Ralph McTell spent the late summer in Cornwall preparing for his forthcoming tours. Marianne James caught up with him to ask about his roots, his recent albums and his upcoming plans

I began by welcoming Ralph home from his Australian tour this spring.
I love playing in Australia and I feel a particular kinship with the country. I think our cultures are very similar in many ways. British working-class culture used to be very similar; we’ve changed here rather than them. They haven’t changed as radically as we have but the country is different now because of the south east Asian immigration –great food, great colour and great sunshine.
Christie Moore’s brother, Luka Bloom, says the reason Aussies are so great is that they’re just “paddies with suntans”. I think it’s a lovely way of describing it, it’s got a bit of that definitely.

I gather Australia was a success, technical problems aside?
The technical problems I have are only because I am only trying to make things better. I have in-ear monitoring now which is like listening to a CD of yourself almost. My pitching is sometimes a bit dodgy and I tend to sing a little sharp on occasion and I think in-ear monitoring has helped me there.
I’ve gone over reluctantly to in-ear monitoring for the sake of doing better performances. Whenever my tour manager and sound engineer Donard Duffy is working with the equipment there is never a problem. But he wasn't with me in Australia. Every roadie under the sun thinks they can do better and that it’s part of their job to create a problem and then solve it. In the past, they didn’t always manage to solve it for me and it affected my performance in the end.
You get used to certain things being on stage with you and you get to rely on them and you really are frightened to change things. I know people say I look as if I am cool on stage but underneath I’m a bit like the swan – serene above the water but paddling like hell under the surface. Every bit of me is working for that performance and if something goes wrong or there’s a sudden noise it really does throw me. It takes me a little time to compose myself and get back into it so I did have a bit of a struggle in Australia.
Also, I am not keen on doing outdoor festivals with an acoustic guitar. I never have been and I’ve always found it a bit difficult. Besides, most of them are in daylight and all my little comfort blankets were being removed. But having said that, it went very well.

Turning to your music, last year you released both The Journey and Gates of Eden. I thought it was unusual to be releasing two albums virtually as companion discs in the same year. Why did you decide to release them more or less at once?
Well, partly bad planning. But also I’ve got a lot of desk-clearing to do. Sometimes I wait for the muse to come and hit me with songs but since our organisation has changed and I’ve been having to do a lot more decision-making in the office area, it’s taken my mind off the ball of songwriting. Anyway, songwriting gets harder and harder as you get older, not easier and easier.
It’s hard to get back into the role of the chap sitting down with a guitar and writing his songs because you’re sort of watching everything. You’re trying to watch that the agency’s working right; the sounds and the touring possibilities are working correctly; the transportation and all that is OK. Although my team does an awful lot of the work, I still have to get involved.
With Gates of Eden, I felt the need to reinforce the fact of my broad taste in music, especially my roots. Part of the reason I wrote my books was that sometimes people think of me as a home-counties, middle-class boy. But my upbringing was tough and I made it tough on myself through various decisions I made. But my roots and my music are so vitally important to me that I think my own music has ended up sounding many miles away from where I started although I don’t know whether that’s better or not.
So every now and then I need to remind myself of the roots of my music are and how good are the writers that have influenced me. There's also nostalgia for an earlier and simpler time. I have real respect for these musicians whose material I cover, especially from those early days.
I was in Cornwall in the summer and I had the opportunity to record with my friends down there. I rather liked the whole organic process of recording in the village hall and gathering the guys together, rehearsing and seeing what came out; I had a great time doing it. There are one or two tracks that I would have preferred to have done again and one or two songs that I would have liked to have included but we ran out of time and budget. Nonetheless, I am very pleased to havbe released Gates of Eden and it lets people know that I am still working even if I’m not writing a lot just now.

