Tarren have been busy reweaving traditional Folk music’s tapestry, unpicking the ways stories of identity are told through the genre and stitching them back together with threads of personal experience for today’s audiences. We spoke to the trio about their new album, exploring gender variance in song and New-Folk.
It could be claimed that the south west’s connection to land, the old ways and its traditions bubble away and rise closer to the surface of mainstream culture than in some other UK locations, so it’s not surprising really that our city and surrounding area has a thriving Folk music scene. And like many creatives that draw inspiration from the past and the way things once were, the Folk community has been reflecting on the content of some songs steeped in tradition that are received and digested differently in 2024. But rather than sweep these songs aside or abandoning them, some musicians have been spurred on by curiosity to find new ways to tell these old tales.
Once such collective is Tarren, a three-piece New-Folk project that combines cittern and concertina (Sid Goldsmith), fiddle (Alex Garden), and accordion (Danny Pedler). All three members were already very active in Folk circles, with other projects including Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith, Awake Arise, The Drystones, Harriet Riley & Alex Garden, and Pedler // Russell. Tarren’s first album Revel was born out of lockdown, and the absence of live gigs. As Sid explains: “We started sending tracks across to each other that we’d written to try reimagine new ways of doing the tunes that we love, based in the southern English tradition of instrumental music. This gave us some sort of accountability and a reason to write tunes. The first album was born out from that splurge of finding out what noises we make together.”
The gender agenda
Though based in tradition, it wasn’t long before Tarren asked the question: “Do modern notions of gender variance have a place in Folk narratives?” As a result of this inquisitiveness, the trio were awarded a bursary from the English Folk Dance and Song Society to explore gender variance in English traditional song.
During their research – which included a week-long creative residency at Cecil Sharp House that took place a year ago, midway through recording the new album Outside Time that’s just been released – they came across three traditional songs from which the album’s first single, Neither Maid Nor Man, was derived. All three – The Handsome Cabin Boy, Bold William Taylor and Pretty Drummer Boy – featured an element of cross-dressing or non-conformity of traditional gender roles.
Neither Maid Nor Man is by nature a compilation of these traditional songs, but is transported swiftly into the 21st century by the final (and incredibly moving) verse, written by non-binary band member Alex about their lived experience – which will resonate with some audience members today, and Alex mentions they’ve been told it’s also introduced others attending gigs to an existence they were not be familiar with before.
“We discovered that there have been lots of different expressions of gender variance going on in English Folk song over time,” says Alex. “I think maybe we wanted to try and prove that it’s not new, it’s not something that’s just relevant to millennials. It’s actually something that’s been around for a really long time.
“At the same time, we found that though it existed, it had been recorded in very specific ways, and had obviously been gate-kept carefully by the mostly-Victorian, quite conservative tune collectors and other people like that.”
Danny explains that many of the songs they were looking at to do with cross dressing, for example, were popular in the 18th century: “There were themes about gender and gender non-conformity, but there wasn’t the language to talk about it in that way, really. And the characters in the songs are instead presented as what they called ‘outrageous’, or an ‘interesting, little novelty’.”
Alex points out that a lot of people in the Folk scene at the moment are “on a mission to try and acknowledge this, and try and make sure that we look at the past and at the source of our Folk music through a modern lens. We try and treat it with respect, but also acknowledge that there are serious shortcomings in the way that it deals with these subject matters, like queerness or race or gender generally.”
Tarren are joined on this undertaking by peers on the scene, including Maddie Morris (who’s incidentally playing with Tarren at St George’s Bristol on 26 October); Scottish non-binary piper and fiddle player Malin Lewis, who Tarren explain has done a lot to make their gender non-conformity part of their show and create visibility in the local scene; a mostly-Welsh but south west-based band called Craven whose members are trans and non-binary; and the Queer Folk collective.
“We’re very lucky in the Folk scene that it feels like there’s a lot of really sound, liberal people,” Sid notes. “A lot of our audience is older, but we’ve had amazing responses playing Neither Maid Nor Man. People come up to us at the end of the set and have said, ‘That’s a really important song, thanks for singing it.’ We get these responses from people that we’re not necessarily expecting it from. It’s really lovely.”
Finding New-Folk
Folk music comprises many tides and currents taking its melodies and arrangements in all sorts of directions, but Tarren have settled on New-Folk to describe their approach.
“We did labour over that particular term a bit,” Sid says. “There are so many connotations in whatever you say. If you use the term ‘roots’ music, that means something different. We wanted to not have just ‘Folk’ there, because people immediately assume so many things. If you use Nu Folk, that refers to artists like Laura Marling, for example. We love all of it, but that’s not what we’re doing.” Tarren decided on the compact label of New-Folk, hinting that their music may not be quite what audiences may initially expect.
“It goes back to the way we thought about Folk music at the start, the journey we’ve been on and trying to weave modern narratives in,” adds Danny. “And I think it all comes around to this new album, Outside Time. The new record is an embodiment of what we see as New-Folk, or contemporary Folk. We’re trying to build in some different musical themes, in a modular arrangement, and we are adding more emotion into the stories. A lot of Folk performers of traditional song research and find the music – then the best singers inhabit it; the song goes through them and comes out. But I think a lot of Folk music is rooted in the past. What we can do is we can use those stones and build a little new thing.”
Outside Time
Unrestrained by the boundaries of tradition, Tarren’s new album (which features cover art from acclaimed local creative Man In The Woods) is a joy for fans of all kinds of Folk music to embrace – from those seeking familiarity to people searching for something new. Tarren say Outside Time is perhaps slightly more refined than their first record now they know exactly what they want to say. So, we were keen to know which moments the band enjoy performing – to give those heading to any of the tour gigs (including that Bristol date on 26 October) a taste of what to expect.
“We flirted with ‘drops’ – for want of a better word – on the first album,” Danny says, “where there’s a crescendo and then it’s a drop into something else, like a texture change. I really enjoy playing them, so on the new album, during Claudia’s we smash it in 4/4 at the end, which is really fun. In the title track Outside Time there’s a big build, then we play the jig straight after, which features a few time signatures. I like those big, powerful moments.”
Alex adds that they found playing the interlocking polyrhythms “really satisfying: It’s an arrangement device that doesn’t get used a huge amount in Folk music. My favourite moment on the album is the final chorus of Sunk [a stand-out moment that Sid agrees with]. All three of us are singing together in harmony. It’s a beautiful song that Danny wrote, all about what it means to be home. That one particular moment always gives me the feels.”
Outside Time is available to download, and buy on CD and vinyl now. tarrenmusic.com
