Member Since: 9/27/2006
Band Website: freyamusic.co.uk, blowzabella.com
Band Members: The tracks currently playing are from ’Lal’ by Jo Freya’s Lal Waterson project. These are the songs of Lal Waterson as interpreted by myself and a wonderful band. The only concert of 2007 went so well that we sold more Cds thean any other artists at Musicport festival. The next performance is Cheltenham Folk Festival in February which we are really looking forward to. My mum is flying in from the states too!! These are the next 4 tracks along from the last 4 I posted. Here is a fantastic review from Ken Hunt.:Jo Freya’s Lal Waterson Project - Lal
8. 10. 2007 | Rubriky: Articles, CD reviews[by Ken Hunt, London] Lal Waterson, who died in September 1998 aged 55, was a founding member of the Watersons, the Hull-based folk group. Elaine, to use her proper name, was the youngest of the three siblings that eventually lent their name to one of the English Folk Revival’s most influential and utterly inimitable voice-based groups. People called her the Quiet One. And there was a sliver of truth to that. Leastways while her defences were up and she was sounding you out, getting your measure. Still, without getting into the realms of cod-psychology about youngest children and their chatterbox tendencies, she had few problems when it came to talking, just difficulties whilst under the spotlight and getting asked to talk about herself and her songs. Lal Waterson was a very visual songwriter. She wrote as she saw things and what she wrote often rode roughshod over the rules of song or poetic form. She kept her cards close to her chest when talking about what she was revealing - or hiding - in her songs.How prolific Lal Waterson was as a songwriter is open to speculation. Her brother Mike, with whom she made Bright Phoebus (1972) with an assortment of England’s finest including Martin Carthy, Bob Davenport, Tim Hart, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Maddy Prior, Richard Thompson and Norma Waterson in tow, summed it up nicely. She would bring a song to him to get his feedback and comments. Then off she would go and return with an entirely different song. Rather than tweaking a rhyme or allowing a seeded idea to germinate, she would cultivate yet another song while claiming it to still be the same original song. It was rather like getting three songs for the price of one. Or would have been if he had logged all three.In 1996 Topic put out Lal and her son Oliver Knight’s Once In A Blue Moon. The posthumously released A Bed of Roses (1999) followed. Save for archived (if not too grandiose a word) paper and demo tapes, that was that. Oh, and the Shining Bright compilation of 2002. In which a cast of notables revisited the Bright Phoebus material or went into other territory, such as Norma Waterson interpreting the very personal recollections within Song for Thirza, a song about the woman who helped raise them after the death of their parents. “You were brought from the work house to live with us,†it begins. Lal’s own singing of Song for Thirza captured as an early 1970s demo would wait in the wings until its appearance on the Watersons’ retrospective boxed set Mighty River of Song in 2003. Jo Freya revisits the song on Lal in a wholly touching way, in one that makes the specific universal in a way I would never have imagined possible from knowing or talking to Lal, Mike or Norma. That is Art with a capital A.The Lal Waterson Project boasts an illustrious assembly that draws on the No Master’s Co-operative, of which Lal was an early collective member. Aside from Jo Freya (vocals, tenor and soprano saxophones), Lal draws on the talents and experience of Chumbawamba’s Jude Abbott (vocals, trumpet), Coope, Boyes & Simpson’s Jim Boyes (voice, acoustic and electric guitars), Chumbawamba’s Neil Ferguson (vocals, bass and acoustic guitars), the Old Swan Band and Jo Freya’s sister Fi Fraser (vocals, electric violin, alto sax, clarinet), the Sex Patels’ Harry Hamer (cajon, tabla) and The Poozies’ Mary Macmaster (vocals, acoustic and electric harp). (Macmaster’s harp on Flight of the Pelican is a marvel.) To which should be added the string quartet of Sarah Matthews and Bella Hardy on violins, Rachel Lawrence on viola and Gill Redmond ..o that boosts the elegiac Migrating Bird, the album’s concluding song.Jo Freya herself worked with Lal Waterson, guesting on both Lal Waterson and Oliver Knight albums. The most memorable of her contributions appeared on Altisidora on Once In A Blue Moon - an intertwined voice and clarinet dance that is both a peak in empathetic communication and a short-listed desert island disc. Having worked with Lal undoubtedly helps Lal’s overall success, but, for me, the reason why Jo Freya’s Lal Waterson Project works so especially well boils down to two things. When it comes to the material already in the public domain, the Project avoids the temptation to stick to the material’s ’stock’ arrangements. Nothing warmed over, nothing réchauffé in the French. Midnight Feast gets a backbeat - admittedly not a big step for Humankind. Yet even though Party Games draws on the familiar Bed of Roses arrangement that Freya and trombonist Alice Kinloch worked up, here it is a springboard, not a replication. As far as I am concerned, the main reason for the Project’s success is down to timbre.When singing solo - as opposed to singing with the family firm - Lal sang in her natural register, expressing things in her own, everyday voice and own idiomatic Yorkshire English. Jo Freya’s natural timbre matches Lal’s speaking and singing voice beautifully. Yet interestingly, while certain flattened vowels in The Bird are pure Lal, the vowels surfacing in May