So why do you feel that Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and the others are so special and endure the passing of time?
Well, the central message of Woody Guthrie appealed immensely to me. He synthesised so many things that I came to believe or recognised as something I did believe. From the socialist standpoint, his care for the unions and the working man, his glorification of that and the uplifting positivity of his songwriting. Also, certain guitar styles turn me on in a way that’s musically exciting without being technically very difficult so they have a purity. That was Woody.
Bob Dylan came through a few years older than me, but he came through the same synthesis if you like. He had more music available to him, being an American, and his passion for Woody quite overwhelmed me. I didn’t think anyone could have admired him more than me but, of course, Bob admired him hugely. What we see in Bob is this wonderful synthesis of beat poetry, classical poetry, and rudimentary guitar playing - that meant that I could at least play guitar better than him. And he had a deeper way of looking at subjects and we know (just as we know from Picasso’s early work) what a great technical artist he is.
Bob’s early songwriting shows he is a passionate man with a gift for poetry so when he goes out on his musical limb of imagery and complexity it is worth studying, it’s worth looking at, it’s worth considering Just like a true artist in any medium, we have a scrapbook of Bob’s life through his art. The art of the singer-songwriter is best personified by Bob Dylan and my immense admiration for his craft is undiminished. There are guitar players and music that I probably like better but there is something about the Bob package that I really love.

Those influences have been consistent throughout your career. Are there any other musical influences or inspirations that have come, and maybe gone again, in that time?
Yes, the great, black American guitar players. They opened up this instrument, turned it into a piano rather than a rhythm instrument. Technically it was a challenge to try and do it; musically it fascinates me.
As well as those great men, there’s a guy called Gary Peterson (co-writer of Girl on the Bicycle).. He has a gift for melody and guitar playing that just overwhelmed me when I first saw him and I still aspire to play complete guitar as Gary played it. All my songs have come out of this style. I have just got in contact with Gary after nine years during which we'd lost touch. I have to list Gary as a very, very important influence.
The one tune that I wrote in my head and woke up with was the Unicorn Song. When I’d finished it somebody said it sounded remarkably like Gasoline Alley by Rod Stewart. These things happen you know, so when you hear Gasoline Alley next time imagine it slowed down. We unintentionally pick up bits from other people. Anyway, there are only eight notes and you can’t write four that haven’t been written before. But it’s what measure, what pace we give them and what we do underneath them.

Do you ever feel pressurised to write in a certain style or perform certain material?
No, I’ve never pressured to perform certain material. However, various managers I’ve had in the past (and they’ll remain nameless) have said: 'Ralph, you’re so near into crossing over into main stream, you know, where you could be very successful' So there has been pressure on me to conform but I’ve fought it tooth and nail.
My former manager Jo Lustig, who could be a nightmare at times, didn’t mince words when I wrote Small Voice Calling. He said: 'Why d’you write a great song like that, a great tune like that and then write these crazy words to it?. I replied: 'Because it expresses what I want to say Jo.'
I’m never quite the folk singer, I don’t want to be the conventional singer-songwriter type person and I like being quirky. The only pressure has been people hoping that I might cross over into main stream. But I’m quite happy where I am thank you.

You obviously find playing blues rewarding and you have often said that, things like Dry Bone Shuffle, you could never make sound like Arthur Blake’s playing, why is that?
Because he’s too clever. There’s something about these wonderful guitar players that we all aspire to but very few ever achieve. It’s swing; it’s an internal swing to the music. I can play Dry Bone Shuffle quite well at home but as soon as I get on stage to play it or record it I just dig in a bit too heavy and I try too hard. It’s a technical thing, it’s an innate thing, it’s something that man felt and was able to do but it’s something that I have learned and I think that’s the difference. I’ve absorbed it but I didn’t make it or create it. Technically its such fun to play especially when you get it right – it’s its own reward really.

Like the rousing applause you get for That’ll Do Babe…
Yes. I think some people appreciate that it's quite a difficult piece although it’s full of tricks. A lot of people have learnt to play it now and Billy Connolly has had it transcribed by a banjo player: Billy's hoping, he’s threatening, to do it himself. It would be good on the banjo.

How do you choose which songs of, for instance, Blind Blake or Woody Guthrie you are going to perform or record?
I choose the ones that will impress the audience who don’t know these artists very well. I’ve heard all of it over the years and I think if I’m going to share my passion for, and joy in, these artists I must pick something that is accessible to an audience the first time they hear it. I do their greatest hits, if you like, and hopefully it leads people to discover more about that particular artist.

