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Hey, it's Cindy Howes and Lizzie Ngo from the podcast Basic Folk, honest conversations with folk musicians.
Basic Folk is truly changing the game with our well-researched deep dives that aim to empower the listener while fostering the folk community.I basically am writing worship music for youth group rejects.
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Who's that one with the arch?
That was the alley that went up.Little bay, south facing bay window.Used to sit in there, enjoy the winter sun.And now, the sun doesn't shine on that house.
It's a blustery, overcast, but mercifully dry January day, and we've come to the historic town of Favisham in Kent.
It's home to Britain's oldest brewery, Shepherd Neame, which traces its roots back to the 1500s, and to the ore gunpowder works, which provided the explosives that powered the Industrial Revolution.
I suspect there might be a few detonations in today's episode as we meet the award-winning singer, songwriter, guitarist and fiddle player Chris Wood.
Chris has lived in Kent all his life and writes songs which put a spotlight on the minutiae of ordinary lives, often in a very poetic and moving way.
But since the Brexit referendum and the Tory victory in the 2019 election, Chris has been in a challenging and questioning mood.Let's find out why.
Good morning.Good morning, Matthew.Where have you brought us, Chris?This is where I used to live for about 37 years, number 40.Is that the one that the terraced house with the alleyway down the side?Yeah, yeah.
With a great big white van parked out the front on the pavement.I've got so many photographs and I'd sort of think, oh, should I send these to the council?You know, big scaffolding lorries and big sort of shit sucker lorries and stuff, you know.
Should I send these to the council in green ink? And in the end, we just thought, why don't we just move, you know?
After 37 years, you've finally got too much food.
Yeah, it was hard.It was hard to move.My studio was up in the attic.Did you record in there?Oh, I recorded everything that you've probably heard.All the solo albums, all recorded up there, yeah.
Wow.And that must be quite some atmosphere up there, was it?
Yeah.You know what it's like when somebody pours their heart and soul into something in a particular room.You can walk in and kind of feel something.
I mean, it was just a scabby old attic, but if I think of what happened in there, yeah, it's an extraordinary place.So do you miss it now you've moved?I don't miss it.
I would go away on tour, and I'd play all over the country, and I'd come back here, and this would be the busiest place I had been since I left it. Honestly, we'd had enough.I see you've brought your dog with you.What's her name?Oh, she's Dancer.
It's a silly name, isn't it?But she was born on the 23rd of December.So she's got a brother up the road called Blitzen.And another one called Comet.Is she a lurcher?Nah, she's quite posh.I mean, she wasn't ours.She was from someone else.
This lady gave her to us because she wasn't fitting in the family, do you know what I mean?So she's come to live with us. She was bred in France.Her father is Bedlington Whippet Cross, but her mother is Scots Deerhound and French Griffon.
That's aristocracy, isn't it?It's a lurcher with papers.
She's a darling.Shall we take her for a walk?Yeah, let's wander.Where are we going to go? Well, we'll do our old walk, what we used to do.Actually, yeah, let's do that.Well, she will recognise it then.
I'm hoping that she will, yeah, I'm hoping that she will.There's no van here, it doesn't feel right.
I want to ask you about Kent, because you've lived here all your life.There's no tea in Kent, Matthew.OK.Kent, right.You've got it.
I mean, how do you characterise the county now?How do you think about it?
Well, I mean, how can I put it?I'm not exactly stunned after a referendum and three general elections in short succession, but I think Kent has basically nailed its colours to the mast.
It feels like a place that, like a lot of Great Britain really, a previous culture is in evidence, but it's gone.It's long gone.
So you can feel the history. around you here.We've just driven through the town and you can see some historic buildings and things like that.But you think that's having no impact on the culture of the people who live here?
Well, I struggle to find a culture of the people who live here.What seems easier to find is almost a rejection of culture.You know, unless it's hoovered up from America.It's all about America, you know.I've got to add this lyric which was
It drifts in from the Atlantic like second-hand smoke.We are the punchline.We are the joke.It doesn't feel special to me.It might just be because it's where I'm from. It feels like an experiment that the scientists forgot to turn off.
And is that partly to do with the power of London?
With the pull of London here?
London's right here, you know.There's sort of two fava-shams.There's sort of slope-shouldered, way-faced, broken in the little greasy spoons.And the market, you see the market stalls dwindle every four or five months or so.There's fewer and fewer.
