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In 1984, while I was still at school, I released my first album, ‘On Kielder Side’. It was a collection of mostly traditional Northumbrian tunes. We had borrowed a TEAC two-track tape recorder from the local radio station for the weekend and all the recording was done in two days between 10am – 4pm in my parents’ kitchen; no mixing, no editing, just straight to tape!
That was forty years ago; my music and the way I record have changed a lot since then. But the idea of playing tunes inspired by Northumberland with a group of friends is still at the heart of everything I do.
I toyed with the idea of re-recording ‘On Kielder Side’, playing all the same tunes with new arrangements. However, on listening to it again, I decided to do a 40-year celebration of that album by reimagining it – taking some of the tunes and re-recording and, in other cases, finding or writing new tunes that cover some of the same themes.
My lament for Sycamore Gap is on the new album, written after the unlawful felling of the majestic sycamore on the Roman Wall. In my mind, it takes the place of the Tom Anderson slow air Da Slockit Light, which was on the first album. Slockit is a Shetland dialect word meaning extinguish or snuff out. Tom wrote the tune one night when he was visiting Eshaness, where he grew up, and he was noticing that where there used to be lots of lights from houses, now there were far fewer, as people had moved away from the area. I feel that my Sycamore Gap tune has some of that same feeling of loss…although there’s definitely some anger in there too…and a touch of hope – I was really pleased with the way the curlew recordings just fitted in there, really locating the tune. And the curlew is the symbol of Northumberland National Park so that all fits in nicely!
Sycamore Gap was meant to be just solo pipes, but Ian (Stephenson) tried adding a bit of pipe organ…and then we got completely carried away, adding the curlews and other field recordings – wind noises, rustling leaves etc. until it was sounding so epic that it no longer quite fitted into the sound world of Return to Kielderside! We ended up doing two versions, one slightly shorter and with ALL the added sounds, which I released as a digital single (listen below), and the other full-length and slightly less ‘out there’ version, which is on the album.
Other tunes that have a link to On Kielder Side include The Steel Reel, which was composed by Martin Matthews. Martin played cittern and mandocello on the original album and I wanted him to be represented on this 40-year anniversary recording.
Looking back at On Kielder Side (I’m going to be mentioning these two albums a lot so let’s abbreviate…OKS for the old one and Return to K for the new), I knew I wanted to play some of the same tunes again – I’ve always enjoyed revisiting tunes and finding new aspects of them – different chords, maybe taking them at a different speed, or bringing in different musicians, with different instruments, which inevitably changes the character of the tune.
So…on Return to K the tune Johnny Cope is presented completely differently to its appearance on OKS where I played it on the fiddle and combined elements of the versions in Köhler’s Repository and the Kielder Jock manuscript. On the new album, I play it on the pipes and didn’t refer to any notated sources (which is probably why the second half has gone a bit off-piste…but I don’t mind that…tunes change!)
Other tunes that appear on both albums include three that I play just as a pipes and melodeon duet with my old friend Julian Sutton. I really like the liveliness of A B Hornpipe and Billy Pigg’s hornpipe (Julian is really going for it on the latter…it makes me smile to hear it!) The slow air Border Spirit wasn’t initially going to be on Return to K, but Julian and I tried it out in the studio (having only played it together a couple of times in our lives!) and there’s something about the way we are playing together…really listening to each other…not quite sure how many times through it’s going to be, or if we’re going to repeat any sections…it just felt very true to the spirit of this new album. Just two instruments, no edits or overdubs…first take! Also – I love Julian’s chords and his playing in general – it was a delight to work with him again.
Return to K starts off by revisiting the first track from the original album – Joan’s Jig (with very different chords behind it) then into Cut the File – and this one was causing a few issues with which chords to choose, until Ian Stephenson (multi-instrumentalist and also the person who recorded the album) was let loose on the pipe organ and we found a completely different approach to the tune.
And now a few words about some of the new tunes….
I composed Greystead Hornpipe because there were quite a few hornpipes on OKS and back in those days hornpipes made up quite a large percentage of my repertoire…I really like the bouncy rhythm – very well suited to Northumbrian pipes. We hardly play any in my current band (the Darkening), so I thought it was about time I wrote a new one.
On OKS, I had played a Scottish tune called Jean’s Reel, and in my mind, the tune that replaces that on the new album is Roman Wall Rambo (named after one of my relatives who was a Roman Wall farmer and an accordion player) I very intentionally channelled that Scottish dance band sound. Of course, it had to have an accordion on there and who better than Amy Thatcher, who I’ve been working with regularly for many years now…I’ve actually known her since she was in primary school!
Another person who I’ve known for years is Northumbrian piper Andy May – we actually recorded a couple of tracks together back in 2002 – but on Return to K, I brought Andy in as a pianist, and he made a huge difference to the soundworld of this album.
The youngest player on the album is teenage fiddler Jem Quilley, who plays on the KC Waltz/ Rede River Girls set – the first tune composed by Jem and his brother Arlo as a gift for me and my daughter Casey, the second composed by me for Jem and Arlo’s younger sisters (also brilliant musicians) It means a lot to me to have Jem playing on this set.
And the last guest musician only pops up on one tune…we’d finished recording, and I suddenly decided that Steel Reel needed another fiddle. I could have double-tracked myself, but that felt contrary to the spirit of the album, so I asked Emily Stephenson, who came straight over and played the tune for me (she lives next door to the studio and was delighted to be lured away from the household chores she was in the middle of!)
I’m sure I could tell you more about some of the other tunes, but I’ve probably gone on long enough…congratulations if you’ve got this far!!
The whole process of making this album has been a joy. It is only a limited edition run (1000 CDs, not going into shops, or on to Spotify, etc., just available from my Bandcamp or at my concerts) to mark 40 years since my first album.
I know that some people will vastly prefer Return to K to my recent work with my band (and vice versa) – and that’s absolutely fine, they’re kind of different things. But it’s all part of the same thing really – it’s all part of me and my musical history and influences. The musicians (Dick Moscrop, Joe Hutton, Henry Robson, Will Taylor, Will Atkinson etc) who I played so many tunes with when I was younger still live inside me and continue to make their presence known. And the group of musicians who join me on Return To Kielderside, despite being much younger, are also players that I’ve known and worked with for decades (apart from Jem, who hasn’t been alive for decades yet!) and I really felt the connection between us and the music.
“Rather than a direct re-recording of her debut, Return to Kielderside is a kind of revisiting in a wider sense of the term: an artistic, physical, psychic repositioning of the musician against the landscape that first inspired her.”
Thomas Blake, KLOF Mag
Return to Kielderside (1st November 2024) Resilient Records
Order via Bandcamp (Digital/CD): https://kathryntickell.bandcamp.com/album/return-to-kielderside
