The Unbroken Circle caught up with James Yorkston a few days after his successful appearance at the Green Man Festival, in the run up to the release of his third full length release for Domino Records, The Year of the Leopard. In our opinion, the album is his most fully realised recording yet. There is more variety, depth and confidence than on the previous releases, both in terms of the song writing and the arrangements, and whilst it is undoubtedly the least overtly ‘folk’ of any of his records so far, James’ understanding of traditional music is woven into his songs as a understated yet recurring motif. It isn’t a folk album, but it is an album that could not have been made by someone who didn’t have a love of folk music and extensive knowledge of the genre.

We started by asking him if he’d taken a conscious decision not to simply reprise the approach he had taken on either of his earlier albums.

“I was aware I didn’t want to do something that was exactly the same as the previous records. It’s not that I wanted to do something different for the sake of it, but equally, I didn’t want to paint myself into a corner. At the time, I thought this was the last record I would be doing for Domino – as it turns out I’m in negotiations to sign up for another few – so I decided I wanted to make exactly the sort of album I’d want to listen to myself. And I wanted to get some of the stuff down that wouldn’t have made it onto the other albums, for example, bad clarinet playing. In a lot of respects, it’s more like the demos I make.”

Was it a conscious decision to make a less folk-orientated record? “It’s certainly less folk than the others: I had fifteen songs to choose from that could have gone onto the album, including one or two traditional numbers and one more Celtic sounding track that would have probably fitted nicely onto the previous album.” James is not convinced that what he does is folk in any case: “The media have dubbed my first album the Alt-Country album and the second one the New-Folk album, but I don’t really look for these things. I’ve listened to a lot of country and old-time music, but it’s not a genre I feel particularly protective towards, more something I’d dip into. I suspect with the first album, the Americana thing came about because of the use of the banjo, lap steel and Hammond organ… and the fact the record had the word ‘country’ in the title! But it’s not a country record, it’s a pop record, just as the second album’s not a folk record, it’s a pop record.”

This suggests, then, that the Year of the Leopard may be dubbed the experimental record. “Woozy With Cider was definitely an experiment- but then again, so were Summer Song, the Brussels Rambler and Don’t Let Me Down. With all of them, I was trying to do something different. Woozy With Cider came about as a result of a Fence Records project: they wanted to do a spoken word project and this was my contribution. It was originally two separate pieces, but they fitted well together. I felt it would work well on the album: the only reason not to do it was that people may freak out because it wasn’t ‘folk’, but then again, that’s not my problem. Doing the unexpected was definitely something I wanted to do – the last record had more of a definite band sound going on throughout: this didn’t. I sing falsetto on Summer Song, which is not something I’ve done before. Steady As She Goes, I was initially unsure about: I was worried it was just a pop song, but Paul Webb convinced me to keep it, by saying that when it’s a pop song of that sort of quality, there’s nothing to worry about.”

James plays clarinet throughout the album, which contributes to the different feel it has to the previous records. He has jokingly described the Year of the Leopard as his clarinet record in the way that Just Beyond the River was his banjo record. He explains, “One of the reasons there is less of a folk feel is because Holly wasn’t around to play pipes and low whistle – she’d just had a baby – so my clarinet takes up those parts. I love clarinet; I’ve played it for a while but I can’t play properly, so what you get is a naive sound, not so much about playing as about a few well chosen notes, a bit like the role the banjo takes on the previous record. Having a proper clarinettist on the session would have been a nightmare: my non-playing means it’s more of a background instrument providing texture.”

Another factor adding to the warm, intimate texture of the record is James’ vocals, which although understated, seems to burst from the speakers and envelop the listener. He confirms that this was his intent: “The vocals were recorded with a very close mike. We had all these expensive mikes in the studio, but we stuck with the ones I had used on the demos – I know how to make them sound good, and most of the time my mouth was only an inch from the mike, often less, which meant it picked up everything.”

The album was produced by Paul Webb, otherwise known as Rustin Man. Paul was the creative force behind Beth Gibbons’ most recent album, and first came to notice when he worked on Talk Talk’s classic Spirit of Eden. We asked James what working with him had been like. “It was great,” he enthuses. “Most people are very careful about letting their guards down, whether it’s about music, art, literature or their feelings - and Paul’s not like that at all. He was getting off on the music straight away, going for it and thoroughly enjoying it, which was great creatively. I was getting off on the music too, so we worked well together.” Did James seek him out as a producer? “Not at all. It’s not like I’ve got a list of people I’m chomping at the bit to work with or anything. It was actually the people at Domino’s idea to ask Paul to produce. We sent him the demos for the album and he loved them. I’ve been lucky working with him and before that working with Kieran Hebden on the last album. They’re both now people I would consider as good friends.”

The Unbroken Circle being primarily a folk website, we felt duty bound to ask James about his relationship with folk music, which goes back a surprisingly long way for a man who wasn’t brought up in a family with any tradition of playing or singing folk music. “My mum sang in church and could do all the warbling bits, though my dad tended to go for the monotone drone. In terms of my own music, they neither encouraged nor discouraged me.” James started making music early, when he was only eight years old. He confesses, “I used to write songs with a friend: we wrote about the farm and the village – I can still remember some of the titles, but I’m not going to tell you what they are! I had an electric guitar but no amp and my friend had a banjo. Neither of us could really play: it was just the same chords being strummed as we sang over the top. The guy I wrote the songs with claims to still have some of the tapes we did, though I’m not sure I believe him. We kept writing all the way through school and I carried on after I moved to Edinburgh when I was seventeen.”