And then there's the Faberchen that's on the London-bound platform at six o'clock in the morning.Every day, you know.Do you influence more middle class?Well, just aspirational people who are in the game.You know what I mean, players.
But if you're not a player, it's all happening to you. And I think most of the people who are having it happen to them have no idea what it is that's happening to them.
So we just zigzagged through an estate here.Oh, get your poo bag out.
Another nursing home.We're not sure of nursing homes down here in Kent.
And a lot of estates now.This must be, what, the 1970s or something like that.But there are lots of them going up around the town, aren't there?Yeah, loads, loads. So, you've lived here all your life.Have you ever thought of leaving?
Because you sound as though you're disillusioned or depressed about what's happening.
Well, yeah, I mean, this is the problem, you see.If you talk about dark things, people think that you are depressed or disillusioned or dark or something.But in fact, this is my muse.You know, this darkness, this...
hypocrisy and these contradictions, I thrive, I love it, I thrive on it.And you want to point out those contradictions in Simon?Well I want to, yeah I mean I'm just keen not to pretend, let's not pretend, I mean we're all grown-ups here.
Let's not allow whoever it is on the telly telling us it's like this or it's like that.Let's just be grown up about this.Let's accept that it's not the way that they're telling us.And I think the only way you can do that is by staying where you are.
There we go, dog central.We're going to head out across here.There's a field here with, is it cabbage? Morning.Morning.What is this in here now?I think it's just like a fertilizer for the ground.Ah, like a green cover, yeah.We'll let you go on a bit.
Alright.Oh yeah, Dancer's loving this.
She loves someone to play with.
I think it's, you know, if you keep moving around, how much can you trust your judgment?Do you know what I mean?How much do you ever really know if you keep moving?If you stop where you are, I mean, it's a cliche, isn't it?
But, you know, the world sort of eventually does come to you. I mean, that little park opposite where we used to live, I've seen it all.I've found a hanged man, I've found shagging couples, guys been murdered, everything.All human existence.
It all kind of comes to the park, do you know what I mean?I've seen proud dads and proud mums and tearful dads and, you know, I don't know.If you just stand still and watch, it's all there.You know, the real stuff's there.
The sirens sang on Sunday They came to rest at your front door They'll call at my house one day That we can all be sure
All the boys in the park had a kick about And as they took the fun fair down Ambulance drove slowly out of town Now all the old folk are tearing up the tennis courts The kids can't get a game.
Round the barber's chair, It's all grey hair, And the tearoom's packed again.But by the bowling green, They stand and dream, As the old flag flutters on the pole.
They dream of the day that they take back control They gave up your allotment, divided it in two
A pair of hipsters took it on Neither of them had a clue But I won't forget that thing you said On Independence Day You said, who cares how it all turns out
I won't be here anyway Now all the old folk are tearing round the tennis courts The kids can't get a game Round the barber's chair, it's all grey hair, and the tearooms are packed again.
But by the bowling green, they stand and dream, as the old flag flutters on the pole. The dream of the day that they take back control By the bowling green they stand and dream As the flag lies limp upon the pole
They dream of the day that they take back control Thank you Chris.
I'm really struck by one of the lines in that when You quote somebody saying, well, I won't be here to see the result of it anyway.Was that a real person that you heard that quote from?
Yeah, I mean, when you write songs, you kind of mix it up a bit.But it was actually the funeral of an old allotment neighbour. It wasn't he who said it, but it was one of the other old bastards.Who said it?You know, who cares?It all turns out.
I'm a beer anyway.What did that make you feel?How did you react to that?I wanted to strangle him. You know that scene in The Godfather where there's an assassination.Somebody gets in the front seat of the car and somebody ice picks them from behind.
This person was in the front seat of the car.
And I thought, oh, if I just had a nice... No, no, it just... But was there a bit of you when you heard it going, I'm going to put that in a song?
Yeah, I mean you hear like, John Cooper Clarke talks about it, he's got notebooks full of one, like I've got a notebook full of one fucking line, you know, great lines, just need poems written for them, you know.
It's like I've got notebooks full of amazing stuff I've heard, yeah.And she said, Ursid's big toenails go off like revolvers.
Listen, we should walk on.Do you spend a lot of your time listening then, Chris?Is that what you do?
