How many folk does it take to create a sensible name for a musical genre? In the past 10 years, the folk movement has scattered off in numerous directions, filed under sub-genres such as psych-folk, anti-folk, freak-folk, neo-folk and acid folk. In Scotland, folk comes straight up with fiddles. It has a distinctive Celtic sound that conjures up images of pub lock-ins on stormy islands and impossibly long walks up very steep mountains.
Outside Scotland, folk means very different things. In America, it’s Americana; in England, it’s sea shanties and Morris dancing. It’s also used to describe a new generation of young acoustic bands singing thoughtful songs with a whimsical edge. It’s nu-folk.
“There are so many different terms, it can get complicated,” says Findlay Napier, who is launching a nu-folk night to provide a platform for Scotland’s growing list of bands who fall under the umbrella. “But I like nu-folk because it’s finally a term that describes what the Americans and the English have been calling folk music for ages.”
When Napier started his present band, Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers, he struggled to explain to people exactly the kind of music they made.
“In Scotland we have this very lovely thing called folk music, which the rest of the world calls Celtic music,” he says. “Nu-folk is quite handy because it’s a pigeonhole that’s quite easy to put people in. It’s got acoustic guitars, nice singing, decent songs, but it’s not indie, it’s not rock and the issues are perhaps bigger than in the kind of music aimed at teenagers.
“In the States, we were a folk band but over here we kind of fell between the cracks. People would say, ‘what kind of band are you in?’ and we’d say, ‘a folk band’, and they’d expect us to play pipes and fiddles. But that’s not what we do. And we couldn’t really call ourselves Americana because it sounds a bit silly. Scoticana? I think I prefer nu-folk.”
Hazy Recollections, a bi-monthly afternoon nu-folk shindig at Stereo in Glasgow, begins on Saturday. For anyone still unsure of what exactly constitutes nu-folk, a few hours in the company of the six artists performing — including the hotly tipped Glaswegian female minstrel Pearl and the Puppets and the Virginian singer-songwriter AJ Roach — should provide the answers. Findlay Napier and The Bar Room Mountaineers, the Brother Louis Collective, Kitty the Lion, and Captain and the Kings complete the line-up.
“We’d all been talking about starting something like this for ages,” says Napier.
“It’s a way for all the bands to get together. We are all playing in the same town, some of us at the same gigs, and I wanted to replicate the atmosphere that there’s always been in the folk scene and at events like Celtic Connections and introduce it into the nu-folk scene. A camaraderie, instead of every man and woman working for themselves.”
In London, the nu-folk scene is thriving, and Napier is convinced that there is just as much talent in Scotland.
“I’d been reading about Mumford & Sons and the scene down in London, and wanted to try to replicate that,” he says. “It’s great to hear bands like that being played on Radio 1. They call themselves a folk band. So okay, the world has changed again, let’s get in there.”
Napier, 31, studied for a BA in Scottish music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) and played in a traditional folk band called Back of the Moon. Before that, he spent a year working as the folklorist Margaret Bennett’s accompanist. After a trip to America he found a change of direction.
“I had a new perspective on folk music and that’s why I started the Mountaineers,” he says. “It was a real eye-opener. We went to Canada and then America and we realised we were the token ‘Celtic music’ act and the rest of the acts were like Pearl and the Puppets.
“We did one folk festival where the headline acts were Kris Kristofferson and Macy Gray. Celtic Connections, which has a really varied programme of music, is far more representative of what a folk festival abroad is like than what you’d imagine.”
Napier now teaches at RSAMD, often covering classes for Phil Cunningham, the accordionist. He’s still involved in the traditional folk scene and runs the Festival Club at Celtic Connections. He has also been signed to a label run by Ronan Keating’s management team to write songs with the former Boyzone singer’s guitarist, Jimmy Docherty. Meanwhile, his band will release a new single in February and an album later in the year.
“I’m very busy but I like it that way,” he says. “And at least when I tell people what I do, they’ll hopefully understand.”
Hazy Recollections, Stereo, Glasgow, Jan 30;
Raise a Glass by Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers, out next month
Nu-folk heroes
The Scottish scene
Findlay Napier and The Bar Room Mountaineers Findlay and his band are leading the Scottish nu-folk revolution with blackly humorous tales of love, debauchery and sin.
He draws on the darker side of folk and country yet has a sound that remains uniquely Scottish.
Pearl and the Puppets Pearl is 21-year-old Kirkintilloch singer Katie Sutherland. Posting four tracks on MySpace brought her the attention of top management company Twenty First Artists (Elton John, Lily Allen) and a publishing deal. She recently recorded with legendary producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur).
Withered Hand Edinburgh-based Dan Willson is making waves with his mournful take on country music. On stage he plays mandolin, guitar and cello while looking extremely upset, but his lovely songs more than make up for the gloomy demeanour.
The English scene
Mumford & Sons Led by Marcus Mumford on vocals and drums, who is the “father” of Winston Marshall on vocals/banjo, Ben Lovett on vocals/keyboards and Ted Dwane on vocals/bass. Radio 1 darlings for their take on the traditional English folk torch passed on by the likes of Fairport Convention.
Noah and the Whale Quirky London five-piece led by Charlie Fink, who writes contemplative songs about broken relationships. The band occasionally add a punk ethic to their wistful folk sound.
Laura Marling A former member of Noah and the Whale, Marling is the Linda Thompson to Fink’s Richard in nu-folk. They used to date but broke up, and Fink wrote soul-baring songs about their relationship that could be seen as “over-sharing”. Her debut album, Alas, I Cannot Swim, which Fink produced, was a Mercury Prize nominee.