His first exposure to folk music came as a result of family holidays. “We used to go on our holidays to West Cork every summer. I remember hearing session players in the pubs, which back then we were allowed in, even though we were only kids. It might sound like romanticised bullshit, but it somehow the music burrowed into my head and even now provides a link to my own past.”

James candidly admits that whilst he loved Scottish and Irish traditional music, until he reached his early twenties, his tastes didn’t stretch as far as anything created south of the border. “For a long time I had a problem with English folk. Whereas I thought of Scottish and Irish music as lively, humorous and great, I had what I’d now call an ignorant attitude, where I thought all English folk was dull as ditchwater. I characterised it as staid and Victorian, even stuff I now like. With Shirley Collins, for example, if you’re not reasonably well versed in what she’s doing, some of her albums can sound like parlour music.”  It was hearing a compilation album of Anne Briggs’ unaccompanied singing on Topic that changed his views: “It was a real eye opener. At the time I was living in Edinburgh and working sporadically in a hotel. My brother and I would visit the music library. We were real music heads: all our mates were into indie pop whereas we would be checking out stuff like African & South American albums. With the Anne Briggs record, I was initially attracted by the cover. It’s a bit like the song, Little Musgrave: who’s this bonny looking lass? Any way I listened to it and thought this is absolutely fucking brilliant, so I saved up and bought myself a copy. I was in my early twenties at the time. I’d been listening to the African stuff – whatever we could find - Kenyan, Senegalese, Malagasy - along with Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotton, that sort of thing. Through Anne Briggs, I got into people like Nic Jones, Shirley Collins, The Watersons, Martin Carthy. I was already aware of Bert Jansch and Dick Gaughan, because of the Scottish scene, but I’d somehow blocked off all this incredible music from down south. However, I was also running a reggae club and playing bass in a garage rock band called Huckleberry, who sounded a bit like a bad Kinks with distorted guitars –so there was a lot of disparate music floating through my ears.”

He warms to his theme. “I’m not particularly hardcore or anything. But for me, folk has always meant traditional music, not people like myself or Adem or King Creosote or Donovan, which is really acoustic singer song writing with, at best, some traditional elements. However, at my solo gigs about a quarter of the set may be traditional material – and King Creosote tackles a few when he’s not with the full band.”

Around the same time, James’ brother- who has subsequently spent a great many years living in Africa- discovered a record by the Malagasy singer and guitarist D’Gary, who was to have a major influence on the direction James’ music would take. “For years I actually thought he was called M’Gary, because that’s what I’d written on the cassette I’d made. I only realised my mistake when I tried to buy a CD of his stuff much later. I absolutely loved his guitar playing. I’d already got into the American blues finger pickers but they hadn’t made me want to learn guitar. D’Gary’s music did. So I got a loan and bought my first acoustic guitar. Six months later I got my first solo gig, supporting Bert Jansch.”

The gig turned out to be a baptism of fire. “It was scary: I’d only been playing finger picking acoustic guitar for around six months and I was trying to use my rudimentary knowledge of chord shapes to attempt to play like D’Gary. Very few people can play as well as he can and I’m not one of them. I actually got a good reaction: I was rubbish, but they were a very nice crowd. Anyway, it put me off playing solo. I didn’t do it again for another four years. By that time I was seriously falling out with the sort of music we were doing with the band. I had started experimenting with different tunings and playing high up the neck of the guitar and it didn’t fit with what the band was doing. I tried a couple of songs with them that I did on the first album – I Spy Dogs, which didn’t really work, and The Patience Song, which actually worked okay. This was a kind of crossover period. By this point I was 28, I hated the music we were doing, I was starting to go deaf and we were going nowhere. I decided I needed to get out of music and get myself an education. I decided to give it two more years and then, if it didn’t work out, I would try to go to college or university, which I never did when I was younger.”

Things started to move quickly. James’ guitar playing had improved considerably since the Bert Jansch gig and he started doing solo gigs again. He made a tape, which included an early version of ‘Moving Up Country, Roaring The Gospel’, which he sent to John Peel under the name ‘J. Wright Presents’. Peel liked it so much he played it twice on his show. James takes the story up. “The people from Bad Jazz Records heard it and got in touch via Peel, saying they wanted to release it as a single. I wanted to promote it with some more gigs. I was aware that John Martyn was due to be touring, and though I didn’t know his stuff at all at the time, I got in touch with the promoter of the Edinburgh show to see if I could support him. She contacted me to say that John Martyn didn’t have support acts. Some friendly people I knew in London suggested I sent the tape to his manager, which I did. The manager liked my songs and I got offered the chance to be the support for the whole tour.”

James admits, “To be honest, I went down quite badly: I was doing songs like St Patrick and Lang Toun, which don’t really have choruses. I had no backing band; it was just me and my poorly picked guitar. I wasn’t booed off or anything like that - the audience were polite - but it was hard work and I was put through the wringer. However, it made me a better player and a more confident performer. At my first solo show in London after the tour, the folks from Domino said I now looked at home on a stage.” John Martyn has garnered a reputation over the years as a fearsomely difficult character. James did not find this to be the case. “I didn’t have a great deal of contact with him, but I did get to tell him that I was terrified and he told me not to worry – he’d been performing solo for years and it still terrified him. A few nights later I said to him that things hadn’t really improved and his advice to me was that I should just fucking get up there and do it or go and do something else. This was a really good piece of advice: I hate the expression, but he was basically telling me to shit or get off the pot.”