Because one of the things I've noticed in your songs is that you pick up on small phrases that people have said and you kind of put a spotlight on those small phrases.
Do you sit in the corner of the pub listening to the conversation, actively seeking out those little phrases?
I try not to do it too actively. But when I went to art school... There was a tutor there who I was particularly pissed off with and I made some move to see if she could be got rid of.She was a shocker, you know.
And of course it was me that was nearly got rid of.I had to go and see the vice principal and we had to go through this pantomime where I had to show him my work, you know, my portfolio.
And at the end of it, he sort of puffed himself up to his full weight.
and his opener was well Chris you seem to have a remarkable eye for trivia and then he sort of laid into me you know but I didn't really hear anything else he'd said because I was still thinking about that phrase you know and I couldn't disagree with him I seemed to have a remarkable eye for
trivia I mean like he said it in a bad way but I think that's exactly what I seem to have you know I seem to hear things other people don't seem to hear I've written lines that I cannot sing you know they're in songs You think they don't work?
I can't get them to work.The first time, they worked for me, but I can't reproduce it, and it's exasperating.And every night I do a gig, I feel that, you know.
It strikes me, then, that the songwriting process must be very painful and painstaking.It takes me a long time.
It takes me a long time, even if it doesn't look like it.I mean, I wrote Come Down Jehovah in about 20 minutes, literally.
Corrine Hallward was on the train, and she'd phoned from Bromley South or something, saying, I'm on the train, I'll be in it whenever.And I thought, God, we need another song.Because we did a little tour together once.
And I just wrote, come down Jo, and drove around and picked her up.But it had been just dating for about 20 years, you know.
So things are going round in your head.Yeah, most of the time.The moment comes for it to land.
Yeah, but I mean, sometimes it's like getting blood out of a stone, you know.And what should anybody be writing about now?Who's writing stuff now? that you think is actually getting down to it.
There seems to be quite a vacuum doesn't there?I mean there seems to be a sort of In music, certainly, you feel like there's a lot of people doing a distraction thing.Do you know what I mean, where there's a lot of escapism?
Well, coming from somebody who's making a series of programs about musicians, yeah, you might have to be careful with that one.But yeah, I mean, certainly, you know, I don't get asked to go to that many folk festivals anymore.
But I did play at one last summer. I was really struck by the way that everybody seemed to me anyway to be sort of folder rolling and hay nonnying as if nothing was going on you know I mean our culture is gone.Democracy as we know it is.
It has long been over.Nobody... I don't know, it's the willful sleeper.
But do you think people... People are desperate not to wake up.People are just ignoring it or trying to avoid it. rather than face the pain of confronting it head on?
Yes, I think, yeah, basically, yeah.Yes, it's much easier to go and watch bagpuss than sit down and get to grips.I mean, Matthew, all my voting life, I have lived in a single party state.
1979 was the first general election that I was able to vote in.Since then, Rupert Murdoch has won every single election except the Cameron-Hung Parliament.You know, Thatcher regarded Tony Blair as her greatest achievement.
Now that's not normal.We're talking about the parallels between now and the 1980s and what people should do if they are angry and upset about what is going on now because during the 1980s there were strikes and there were
marchers and some bands got together and tried to to do something about it.Do you sense that there's anything like that going to go on now?
No, I think the issue for the left has always been, it's always fought its battles on a issue by issue basis.
And that's fine if you're going up against, you know, folk against fascism or the civil rights movement, there you've got a palpable issue, you know.But you cannot fight neoliberalism in that way.Neoliberalism operates on a cellular level.
It's like going out with Excalibur to fight fog.I just don't think people have got their heads around that. I try very hard not to do protest music because I think protest music, not always but very often, is banal.
You know, we shall overcome... What a load of bollocks.
It is bollocks, isn't it?I mean, it's just childish.But what you do is point out what's going on, rather than offering a solution or a rallying cry.Yeah, yeah.I mean, the last... You're observational.
Yeah, I don't really have answers.In fact, since we've moved, And now we've got a big garden, because Claire's the gardener.Your wife?Yeah, she's the gardener and I'm the tractor.Rather creaky, broken down old tractor.
You know, there is a philosophy, I don't know whose it is, but basically just be kind and grow a garden.And it sounds ridiculously simple, but as each day goes by, I'm beginning to understand it and get behind it, you know.
