Kate Rusby to scour Cork Folk Festival for old tunes that need rescuing

Kate Rusby has collaborated with everyone from Ronan Keating to Paul Weller, and is looking forward to hearing new music on her visit to Cork Folk Festival, writes Ed Power.

Kate Rusby is so bubbly she deserves to have a brand of champagne named in her honour. That, at least, is how the Yorkshire folk singer comes across in conversation. On stage and on record she cuts a very different figure — her steely, expressive voice guiding the listener through storm-tossed laments and gripping confessionals.

She will deploy these talents when she comes to Cork next weekend to headline the city’s Folk Festival in its 39th year As a folk musician, Ireland obviously looms large for the 44-year-old from Penistone in south Yorkshire and she is looking forward to resuming acquaintances with the genre’s Celtic roots.

@CorkFolkFest runs 3 - 7 Oct https://t.co/xt23jSLres pic.twitter.com/k6ndbSQPyr

— JC (@Traveliremag) September 30, 2018

“You’ll discover so many versions of one song — it may have gone to America, to Ireland, to Southern England, all the way down Cornwall,” she says. “It leaves a trace — all these different versions. And then you as a folk artist are working with different musicians and so bringing in even more influences.”

Rusby is widely acclaimed as the “first lady” of English folk. Since her debut album in 1997, she has headlined the Cambridge Folk Festival, received a Mercury Music Prize nomination and collaborated with everyone from Ronan Keating and Paul Weller to actress Jennifer Saunders (who suggested she start writing her own material).

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She also lives a thoroughly normal life. She squeezes in a chat with the Irish Examiner between the school run and preparatory work on her next album. She has a lot to get off her chest she says, though she probably won’t write anything as political as ‘Life In A Paper Boat’, which she penned in 2016 watching news reports about refugees fleeing to Europe from Syria.

“It’s not often I see something in the news and think, ‘I’m going to write a song about that’. That song grew out of a mother’s angst and the story of a mother carrying her child through such difficult circumstances. My songs come out of my headspace. They aren’t really to do with current affairs. They are more to do with personal stories, people I’ve chatted to along the way.”

English folk has been through rather a bruising time lately. Banjo bashers such as Mumford and Sons and Noah and the Whale are accused of watering down this ancient music — to which can be added the additional offence of coming from middle class backgrounds. The ‘kids’ may love them. The purists, however, have had a different reaction.

But Rusby is entirely supportive of these bands — and of the public’s freedom to enjoy whatever music it wishes. Having received a chorus of disapproving tuts early in her career for her sometimes radical interpretations of age-old material, she speaks of the “folk police” as a negative influence.

“Anything goes,” she says. “I absolutely love that Mumford and Sons have such an obvious love for folk and are being played on BBC Radio One. I can only see it as a good thing. They might spread the word. I always try to look on the positive. I’m not one of these people who thinks, ‘get away from that music… it’s ours’.”

Rusby grew up steeped in folk. Both her parents are musicians and when her peers in rural Yorkshire were going to raves or drinking cider in the fields, Rusby was playing folk festivals with the family.

I thought everybody did that until I was about 11 or 12, which is the age when you get a bit more bothered. My friends would ask was I coming to the disco with them and my answer would be ‘No thanks… I’m off to do this festival’. They were really intrigued by it. So in many ways,I spread the word to them. I escaped being part of the anti-cool gang

To be a folk musician, she says, is to be a part-time detective. Rusby is always on the lookout for old tunes that need rescuing. She hopes to continue her adventures in Cork.

“One of my favourite things is to find a song that’s been in a book for 200 years and to lift it out and give it a tune. It breaths new life into something that’s been stagnant in a book. I love going to second hand bookshops and finding these old ballad books. You’ll always discover them in the dustiest corner. When I’m starting a record, I‘ll reach for one of those books and look through it.”

As she says, this has brought down the rancour of the folk academy. “The folk police will tell you the song was written down in 1902 or whatever and you must sing it like that. But that’s not the way should be. These are living songs. You’ve got to treat them like that.”

Kate Rusby plays Cork Opera House next Sunday, October 7