Even if it was a very steep learning curve he found himself on, James has good memories of the tour. “It was a fantastic experience. John Martyn had some great songs and I really learned about life on the road. There was no room for me in the tour van, so I was getting buses and trains to gigs and learning to look after myself. I managed to rope my cousin in for a week or so, which was great because he drove me to gigs and we just had great fun and got drunk. I’d love to do something like that again now I can play - at the time I was just an amateur musician with a job at a bookshop. I still actually do a lot of support slots, especially in the USA and Europe, where I’ve supported all sorts of oddballs. Though some may disagree, I haven’t got a particularly huge ego and I’m happy to play support, especially if it’s likely to be a good gig.”

Around the time of the John Martyn tour, James was signed by Domino Records. He has released three full-length albums with them, along with Someplace Simple, a mini-album of mainly traditional songs. On top of this, he has found time to maintain his relationship with the Fence Collective, releasing two mini-albums (30 and Lang Cat, Crooked Cat, Spider Cat) under his own name and contributing to a multitude of samplers and one-off projects, as well as releasing a further mini-album, Hoopoe, on Spain’s Houston Party label. We suggested to him that it was lucky that he had the sort of contract with Domino where he had the freedom to continue to work with other labels. James is philosophical about the relationship. “I’m not making Domino much money compared with bands like the Artic Monkeys or Franz Ferdinand. They’re happy for me to issue stuff with the Fence Collective. They recognise it’s a creative outlet for me where I can have a bit of fun. They can see how it works for me as a breeding ground for new ideas. Only an idiot of a record company would expect one of its artists to cut themselves off from such great people. Domino knew all about my association with Fence when they signed me, and I think that rather than put them off, it’s one of things that appealed to them.”

James’ involvement with the people behind the Fence Collective goes right back to his schooldays and the affection he feels for them is unequivocal. “I’ve known them for a long time. I went to school with Kenny Anderson’s younger brothers, Pip Dylan & Lone Pigeon, and though Kenny’s a few years older than me, I sat in on bass with his Ceilidh band once or twice. In fact we did plenty of odd shows together in the days before Fence existed as it does now. I reckon we’ve known each other musically for over ten years, and we’re good buddies. When we bump into each other on the road or at festivals it’s like having your best mate along. It’s an unconditional friendship: we speak the same slang, know the same people and tell the same jokes.” James has no doubt about the importance of the role Kenny now occupies. “When it comes to Kenny’s music, I personally prefer the more stripped down stuff he does than to his full band... He’s a genius, he’s unique and this is at its purest when it’s just him and an accordion. But then I like things as far removed from the rock format of drums, bass and electric guitar as it’s possible to get. What I love about the whole Fence thing is that you’ll get someone like Gavin Bollis, who’s a comedian pitched somewhere between Les Dawson and Ivor Cutler, going on between Pumajaw and Lone Pigeon. It’s eclectic and it makes for a great atmosphere. There’s no bullshit, they just support one another and get on with it.”

One of James’ releases of most interest to the Unbroken Circle is Someplace Simple, which includes his recordings of a number of traditional songs. His original plan was to record an entire album’s worth for Fence, a project that was postponed when he signed to Domino. We asked if it were still something he would consider doing. “I’m still planning to do it – the list of tunes is in my note book, slowly growing - but there’s no point unless it’s really very good and also contributing something new. When I did Rosemary Lane (on Someplace Simple), I only knew the Anne Briggs version. Then I heard Bert Jansch’s and I was slightly taken aback by how similar my version was. The point is, it’s got to be really damned good and it’s got to be original. It’s not even about whether you concentrate on the really popular, well-known traditional songs or dig out obscurities, but about how you do them. I’ve done both: In Dessexshire as it Befel is fairly obscure, but it’s a great song – I got it from an English Folk Dance and Song Society sampler. Sir Patrick Spens (from Hoopoe), on the other hand, is more well known. I learned it from Nic Jones’ version, which of course, is an anglicised version. My mum was laughing at me for doing the anglicised version, because she’s familiar with the Scottish version. I’m really please with how my recording of this song worked out. However, I’m aware that what I think of as great isn’t necessarily something that’s going to sell many copies, but that Hoopoe record is something I feel proud of.”

Someplace Simple also includes a cover of The Scarecrow, from Mike and Lal Waterson’s classic 1972 album, Bright Phoebus. What made James decide to record a version of this song? “I love Lal Waterson’s voice and songwriting,” he enthuses. “Bright Phoebus is a great album. It’s flawed: the opening track, Rubber Band, is sub-Sgt Pepper crap, and Sgt Pepper bores me anyway. But Lal’s voice is extraordinary. Bright Phoebus may be full of holes, but at its best it has an aching beauty to it. It has a quality that’s a heck of a lot darker than you often find in English folk singing – or any other type of record. It’s terrible that Bright Phoebus has never had a proper CD reissue- I ended up buying a copy of the original vinyl on e-Bay after only having a cassette of it for ages.”