So there is something about connecting with nature that you think is good for people?
Well, it's a platitude, isn't it?It's obvious.It's obviously good for people.I mean, people are sunk right now.They're being lied to, they're being bought with their own money. Yeah, anything that predates that.
It's a pre-Murdoch England that we're all yearning for.
It's a good moment to walk past the Faversham sewage treatment plant.You did that on purpose, didn't you?
Yeah, I thought if I spin that out we'll just see that we're upwind of it so we're okay. The heavily overworked Fabersham sewage treatment plant.Oh really?
Of course, with all the new estates.
Now, Chris, I think you and I have got at least one thing in common, which is that we were both choristers.You were a chorister, weren't you?
Yeah, I was, yeah.Where were you a chorister?Just a little church in Whitstable, All Saints Church. Did you enjoy the experience?
Oh, I think a very strong case could be made for the fact that by the age of eight I had made the best music I was ever going to make in my entire life.
Well, you know.It's transcendent.Bird and Gibbons and Tallis, Bach, you know.It's not just music, is it?It's culture.Those hymn tunes, sensational, you know.
Actually, there's one that I've been trying to remember, and I can't find anyone who knows the name.See if you can remember this one.
I don't know the words, but the tune goes... Ba da da da dee da, do da dee da, do dee do do do.Do da do do, do da do do.La da da da da da. No.No, I don't remember it.
Nobody knows it.And that's something you've brought back from your memory?
I think I used to sing it when I was a kid.And if you watch the Alistair Syme Christmas Carol, There's a scene in it where one of the ghosts transports Scrooge to what his former fiancée is doing now.
And on this Christmas night, she's helping out in a kind of Florence Nightingale-type hospital for the poor, you know, and she's going from bed to the bed.And in the background,
you hear that tune, you know, and as soon as I heard it, I thought, I know that tune.I sung it to Norma Waterson and she said, it sounds Irish.And as soon as she said that, I thought, yes, it does sound Irish.
In the way that, you know, I mean, the English have pilfered all sorts of other... So, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, the folk song collectors regarded as almost the model English melody, you know.O come, O come, Emmanuel.
And that's the sort of melody they were looking for when they were going out to collect. It transpires, it's found in a French manuscript from like the 12th century.
So we've always been picking up these things from other people.
But what was the highlight of your choral career do you think?All the little churches from Kent all kind of congregated at Canterbury to do this great, it must have been Christmas wasn't it, Epiphany or something like that, a great big service.
and O Come O Come Emmanuel, it was the first time I'd ever heard it and to hear it for the first time while you're singing it in Canterbury Cathedral at the age of eight, it was just too much for me, you know, and we rehearsed all day and then we were supposed to go and have a pee and a sandwich before the service and I was just so swept up in the whole thing I completely forgot to have a pee.
I hadn't had a pee all day, you know.I got through the whole service and in the end I just Oh no, it's so agonising.Just 20, 30 yards from where the martyr Thomas himself was cut down, you know, on the hallowed flagstones of Canterbury Cathedral.
But that's a traumatic experience, isn't it?That's a really traumatic experience.
Yeah, but it was as nothing compared to the positives of the music.
It was just a phenomenal moment, and when you're a kid, you know, you soak stuff up, you know, you just, everything happens, the light and the stained glass coming in, I mean, it was just... And there is a peculiarly English thing about that church music, isn't there, and about that church experience.
That certainly had a big impact on me, it felt like I was connecting with my culture.
And whether you sort of believed in God was irrelevant almost.
And it was only later that I looked at the English hymnal and realised that Vaughan Williams had a huge part in finding the music for it and that loads of the music was English folk music.So it wasn't necessarily a religious thing.
That's not to say it wasn't an irreligious thing either.But there was a sense of tapping into something human that this was yours, this was your birthright, you've been born, and it is English, it's Anglican.
It's not Scottish, it's not Irish or Welsh, you know, they have their versions.But the whole kind of Anglican thing, yeah, those hymn tunes are part of who I am, most definitely.
They're a fine example of what we don't sing anymore, what we've basically turned our back on, what we've rejected culturally. I know, darling.You used to come here all the time, didn't you?I've got my little dog whistle here, you know.
