GuilFest 2006. The 3 Day Guildford Music Festival on 14th, 15th and 16th July 2006

Interview:

Artist: Martha Tilston
By: Chris Groom
Croydon Guardian [http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk ]

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Martha weaves summer magic.

The summer festivals are fast approaching and Guilfest continues to grow and flourish with each passing year. Despite the widening range of styles and eclectic mix of artists, Guildford has never forgotten its origins as a folk and blues festival and still provides the opportunity to catch emerging acoustic performers outside of the club circuit.

Martha Tilston is a perfect example, combining an emotive voice with imaginative acoustic arrangements and a love of experimentation. The daughter of folk songwriter/guitarist Steve Tilston, she grew up in a household with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan on the turntable and Bert Jansch and John Renbourn dropping by to visit her dad. Little wonder that Martha should follow the same path, although she treads it rather differently:

“I’ve been singing all my life really, but only relatively recently thought of it as a career, when I stopped being an actress”, she laughs, “so I thought I’d look for something a bit more steady! I’ve been playing piano and writing since I was four or five and the lovely thing about having a songwriter as a father is that I always thought it was perfectly normal to write songs. I remember asking the other kids at school, so what does your dad write?!

“I’m happy that I got into that side of music independently, I was obviously aware of these people from growing up around them, but I know I would have ended up with Sandy Denny, Fairport and Bert Jansch in my record collection anyway.”

Martha’s first taste of success came with Mouse, a duo with guitarist Nick Marshall that achieved a fair amount of cult acclaim, but have since gone their separate ways:

“Mouse was just an amazing meeting of minds really, Nick is an incredible musician, very inspiring. I’d booked a gig before I found a guitarist and just put the word out, which I thought would be easier than advertising; Nick was recommended by a friend, invited round for a cup of tea and we ended up jamming all night. Within months we were writing together - it was a magical time - when people were really hungry for live acoustic music.”

So is the split permanent? Martha smiles - “It might be, it might not be - we like to say that Mouse is in deep-hibernation!”

Since February, Martha’s first official solo album Bimbling has drawn even more friends to her music. And the title means?

“Bimbling is a festival term actually, it means to go off for a bit of an adventure, you’re not sure
where or what will happen when you get there... which I think is what the album does, in a way. I put it out on my own label and funded the album by doing a painting of each song and selling them at a little exhibition – that provided the money to press the album. I sold on the premise that if the album does well, the original paintings will be worth more, but the album won’t do well until people buy the artwork.

“The cover painting was done for the guy who let us use his recording studio, bless him - he would play us bits of crazy 60s psychedelia in between takes and after a while it had an effect - you can hear halfway through the album the electric guitar comes off the wall.”
Martha is no stranger to the festival scene either, arriving at GuilFest2005 by way of her second year at Glastonbury - “I used to go festivals with my dad when I was little and then rediscovered them about five years ago. But they were the more underground, environmental festivals, small gatherings in woods, lantern-lit magical affairs with amazing music.

“I love Glastonbury, it’s all the tribes coming together, like a proper old-fashioned tribal gathering. This year will be my first time on the Avalon stage and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve been working with Matt Tweed, who plays bazouki and bass and guitarist Tim Cotterill, hopefully they’ll both be with me at Guildford - but there’s eight of us playing at Glastonbury, I’ll have a string section as well which should be interesting.”

On her recent visit to Croydon Folksong Club Martha produced a stunning performance, notably slipping songs by Portishead and Lamb in amongst her own.

“I try to cross-pollenate as much as I can; I think it’s basically all the same you know, folk music is not up to us to decide, history decides what becomes ‘folk’ music. The improvisation is so important; my favourite gigs are where we start to explore, fly off and see where it goes – the audience don’t necessarily know it, but they really wake up when you do that, because it’s all so fresh for you that everyone’s taken on the same sort of journey.”

Martha lists Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel and Tori Amos among her influences, while I can hear Julienne Regan and Beth Orton in her work. Decide for yourself, when Martha Tilston and friends weave their brand of magic on the UnCut stage at GuilFest2005 on Sunday, July 17. July.