James’ discovery of the album can be traced back to the artist that originally aroused his interest in English folk music. He explains, “I discovered Lal Waterson through her song Fine Horseman, which Anne Briggs covered on The Time Has Come. I saw a vinyl copy of that album years ago in a second hand record shop. This was before it was reissued on CD and the guy in the shop wanted £120 for it. I had to have it, but I was working part-time at the time and there was no way I could have afforded it. I explained that I was skint and the guy ended up doing a cassette copy of it for me. And there was this amazing song, Fine Horseman, tucked away at the end. I tried to do a cover of Fine Horseman for Someplace Simple, but I couldn’t get the purity of the song, which is why I attempted Mike Waterson’s The Scarecrow instead.”

After discovering Bright Phoebus, James went on to get hold of everything else by Lal Waterson he could find, including the two later solo albums, Once in a Blue Moon and A Bed of Roses, which she made with her son, Oliver Knight. “Her records are simply in a different class. There’s an incredible depth to her lyrics and her voice. I think that if you listen for it, you can really hear the influence Lal Waterson had on me coming through on my second album. I’d also highly recommend the four or five solo tracks she has on the Waterson Carthy box set, Mighty River of Song. They are some of her most beautiful songs and some of my favourites. I’d say they’re close to perfect. I’m currently involved in making a Lal Waterson tribute record. I hope that comes off.”

Given the position of Bright Phoebus in the strange-folk canon, the Unbroken Circle went on to ask James what his feelings were about the psychedelic folk and folk rock movements of the late 1960s through to the mid 1970s. “I never got into the whole psychedelic folk thing. I haven’t heard a lot of the bands like Forest and so on. The Incredible String Band were never an influence on me – in fact I can’t stand them. It’s the same with Fairport Convention. Domino gave me a copy of ‘Liege and Leif’ and it just doesn’t do it for me. I saw them a couple of years back and I was horrified – it was middle-of-the-road adult-oriented jazz-folk. I had to leave. We had no choice really: they made Doogie (James’ bass player of choice) so angry he started heckling! Having said that, I saw the old line up, minus Sandy Denny of course, doing ‘Matty Groves’ at the BBC Folk Awards and they were really good to watch, really getting into it. When it comes to folk, it’s simply that I prefer the more traditional stuff. I don’t find the other stuff offensive or anything, it just doesn’t make me think, wow, this is amazing. The bottom line though, with whatever style, is remember to make it good!”

So what about the potentially thorny issue of ‘nu-folk’? Having spent the previous weekend at the Green Man Festival, James warms to his theme. “The thing about the word ‘folk’ is that it means different things to different people – I’d rather just play the music than sit around scratching my chin discussing how to categorise it – and it’s the same with most musicians I know. The term itself isn’t the point. It’s the music that counts. For example, I actually think a lot of the time, regardless of the quality of the music, the whole concept is bollocks and has nothing to do with what I personally perceive as folk. You might as well call it nu-reggae, for all the meaning the term has. It seems to be purely about the instrumentation used. When I’m playing at what one may perceive to be new-folk events, I often tend to be the most traditional ‘folk’ act on the bill, which is pretty ironic, as I’m not really traditional in the slightest. But, who’s to say I’m right? Not me, that’s for sure. And that’s my point. Folk means different things to different people – let’s forget about it and move on!” Does James think the current movement is a passing fad or something that will be around for a while? “I think it will stay around. It’s outgrown it’s original position as a journalists’ derivative of folk music, but the definition has become so wide it means nothing, so somehow you end up in a situation where Four Tet, the Aliens and James Yorkston are all nu-folk! Having said that, stretching the bounds of the name it’s given itself is probably no bad thing. For example, the CD that Rob da Bank put together, Folk Off, only has one track on it that I’d personally consider folk, but there are some other great tracks on the record. I don’t find it offensive or anything. It’s just a marketing tool. I’ve done a few gigs with Jim Moray, and he reckons the whole new wave of folk may well sweep away the old folk scene and they won’t have any kind of say in it. I don’t think he’s referring to skinny white guys playing Anji, though!”

That is a depressing thought. On the one hand, folk music as a concept has come out from under the miasma of derision it had existed in for so long, but on the other, the new broader definition of folk may carry within it the seeds of the destruction of the longstanding tradition it threatens to eclipse. James makes a final comment where he points to a positive that may counterbalance this worst-case scenario. “One of the good things about the new-folk movement is that it provides a platform for people like Alisdair Roberts or Elle Osbourne - people who are genuinely doing traditional songs in an original way, yet are swept along by the new-folk trendies. Hopefully, the crowds they attract will then explore traditional music further, and this has to be a good thing. However those two artists would quite easily succeed without any scene supporting them, simply as they’re very good.”

And, we might add, it has to be a good thing that as one of the best of the current crop of acoustic singer songwriters, James Yorkston is happy to talk candidly and enthusiastically about the traditional singers whose songs and voices have moved him. James may not consider the music he makes to be folk music as he would define it, but what he undoubtedly is doing is continuing to produce music that is awash with a beguiling sense of warmth and intimacy; music that is deeply rooted in and sustained by a wider community of musicians with a commitment to doggedly follow their own paths; music that is permeated with the influence of the years spend absorbing the best of traditional folk music: an influence that leaves a subtle yet tangible footprint on his own songs.

