Getting Jiggy With It
They’re the dyed-in-the-heather folk troupe who aren’t all that they seem. Though named after a remote Scottish isle, neo-folkies Stornaway actually hail from the windswept reaches of England’s Home Counties. They talk about catching the trad bug and explain that, though Mumford and Sons and Laura Marling would have you think otherwise, there’s nothing zeitgeisty about English folk at the moment.
Patrick Freyne, 02 Sep 2010
Robert Steadman, youngest member of indie folk quartet Stornaway, is considering his future. “I finished A-levels last summer so I’m in my gap year,” he says. “I could do music or art or something. I was considering doing environmental science, a degree with a career at the end of it.”
“You could combine it with touring,” muses multi-instrumentalist Jon Quin. “At each gig you could take a soil sample.”
Everyone nods sagely. Singer and songwriter Brian Briggs starts reminiscing about his own time studying environmental science in Oxford where he focused specifically on duck ecology.
“I was studying the use of water ponds in South West London by a particular breed of duck,” he recalls. “Someday if this goes tits up I’ll go back to it.”
Ah, it’s so nice and refreshing to meet a band who aren’t ashamed to be educated, who are smart enough to know their career has a shelf-life, and who don’t equate ostentatious rudeness and wilful ignorance with cool. Briggs was diverted from his environmental career by a chance meeting with Quin, then a Russian scholar, and after their first conversation they had put an advertisement in the local free-sheet.
“Ollie [Steadman, bass-player] was the only person who responded,” says Briggs. “So we had to take him.”
Luckily Ollie came as a sort of package with his younger brother Rob and a four-piece band was soon born. They called the outfit Stornaway after a town on the Isle of Lewis, which they only got around to visiting the week before our interview.
“It’s not quite on the regular touring schedule,” Briggs laughs. “And I don’t think the people who came were necessarily following us or knew us. It was just a lot of sceptical locals: ‘Who are these southern upstarts who’ve taken our name?’ But we bought them a whiskey and I think that won them over.”
That gig came with some practical problems.
“The engine on the ferry broke and we had to stay for an extra night,” Briggs explains. “It was great because we got to see the island but it meant we missed a gig on the mainland. So we went over the next day and played at 11 in the morning in the blazing sunshine. It was the most amazing day weather-wise and what they got was way better than what the gig would have been the day before I reckon. It was totally acoustic and really friendly and informal.” He beams. “It was my favourite gig so far.”
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