy’s CD ‘Talking With Strangers’, 2009 
31. ‘Talking With Strangers’ – from Judy’s CD ‘Talking With Strangers’, 2009
32. ‘Waiting’ – from vinyl picture-disc ‘Fragile’, 2010 
33. ‘Sparkling’ – from vinyl picture-disc ‘Fragile’, 2010 
34. ‘Fragile’ – from vinyl picture-disc ‘Fragile’, 2010 
35. ‘An Evening In The Fall’ – by Sand Snowman from ‘Nostalgia Ever After’, 2010 
36. ‘Wintersong’ – from Judy’s CD ‘Flow And Change’, 2013 
37. ‘Weather Changes’ – by Dodson & Fogg from ‘Dodson And Fogg’, 2012 
38. ‘Me And The City’ – by Sand Snowman from ‘Sleepers Hide & Seek’, 2013 
39. ‘All The Faces Of The Crowd’ – by Sand Snowman from ‘Sleepers Hide & Seek’, 2013 
40. ‘Relentless’ – by Thee Faction from ‘Songs To Remind The Class etc’, 2013 
41. ‘The Blue Barracuda’ – by Füxa from ‘Dirty D’, 2013 
42. ‘Satellite Calling’ – by Sleepyard from ‘Black Sails’, 2014 
43. ‘Rainy Day Vibrations’ – by Sleepyard from ‘Black Sails’, 2014 
44. ‘Song Of The Surf’ – previously unissued, 2014 
45. ‘Take Me Dancing’ – previously unissued, 2014  
46. ‘RadioWaves’ – previously unissued duet with Jackie McAuley, 2014 
47. ‘Jenny May’ – Trader Horne ‘Morning Way’ song from ‘Live At WM Jazz’, 2014 
48. ‘If I Had A Ribbon Bow’ – Judy’s Fairport Convention song from ‘Live At WM Jazz’, 2014

‘ENCHANTED GARDEN’ (Talking Elephant, September 2004) Hawkwind/High Tide Simon House adds violin to this reverby New Agey album, with Astralasia’s Marc Swordfish programming

‘SPINDLE’ (Talking Elephant, March 2006) opens with ‘See Emily Play’, produced by Marc Swordfish – who co-wrote the songs with Judy, incorporating New Age trance-beats, and features Robert Fripp soundscaping ‘Shining’, and banjo-player Dave ‘Doc Mahone’ Russell

‘THE WHORL’ (Talking Elephant, July 2006) recorded in Launton and ‘The Manor’, nine tracks including her updated version of ‘I Talk To The Wind’, plus ‘Seventh Whorl’ and ‘Forever Shining’ with Simon House, Robert Fripp, Pete Sinfield, Phoebe Thomasson and Giles Bolton

‘TALKING WITH STRANGERS’ (Fixit Records, August 2009) ‘after three decades away from the studio, and assisted by luminaries from both her earlier career (Robert Fripp and Simon Nicol) and the contemporary scene… isn’t trad, weird or, in any sense of the word, fiddly. Nor, as might be feared, is it twee, or so tasteful as to have no savour at all. Rather, it is quietly sweetly ambitious, ornate and atmospheric, and a pleasant surprise’ (‘Mail On Sunday’), recorded with Myspace internet participation of musicians from Texas (drums), flute (New York), Tim Bowness, and voices (France and London). Includes 19-minute Prog-suite ‘Harpsong’, plus ‘Neverknowing” and ‘In The Silence’ with the lyric ‘it was always meant to be’ exhaled like a deep breath. Promoted by a 10 August performance at the Barbican

‘FRAGILE’ (Brilliant Records, January 2011) all three tracks from this EP collected onto ‘Gathering The Threads’

‘FLOW AND CHANGE’ (Gonzo Multimedia HST150CD, July 2013) opens with ‘Black Dog Dreams’ – ‘the creatures of legend and lie’, co-written with Hawkwind Simon House, with lap-steel from Mike Mooney (Echo & Bunnymen). Producer Alistair Murphy using computer-mix to draw geographically diverse elements together. ‘Sisterhood Of Ruralists’ celebrates the arts-collective responsible for the cover-art. ‘Featherdancing’ looks back to Judy’s childhood with her two sisters, while ‘Beautiful Child (Freya’s Song)’ looks to the future, dedicated to her granddaughter. ‘In the flow and change of life from my earliest musical beginnings… through the amazing feeling of holding a copy of my own singing on an LP in the sixties and seventies and not quite believing they were really real… to the present day of the issuing of my newest release Flow and Change’

‘LIVE AT WM JAZZ’ (Cromerzone, August 2014)

By Andrew Darlington

View all posts by Andrew →

This entry was posted on 21 May, 2015 in homepage and tagged Andy Darlington, Fairport Convention, folk music, Gathering the Threads, Giles Giles and Fripp, Judy Dyble,Trader Horne. Bookmark the permalink.

Published on Mon, 03/12/2012 - 14:56