When choosing these songs, do you have any particular criteria or theme? And are there any songs you won’t perform?
I think there probably are some songs of Woody’s that I would choose not to perform where the message is too overt and was written very quickly. I like the crafted songs best and I’ve no way really of knowing which ones are which because Woody hardly ever wrote a tune in his life: he borrowed from American tradition in the main and adapted.
Some songs are very directly aimed at organisations or a particular incident that isn’t relevant. For example, Ludlow Massacre refers to a specific incident that happened many years ago but the core of the message is that the authorities would do nothing to help the the striking miners because there was vested interest. So the song is timeless. I choose that sort of material.
I am a huge admirer of Billy Bragg as a man and as a musician and a songwriter but I find that his very direct approach doesn’t suit me. I’d rather be a little bit ‘coming in at the side door’.

Apart from Dylan Thomas, who has had a profound affect on you as evidenced by The Boy With A Note, have there been any other non-musical inspirations that have made you want to research more and write a song or work on a project?
There have but somehow Dylan’s story was of particular interest to me because he died so young and I thought ‘I am older than him and he didn’t need to die, it wasn’t in the plan’. They used to say 'Those who the Gods love die young'. I can’t imagine the Gods loved Dylan and that he slipped through their net somehow and died anyway. I can’t really say it any better than that.
His was a sort of a pre rock ‘n’ roll death and the dilemmas and the things that really killed him affect most solo artists at some point or other – self doubt and a kind of dowdy glamour, if that’s the right way to describe it. I can almost smell his wet raincoat. The 1950s had a sort of smell about them, a smell of austerity, and there’s this man who’s probably been obsessed with death most of his life. Death is not my obsession but the beautiful way it is expressed in Dylan Thomas's poetry moves me deeply.
There are lots of poets that I love. I am never very far from a book of poetry. The simple beauty of haiku impresses me, I’ve got several books of haiku poetry that I ponder. I like Seamus Heaney; I think Roger McGough is wonderful as well. I also enjoy Sir John Betjeman’s work and had the privilege of meeting him.
People impress me. I mean ordinary folk. I think I’ve written more songs about just that – people I’ve met, not just the Sylvia Plaths but the Harrys of this world. So I think people affect me as much as art in providing inspiration.

Are there any subjects that you would not write about or cover?
I try not to write too personally about intimate feelings. Early criticisms of my work did affect me - people said: 'he’s too emotional, he’s too soft or he’s too this or too that.' I think the way I wrote has been vindicated because the songs are still out there and people still seem to like them. If you read Melody Maker from the ’60s, they can be pretty damning and I was liberated when I stopped reading music papers.
I am aware of criteria outside of my own: certain words don’t sound right, certain sentences I’ll avoid. Because I don’t want criticism being levelled at me, I try and avoid it at source and that’s not always a good thing. I think you should just get on with your work and not worry. But I do worry - I worry a lot about communication.

If it is something you have produced yourself, it’s something very personal and it feels like a personal criticism if it’s not liked.
That’s exactly right. When I was young I remember feeling broken by the fact that my intentions were so honourable - why would anyone find areas to have a go at me? I was trying my best and it was not through ego that I was doing it.

In a recent interview with Aled Jones you said that the music of Dylan and Paul McCartney would last for generations. A lot of people think your music is right up there: how do you feel about that?
Well, I don’t know. I would love it. I think that Streets of London will be around for a while and will outlive me. I hope that some of my other work will one day get the attention I think it ought to have had.
When you set a yardstick like Streets (which is not my best song) it’s very hard. I think that’s a very young song and I think it shows real naivety and I could not write that song now. Whereas my writing has got more interesting and deeper and complex over the years but I think the media hasn’t stayed with me.
That's set my chin against the wind if you like. I just sa: 'right I’m going to carry on and I’m going to keep using my own judgements and my own criteria and try and write better.' But that’s a bit like driving with the hand brake on because you keep going back and re-working lines.
For example, Walk Into The Morning is one of the more recent songs I’ve written. It took me about six months. I kept coming back to it and toying with the lines and moving them about for the sake of the rhyme scheme and so on. I’ve done a similar thing with a song I’m going to be recording for the talking book. I just keep worrying at it like a terrier and just when I think 'oh well, that’ll have to do' I come back and look at it again and think 'I’ll move that over there now and I’ll take this back here and that’s going to make it a bit better'.
The point is that sometimes it makes it an intrinsically better thing but it doesn’t mean to say that it’s a better song. Sometimes the immediacy, the urgency is nearly always the best: you can refine it but the first thought is always the best thought.