But before I can get this out, she's half a mile away, you know.Good girl, darling.Good girl.What a good dog.See, we're on the edge of the marsh here.And this is the sea wall.Climbing up here, yeah.But it's not the sea.It's the Fabersham Creek.Wow.
It's a great view from here, isn't there? Yeah, I mean, you know, you get your people who like mountains and hills, but... This small incline does quite nicely, doesn't it?Mountains and hills are great if you're on the top.
When it's flat, it's 360 degrees every day, all the time.
And you can see that the creek bends around a corner here. And away in the distance, there's the usual line of pylons marching across the land.
They're all the same size pylons.Yeah.And those two there are bigger.
That's where the creek goes underneath. So this creek wiggles its way around and it goes out there and there has to be that much higher because the Thames barges have a huge mast.If it weren't for them they could just use ordinary pylons.
And what about behind us as well because it's so interesting actually that we're right out here in the middle of what seems to be nowhere but I can still hear a lorry reversing.
It's because we're near the town aren't we.
You know it's about the margin To be on the edge of things feels like the right place for me.And if you're bored of Westminster and its madness and its powers and all the rest of it, you could get in a little sailing boat there.
and you could wiggle your way out and you could go off to Norway where people are normal or Finland or Denmark it's so tantalizingly close if I see a map with no coastline on it I get really jumpy you know I don't like it
So you like to be near the coast?I have to be on the edge, yeah.Right, and that's because of the possibility of escape?Yeah, it sounds stupid, I'm never going to do it, am I?Have you ever done any sailing?
Yeah, yeah, my dad used to keep, you see those masts over there, that was the boatyard there.He was a sort of overweight advertising executive, you know, from London and stuff.
And he got this thing about sailing and he couldn't sail it on his own, so I went with him and we were right where we wanted to be, you know.And we'd sail, me and my dad, all day and hardly say a word.
And what sort of voyages did you do, just locally?
Just what they call mudlarking, just pootling around here.Yeah, we might go out around Sheppey, maybe over to Essex, but then get back pretty sharpish, you know.I mean, no, once we got caught out in the fog, We didn't quite know where we were.
This is my dad, because my dad was self-taught at everything, see, which is where I've got that from as well.I've got his cynicism, you know, because he was in advertising, wasn't he?
So, you know, he had a very poor opinion of the human race, as most advertising people do.But also, In Whitstable Library, at the far end of Whitstable Library, there's a wall of Teach Yourself books.
Do you remember with the yellow spine with a little black band around it?Yeah. Every week he'd just pull one of them out and he'd learn all about it.That's what we're learning this week.Next week, watercolour painting, you know.
So he'd done Teach Yourself Sailing, hadn't he?Yeah, he'd done Teach Yourself Sailing, he'd done navigation and he'd learnt his knots and stuff.And we had this, it was a horrible little boat, it was a plastic tub, you know, and we'd sort of sail out.
and once we were out and the fog came in and he hadn't quite got his triangulation points worked out you know he was sitting out there while he was sort of pretending to be doing navigating but there was nothing to see there's no way he could be trying to estimate the direction and the speed of the tides and all the rest of it and suddenly
looming up out of the mist were the red sand forts either the red sand or the shivering sand forts the gun emplacements out there where they filmed Doctor Who you know it just kind of whoa you know just came out of the mist it was
It was just great, you know, yeah.
You said that you went for a long time without speaking.Was that just because you felt very companionable when you were out together like that?
Yeah, I mean, we weren't very companionable, me and my dad, you know.It wasn't an easy relationship because I was quite like him.I think that's where I get a lot of it from, really.He was always looking for the angles.
He was always assuming that people were idiots. That's kind of what he was like, so I think that's where I kind of get that.But I think with the sailing, the place just got to us.We didn't need to talk.There was no engine noise.
It was just the sea and the wind. I mean, it's stripped back, isn't it?It gets pretty stripped back and I like that.That feels very natural to me, you know.Good girl.Good girl.Dancy, sit.Dancy, sit.Dancy, down.
What I love about the marshes is that all year roundness.If you walk in the woods it's like summer or it's winter and there's a massive difference.But on the marsh, because so much of it is sky,
It's kind of the same-ish, but it's never the same if you see what I mean.And one of the things that I love about the marsh is that kind of 360 nature of the landscape.
