Interviews

Andy Votel

Votel is not a four letter word

How did the idea for the compilation come about?

Anne Briggs

"It seemed like the right time, many of these records have been in my collection for almost 10 years and people still haven’t tapped into the source of what I call 'folksploitation'. There seemed to be a folk resurgence over the last 18 months with a rekindled interest in names like Anne Briggs, Trees, Pentangle, Fred Neil etc. Sadly it seems despite a 30 year gap since the inception of some of these records, there is still a sense of snobbery amongst supposedly discerning music lovers about the authenticity of folk music and what folk music should and shouldn't be.

Terms such as acid-folk have blurred these uptight boundaries to a certain extent, but how do you categorise to the folk-rock music that didn’t come from the British underground or the Greenwich Village scene? It’s a very British attitude that makes people want to verify the 'realness' of art. Artists like Yashti Bunyen or Comus were never recognised as folk-legends in their day but now they’re lorded as 'missing folk artefacts'. European folk-groups, commune bands and religious cults have got as much right to take their place in the annals of folk history as Bob Dylan or the Houghton Weavers for that matter.

Also there are a lot of 'hippy rock' acts that were manipulated by major record labels and marketed as bubblegum acts or alongside jazz groups, even though their influences and motivations were as pure as the next Joni Mitchell soundalike - maybe even with a slightly more adventurous and experimental outlook (making hybrids such as folk-funk). Experimentation is the essence of great folk music, but then purists tend to dislike mavericks.

I'm also a great believer in disposable music and I’m keen to exploit the lost, forgotten and unwanted records that skimmed the surface of such a vibrant and automatic area of music as folk. It was very exciting to speak and meet with the original artists many of whom Doug (Delay 68/ Finders Keepers) found by chance whilst searching for there records on the Internet over the years."

Are you a big fan of folk?

John Renbourn

"Of course. Pentangle and Bert Jansch have been favourites since I was a child and I’ve recently been listening to some great Marianne Faithful covers of Pentangle tracks. My dad had records by John Fahey and John Renbourn when I was a kid, as well as a lot of dodgy Irish folk by the Dubliners and Lancashire mining songs by Mike Harding and the like. I also like Alan Stivell from France and stuff like Karen Dalton."

How did you decide on the final track listing?

"Basically, if it was on a major label, I couldn’t afford it. This forced me to pick as many obscurities as possible."

If you could push one folk artist into the spotlight, who would it be?

"I’ve become quite friendly with a singer called Chrissie Harwood who I had tried to hunt down for years and years after picking her LP up at a record fair when I was young. The LP now reaches 200 quid on eBay but she was totally unaware of this when she smashed all her personal copies up with a hammer to avoid embarrassment. After trawling through the English and Welsh phonebooks to find her, she contacted me from America so we could release her LP on our Finders Keepers label.

Folk Is Not A Four Letter Word

Then out of the blue, it got released by an Italian company who didn’t ask her permission. She was very sad, considering the LP that she made at 16 years of age had already been stolen from her once 35 years previously.

There's also a fantastic singer-songwriter called Don Cooper of whom I am releasing an anthology with Christian McBride (45 kings) for Delay 68. He's a great bloke living and teaching music in mid-America. He was actually sampled by MC Search and Dilated Peoples but didn’t realise it. Apparently he didn’t recognise the hip-hop track names on his royalty statements as his own but just kept his mouth shut."

It is a very atmospheric record, where would you recommend listening to it?

Carol Batton

"In the garden maybe. Manchester’s very own Carol Batton did an inspiring poem about bees which is used as the intro so I think outdoor listening is essential, although it does get a bit wintry. I'm surprised it doesn’t work as a baby comforting LP; it doesn’t stop my daughter from crying. I'm working on a follow up to my Music To Watch Girls Cry mix CD called Music To Stop Babies Cry."

Any plans to make this a series, profiling other underestimated genres?

"A series is exactly what ...Four Letter Word is. We have a prog one coming up later in the year with a lot of prog-rock from around the world which happens to include some mammoth hip-hop samples, and then Cherrystones is preparing Glam Is Not A Four Letter Word full of roaring alcoholic glam-rock rarities."

Away from the compilation, how's your DJing going?

"Great actually, I had a six month break but I’m getting some well suited gigs at the mo, I’m DJing on Gruff Rhys' LP tour playing Welsh music and the B-music collective thing is also very exciting. We have regular spots in London, Manchester and Belfast which is handy for spreading the word of the weird."

You had David Holmes join you again at Manchester’s B-Music, how did that happen?

"David is a resident at B-Music, we play in Belfast four times a year and he returns the favour. We are all part of the collective which includes Homer, Cherrystones, me, Boney, Dom and some other apostles."

And life at Twisted Nerve, anything big on the horizon?

Andy Votel

"There's a lovely discount compilation coming out called Now Is The Winter Of Our Discount Tents and a bunch of brand new artists you have never heard of before including a French American singer-songwriter, an Italian 'Giallo' rock group and some Krautrock country and western stuff from Peru. To be honest I am keen to keep releasing runs of 500 7'' singles this year, so people know where they stand. There’s been too many people abusing the label to try and make fast cash over the past couple of years. It's no way to treat an independent label like TN and it creates a common misconception of what the label’s about.

For the record we've never made a penny from a Badly Drawn Boy release and me and Damon have never made any money from the label that hasn't gone straight back in to the label, it's an expensive hobby which I love dearly."