Nick Drake used obscure guitar tunings and none of it was written down. How experimental are you with tuning?
Not very. My guitar tunings are restricted to possibly three and the conventional one. Drop D (the bass string dropped down to D) is one of my favourites as it gives the guitar an incredible fullness which I use on the songs Tequila Sunset and Joseph.
Then there is open D ( tuned to a major chord of D). I used that for The Setting and for things like Birdman and Pity The Boy. There is a G tuning which is Robert Johnson’s style, a blues sort of tuning which is just a G chord which gives a tension to the strings, and then there’s bottleneck.
Nick Drakes’s convoluted tunings and strange and beautiful poetry suited that style but it was destined to be recorded music: he never liked performing. Robert Kirby (who did the arrangements for my You Well Meaning album) went to school with Nick and his arrangements enhanced those recordings considerably. I worked with Nick a couple of times and I think he supported me on his very last live performance, he didn’t play after that and he was a lovely, shy, sweet guy but very screwed up.

Are there any other avenues of musical expression that were relatively untapped in your early career that you feel have been opened up to you over the years and that you’ve used?
Probably a deepening affection for our own folk music. That's partly because the folkies have accepted me as part of what they do and I’m delighted with that community and the music. I've gone from never being really sure about British folk music to loving it, through the connection with friends like Dave Swarbrick and Fairport.
I’ve always loved jazz and still do. I particularly love jazz piano playing. My biggest regret is that, in spite of noodling away on the piano for years, I haven’t moved further forward - I think it’s a wonderful instrument. One aspect of The Journey, my four-CD box set, is that because I didn’t choose the compilation I feel that the piano is under-represented. I wish I’d done more.
I think audiences are slightly surprised if I try something a little bit off the wall: I don’t think many people who come to a Ralph McTell gig have got a Blind Blake album in their collection, for example. My music can be traced back to that but you wouldn’t think so on the first listening.
One of the things I would have loved to have had a go at is an album of 1930s or ’40s standards because they’re just beautifully written poetry with the most incredible music. They are just beautiful. If you play a guitar or piano, the progressions and chord sequences are just lovely. One thinks of Cole Porter and Hoagie Carmichael. I never tire of them. Now Rod Stewart’s gone and done it and done it very well, I have to say. So there’s still possibly something there that I could do at some point, possibly with a Django-esque background, perhapsd using acoustic guitars rather than full orchestra and one leading instrument like a piano or violin. It’s one of those things you think you will do and hopefully I will get round to doing it sometime.

When you released The Journey you said that you didn’t like to listen to your old recordings. Having released the set what are your feelings on looking back?
I am so glad that some of fun that I had is captured. There is a version of Pasadena, a Temperance Seven hit, which we did with a jug band and it was recorded by somebody with a primitive cassette recorder in the middle of the audience We had no mics, we played acoustically and there’s exuberance and a fun there.
I never realised at that point that I was going to have a career in music: I just loved playing. When I talk to young musicians, I say: 'Just the fact that you can play, that you can actually make music and share it, is its own reward.'
For me, a slightly melancholic sound is the nature of the acoustic guitar. I don’t think it’s an instrument to be thrashed. If you want real excitement you’ve got to go to an electric guitar or the Django style. But when you just coax the music out of an acoustic guitar, as I try to, it is melancholic. Because all the songs are written from the guitar, from the body of the guitar, my style of playing is born from that.
My songs tend to be of a thoughtful nature and that can mask the fact that I’ve had so much fun doing it, especially as a young man in my busking days and at the Folk Cottage in Cornwall. We’ve captured some of that on the box set.
I would love to have always been windswept and interesting but I’m just a lad, just a boy having a lot of fun with my guitar. If I’d been allowed to choose the tracks, the box set might have ended up a 'best of'. But David Suff, who compiled The Journey, was adamant. He said: 'It’s not a best of Ralph - it’s your musical journey.' I think he’s done a good job.