And so what I do, if there's no one around, you know, which doesn't happen that often, but if there's no one much around and it's a summer or a bit blustery like this, if you get in the lee of the sea wall, you kind of just get down and you just sort of,
You know, if you've been working hard, you might sort of feel a bit drowsy, you know, and you sort of, you might fall asleep, you might have a little nap, you know, the sort of thing that our continental cousins think nothing of, but we feel terribly ashamed about doing.
You might have a little nap and that's all very nice, but it's when you wake up, when you wake up from that nap and you are out here, It's awe-inspiring, this sky, isn't it?It's just brilliant, you know.
And so there might be kestrels, or on the other side there's curlew.You know, and you just wake up.You know what it's like as you come out of sleep, you're in that sort of dreamy half-and-half place, you know.
Well, to be in that place out here is a real privilege, you know.A real privilege.
Is there a song that you could sing here for us?
There's a song that I've been trying to work out.I'll limp through it for you.It's not my song.It's a lyric by John Clare.The Peasant Poet?The Peasant Poet. and he wrote it when he was in the lunatic asylum at Northampton General Asylum.
And I've been mucking about on the guitar to try and get it to work, but I originally wrote it for a choir, soprano, alto, tenor, bass.And, you know, the lyric is, I am, but what I am, no one cares or knows.My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
It's just gorgeous. I am yet what I am, no one cares or knows.
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.I am the self-consumer of They rise and vanish in oblivious host I long for scenes where no man ever trod A place where woman never smiled nowhere
There to abide with my Creator God And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept Untravelling and untravelled here I lie the grass below above the voltage.
I was just trying to picture the sort of sense of desperation in his life at the time when he wrote that and then the ability to kind of project yourself into this escaping world of heaven.
Unbelievable.Yeah, he never saw Helpston again.I don't know how long he was there for.Years.
And he was put there because he was too poetical.Yeah, yeah.Wasn't he?Yeah.
It said there was an outrageous line or something on his committal papers which said, given to poetic ramblings or musings.
Yeah, which is like the same way that women were just incarcerated because they were just a bit too much, weren't they, you know?It was the same for him.
You know, all the football matches now, before the match starts, they all start a minute late because it's the year of mindfulness or something and so they're trying to combat depression and mental health and the rest of it.
But surely it must have occurred, if you look at the times that we're living in, the madness that's taking place every day, to me, to have unstable mental health or to be staring at depression, to me, that seems like a perfectly healthy response.
It's logical that you might be suffering from anxiety.Absolutely, yeah. Have you suffered from depression yourself?
I haven't... I don't think I have.When I finished making So Much To Defend, I've been exhausted a couple of times.Physically, emotionally, cognitively, absolutely spent.
Because you put so much into the album?
Yeah. So a friend of mine who had an Arsenal season ticket, she said, do you want to come and see Arsenal?
And I was like, whoa, yeah, of course.
I'd never been to a premiership match.And I was like, yeah, you know, I've been looking forward to this, you know.But the album was finished and I sort of somehow got to the railway station and I sat down.
And the train I was supposed to get on was there. But I sort of sat down and I sort of looked at it, you know, and then I saw the doors beep and saw them close and I saw it drive off, you know.
And I think at least one more train came and went before I kind of woke up, you know.
Because you just couldn't get the impetus or the energy to get on?
I was so... It was like, you know, the scene where, in The Graduate, where Dustin Hoffman's given the diving suit and he drops into the swimming pool.To the bottom of the pool, yeah.And that's where I was, yeah.Right.
And what do you think had provoked that?
Why do you think that had happened?Just work, just... When you do a gig, you put energy out.If you're the sort of performer I am, you wear your heart on your sleeve.Every night, you know, I'm reaching as far deep
as I can, and I give, give, give, but the audience give back, and you can have some wonderful, wonderful evenings, you know.And I think they appreciate that.When you make an album, there's nothing comes back.It's all going out all the time.
And it can take a long time, you know, if you don't quite know what you're doing, like I don't.You know, if I lived in Nashville, People make albums and, you know, hey, let's cut an album, man, you know.
And there's 27 people to help you, but everything I do is on my own.So when you read Claire, it's very real, you know.
We should do a football song at some point.Do you think that'll be possible?Yes, we can try and do it.Are you a Fabersham FC supporter?