The Unbroken Circle caught up with James Yorkston a few days after his successful appearance at the Green Man Festival, in the run up to the release of his third full length release for Domino Records, The Year of the Leopard. In our opinion, the album is his most fully realised recording yet. There is more variety, depth and confidence than on the previous releases, both in terms of the song writing and the arrangements, and whilst it is undoubtedly the least overtly ‘folk’ of any of his records so far, James’ understanding of traditional music is woven into his songs as a understated yet recurring motif. It isn’t a folk album, but it is an album that could not have been made by someone who didn’t have a love of folk music and extensive knowledge of the genre.

We started by asking him if he’d taken a conscious decision not to simply reprise the approach he had taken on either of his earlier albums. “I was aware I didn’t want to do something that was exactly the same as the previous records. It’s not that I wanted to do something different for the sake of it, but equally, I didn’t want to paint myself into a corner. At the time, I thought this was the last record I would be doing for Domino – as it turns out I’m in negotiations to sign up for another few – so I decided I wanted to make exactly the sort of album I’d want to listen to myself. And I wanted to get some of the stuff down that wouldn’t have made it onto the other albums, for example, bad clarinet playing. In a lot of respects, it’s more like the demos I make.”

Was it a conscious decision to make a less folk-orientated record? “It’s certainly less folk than the others: I had fifteen songs to choose from that could have gone onto the album, including one or two traditional numbers and one more Celtic sounding track that would have probably fitted nicely onto the previous album.” James is not convinced that what he does is folk in any case: “The media have dubbed my first album the Alt-Country album and the second one the New-Folk album, but I don’t really look for these things. I’ve listened to a lot of country and old-time music, but it’s not a genre I feel particularly protective towards, more something I’d dip into. I suspect with the first album, the Americana thing came about because of the use of the banjo, lap steel and Hammond organ… and the fact the record had the word ‘country’ in the title! But it’s not a country record, it’s a pop record, just as the second album’s not a folk record, it’s a pop record.”

This suggests, then, that the Year of the Leopard may be dubbed the experimental record. “Woozy With Cider was definitely an experiment- but then again, so were Summer Song, the Brussels Rambler and Don’t Let Me Down. With all of them, I was trying to do something different. Woozy With Cider came about as a result of a Fence Records project: they wanted to do a spoken word project and this was my contribution. It was originally two separate pieces, but they fitted well together. I felt it would work well on the album: the only reason not to do it was that people may freak out because it wasn’t ‘folk’, but then again, that’s not my problem. Doing the unexpected was definitely something I wanted to do – the last record had more of a definite band sound going on throughout: this didn’t. I sing falsetto on Summer Song, which is not something I’ve done before. Steady As She Goes, I was initially unsure about: I was worried it was just a pop song, but Paul Webb convinced me to keep it, by saying that when it’s a pop song of that sort of quality, there’s nothing to worry about.”

James plays clarinet throughout the album, which contributes to the different feel it has to the previous records. He has jokingly described the Year of the Leopard as his clarinet record in the way that Just Beyond the River was his banjo record. He explains, “One of the reasons there is less of a folk feel is because Holly wasn’t around to play pipes and low whistle – she’d just had a baby – so my clarinet takes up those parts. I love clarinet; I’ve played it for a while but I can’t play properly, so what you get is a naive sound, not so much about playing as about a few well chosen notes, a bit like the role the banjo takes on the previous record. Having a proper clarinettist on the session would have been a nightmare: my non-playing means it’s more of a background instrument providing texture.”

Another factor adding to the warm, intimate texture of the record is James’ vocals, which although understated, seems to burst from the speakers and envelop the listener. He confirms that this was his intent: “The vocals were recorded with a very close mike. We had all these expensive mikes in the studio, but we stuck with the ones I had used on the demos – I know how to make them sound good, and most of the time my mouth was only an inch from the mike, often less, which meant it picked up everything.”

The album was produced by Paul Webb, otherwise known as Rustin Man. Paul was the creative force behind Beth Gibbons’ most recent album, and first came to notice when he worked on Talk Talk’s classic Spirit of Eden. We asked James what working with him had been like. “It was great,” he enthuses. “Most people are very careful about letting their guards down, whether it’s about music, art, literature or their feelings - and Paul’s not like that at all. He was getting off on the music straight away, going for it and thoroughly enjoying it, which was great creatively. I was getting off on the music too, so we worked well together.” Did James seek him out as a producer? “Not at all. It’s not like I’ve got a list of people I’m chomping at the bit to work with or anything. It was actually the people at Domino’s idea to ask Paul to produce. We sent him the demos for the album and he loved them. I’ve been lucky working with him and before that working with Kieran Hebden on the last album. They’re both now people I would consider as good friends.”

The Unbroken Circle being primarily a folk website, we felt duty bound to ask James about his relationship with folk music, which goes back a surprisingly long way for a man who wasn’t brought up in a family with any tradition of playing or singing folk music. “My mum sang in church and could do all the warbling bits, though my dad tended to go for the monotone drone. In terms of my own music, they neither encouraged nor discouraged me.” James started making music early, when he was only eight years old. He confesses, “I used to write songs with a friend: we wrote about the farm and the village – I can still remember some of the titles, but I’m not going to tell you what they are! I had an electric guitar but no amp and my friend had a banjo. Neither of us could really play: it was just the same chords being strummed as we sang over the top. The guy I wrote the songs with claims to still have some of the tapes we did, though I’m not sure I believe him. We kept writing all the way through school and I carried on after I moved to Edinburgh when I was seventeen.”