If you hadn’t been a musician do you think you would have ended up in the music business somewhere or what do you think you would have done?
I don’t think so. I’m a restless soul and music has given me an outlet to things which most jobs would have denied me, for example, travel. One of Andy Irvine’s songs is Never Tire Of The Road and the subtext to me means be grateful for every opportunity you have to meet people and to travel and to leave the town the next day and go to a new one. I’ve always been a wanderer. This job has allowed me to do that. It’s given me space and time to reflect, sometimes in hotel rooms which are not the best place. But I love England and Britain generally and I love travelling.
I get time away which makes me appreciate home and gives me time to live the artist’s life. I’m immensely grateful for that as well as for all the other things that music has brought me.
If you ask me what I would probably have ended up doing it would be a landscape gardener.
One of my best friends in the music business is Alun Davies, who was Cat Stevens’ right hand man, and he’s a landscape gardener. He’s got great big hands that you think are going to break the guitar in half but that’s the nearest thing as they’re both creative. There are times when landscape gardening is repetitive and therefore frees your mind to think about other things, like music. And its outdoors; you’d be moving about, you wouldn’t be working the same piece of land. I’m a big bloke and still quite strong and I enjoy working outside. In fact, I’m doing that at my place in Cornwall at the moment, breaking my finger nails and hoping they’ll grow in time for the autumn tour.

Some folk musicians are adopting unusual styles or arrangements, for example Jim Moray? Do you feel that’s being true to the music or distorting it or just extending the boundaries?
I think the tradition has already been messed about with in a very positive way. We’ve introduced instruments to it that would never have been considered pure in English folk music - for example, the bouzouki, the guitar.
I think the tradition is so wonderful and so brilliant and is open to much more conventional interpretation which, to me, is more interesting than Jim Moray's specific foray. You never tire of the tradition; no matter who sings the song, it’s just a great song, that’s why it’s lasted so long. What you do to it is largely irrelevant. Jim is using it almost like sampling – take a bit from here, add a bit there. It’s musical expression and fair play to him but it’s not what interests me. I really just want to become a better guitar player, a better singer, a better writer. I just want to improve the craft that I’ve got, that’s my ambition – to continue to improve.

When did you first start to use the electric guitar?
Well, inside all us folkies there’s a rock ‘n’ roll star trying to get out. You strap on an electric guitar and you feel completely different. The thing is I’ve never mastered it. I don’t think anyone ever masters the instrument that they choose, it’s always a challenge.
In the 1970s, I had a desire to move more into an Americana-type sound - think of The Byrds, somewhere like there. I found that very attractive, coupled with some of the new country-rock singers coming out of LA. Therte music was more rock ‘n’ roll than the sugary country and western style which I don’t like. It was exciting and it was raw and it was rocking and it seemed to have positive messages.
Danny Lane, the drummer with my ill-fated live band in the 70s, introduced me to a lot of very exciting music and, naively perhaps, I felt that I could take the audience with me on that particular journey. I singularly failed to do that but it’s still something I want to do. I’ve just bought myself a new guitar amp and my Telecaster is being worked on as we speak. I'm going to think about what I can do on the electric guitar and see if I can adapt it to a style and try and make a small bluesy, rocky album with electric instruments. I'd like to do that - I think there’s a place for it.
Apart from personal friends like Steve Turner, Tim Renwick and Jerry Donahue, one of my favourite guitar players in that genre is Mark Knopfler. His guitar style and the way he writes is absolutely fantastic. A lot of jealous people put him down but I say they must be missing something. Romeo and Juliet or Sultans of Swing are wonderfully crafted songs and beautifully played.

Mentioning Knopfler reminds me of that French and Saunders sketch…
Oh yeah! I nearly killed Mick McDonagh after that. I’ll tell you the background to it.
I turned up and I was told that they wanted me to play a bit of Streets of London and I said “I don’t want to do it Mick” and he said, “Ralph, this is a very popular television show”.
I am great fan of the girls’ writing and their performances anyway. So I turn up on the day and asked what was going on? They said: “It’s a sketch with Roland in”. The director came down and introduced us to Dawn, who played the Judge. He said, “Thank you very much for coming, it’s very kind of you all to be here. Mark is flying off to America in half an hour. We are not going to be able to rehearse this, we will just have to cut it together when we’re done and so just keep your scripts open on the page and read it and quickly read through and we’re just going to go for it.” It was a world of rock ‘n’ roll... and yours truly…
So we all trooped into the courtroom set. The director said: 'Not you Ralph, you’re over there.' They were all in the witness box and I was in the dock. I looked at Mick and he turned away and started talking to somebody else. They started rolling the camera. I was looking at my script and thinking “What is going on?” For the next six weeks walking down the street people would point at me and shout “Guilty!”. It was the most extraordinary thing and it turned out to be a bit of a hit. It’s on YouTube.
I believe that there’s a load of Tickle on the Tum on YouTube too now. At Cropredy a lady said she’d seen them all. I think there were 37 of them altogether. Where they all are I don’t know. I found some demos at home of stuff that wasn’t actually broadcast which were songs that may have actually gone out at some point but I really do think that there’s a case, perhaps, for trying to get all the songs out on one album. We’ll see.

