There are so many ways to interview musicians these days – phone, Skype, WhatsApp (yes, it’s possible) – but nothing beats sitting backstage at a festival, face to face, with the music from the main stage pounding away in the background. That’s the setting for the second half of this double interview with Ross Couper and Tom Oakes, two musicians who come together to play music heavily influenced by a variety of traditions (Scottish, Irish, Shetland, Scandinavian), mixed together with driving contemporary rhythms and a smattering of jazz, all played on stripped-down fiddle and guitar. If that sounds remarkably complex, then it’s a complexity that is very cleverly disguised on their debut album, Fiddle & Guitar.
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Wickham Festival is a decade and a half old, so you get the sense it ought to be better known. At the same time, you kinda hope it stays as intimate as currently is. Set on the southwesterly tip of the South Downs, it’s a real gem of a festival – a gorgeous location, an easy size to get around, a not-too-big-but-definitely-not-small audience, three well-sized stages… and performers that make you wonder just how the organisers can afford it all. Ours not to reason why, though. Ours but to get stuck in.
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