His first exposure to folk music came as a result of family holidays. “We used to go on our holidays to West Cork every summer. I remember hearing session players in the pubs, which back then we were allowed in, even though we were only kids. It might sound like romanticised bullshit, but it somehow the music burrowed into my head and even now provides a link to my own past.”

James candidly admits that whilst he loved Scottish and Irish traditional music, until he reached his early twenties, his tastes didn’t stretch as far as anything created south of the border. “For a long time I had a problem with English folk. Whereas I thought of Scottish and Irish music as lively, humorous and great, I had what I’d now call an ignorant attitude, where I thought all English folk was dull as ditchwater. I characterised it as staid and Victorian, even stuff I now like. With Shirley Collins, for example, if you’re not reasonably well versed in what she’s doing, some of her albums can sound like parlour music.”  It was hearing a compilation album of Anne Briggs’ unaccompanied singing on Topic that changed his views: “It was a real eye opener. At the time I was living in Edinburgh and working sporadically in a hotel. My brother and I would visit the music library. We were real music heads: all our mates were into indie pop whereas we would be checking out stuff like African & South American albums. With the Anne Briggs record, I was initially attracted by the cover. It’s a bit like the song, Little Musgrave: who’s this bonny looking lass? Any way I listened to it and thought this is absolutely fucking brilliant, so I saved up and bought myself a copy. I was in my early twenties at the time. I’d been listening to the African stuff – whatever we could find - Kenyan, Senegalese, Malagasy - along with Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotton, that sort of thing. Through Anne Briggs, I got into people like Nic Jones, Shirley Collins, The Watersons, Martin Carthy. I was already aware of Bert Jansch and Dick Gaughan, because of the Scottish scene, but I’d somehow blocked off all this incredible music from down south. However, I was also running a reggae club and playing bass in a garage rock band called Huckleberry, who sounded a bit like a bad Kinks with distorted guitars –so there was a lot of disparate music floating through my ears.”

He warms to his theme. “I’m not particularly hardcore or anything. But for me, folk has always meant traditional music, not people like myself or Adem or King Creosote or Donovan, which is really acoustic singer song writing with, at best, some traditional elements. However, at my solo gigs about a quarter of the set may be traditional material – and King Creosote tackles a few when he’s not with the full band.”

Around the same time, James’ brother- who has subsequently spent a great many years living in Africa- discovered a record by the Malagasy singer and guitarist D’Gary, who was to have a major influence on the direction James’ music would take. “For years I actually thought he was called M’Gary, because that’s what I’d written on the cassette I’d made. I only realised my mistake when I tried to buy a CD of his stuff much later. I absolutely loved his guitar playing. I’d already got into the American blues finger pickers but they hadn’t made me want to learn guitar. D’Gary’s music did. So I got a loan and bought my first acoustic guitar. Six months later I got my first solo gig, supporting Bert Jansch.”

The gig turned out to be a baptism of fire. “It was scary: I’d only been playing finger picking acoustic guitar for around six months and I was trying to use my rudimentary knowledge of chord shapes to attempt to play like D’Gary. Very few people can play as well as he can and I’m not one of them. I actually got a good reaction: I was rubbish, but they were a very nice crowd. Anyway, it put me off playing solo. I didn’t do it again for another four years. By that time I was seriously falling out with the sort of music we were doing with the band. I had started experimenting with different tunings and playing high up the neck of the guitar and it didn’t fit with what the band was doing. I tried a couple of songs with them that I did on the first album – I Spy Dogs, which didn’t really work, and The Patience Song, which actually worked okay. This was a kind of crossover period. By this point I was 28, I hated the music we were doing, I was starting to go deaf and we were going nowhere. I decided I needed to get out of music and get myself an education. I decided to give it two more years and then, if it didn’t work out, I would try to go to college or university, which I never did when I was younger.”

Things started to move quickly. James’ guitar playing had improved considerably since the Bert Jansch gig and he started doing solo gigs again. He made a tape, which included an early version of ‘Moving Up Country, Roaring The Gospel’, which he sent to John Peel under the name ‘J. Wright Presents’. Peel liked it so much he played it twice on his show. James takes the story up. “The people from Bad Jazz Records heard it and got in touch via Peel, saying they wanted to release it as a single. I wanted to promote it with some more gigs. I was aware that John Martyn was due to be touring, and though I didn’t know his stuff at all at the time, I got in touch with the promoter of the Edinburgh show to see if I could support him. She contacted me to say that John Martyn didn’t have support acts. Some friendly people I knew in London suggested I sent the tape to his manager, which I did. The manager liked my songs and I got offered the chance to be the support for the whole tour.”

James admits, “To be honest, I went down quite badly: I was doing songs like St Patrick and Lang Toun, which don’t really have choruses. I had no backing band; it was just me and my poorly picked guitar. I wasn’t booed off or anything like that - the audience were polite - but it was hard work and I was put through the wringer. However, it made me a better player and a more confident performer. At my first solo show in London after the tour, the folks from Domino said I now looked at home on a stage.” John Martyn has garnered a reputation over the years as a fearsomely difficult character. James did not find this to be the case. “I didn’t have a great deal of contact with him, but I did get to tell him that I was terrified and he told me not to worry – he’d been performing solo for years and it still terrified him. A few nights later I said to him that things hadn’t really improved and his advice to me was that I should just fucking get up there and do it or go and do something else. This was a really good piece of advice: I hate the expression, but he was basically telling me to shit or get off the pot.”

