Talking To...Jim Moray
#N And like you, the song moves on, the person that hears it on your album would hear it in a different context and it moves on when they play it.
#J Exactly.
#N You're a man that thinks a lot about folk music. You're one of the few folk artists that appears on the messageboards, at least under their own name. You take part in the debates and people know it's your real opinion.
#J There used to be quite a lot of us on the messageboards. Five, six years ago, John Spiers, Eliza(Carthy) used to post. Eliza still reads them a lot, but doesn't post that often. The problem is that it's a written medium and it's easy to miss a context. If you put down the wrong thing or it's read as the wrong thing it can hurt your career. You have to be careful putting your name to things if it's your livelihood.
As you say I think quite a lot about these things and how to express it. It would be easy enough to invent a pseudonym, but then it wouldn't be me. I contribute to messageboards a lot because I think they're an important part of the folk community. You've got to be aware. I think it's Godwin's law that states the longer a thread continues the greater the chance of one contributor comparing another to Hitler. You've got to keep perspective in all of these things, but a great community thing.
The boards allow people that are geographically spread to talk to each other and share experiences that they otherwise couldn't or would take ages by word of mouth.
For artists…If I was in the Killers, I could probably have an interview published in a big paper or on the radio every week. I could put my point across to a lot of people regularly. In the folk world I do quite a lot of interviews, compared to many artists. I get periods where I might have a busy three months and then not able to do so for another two years. There just aren't enough media outlets, radio, tv, magazines, to give a consistent voice.
Because of that the messageboards become important. Folk music in a commercial sense has been quite slow moving because of that. There aren't enough ways of letting people know what's out there, what's going on. The internet is speeding it all up again and I like contributing to that.
#N It also allows you to engage with your audience on a one to one level. To interact and exchange ideas, rather than a one way process that written and broadcast mediums tend to be.
#J There is a flipside to it. If you're talking to someone after a gig, they're there and accountable for what they say. You get people on messageboards that feel they aren't. I think it's good to have a level of communication with the audience. I'm not heard to contact.
#N Heading off at a complete tangent. I interviewed Jackie(Oates) at the beginning of the year and she mentioned the possibility of the two of you getting into the studio together. Is that going to happen soon?
#J I've just been producing the new Wistman's Wood(Jackie Oates band project) album. We've just done that, there's a couple of bits left to do before it's done and dusted, but it's nearly finished.
Me and Jackie live close enough together now that we never really go into the studio together, we can take odd half hours or if we've got a morning spare. I don't think that we're going to do a duo album, but I'm sure we will always appear on each others records.
There's a project that I'm just starting that will definitely involve her, but it's a very long term thing.
#N Go on, you've got me intrigued now.
#J It's going to involve a lot of people. It doesn't have a name or anything yet, but I'm trying to put together a collective album. The idea being I'm almost the editor and I find contributions from musicians.
Some of the people that played on this album, I never even met. The rapping on the album, I never met Bubbz I ftp'd the music to him. He added his bit and send it back. I'd give it a listen, e-mail any changes and did it that way. The silly thing is we were in different parts of Bristol when we did that, but it could just have easily been America or Brazil.
With the mainstream music industry in recession, people are more up for gigs and whilst what I did wasn't quite like this…I was put in touch with….I my position you sometimes don't realise how attainable you are. I went to a couple of meetings with Real World records and was put in contact with Jerry Barotta in New York State.
As a drummer he help define the sound of prog rock. He gets lots of gigs as a session musician, but now he does them at home and emails them to people. His drums are permanently mic'd up. He gets a commission goes to the studio, records the drums and mails them to the client. He's no longer got any real overheads so it's not expensive.
There's all kinds of people like that and what I want to do is an album ultising that ability. You could have an album with contributions by people anywhere in the world. It could all be done really quickly utilising the internet. It wouldn't so much be a Jim Moray album, it could have shared ownership.
In theory the costs would be relatively low because people would be in their own homes. I've got a couple of meetings about that coming up. I don't want to overstate it, it might not work out, but it's where I'm at at the moment. It's what's exciting me
#N And yes you're right the net is very much a double edged sword, but this is very much a positive in what it can do for music.
#J Exactly. If you were to distil the answer down…I think what people describe as a rise in folk music in the last five years, I don't think is that…I think people are getting bored with music that engages at a stadium level, people want to engage with music at a one on one level, a conversation. I think what binds together what I do, what Kate Rusby does, what Eliza Carty does and Joanna Newsome and other artists like that is they can try to engage on that level.
You can do more fine strokes rather than a broad brush, you can engage with a musician in Brazil. It's a lot easier to do now. You couldn't do it before and I want to do something that utilizes that idea. That's one place where I've got my head.
Another area that I'm thinking a lot about is dance music, but generic, thinking about Cuban, morris, clog and ceilidh and to sort of find the things that they share. It would be interesting to put together a band around that.
#N Would that need to be a big band, as there seems to be a move towards bigger bands at the moment, Bellowhead, Uiscdwr Big Band, Oysterband Big Band, more instruments and more range.
#J There are sort of precedents, the Afro Celts, Bellowhead, bands like that already touring, but I want to apply my thoughts to a band like that.
#N There was a band called the Happy End twenty odd years ago, about twenty three people, where the Barely Works came from that came together for occasional gigs/festivals that brought different elements in a bigger set, jazz into folk, into blues into latin, they could go off at tangents, all musicians playing then hardly any.