Twenty-Seven Years on the Bus
by Steve Winick
Part 4
Like a character from one of Bob Johnson's ballads, Steeleye Span did not stay dead for long. Two years after the final break-up, the band was back again, this time with the stable lineup that had recorded the classic mid-seventies albums: Maddy Prior, Tim Hart, Rick Kemp, Peter Knight, Bob Johnson and Nigel Pegrum. "They asked us to make an album," Prior recalls, "and we got on so well, we thought we'd tour."
The album in question, Sails of Silver (1981), exemplifies the incertitude that characterized the band through the 1980s. It contains only one traditional song, the rest of the material having been written by the group. The unfamiliar material and slick production values both contribute to the feeling that this is not a Steeleye album at all. Prior explains, "Because we'd all kind of gone in different directions, all doing different things, with different ideas, that certainty that we'd had before, we'd lost. We were so in disarray, and we didn't have the material we were confident with. So [producer Gus Dudgeon] had a lot more input, and I think that's why it sounds very sweet and rounded and nothing offensive in it, you know. And that wasn't what we were known for, and it isn't what we do, what we're good at." Still, she insists, it's not a bad album, really. "I actually think it's quite a jolly album. And very accessible."
Despite the almost complete absence of traditional material from Sails of Silver, the album that inspired Steeleye's reunion, their subsequent tours included many of Steeleye's old favorites, songs like "Little Sir Hugh," "Thomas the Rhymer," "Alison Gross" and, of course, "All Around my Hat." One live album, available only in Australia, documents the sound and repertoire of this era's Steeleye Span.
During the period of the initial breakup, and for years thereafter, all the members of Steeleye pursued other interests. Prior and Kemp both produced solo work, Prior's being particularly abundant; most importantly, they raised their children. Hart made some solo albums and played music on his own for a while. He left the group in 1984, was a rock manager for a while, and ultimately moved away to Gomera, in the Canary Islands. Pegrum was a record and film producer. Knight spent a few seasons fishing in the English Channel and found himself more and more drawn to improvisational music. He, too, has released a solo recording, An Ancient Cause (1991). Johnson never had a solo music career, because, he says, "Everything I was doing worked perfectly well in Steeleye Span! It just so happens it did. There was Peter playing and Maddy singing, and what more could I want?" As a result, he had perhaps the broadest range of vocational experiences; he operated a restaurant for a while, and later earned a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Psychology, winding up as a vocational counselor. "It was mind-boggling, really," he says. "There I found myself, with a suit and a shirt and a tie on and a briefcase with all my notes in, getting on a bus and going to work!" A very different sort of bus than he was used to, to be sure!
Years passed, during which the members of Steeleye toured regularly once or twice a year and then returned home to their lives, their jobs or their other musical projects. They didn't arrange much new material, and they went five years without making a studio record. When an album of new material did come out, 1986's Back in Line, it was disappointing for many of Steeleye's fans. As with Sails of Silver, there is very little traditional music on it. But for a couple of Johnson's more forgettable ballad adaptations, the album is made up of historical songs written by the band members. Prior and Kemp, for example, had moved to the Scottish borders and had developed a fascination with Robert the Bruce; hence, three songs about the Bruce on Back in Line. Although several of the songs are good, the album is one of their weakest.
In trying to explain the slick but insubstantial feel of the album, Prior suggests that they were bamboozled by 1980s production values. "I quite often think we fell in love with the sounds and lost the point." More importantly, the performances on Back in Line are decidedly lackluster. Clearly, there was a big hole in the band where Tim Hart used to be, and the keyboard work of Vince Cross was no replacement for Hart's voice and acoustic instruments.
As the band continued to drift, Rick Kemp quit for a variety of reasons including a repetitive strain injury to the shoulder. There followed several years in which Steeleye brought in session men to play bass, unready to perform new material or to record. Then came 1989, which was Steeleye's 20th anniversary year. Clearly, some celebratory tours and an album project had to be done. Little did anyone know, it was to be the beginning of a resurgence in the band's energy and conviction.
Enter Tim Harries, a young bass player who knew Pegrum. Harries was just what the band needed, fresh blood, youthful energy, and a kick-ass musician to boot. A self-taught rock bassist since the age of nine, Harries also went to university and a conservatory and learned piano and classical double bass. After finishing his training, he had spent several years living the anonymous life of most professional musicians: pit orchestras for musicals, symphonic dates, chamber music ensembles, weddings and whatever else came along. In 1989, opportunity knocked twice, and Harries answered. First he was asked to join Bill Bruford's Earthworks, which he promptly did. A bit later Steeleye approached him. "They ended up with about two weeks before a tour, and they were desperate for a bass player," he says, modestly. "So I joined the band purely because there wasn't any choice. They had to have somebody!"
