June Tabor is so fiercely determined to steer her own course that she bristles at the merest mention of the music industry, writes Tony Clayton-Lea.
June Tabor has just given a snack to her cat. Fresh from work in London, Tabor is now back in her home in Wales, where her faithful animals have been awaiting her return. Tabor loves her animals. When asked what is her worst personality trait she says it is her impatience. "But not with animals, funnily enough. I'm better with animals than people."
You wouldn't think it listening to Tabor's music, which over the course of 30 years has established her not only as a chronicler of ordinary people in all their tragedy and glory but also as an unwitting and unwilling participant in the development of British folk. She can be quite sharp in her responses but comes around quickly, regretting perhaps her self-confessed impatience and replacing it with a generosity of spirit and forgiveness that most certainly encapsulates the love she shows toward her furry friends.
She is, she admits, a late starter; she was working first as a librarian and then as a Lake District-based restaurateur before she took the plunge into full-time singing. Mention her views of the music industry in the context of her singing career and she bristles like one of her cats at the sound of a strange bark.
"Don't ask me about the music industry - I've got nothing to do with that! It makes it sound like I'm famous or successful, or something like that." A breath, a pause, and then the forgiveness takes over: "I have been exceptionally fortunate in as much as I've always been able to do what I've wanted, which ipso facto does not involve commercialism. In a way that was a conscious decision in the mid-seventies - at that time I decided not to go into music on a full-time basis, because I knew if I did that I would no longer be in control."
So she stuck with the day jobs for another 10 years, along the way releasing albums such as Airs and Graces, (1976, her debut), Ashes and Diamonds (1978) and Abyssinians (1983). She refused to travel along the path that other people took ("having hit songs, and the like, turning into their own tribute bands") and carried on doing what she felt was right for her, as well as making forceful decisions in relation to her material and the way it was performed. As far as she is concerned, the way her performance and musical life have evolved is a natural and organic process without any considerations whatsoever of commercialism. "The music business has passed me by - or I have sat still and let it go wherever it wanted to." End of topic. Next question, please.
Tabor started singing full-time from the late 1980s, and has since recorded and released a body of work that stands head and shoulders above what passes for contemporary British folk. She seems wary of praising the likes of Kate Rusby and Karine Polwart (two UK contemporary folk singers who have surely benefited from Tabor's pioneering, independent frame of mind), and perhaps views them (tetchily?) as having tied something of themselves onto the coat tails of commercialism.
"Largely, whatever public profile or reputation I have was gained in a very gradual way without any particular consideration for the media. It was totally different from anything that Kate and Karine - and anyone else doing something in a much more commercial way - have achieved. I think it's brilliant that they are bringing their music - whatever that might be - to a wider public and doing it with considerable conviction and success. But it's got nothing to do with the way I evolved and developed as a singer."
SUCH A HEADSTRONG mindset has been with her all of her life, it seems. Where did it stem from? Her level of awkwardness, she says, has been a constant source of energy for her throughout her life. She admits she is not one for standing still.
"I try not to," she says. "It's only learning things, attempting things, even, that you maybe don't always get right that helps you to understand what is happening now, what may happen in the future, and which gives you a new perception of what went on before. Working with musicians from outside the received field of folk music is also very important, because it makes you look at material in a different way. It helps you to understand the strengths of a music you might not have heard before, and to consider it from a standpoint that is not yours initially."
It's experimenting, she agrees, but not for the sake of it. She says she wouldn't undertake any collaboration unless it wasn't something she thought she could learn from. Cue a throwback to her days as a restaurateur: "Musical equivalents of fusion food don't always work, and you have to be aware of the intentions of that fusion before you embark on it. You might get an Arts Council grant for it, but it won't actually be very good because it's an impossibility in the first place to make those two things interact and form an entity that is part of both and something of neither."
What about other people who would say the same fusion is a seamless one? "Yes, it's subjective, but if it doesn't work for me, then it just doesn't work. If they don't work then maybe there's a lack of substantial meat - and I say that as a vegetarian - in them in the first place. Maybe the words in them aren't as strong as I thought they were in the first place."
Tabor has been at the top of her game for some time now, the doyenne of heavily-accented Brit Folk who has stretched the remit of the genre by singing everything from Billy Bragg, Lou Reed and Elvis Costello to new ballad projects (1996's Singing the Storm, pieced together by harpist and composer Savourna Stevenson, with lyrics commissioned from Liz Lochhead, Michael Marra, Valerie Gillies and Les Barker) and song cycles (this year's Soldier, Sailor, Shepherd by the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Renga Ensemble, a work derived from material brought to light by song collector and folklorist Ruth L Tongue).
THERE SEEMS TO be no one on the horizon to come even close to her, and for many people she is at her best when she touches the bones of human experience, of lives bruised by tragedy and discomfort.
"Like most people's, my life has seen good and bad," she reveals. "Rare is the person whose financial, emotional and personal parts of their lives have not been troubled. So yes, downs and ups cannot help be reflected in one's music and understanding of human emotions when you've not necessarily got love right yourself quite a few times. It gives you a level of sympathy with other people who don't. And it possibly gives other people a degree of support through music."
She has been accused, she says, of singing depressing songs, something she dismisses with an exasperated sigh. It is, Tabor highlights, a very superficial claim, considering the nature of the material she performs. Strong stuff? Yes. Folk lite? No.
"The subject matter of many of the songs showcases the indomitable nature of the human spirit - and that's what matters. If you can take all that life can throw at you and still manage to take comfort in what's around you - music, art, literature, landscape, people - then you've learned something from your experiences, and you're contributing something to other people's."
All of which ties in neatly with what she deems to be her best personality trait: "Hopefulness," she reckons, "Trying to never lose sight of hope."