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CARA DILLON AND SAM LAKEMAN
 Watch Cara's performance.
Last year you had a showcase in the club tent, and it's a set on the main stage this year. It's been a great year for you - what's been the highlight so far?
Sam Lakeman: To be honest the main festivals we've been doing in the summer. We did a big tour for three and a half months at the start of the year, which was really hard work. We played an awful lot of arts centres and folk clubs and small theatres. It was brilliant fun, because we hadn't been on the road for a few years. When we played last summer, we were just starting to get back into the swing of things, but now we're fully practiced up and we're really seasoned on the road now.
Cara Dillon: We played Glastonbury, which was fantastic, and Womad last weekend. And of course winning the Radio 2 Folk Awards was so brilliant. That really meant a lot to us. And we also won a Hot Press Irish Music award, and we were sitting in a room with Bono and the rest of U2, the Corrs and Ash. It was a really great moment because we're just doing what we believe in, and all of a sudden we've just branched into this whole new realm that could actually be considered quite cool.
Is there any other act at Cambridge this year that you really want to go and see?
CD I'd love to see the Indigo Girls tonight. We actually did a support tour a few months ago throughout Europe. It'd be good to hook up with them. They're great singers and have fantastic songs.
SM Looking forward to seeing the Oysters, as ever. We've seen them so many times before but they're such great craic, they really get the crowd going. And the Holmes Brothers! I think I've just missed them. I remember last year the Campbell Brothers were absolutely fantastic.
It's in the same vein - gospel and r'n'b…
SM I love it. Great stuff!
Winning the Horizon and the Best Traditional Song Awards at the Radio 2 Folk Awards. Was it a big deal to have that recognition from your peer group?
CD To win best traditional song with Black is the Colour was incredible, because that's one of those songs that everybody's done to death! But it's one of those songs that I don't ever remember where I learnt it but I grew up listening to it. For us to work out our own arrangement and to get a stamp of approval was really great. The Horizon Award was great but it was a bit weird because we've been around for a wee while - in my own head I've never really been out of music. It was a brilliant night, though, because we didn't really expect to get anything so I felt really lucky and glad.
You featured in the title music for Billy Connolly's recent television series, which probably gave you your widest exposure yet. Did you get to meet the Big Yin?
CD We never got to meet him at all! I'd just love to tell him thank you for picking us to do the song because the feedback that we've had has been incredible. It's an absolutely beautiful song, so emotional.
SM We were in the middle of our tour in February and we got this call from our production office and they said that Billy had requested Cara to sing this song. He'd chosen all the music for the whole series and chosen all the artists he wanted to play on it. We literally had one day off and we went to a small studio and recorded the song. We thought nothing of it until it went out and the response was unbelievable. We've put the song on our website as a free download so people can bootleg it around as much as they like!
What kind of things do you look for in a song when you're choosing material?
SL First it starts with Cara. She has a massive collection of songs of her own, songs her sister sings, songs that she's grown up with. She'll pick a song which she thinks is suitable and I'll sit down and try and figure out what it is about the song that touches us. If we can make it work then it progresses, but if we can't for some reason - it's in the wrong time signature or a funny key or just doesn't have the right atmosphere - then it goes into a 'try it later' pile. But it tends to be really lonesome, heartbreaking songs, doesn't it?
CD That's the typical Irish tradition. Songs about emigration, lost love. But the melodies are really haunting. I keep getting drawn towards all these really sad melodies for some reason. I recently discovered this book in my hometown of Dungiven with three or four hundred songs about the town and the surrounding lands. There's a song written by a great grandfather of mine who went away to America, which is about a dream he had of the town. You identify with your relatives and people who've gone before, and the pain and suffering they had to go through. You don't want to forget that.
Is it important for you that you recognise the roots of your tradition and keep putting that into your music?
 CD Absolutely! The reason we're all here today and want to go and listen to traditional music is because the songs are so powerful and the sentiments still apply today. There's always people emigrating and people who have got broken hearts and these songs have survived the test of time. They're not like your average pop song which is there for a few months and then nobody remembers it. These are the real thing!
You're signed to Rough Trade, not a label you'd normally associate with folk music. Have you ever felt under pressure to adopt a more commercial approach and go for the crossover appeal?
SL Not really, to be honest. The guy who signed us to Warners now owns Rough Trade, and when we left Warners with very little to show for it he made a blind offer that we could come to Rough Trade and do what we like. He had no idea what we were going to come back with.
CD He really believed in us and where we were coming from. He believed in us and said just go off and make the album and I'll help you as much as I can. But putting it out on Rough Trade has opened us up to a whole new audience, young people who're just discovering folk music, young people who'll just buy anything Rough Trade puts out, and they're saying they're discovering lots of new bands as a result of buying our album.
SL It's been brilliant for them as well, because it makes them look very eclectic. It's also brilliant because everytime Cara gets written about or mentioned on the radio, Rough Trade gets mentioned. And here we are - you've just done it again!
What's the next step for you then? Is there another album in the pipeline?
CD We're recording the second album any day now. We've got all our songs and are just starting to put down the arrangements. I think we're ready to start recording the next album, and I'm really looking forward to it.
SL I don't know when it will be out, maybe spring next year.
What can we expect from the new album? Will it be more of the same or are you moving things to another level?
CD On our last album we had two of our own songs and we got a great response from them. One of the songs, Blue Mountain River, was released in Ireland as a single, and we got great feedback from it, so it's given us a bit of confidence in our own material. We do a lot of songs that we've written in our set, so it's going to be a balance between traditional and original material.
When you're writing as opposed to choosing a traditional song, do you try and capture the feelings from the traditional material which appeal to you and incorporate them into your own songs?
CD I just sort of follow my instincts. No matter what I do, the folky vein will always be flowing through because that's where I come from. When we were with Warners they were always trying to tone down the traditional elements and put in more commercialism.. I couldn't really handle that. And of course Sam is constantly playing these beautiful melodies which I end up writing something sad over it, so the whole traditional, sad song thing spills over.
SL It's quite soulful stuff…
CD It's just depressing, Sam!
SL We've been writing songs for about six years. When we were at Warners all we did was write original material. We did the occasional arrangement of a traditional song with massive programmed beats and stuff, and some of them were really great! We've got a large back catalogue of songs. We're never stuck for them!
Interview by Mick Fitzsimmons
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