The lineup featuring Harries and Pegrum recorded one album, 1989's Tempted and Tried. It was much better--or at least much more Steeleye--than the other 1980s albums, with more focus on traditional songs with a folky sound. Johnson's supernatural ballads were back as well, including a version of "The Cruel Mother." Even the original songs, mostly written by Knight, treated folkloric themes or commented on traditional culture; one of the most successful of these, "Seagull," is about the popular English game of shove-penny. Where sound was concerned, Johnson filled in the Tim Hart gap, playing acoustic guitars as well as his usual electric. Steeleye's fans quickly expressed relief at an album they could sink their teeth into, and the group's star began to rise again.
Very soon after Tempted and Tried, Nigel Pegrum left the band and moved to Australia for personal reasons. His replacement was Liam Genockey, an Irish drummer who had played for years with Peter Knight in a band led by saxophonist Trevor Watts. Among Genockey's first appearances with the band was the Twentieth Anniversary Celebration tour in September 1989; one concert on this tour was filmed and released on video.
Genockey says he comes from a "rock and roll, blues background," but that he has played a lot of free-form jazz as well. In addition to Steeleye Span, he plays in a blues trio called Buick Six, and in Irish singer Paul Brady's band. He has been an active session musician on the British and Irish rock and roll scenes, and has played with folk-rock legends Richard and Linda Thompson. He has also played African drums, in several groups that featured drummers from Ghana. Unlike many drummers in "ethnic" or "folk" music, he does not surround himself with dozens of percussion instruments that he uses once a night. At the same time, he is not a "straight" rock drummer like Pegrum. Instead, he hits, brushes and rubs every surface, every skin, every rim and cymbal of his standard trap kit, increasing his sound palette and the band's versatility. In the course of any concert, he can be heard rubbing the cymbals to produce a high-pitched pure tone, or drumming for a while on the sides of a drum rather than the head. Little things, perhaps, but they add a lot to Steeleye's sound.
Both as the rhythm section and as the "new boys," Harries and Genockey naturally formed a kind of unit within Steeleye. It was important that both were musical explorers, eager for new challenges. "Once Liam joined," Harries says, "we managed to start off on some sort of process, some sort of development."
Prior agrees: "I don't think I really re-engaged with Steeleye for quite a long time. When Liam and Tim really started to get the hang of it, they gave us the confidence to recognize what it was that we do."
Genockey translates: "They got a good kick up the arse!"
What followed was a period in which Steeleye Span deepened their commitment to traditional songs while experimenting with new sounds. The results of these changes can be heard on the band's 1992 live album Tonight's the Night, which improved on Tempted and Tried and made it clear that Steeleye was ready for the 90s.
Some of Steeleye's best songs resurfaced in the repertoire, re-thought with the new band in mind. More importantly, new arrangements for traditional material became better and bolder. An example is Johnson's approach to "Tam Lin," one of the greatest British ballads. Having read that the legend of Tam Lin was known in eastern Europe, Johnson decided to use Bulgarian melodies instead of English ones. He found three completely separate traditional tunes from Bulgaria and crafted a long and haunting arrangement for the song, more ambitious than anything since Commoners Crown, and more inspiring as well.
In the midst of this period of growth, the band suffered another setback, and once again managed to turn it to their advantage. In 1993 Prior developed voice problems. As with many aging singers, her voice began to change in register and became unpredictable. Her husband suggested a solution: call up Gay Woods and ask her to join the band again. "People do seem to come in and out of Steeleye," Prior says, recalling the analogy of the bus. "There's been a few people who've been in, gone out, come back in. And so it didn't seem odd. It was the most sensible thing for me to do."
As luck would have it, Woods had recently begun to sing traditional songs again. She and Terry split up in the late 1970s, largely because she thought folk club audiences were miserable, depressing and judgmental, and wanted to try her hand at rock music. After a few years with a rock band called Auto Da Fé, she quit performing to have a baby, and studied for a diploma in Jungian Psychology. But in January 1994, the folk world knocked on her door. "I got offered two gigs in a folk club," she recounts. "So I said, 'aaah, I'll take them,' you know? I did some old traditional songs. Like 'The Lowlands of Holland,' and 'The Trees They Are So High,' and 'Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies,' some of my real favorites. And they were lovely. It was nice just to stand up and see could I sing again." She was primed and ready for Steeleye Span.