Not really, no.I don't know if anyone... No.There are Fabersham FC supporters, but they are few in number, I think.I only went a couple of times, it was just so great, you know.It was just another world.
In fact, I don't go to see Fabersham very much because it's a bit like playing the sitar.
Yeah.What's he going to say next?Everyone thinks.I know that if I started to get into it, I wouldn't have time for anything else.It could become an obsession.Yeah, yeah.
You know, minor league football, because it's, I mean, it really is one of the last bits of culture that we've got left, isn't it?
So when Whitstable come up or Margate come up, you know, there's a sense of something, something that's bigger than we are.
And you did write a song about it.I did write a song.It's called It's Only a Friendly.Yeah.
It was all the old chaps up the back where they always sit Their heads went down as the brand new signing slipped again He'd been jogging to and fro to virtually no acclaim.He'd made very little impression on a highly forgettable game.
Under our antediluvian floodlights, both teams looked the same.But it was only a friendly
As the full back brought the visiting striker down They said they heard the crunch from the dump at the edge of town We all heard the words as they fell on stony ground It's only a friend leave
They were fishing for pike on the telly in the clubhouse bar.Young Luke came in, he'd just ridden off his uncle's car again.
Now Luke is a lad with a gift for devastation.
And this time the young brave had crossed the Central Reservation.And sure enough the police came in, they were looking for It was only a friendly.Cos we was on our best behaviour, we were queuing up to be polite.
As we all stood and we swore, Luke had been at the match with us all night.
We walked them back to their car and we wished them both goodnight.It was only a friendly.
They had just scored again when she said, I ain't a bleedin' pikey But I have demeaned myself a time or two She let out a laugh like a bowling ball As she slid down the gentleman's toilet wall She held John Luke in a thrall And that's not all, it was only a friendly
Young Luke had meant to play the gent as he went to try and catch her, but he missed.
She said, you're gonna need to be quicker than that if you wanna get kissed.He said, I don't care, you're still all mine to do.
And the tannoy voice said something about man of the match It was their slippery little substitute absolutely no one could catch And all around the ground the final whistle blew And somebody shouted something we already knew
Oi referee, it's not always all about you.
It was one of the old chaps up the back, where they always, where they always, always sing.
We're going to go this way now.We're on the edge of an old brick field.There were loads of brick fields around Fathersham and the last brick works closed a couple of years ago and is now being developed of course turned into noddy boxes.
This is the key.This is the key to Narnia.We're going to unlock the wardrobe and go through.I know it sounds like Guantanamo, but... It's really into the magic.We're going into Narnia here.
So when did you get an allotment first?
my friend Rob Jarvis who's a brilliant trombone player he's played the trombone on various records he's got one up the top he said actually it's a bit too much there's half of it it's just under black plastic and i oh right okay you know
there a few days and weeks went past you know and then I said so what are you gonna do with that bit under the plastic then he said I'm just gonna have to wait until I can get to it I said well how about me and Claire doing it
And he said, yeah, he said, if you don't mind, you know, it's still my allotment, but if you don't mind working it for me, that'd be good.
And we had about pretty much two seasons on half of someone else's plot to get a feel for it, you know, and then a half plot came up, we got that. From that came the album A Handmade Life.That's where that came from, starting with being a lotmenteer.
And then a full plot came up, so we moved.
I mean, there's a whole society going on here, isn't there?I mean, we're walking through all these different plots with their different kinds of sheds and their different approaches to growing things.
And do you interact with the other allotment owners?
Yeah, you can't not do that, really.I mean, I try to be my belligerent. Eeyore curmudgeonly self, you know, but you can't not really.I mean, this lady's blackberries here, she claims not to know what she's doing.
She gets a sensational amount of blackberries out of it and they taste fantastic.And, oh, no, I don't, I just suck them in.I just watch Monty Don and I just, you know, and, you know, it's just great.And are there rivalries?
Amongst some of the old guys there are, but they are literally dying off, you know.This is us.
Yeah.Well, this looks rather well kept.Very nice.
And what do you grow on your plot?
Well, go on, name something.
Yeah.Peas?Yeah, we've tried peas.Peas not so good here, but beans, French beans, climbing beans and broad beans.Keep going.
Yeah.Don't bother growing main crop, because they're really cheap, but grow the earlies. They are sensational, straight out of the ground.
While I'm standing here I keep hearing some of your music in my head.