That would be absolutely superb. The Great Mysterio is there.
He’s there? Well, that was a great idea but the bloody donkey would not co-operate in the end. The bloke said: 'He’s never done this before' and I don’t know how they faked it in the end.

Bridge of Sighs was recently re-released on CD. The liner notes suggest a theme running through the album about communication and people trying to connect.
Intellectually, it’s a nice view from Paul Jenkins but it is not how the album was conceived. It wasn’t conceived. The only time I’ve ever stuck to a theme is on the Dylan Thomas album. My writing comes from everywhere. Reverend Thunder, for example, is one of the new songs that remain unrecorded and so is Around The Wild Cape Horn. They don’t relate at all, it’s just whatever happens.
Bridge of Sighs was something I was particularly pleased with because at that point Ireland (a country I love) had reached an intransigence, a failure to move; and I was going through a similar problem with my then-manager (who happened to be my brother). I was saying that the sigh is for the compromise: it’s a big sigh, but let’s do it, let’s talk, let’s agree to compromise and what’s wrong with that?
People are afraid of compromises, as if it’s a backing-down. But compromise means both parties back down so that they can agree and then move forward. It’s terrifying what is done in the name of religion: it can give people the hustification to perform the most unspeakable acts and to respond with an eye for an eye. Lots of ideas were fitted into that song and it’s one of my personal favourites. It’s a different style of writing and a different style of playing but I was particularly pleased with that.
The Setting was written while I was doing the Tickle on the Tum series. I was in the dressing room between takes and noodling around on the guitar and I started to find this tune and I just knew I was on to something.
With those two songs alone I had the basis of something quite strong: the conflict in my own life and the conflict of whether I should have been doing children’s TV. There were so many elements that come together in that album and there are just so many different types of songs.

I see two types of songs. One about situations and circumstances and the other about very specific people like, for instance, Mr Connaughton.
I think Mr Connaughton was written out of time. It wasn’t a part of the body of work that was going on at that time but that’s the way I think I’ve always been. I’ve just been wherever the muse comes from and that’s fine with me and somehow my audience put up with being bussed from theme to theme and, hopefully, it makes the albums more interesting.
I like people to say “Oh I must come back to that” or “I like that tune” or “What’s that about – oh it’s about that”. Maybe they find that the subtext is actually about something else. That's what The Setting is about to me. It was the nearest I could get to the short story style of Sean Ó Faoláin. We’re talking about someone who is leaving but we’re really concentrating on the one who stays and those little quirks interest me in songwriting.

There is a traditional Celtic sound to several of the songs on the album. What is it that draws you to that style or sound?
I think it’s a thing about purity. It’s something about those modal chords, the five notes you get when you swing a piece of pipe round. They are like the Scottish bag pipes, like Irish music, the fiddle tunes and so on. Played slow they have a spiritual sound to them. I don’t have religious belief as such, but I do believe in a spiritual yearning and that yearning is best demonstrated for me through music.
Other cultures have added half-notes and quarter-notes (and so have we) but there’s something very pure about those modal sounds: they cut a deep chord within us and we respond. Played slowly they give a majesty and played fast they’re sexy and jolly and make us feel good.