Soon after Woods rejoined the band in 1994, Steeleye Span marked its twenty-fifth anniversary with a mighty reunion concert featuring everyone who had ever played in Steeleye, minus Terry Woods. Billed as "Steeleye Span: The Journey," it was quite a festive occasion, and gave latter-day fans the chance to see Hutchings, Carthy, and Hart in the context of Steeleye Span. Gay Woods, who had not seen Hutchings at all in the twenty-five years since quitting the band, enjoyed it immensely. "It was great to see all those people again, mindblowing!" Carthy agrees. "Fabulous, Fantastic! Brilliant!" he enthuses. "We got four hours rehearsal each band, and then we had to go and do it, and it really was a case of, as they say in Yorkshire, shit or bust."
Since that historic concert, Steeleye has remained active. Even though Prior's voice is settled back to normal, Gay Woods has become a permanent member. This gives them additional versatility, introducing not only the possibility of female harmonies, but also Woods's extraordinary voice and large repertoire of songs. Their new album, called Time (1996), clearly shows Woods's influence in songs like "The Water is Wide," "Go From My Window," and a tongue-in-cheek "Old Maid in the Garret," which was Sweeney's Men's first hit in 1967. As Knight says, "Gay's voice is extraordinary, and has added a huge dimension to the band." Time is clearly Steeleye's best studio abum in more than twenty years, showing that they're more than ready to move forward with traditional music once again.
What changes lie in the future for Steeleye Span? The band members are hesitant to discuss specific changes, except to say that, in Knight's words, "something is looming." It's hard to predict the ways in which Steeleye Span will change. The band has always struggled with the inertia that comes of being democratic; as Prior points out, democracy "means that everybody has an opinion, and it's got to be taken into account. You have the final veto of saying no. So a lot of stuff doesn't happen, more than does happen." When there's no one driving, the bus tends to stall, too.
Still, generalizations are possible. For Knight, the future involves striking a more perfect balance between traditional music and improvisation. For Genocky it means trying their hands at more material, playing longer sets and more challenging songs. For Johnson and Prior, whose love of traditional songs has never dimmed, it primarily means a search for new material to adapt.
"We don't ever actually have a plan," Prior confesses. "Whatever the material does, that's where we go. Bob comes in with an arrangement, but even that gets adapted. Is that right, Bob?"
"What?" Johnson asks, suddenly guilty. "I didn't touch her!"
Prior rolls her eyes, laughing. "But of course, sometimes everybody's got a really clear idea of what's going on!"
by Steve Winick
Part 4
Like a character from one of Bob Johnson's ballads, Steeleye Span did not stay dead for long. Two years after the final break-up, the band was back again, this time with the stable lineup that had recorded the classic mid-seventies albums: Maddy Prior, Tim Hart, Rick Kemp, Peter Knight, Bob Johnson and Nigel Pegrum. "They asked us to make an album," Prior recalls, "and we got on so well, we thought we'd tour."
The album in question, Sails of Silver (1981), exemplifies the incertitude that characterized the band through the 1980s. It contains only one traditional song, the rest of the material having been written by the group. The unfamiliar material and slick production values both contribute to the feeling that this is not a Steeleye album at all. Prior explains, "Because we'd all kind of gone in different directions, all doing different things, with different ideas, that certainty that we'd had before, we'd lost. We were so in disarray, and we didn't have the material we were confident with. So [producer Gus Dudgeon] had a lot more input, and I think that's why it sounds very sweet and rounded and nothing offensive in it, you know. And that wasn't what we were known for, and it isn't what we do, what we're good at." Still, she insists, it's not a bad album, really. "I actually think it's quite a jolly album. And very accessible."Despite the almost complete absence of traditional material from Sails of Silver, the album that inspired Steeleye's reunion, their subsequent tours included many of Steeleye's old favorites, songs like "Little Sir Hugh," "Thomas the Rhymer," "Alison Gross" and, of course, "All Around my Hat." One live album, available only in Australia, documents the sound and repertoire of this era's Steeleye Span.
During the period of the initial breakup, and for years thereafter, all the members of Steeleye pursued other interests. Prior and Kemp both produced solo work, Prior's being particularly abundant; most importantly, they raised their children. Hart made some solo albums and played music on his own for a while. He left the group in 1984, was a rock manager for a while, and ultimately moved away to Gomera, in the Canary Islands. Pegrum was a record and film producer. Knight spent a few seasons fishing in the English Channel and found himself more and more drawn to improvisational music. He, too, has released a solo recording, An Ancient Cause (1991). Johnson never had a solo music career, because, he says, "Everything I was doing worked perfectly well in Steeleye Span! It just so happens it did. There was Peter playing and Maddy singing, and what more could I want?" As a result, he had perhaps the broadest range of vocational experiences; he operated a restaurant for a while, and later earned a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Psychology, winding up as a vocational counselor. "It was mind-boggling, really," he says. "There I found myself, with a suit and a shirt and a tie on and a briefcase with all my notes in, getting on a bus and going to work!" A very different sort of bus than he was used to, to be sure!