Even if it was a very steep learning curve he found himself on, James has good memories of the tour. “It was a fantastic experience. John Martyn had some great songs and I really learned about life on the road. There was no room for me in the tour van, so I was getting buses and trains to gigs and learning to look after myself. I managed to rope my cousin in for a week or so, which was great because he drove me to gigs and we just had great fun and got drunk. I’d love to do something like that again now I can play - at the time I was just an amateur musician with a job at a bookshop. I still actually do a lot of support slots, especially in the USA and Europe, where I’ve supported all sorts of oddballs. Though some may disagree, I haven’t got a particularly huge ego and I’m happy to play support, especially if it’s likely to be a good gig.”

Around the time of the John Martyn tour, James was signed by Domino Records. He has released three full-length albums with them, along with Someplace Simple, a mini-album of mainly traditional songs. On top of this, he has found time to maintain his relationship with the Fence Collective, releasing two mini-albums (30 and Lang Cat, Crooked Cat, Spider Cat) under his own name and contributing to a multitude of samplers and one-off projects, as well as releasing a further mini-album, Hoopoe, on Spain’s Houston Party label. We suggested to him that it was lucky that he had the sort of contract with Domino where he had the freedom to continue to work with other labels. James is philosophical about the relationship. “I’m not making Domino much money compared with bands like the Artic Monkeys or Franz Ferdinand. They’re happy for me to issue stuff with the Fence Collective. They recognise it’s a creative outlet for me where I can have a bit of fun. They can see how it works for me as a breeding ground for new ideas. Only an idiot of a record company would expect one of its artists to cut themselves off from such great people. Domino knew all about my association with Fence when they signed me, and I think that rather than put them off, it’s one of things that appealed to them.”

James’ involvement with the people behind the Fence Collective goes right back to his schooldays and the affection he feels for them is unequivocal. “I’ve known them for a long time. I went to school with Kenny Anderson’s younger brothers, Pip Dylan & Lone Pigeon, and though Kenny’s a few years older than me, I sat in on bass with his Ceilidh band once or twice. In fact we did plenty of odd shows together in the days before Fence existed as it does now. I reckon we’ve known each other musically for over ten years, and we’re good buddies. When we bump into each other on the road or at festivals it’s like having your best mate along. It’s an unconditional friendship: we speak the same slang, know the same people and tell the same jokes.” James has no doubt about the importance of the role Kenny now occupies. “When it comes to Kenny’s music, I personally prefer the more stripped down stuff he does than to his full band... He’s a genius, he’s unique and this is at its purest when it’s just him and an accordion. But then I like things as far removed from the rock format of drums, bass and electric guitar as it’s possible to get. What I love about the whole Fence thing is that you’ll get someone like Gavin Bollis, who’s a comedian pitched somewhere between Les Dawson and Ivor Cutler, going on between Pumajaw and Lone Pigeon. It’s eclectic and it makes for a great atmosphere. There’s no bullshit, they just support one another and get on with it.”

One of James’ releases of most interest to the Unbroken Circle is Someplace Simple, which includes his recordings of a number of traditional songs. His original plan was to record an entire album’s worth for Fence, a project that was postponed when he signed to Domino. We asked if it were still something he would consider doing. “I’m still planning to do it – the list of tunes is in my note book, slowly growing - but there’s no point unless it’s really very good and also contributing something new. When I did Rosemary Lane (on Someplace Simple), I only knew the Anne Briggs version. Then I heard Bert Jansch’s and I was slightly taken aback by how similar my version was. The point is, it’s got to be really damned good and it’s got to be original. It’s not even about whether you concentrate on the really popular, well-known traditional songs or dig out obscurities, but about how you do them. I’ve done both: In Dessexshire as it Befel is fairly obscure, but it’s a great song – I got it from an English Folk Dance and Song Society sampler. Sir Patrick Spens (from Hoopoe), on the other hand, is more well known. I learned it from Nic Jones’ version, which of course, is an anglicised version. My mum was laughing at me for doing the anglicised version, because she’s familiar with the Scottish version. I’m really please with how my recording of this song worked out. However, I’m aware that what I think of as great isn’t necessarily something that’s going to sell many copies, but that Hoopoe record is something I feel proud of.”

Someplace Simple also includes a cover of The Scarecrow, from Mike and Lal Waterson’s classic 1972 album, Bright Phoebus. What made James decide to record a version of this song? “I love Lal Waterson’s voice and songwriting,” he enthuses. “Bright Phoebus is a great album. It’s flawed: the opening track, Rubber Band, is sub-Sgt Pepper crap, and Sgt Pepper bores me anyway. But Lal’s voice is extraordinary. Bright Phoebus may be full of holes, but at its best it has an aching beauty to it. It has a quality that’s a heck of a lot darker than you often find in English folk singing – or any other type of record. It’s terrible that Bright Phoebus has never had a proper CD reissue- I ended up buying a copy of the original vinyl on e-Bay after only having a cassette of it for ages.”