What did you like best or least about the album, in terms of its material or recording?
A friend of mine rang me up. He said: 'Bring back analogue, bring back valve amplifiers, there’s a warmth there which digital recording seems to lack.” Another positive aspect is that the songs are nearly all first takes. I sat with Alun Davies on one side of the studio giving me a light rhythm on every song and I did live vocals – the first time I’d ever done that.
Gerry Conway, the drummer, said was happy for me to record with Alun and put the drums on last. If I'm in the studio with the drums, I will perform differently. I feel I’ve got to sing loud. So doing it that way with just two acoustic guitars was fantastically liberating. It was more like performing live.
The only negative point was technical. I think we were a little heavy on the reverb on that album. When you hear new songs coming through huge speakers, bigger than you’d have on a PA, and you’re sitting in the room and you can put a little bit of reverb there, push the guitar up there, it’s very seductive.
Otherwise, I don’t have a problem with it: I think it’s a nice album.

Regarding your new album, we have mentioned Reverend Thunder and Wild Cape Horn. How is the album progressing?
None of it has been recorded. I hope that by the end of this year I will have cleared my desk. The last vinyl album, Bridge of Sighs, is out and The Journey has been finished. The Dylan album has been done and is out there.
I am currently working on two or three extra songs for the talking book, the two volumes of autobiography in one as a paperback edition and companion CD.
The album will include material carefully selected from the autobiography and read aloud. I find that incredibly difficult because I’m not an actor but I have been helped by a great guy, a sound and film editor named Martin Bell.
I have been recording this now for six years, doing bits and bobs and going back. I’m doing acoustic versions of songs where applicable but sticking to the story. There’ll be three new songs and I’ll be placing many of the old ones in their autobiographical context. It’s been a massive job. If I’d have known how big a job it was I wouldn’t have gone into it with quite such alacrity but we’re near the end now.
Album one is mixed but we’re going to drop in another couple of songs to it. I think that people only want to hear someone reading for so long but hopefully we’ve got it so that they can just listen to the songs or just listen to the readings.
When it's done, that will effectively have cleared my desk. Early next year I hope to think about recording a new Ralph McTell album.
Cape Horn had its debut at Banbury and the second time was at the Festival Hall. I’m toying with playing Reverend Thunder on 12-string and then I go back and listen to it. I’m still adapting it and still working on it. I want it to be a fitting tribute to the great Rev Gary Davis.
I’m a bit of a butterfly; I don’t stick with anything for very long before I throw it off and do something else. It’s quite a difficult guitar piece but it’s getting there. I’m very pleased with it and I think there are bits and bobs of other songs slowly emerging from the mist.

Talking of Banbury brings me to the gala concert in November. I gather it’s going to have the format of songs and readings.
I think it will, yes. Billy Connolly, who is one of the most consummate performers it’s ever been my privilege to know, has always said to me that part of the responsibility of the artist is to push out of your comfort zone and try things a little bit differently. People don’t mind if you make mistakes.
The people who come to my gigs are just the best. They’re loyal and they seem to understand what I’m all about and I never take it for granted and I continually try to entertain and impress.
It is largely due to Billy that I started talking as much as I do during shows. When we tried to cut back on the anecdotes, people would ask why I wasn't talking. So we are trying to strike that balance.
As to touring, we start with a tour in the north with the Guthrie and Dylan material because we never got very far up north with that show last year. Then I switch to the combined music-with-readings format for the southern run of the Up Close Tour.
At the gala concert in Banbury, I will try and do a little of both. We’re going to have an interval so I can break it up into two sections. An interval always unsettles me - we just get the ball rolling then we have to stop. My old fashioned approach means I’ve got to have two starters and two finishers and that’s always difficult. Besides, I have to sit there twitching waiting to get out again. I think you can lose the momentum.

Do you think this kind of concert could become a regular feature?
I miss meeting everybody after the shows but it was getting impossible and we were having all kinds of problems as a result. Not just problems with the theatres but physically too. Donard was just completely wiped out. I’d be coming off stage full of adrenalin so it was less of a problem for me. But when I got back to the hotel I’d be just whacked. The day often started at 10am and if we weren't out of the theatre until midnight we simply weren’t getting enough sleep. So it had to slow down. But I do miss meeting people and I don’t want anyone to think that I’m bored with the people that have supported me. On the contrary, I think the world of them, where would I be without them. We have to stick to our guns but we'll try to arrange on each tour an occasion where we can all get together and have a chat.

Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to talk to me.
It’s been a pleasure Marianne - I look forward to seeing you somewhere down the road.