Years passed, during which the members of Steeleye toured regularly once or twice a year and then returned home to their lives, their jobs or their other musical projects. They didn't arrange much new material, and they went five years without making a studio record. When an album of new material did come out, 1986's Back in Line, it was disappointing for many of Steeleye's fans. As with Sails of Silver, there is very little traditional music on it. But for a couple of Johnson's more forgettable ballad adaptations, the album is made up of historical songs written by the band members. Prior and Kemp, for example, had moved to the Scottish borders and had developed a fascination with Robert the Bruce; hence, three songs about the Bruce on Back in Line. Although several of the songs are good, the album is one of their weakest.In trying to explain the slick but insubstantial feel of the album, Prior suggests that they were bamboozled by 1980s production values. "I quite often think we fell in love with the sounds and lost the point." More importantly, the performances on Back in Line are decidedly lackluster. Clearly, there was a big hole in the band where Tim Hart used to be, and the keyboard work of Vince Cross was no replacement for Hart's voice and acoustic instruments.
As the band continued to drift, Rick Kemp quit for a variety of reasons including a repetitive strain injury to the shoulder. There followed several years in which Steeleye brought in session men to play bass, unready to perform new material or to record. Then came 1989, which was Steeleye's 20th anniversary year. Clearly, some celebratory tours and an album project had to be done. Little did anyone know, it was to be the beginning of a resurgence in the band's energy and conviction.Enter Tim Harries, a young bass player who knew Pegrum. Harries was just what the band needed, fresh blood, youthful energy, and a kick-ass musician to boot. A self-taught rock bassist since the age of nine, Harries also went to university and a conservatory and learned piano and classical double bass. After finishing his training, he had spent several years living the anonymous life of most professional musicians: pit orchestras for musicals, symphonic dates, chamber music ensembles, weddings and whatever else came along. In 1989, opportunity knocked twice, and Harries answered. First he was asked to join Bill Bruford's Earthworks, which he promptly did. A bit later Steeleye approached him. "They ended up with about two weeks before a tour, and they were desperate for a bass player," he says, modestly. "So I joined the band purely because there wasn't any choice. They had to have somebody!"
The lineup featuring Harries and Pegrum recorded one album, 1989's Tempted and Tried. It was much better--or at least much more Steeleye--than the other 1980s albums, with more focus on traditional songs with a folky sound. Johnson's supernatural ballads were back as well, including a version of "The Cruel Mother." Even the original songs, mostly written by Knight, treated folkloric themes or commented on traditional culture; one of the most successful of these, "Seagull," is about the popular English game of shove-penny. Where sound was concerned, Johnson filled in the Tim Hart gap, playing acoustic guitars as well as his usual electric. Steeleye's fans quickly expressed relief at an album they could sink their teeth into, and the group's star began to rise again.Very soon after Tempted and Tried, Nigel Pegrum left the band and moved to Australia for personal reasons. His replacement was Liam Genockey, an Irish drummer who had played for years with Peter Knight in a band led by saxophonist Trevor Watts. Among Genockey's first appearances with the band was the Twentieth Anniversary Celebration tour in September 1989; one concert on this tour was filmed and released on video.
Genockey says he comes from a "rock and roll, blues background," but that he has played a lot of free-form jazz as well. In addition to Steeleye Span, he plays in a blues trio called Buick Six, and in Irish singer Paul Brady's band. He has been an active session musician on the British and Irish rock and roll scenes, and has played with folk-rock legends Richard and Linda Thompson. He has also played African drums, in several groups that featured drummers from Ghana. Unlike many drummers in "ethnic" or "folk" music, he does not surround himself with dozens of percussion instruments that he uses once a night. At the same time, he is not a "straight" rock drummer like Pegrum. Instead, he hits, brushes and rubs every surface, every skin, every rim and cymbal of his standard trap kit, increasing his sound palette and the band's versatility. In the course of any concert, he can be heard rubbing the cymbals to produce a high-pitched pure tone, or drumming for a while on the sides of a drum rather than the head. Little things, perhaps, but they add a lot to Steeleye's sound.Both as the rhythm section and as the "new boys," Harries and Genockey naturally formed a kind of unit within Steeleye. It was important that both were musical explorers, eager for new challenges. "Once Liam joined," Harries says, "we managed to start off on some sort of process, some sort of development."