James’ discovery of the album can be traced back to the artist that originally aroused his interest in English folk music. He explains, “I discovered Lal Waterson through her song Fine Horseman, which Anne Briggs covered on The Time Has Come. I saw a vinyl copy of that album years ago in a second hand record shop. This was before it was reissued on CD and the guy in the shop wanted £120 for it. I had to have it, but I was working part-time at the time and there was no way I could have afforded it. I explained that I was skint and the guy ended up doing a cassette copy of it for me. And there was this amazing song, Fine Horseman, tucked away at the end. I tried to do a cover of Fine Horseman for Someplace Simple, but I couldn’t get the purity of the song, which is why I attempted Mike Waterson’s The Scarecrow instead.”

After discovering Bright Phoebus, James went on to get hold of everything else by Lal Waterson he could find, including the two later solo albums, Once in a Blue Moon and A Bed of Roses, which she made with her son, Oliver Knight. “Her records are simply in a different class. There’s an incredible depth to her lyrics and her voice. I think that if you listen for it, you can really hear the influence Lal Waterson had on me coming through on my second album. I’d also highly recommend the four or five solo tracks she has on the Waterson Carthy box set, Mighty River of Song. They are some of her most beautiful songs and some of my favourites. I’d say they’re close to perfect. I’m currently involved in making a Lal Waterson tribute record. I hope that comes off.”

Given the position of Bright Phoebus in the strange-folk canon, the Unbroken Circle went on to ask James what his feelings were about the psychedelic folk and folk rock movements of the late 1960s through to the mid 1970s. “I never got into the whole psychedelic folk thing. I haven’t heard a lot of the bands like Forest and so on. The Incredible String Band were never an influence on me – in fact I can’t stand them. It’s the same with Fairport Convention. Domino gave me a copy of ‘Liege and Leif’ and it just doesn’t do it for me. I saw them a couple of years back and I was horrified – it was middle-of-the-road adult-oriented jazz-folk. I had to leave. We had no choice really: they made Doogie (James’ bass player of choice) so angry he started heckling! Having said that, I saw the old line up, minus Sandy Denny of course, doing ‘Matty Groves’ at the BBC Folk Awards and they were really good to watch, really getting into it. When it comes to folk, it’s simply that I prefer the more traditional stuff. I don’t find the other stuff offensive or anything, it just doesn’t make me think, wow, this is amazing. The bottom line though, with whatever style, is remember to make it good!”

So what about the potentially thorny issue of ‘nu-folk’? Having spent the previous weekend at the Green Man Festival, James warms to his theme. “The thing about the word ‘folk’ is that it means different things to different people – I’d rather just play the music than sit around scratching my chin discussing how to categorise it – and it’s the same with most musicians I know. The term itself isn’t the point. It’s the music that counts. For example, I actually think a lot of the time, regardless of the quality of the music, the whole concept is bollocks and has nothing to do with what I personally perceive as folk. You might as well call it nu-reggae, for all the meaning the term has. It seems to be purely about the instrumentation used. When I’m playing at what one may perceive to be new-folk events, I often tend to be the most traditional ‘folk’ act on the bill, which is pretty ironic, as I’m not really traditional in the slightest. But, who’s to say I’m right? Not me, that’s for sure. And that’s my point. Folk means different things to different people – let’s forget about it and move on!” Does James think the current movement is a passing fad or something that will be around for a while? “I think it will stay around. It’s outgrown it’s original position as a journalists’ derivative of folk music, but the definition has become so wide it means nothing, so somehow you end up in a situation where Four Tet, the Aliens and James Yorkston are all nu-folk! Having said that, stretching the bounds of the name it’s given itself is probably no bad thing. For example, the CD that Rob da Bank put together, Folk Off, only has one track on it that I’d personally consider folk, but there are some other great tracks on the record. I don’t find it offensive or anything. It’s just a marketing tool. I’ve done a few gigs with Jim Moray, and he reckons the whole new wave of folk may well sweep away the old folk scene and they won’t have any kind of say in it. I don’t think he’s referring to skinny white guys playing Anji, though!”

That is a depressing thought. On the one hand, folk music as a concept has come out from under the miasma of derision it had existed in for so long, but on the other, the new broader definition of folk may carry within it the seeds of the destruction of the longstanding tradition it threatens to eclipse. James makes a final comment where he points to a positive that may counterbalance this worst-case scenario. “One of the good things about the new-folk movement is that it provides a platform for people like Alisdair Roberts or Elle Osbourne - people who are genuinely doing traditional songs in an original way, yet are swept along by the new-folk trendies. Hopefully, the crowds they attract will then explore traditional music further, and this has to be a good thing. However those two artists would quite easily succeed without any scene supporting them, simply as they’re very good.”

And, we might add, it has to be a good thing that as one of the best of the current crop of acoustic singer songwriters, James Yorkston is happy to talk candidly and enthusiastically about the traditional singers whose songs and voices have moved him. James may not consider the music he makes to be folk music as he would define it, but what he undoubtedly is doing is continuing to produce music that is awash with a beguiling sense of warmth and intimacy; music that is deeply rooted in and sustained by a wider community of musicians with a commitment to doggedly follow their own paths; music that is permeated with the influence of the years spend absorbing the best of traditional folk music: an influence that leaves a subtle yet tangible footprint on his own songs.