Which ones do you hear?My Darling's Downsized.
Oh yeah, that's right.It's a bit twee though, isn't it?I know, but it was written on the allotment.
It is allotment.It's very twee.It's sort of ignoring what's going on.
This isn't where my Not where your head is at the moment?No, not at all.Not at all, no.I'd just do a different song.If ignorance is bliss, they say it is folly to be wise.But have you ever looked into their eyes?
Try and catch their gaze Tell me what you see Cos that don't look like bliss to me It looks like frightened and uncertain Like what is going on?Looks like where have all the promises gone?
It looks like being asked to finish Something someone else began
It looks like hurry up and get this done.
If ignorance is bliss, then tis folly to be wise.Bait a hook for simple, watch the simple rise.Everything is simple when you are simple too.
Let your red top do the work for you Learn to hate your neighbour as you would hate yourself While the dream stays wrapped in cellophane on the top shelf Oh, if you could fog a mirror, you'd be free to leave But you're so angry you can't breathe.
If ignorance is bliss, then tis folly to be wise.Everything in black and white, no compromise.They say that with no power comes no responsibility.
They say your ignorance will set you free Free to dream of empire and the sun that never sets Free to walk away from all your debts When the grandkids ask how were you so easily misled
feel free to bow your head.If ignorance is bliss and is folly to be wise, have you ever looked into their eyes? Try and catch their gaze Tell me what you see Cos that don't look like bliss to me
Well, that wasn't twee.That's where your mind is at the moment.That's what's going on now.
I think that's where millions of people's minds are at the moment, Matthew.You know, your programme's called Folk on Foot, right?Who are the folk in folk music?Who are the folk?It's a question that you and McColl used to ask all the time.
Do you have a kind of tentative answer to it?I don't know, but... When I started doing this, I told you my dad was an advertising man, right?So I'm brought up very cynically, right?
So I finally arrive at what we call folk music, and I suddenly see, for the first time, the ordinary person, right?Being articulate, romantic, joyful, tenacious, visionary, imaginative.You know, in folk songs, what you get is the voice of
the people who were never going to have their history written up by anyone else.History is always written by the winners.
Now, folk music is a chance for the people who aren't the winners to basically set out what they figured were the important things in their lives.And I was overjoyed when I heard that voice.
But, you know, I just went and did a tour at the end of last year.I was up in the northeast and that landscape is full of the ghosts of these people.
So, you know, fishermen in Hull, miners in Easington, railway workers in Stockton, mill workers in Leeds, you know, the ghosts of these people were everywhere, but they were ghosts.What was real were the Brexit posters.
Now, what I think a lot of folk music is, is about who were the folk.
But do you not think you had a kind of idealised view of who the folk were in the past?Because they were also murderers and rapists in medieval times.I think you're absolutely right, Matthew.
And there were people who were racists and had views that you might not agree with.And some of those are in the folk songs, aren't they?
I think you're absolutely right.But I think what the Brexit thing did was it caused a lot of people to suddenly wake up and realise that this is not the country you thought it was.
My songs are sort of praising the sort of wonderfulness of all these ordinary lives, but it turns out no member of the folk, the current folk, has ever asked me to write a song about them or sing them a folk song.
you know, this folk music has got nothing to do with who the people are now.So it's not their music, but can it be about them?I don't know.I don't think it can be.I don't think I can really write about them.
I think I've got a few of these angry songs to get off my chest first.But I do also think that if I'm going to stay living here, I have to find a way through it.
I have to wake up, I have to smell the coffee, I have to stop looking at this country through rose-tinted specks and if anyone ever told you that you'd hear the phrase Chris Wood looks at England through rose-tinted specks.
And here we are, back at the faithful old Mondeo.Back at the Mondeo.
Mondeo Man.The Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Centre.Yeah.Chris, I'm just going to say thank you because it's been absolutely fascinating.So thank you for spending time with us.Thank you for sharing your music.
And most of all, thank you for challenging me.I went on a bit, I'm afraid.
Yeah.You can get to the end of a long queue as far as that's concerned. Good, hope you had a good time.
Good girl.There's a good girl.
Well that was a treat wasn't it?If you enjoyed that Folk on Foot classic episode do please like and review us in your podcast app and become a member of our wonderful Patreon community at folkonfoot.com support us or via the link in the show notes.
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