Prior agrees: "I don't think I really re-engaged with Steeleye for quite a long time. When Liam and Tim really started to get the hang of it, they gave us the confidence to recognize what it was that we do."Genockey translates: "They got a good kick up the arse!"
What followed was a period in which Steeleye Span deepened their commitment to traditional songs while experimenting with new sounds. The results of these changes can be heard on the band's 1992 live album Tonight's the Night, which improved on Tempted and Tried and made it clear that Steeleye was ready for the 90s.
Some of Steeleye's best songs resurfaced in the repertoire, re-thought with the new band in mind. More importantly, new arrangements for traditional material became better and bolder. An example is Johnson's approach to "Tam Lin," one of the greatest British ballads. Having read that the legend of Tam Lin was known in eastern Europe, Johnson decided to use Bulgarian melodies instead of English ones. He found three completely separate traditional tunes from Bulgaria and crafted a long and haunting arrangement for the song, more ambitious than anything since Commoners Crown, and more inspiring as well.
In the midst of this period of growth, the band suffered another setback, and once again managed to turn it to their advantage. In 1993 Prior developed voice problems. As with many aging singers, her voice began to change in register and became unpredictable. Her husband suggested a solution: call up Gay Woods and ask her to join the band again. "People do seem to come in and out of Steeleye," Prior says, recalling the analogy of the bus. "There's been a few people who've been in, gone out, come back in. And so it didn't seem odd. It was the most sensible thing for me to do."As luck would have it, Woods had recently begun to sing traditional songs again. She and Terry split up in the late 1970s, largely because she thought folk club audiences were miserable, depressing and judgmental, and wanted to try her hand at rock music. After a few years with a rock band called Auto Da Fé, she quit performing to have a baby, and studied for a diploma in Jungian Psychology. But in January 1994, the folk world knocked on her door. "I got offered two gigs in a folk club," she recounts. "So I said, 'aaah, I'll take them,' you know? I did some old traditional songs. Like 'The Lowlands of Holland,' and 'The Trees They Are So High,' and 'Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies,' some of my real favorites. And they were lovely. It was nice just to stand up and see could I sing again." She was primed and ready for Steeleye Span.
Soon after Woods rejoined the band in 1994, Steeleye Span marked its twenty-fifth anniversary with a mighty reunion concert featuring everyone who had ever played in Steeleye, minus Terry Woods. Billed as "Steeleye Span: The Journey," it was quite a festive occasion, and gave latter-day fans the chance to see Hutchings, Carthy, and Hart in the context of Steeleye Span. Gay Woods, who had not seen Hutchings at all in the twenty-five years since quitting the band, enjoyed it immensely. "It was great to see all those people again, mindblowing!" Carthy agrees. "Fabulous, Fantastic! Brilliant!" he enthuses. "We got four hours rehearsal each band, and then we had to go and do it, and it really was a case of, as they say in Yorkshire, shit or bust."
Since that historic concert, Steeleye has remained active. Even though Prior's voice is settled back to normal, Gay Woods has become a permanent member. This gives them additional versatility, introducing not only the possibility of female harmonies, but also Woods's extraordinary voice and large repertoire of songs. Their new album, called Time (1996), clearly shows Woods's influence in songs like "The Water is Wide," "Go From My Window," and a tongue-in-cheek "Old Maid in the Garret," which was Sweeney's Men's first hit in 1967. As Knight says, "Gay's voice is extraordinary, and has added a huge dimension to the band." Time is clearly Steeleye's best studio abum in more than twenty years, showing that they're more than ready to move forward with traditional music once again.What changes lie in the future for Steeleye Span? The band members are hesitant to discuss specific changes, except to say that, in Knight's words, "something is looming." It's hard to predict the ways in which Steeleye Span will change. The band has always struggled with the inertia that comes of being democratic; as Prior points out, democracy "means that everybody has an opinion, and it's got to be taken into account. You have the final veto of saying no. So a lot of stuff doesn't happen, more than does happen." When there's no one driving, the bus tends to stall, too.
Still, generalizations are possible. For Knight, the future involves striking a more perfect balance between traditional music and improvisation. For Genocky it means trying their hands at more material, playing longer sets and more challenging songs. For Johnson and Prior, whose love of traditional songs has never dimmed, it primarily means a search for new material to adapt.
"We don't ever actually have a plan," Prior confesses. "Whatever the material does, that's where we go. Bob comes in with an arrangement, but even that gets adapted. Is that right, Bob?"
"What?" Johnson asks, suddenly guilty. "I didn't touch her!"
Prior rolls her eyes, laughing. "But of course, sometimes everybody's got a really clear idea of what's going on!"
