WEAVING MY
ANCESTORS' VOICES

 

 

 

 

    


Sheila:

Umm... Yeah, again the good ones, the good ones do. I mean there are a lot of Folk Clubs which are a lot more informal where people do stick to the, sort of, the melody and it's more predictable, yeah.

John:

Yeah. Sheila Chandra has been my guest here in the studio and we've been listening to "Weaving My Ancestors' Voices", which is, what your 6th, 7th record, as a soloist?

Sheila:

Sixth solo album, yeah.

John:

OK. Was this recorded in Real World studios in Box?

Sheila:

No, because I own the recording, and that's just my way of keeping control over it. I recorded it in Bristol in this very little studio, that has a great engineer. We used a, stereo miking technique from the thirties and he really got into it, and then we mixed it at the Real World studios in Box and so that's where all the great reverbs and delays come from. We had a wonderful time. Have you ever seen a picture of the studio at Real World?

John:

I have, infact yeah, it's like three storeys tall, or something like that?

Sheila:

It's huge, it looks like a bunker from the outside, but on the inside it's really nice.

John:

Yeah, well it's an old mill, isn't it?

Sheila:

It is yeah, and the studio is actually a bit that's added on so that it's acoustically perfect. The big studio anyway. But it's a lovely place to work.

John:

Yeah, but this sounds like it was done the real old fashioned way. Just voice, stereo, mike, little old studio in England. It sounds great, it really is - it's a wonderful recording.

Sheila:

Thank you. I'm working on the next one, I'm writing for the next one.

John:

Already? Yeah, and will it also be just you or are you going to bring some musicians back in...

Sheila:

Well, because of the live stuff, I've been developing beyond the festival situation into 80 minute performances. So I've been aware of needing more material of a certain type that the audience needs to hear, something like this here and so on and so it's out of that kind of deep anchoring that playing live for the first time has given me, that I've developed a lot of the new material. So I've also been able to play it in live, which I've never done with any of my other material.

John:

Yeah, well the other stuff, when you did those records, they were on a label called Indipop, which sort of gave a clue to what the sort of sound was. It was a very pop inflected, kind of dance oriented sound.

Sheila:

Except for "Quiet" and "Nada Brahma".