Butterfly are Jo Freya’s and clearly out of county or indeed Riding.The thing is this: Lal’s songs were like nobody else’s in my experience. Gleaning local or private knowledge helped you glimpse pinpricks of light in the rolling fog. When she or Jo Freya sing “Spent all last night in Wilson’s Arms†in her song Wilson’s Arms, then it helps to know a bit about Yorkshire geography and moorland. And toping topography. The Wilson’s Arms was a pub up the road from where she lived - everywhere is up the road from Robin Hood’s Bay - but there again the printed lyrics blow - give away - the sung pun. When in Flight of the Pelican talk turns to the pelican, it helps to know that Lal Waterson served time as a heraldic artist in her youth and was well aware of the pelican’s self-sacrificing and caring, heraldic symbolism. Heraldry hones the cutting edge in this song despising Thatcherite values. Likewise Some Old Salty recalls the jive and bop of the Humber riverboat cruises of the 1950s. Still, what is there not to get when Bath Time and its evocation of parenthood, bath and bed time? Jo Freya knows these things and that is why, in my opinion, her interpretations really get under the skin of Lal’s idiosyncratic missives masquerading as songs and cast them in new light. A masterpiece of re-examination of a true original.Ken Hunt is responsible for Lal Waterson’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the biographical and song notes in the accompanying book with the Watersons’ Mighty River of Song.Lal No Masters Co-operative Ltd NMCD27 (2007) - www.nomasters.co.ukJo comes from a ground breaking background in folk and acoustic music. You will have seen her performing live as part of Blowzabella, The Old Swan Band, Coope/Boyes/Simpson/Freya/Fraser/Boyes, Token Women, Scarp, and previously as a duo with Pete Morton and in recorded collaborations with Lal Waterson.Whilst still performing with the current line ups listed above she is now focussing on her solo performances. These feature her lyrical and instrumental compositions accompanied by keyboard and the use of live looping. The material features her own songs including the quirky ‘Little ‘O’’, about the pit falls of internet use, and other songs ranging from comedy to wry observation selected from the best of traditional and contemporary sources.
The live looping system allows Jo to sing and play with herself in public which adds an exciting new element! This allows her multi-instrumental skills to shine in a solo environment.In the 1970’s the Old Swan Band revolutionised the English scene by bring English country dance music to the fore. In the 1980’s Blowzabella fulfilled a huge role in opening up European music both here and abroad. Consequently Jo went on with Scarp to win the French Gold Music award for world music. Whilst those bands were and are predominantly instrumental Jo has flexed her vocal skills in a unique combination show ‘Songs of Three Nations’, with Ray Fisher and the late Siwsanne George. Compositions have been featured in two national touring shows ‘Perjuring Little Whore’ the tale of Fanny Blair and ‘Mad, Bad and Dangerous’ about Lord Byron from a women’s perspective!
Jo continues to play with the line ups listed in the introduction but is focussing on touring extensively as a solo artist. For festivals Jo can offer, in addition to concerts, workshops on vocal skills, singing in harmony and folk orchestras.
Above and below are video clips from Cheltenham Folk Festival. My thanks go to Likal for doing the video and to the wonderful Oliver Knight who was doing the live sound for us that day. As you can tell if you have a listen the acoustics are truely awful in the town hall which is why what Oly has achieved is masterful. Above is ’Party games’ and below is ’Long Vacation’ both written by Lal Waterson. In Long Vacation I had an extra long ending.... just because I could!!!!
Influences: Whilst starting off very much in the folk and world music arena my influences include contemporary composers such as Steve Reich, Michael Nyman and Juduth Weir. The singers I have loved and still do are Eddi Reader, Annie Lennoz, Edith Piaf, Patsy Cline, Ella Fitzgerald, Sandy Denny and Janis Joplin. I am also inspired by other 'folk' musicians who compose wonderful beautiful music and yet seem to be relegated to a second class music world, just because of being associated with that word 'folk'. In this category I would include Chris Wood, Luke Daniels and Swop amongst others.
As I write lyrics from time to time my influences range from Kate Bush, Annie Lenox to John Tams and Pete Morton and I currently admire Karine Polwart and Declan O'Rourke.
Sounds Like: I am a saxophone playing vocalist and have been told I sound like me which is a good thing.
Latest releases 'Voices at the Door' Coope, Boyes and Simpson, Fraser, Freya, Boyes - Christmas 2006. Acapella carols and deamed to be "my favourite, favourite, carol singers" by Natalie Wheen of classic F.M.
'Octomento' by Blowzabella(2007). Our first release for many years. Those who have purchased it love it but we have no reviews to qoute as yet.
'Lal' - Jo Freya's Lal Waterson project.(Oct 2007) I am very proud of this although I feel an imense responsibility interpreting the works of someone else, especially someone that I admire to this degree. To those of you who don't know Lal Waterson, from the wonderful Waterson family, she sadly died 9 years ago but she leaves a legacy of songs that set her amongst the best of British poets in my opinion. If you're new to these songs I hope you'll hear their quality.
Thanks for listening.
Below is a video of Blowzabella live last Saturday, near Paris.
Record Label: No Masters
Type of Label: Indie