Suntrap official website UK Folk Band

New Folk Sounds Oct/Nov 2002 No.83 (English Translation from Dutch)

Playing Folkmusic is Sexy!

The London based band Suntrap have been on the road professionally for some years. The word “professional”, in this context, is reflected in their attitude to the quality of their music, and especially that of their vocals. Suntrap started as a trio, and are now a four-piece band. Their second album (‘Red Red Shoes’) is proof of why they deserve to stand in the spotlight. Their mixture of traditional English elements in combination with their own compositions has a certain style all of its own and this is what makes them special. It’s time to meet Sara Byers, Mary Wilson, Nicola Davies and Paul Hoad.

Paul’s parents had a folk club, so he grew-up with folk music. For Nicola things were different: ‘I found that I loved folk music by discovering various folk bands when I was 21. I've been playing violin since I was 9, but it took me many more years to start learning fiddle tunes and get into the folk club scene, it happened very gradually. I'd really spent about 3 years playing a lot of folk music, especially with my other band, Noddy’s Lot .’

Sara sang with her mother around the house. When she was about 8 the film 'Far From the Madding Crowd' made deep impressions: ‘This film is based on the Thomas Hardy novel. I heard ‘Bold Grenadier’, one of the songs in the film, and thought it was the most fantastic thing I'd ever heard. I thought; 'This is it!'.’

Many years later Sara saw Mary sing at Cecil Sharpe House and thought she had heard an angel. Both ladies tried to combine their vocals, and asked Paul, (a colleague from one of Sara’s former bands), to back them up on guitar. Right after that Byers and Hoad wrote their first song named ‘Hold Me’. Hoad wrote ‘Long Winter Coat’, and Mary and Sara took up fiddle and accordion. Suntrap was born. The trio felt from the first moment that this cooperation was going to work-out perfectly. But then they needed a name for their band. They wanted two words combined into one.

Paul: ‘We just did some brainstorming and Mary's husband, came up with several names one of which was Suntrap. I like to think that there is a lot of sun in our music.’
Mary: ‘One of our aims is always to "trap" an audience with our heat and emotion.’
Nicola: ‘There's usually a dark side hidden in our music as well, so that would be the "trap".’

I asked Suntrap how they went from trio to quartet. Paul: ‘Mary needed to take some time away from the band so we wanted someone to stand in. We had also been looking for a fourth member for some time. My father met Nicola at his folk club and asked her if he could give her phone number to his son! Rather trustingly she agreed. Nicola fitted in brilliantly. She's lightening fast at learning parts and very soon had learnt the fiddle parts from the last two albums. She then went on to write harmony fiddle as well for each of the songs. She's amazing. We are very lucky indeed. And she sings well too. We couldn't have asked for anything more.’

When developing arrangements, Suntrap try out lots of different ideas before settling on what they feel best suits the song. Paul: ‘Sometimes you instinctively know where to go with the music and sometimes you just have to try out lots of things until you get something you are happy with. With regards to the vocals: we take a great deal of care to get the harmonies right. It's often a question of singing through the harmonies very slowly a note at a time and adjusting the notes where necessary.’

Sara: ‘We are lucky because Mary has an amazing range to her voice which allows her to do some stunning high harmonies that compliment Paul’s voice and mine. Sometimes a song just asks for lots of richness and harmony. Paul and I both write our own material as well as co-writing and we often end up singing our own compositions. This means that Mary hasn't had so much lead vocal action in the past but we are hoping to turn this around in future. One of the best tracks on ‘Red Red Shoes’ is Mary's 'Heads or Tails'.’

Paul: ‘Our new songs are never "finished" the first time we play them to an audience. You have to play them to people as part of the song's development. You can only go so far by rehearsing the song in private. When you perform the material to an audience for the first time it's as if you can hear the song through the audience's ears.’

Mary and Nicola both play fiddle and work together as a team. I asked Nicola how she had integrated musically on joining the band.

Nicola: ‘Mary and I will jam along a lot but then one of us will come up with the riff we want to keep. Mary will often come up with an exciting rhythm and then we'll evolve good harmony notes. On other songs Mary sings more and I concentrate on a fiddle line. I am careful not to destroy an already brilliant arrangement - I just try to enhance it if possible. Sometimes we fiddles play in unison which is also an exciting effect where we want to bring out a fiddle line. There's the occasional new vocal harmony in there as well. Its still evolving, even after a year, sometimes I think of something new while on stage and get raised eyebrows or a smile from Mary.’

Sara: ‘Nicola is very inventive and so adaptable, able to fit around what we have in place whilst thinking up new lines and bringing new vigour to some of our older material.’

Paul told me about the differences between the first and second albums: ‘For the first album we recorded all the instruments separately and for the second album we all stood in a circle. This is a much more relaxed scenario - you don't have to where headphones and it’s much easier to get into the performance. There are technical difficulties to do with spillage across the different microphones but this is greatly outweighed by the benefits of making the sessions more pleasurable. We have our producer, Richard Jackson, to thank for pointing us in this direction.’

The strong folk scene in England is seen by the media there as something for older people. For this reason a lot of young people in England have not had the chance to hear or see their musical tradition on radio and TV. Paul: ‘Many English people just don't seem to realise how sexy it is! Whereas the impression I get from continental Europe is that Folk Music is much closer to the mainstream and is generally more appreciated, valued and accepted than here in the UK . We would certainly like to play in mainland Europe a lot more.’

So, concert promoters get together and please get in touch!

Ron Janssen