Guitar hero Martin Simpson gets back to basics on tour and in the studio
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THERE is no doubt that singer and guitarist Martin Simpson has covered a lot of ground and played a vast array of venues in over 35 years as a professional musician.
However, he finds himself venturing into new territory with a tour of the north of Scotland that takes the Lincolnshire-born musician and his well-travelled guitar into intimate venues and village halls from Aberdeen-shire to the Isle of Lewis, including dates in the Black Isle, Easter Ross and Drumnadrochit.
"I’m quite sure to expect. I’ve not been there at all with some of the venues," Simpson said.
"But I love coming to Scotland. I think it’s beautiful — and I think it’s an eminently sensible place too."
With a name like Simpson, it is no surprise to find some Scottish ancestry — Simpson’s father was half-Scottish — but for him the main connection is a musical one.
"Dick Gaughan, for instance, has been a friend since the mid-1970s and has been an influence since his first record," he added.
"The Scots ballads are just a giant source of inspiration and I think bagpipes are amazing. The gravity of Scots music as well as the levity really appeals to me."
With a career that has seen him amass 26 nominations in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, an early collaboration with folk singer June Tabor and working alongside such big names in roots music as Richard Thompson, Kate Rusby and Jackson Browne and even playing a 30 minute set at the BBC Proms, the 60-year-old Simpson is hardly an unknown, but he does relish the prospect of performing to an audience who may not be familiar with his music.
"I love playing in places where I haven’t necessarily been before and where I don’t think I’m preaching to the choir, if you like," he said.
"I like to play to an audience that is excited and wondering what they are going to get."
This series of intimate, back to basics shows mirrors Simpson’s latest album Vagrant Stanzas, which finds Simpson playing solo with just voice and guitar — a contrast to previous album Purpose + Grace, which featured such notable guests as Thompson, Tabor, Gaughan and Jon Boden of Bellowhead.
"I’ve been recording professionally since 1975 and in that time I’ve made an awful lot of records, sometimes as a session player for other people, sometimes my own records, but very often playing with lots of other people," he explained.
"To return to ground zero — I really like it. I ecorded the whole thing in three days. I was in the studio more days than that, but for most of those, I was in for a couple of hours, banging down a couple of tracks and out again. Interestingly, I’ve just done a record, the Full English, and that was with a full band, and that was done very quickly as well. "
The Full English is something of a folk supergroup including not only Simpson but Fay Hield, Nancy Kerr and Seth Lakeman among its ranks, several of them, like Simpson, now based in Sheffield.
Vagrant Stanzas was co-produced by another prominent figure on the Sheffield music scene, though not one immediately associated with the folk scene, Simpson’s neighbour Richard Hawley.
Simpson revealed that one aim of the album was to capture the same intimacy as when Simpson played for Hawley across the kitchen table.
"Every day I would go to the studio remembering what Richard said and imagining that I was playing to one person at home," he said.
Naturally songs from Vagrant Stanzas will feature on Simpson’s Highland tour — along with a lot more picked up both here and in the USA where he lived for 15 years.
"If I’m struggling with anything at the moment, it’s that I’ve got a massive repertoire of stuff to choose from," he acknowledged.
"I’m very regularly doing two hour-plus sets because it just seems the right thing to do. Sometimes a song just comes out of the ether and demands to be played. Songs won’t leave you alone. Once they get you, you have to perform them — and that’s a really cool thing. Sometimes you learn a song you had absolutely no intention of looking at — it’s got you!"
Though he is also a songwriter, Simpson proudly remains an interpreter of songs both traditional and contemporary.
"I’ve always done other people’s songs," he said.
"Other people’s songs and traditional ballads are, I think, the reason I write well because I have had so many years of working with and interpreting other people’s music. But sometimes you look at all those things, and they don’t say what you want to say, so that forces you into a position where you have to write."
• Martin Simpson can be seen at Findhorn’s Universal Hall Arts Centre on Thursday 8th November; Carnegie Hall, Portmahomack on Friday 8th November; Resolis Memorial Hall, the Black Isle; Saturday 9th November; Glen Urquart Public Hall, Blairbeg, Drumnadrocht on Sunday 10th November
