Jennifer Cutting is no stranger to fans of Folk and World music. For a decade she led her band The New St. George through their journey, acquiring many accolades and a solid fanbase along the way. Since The New St. George Jennifer has continued to experiment with wild and imaginative settings and instrumentation for traditional British and Celtic music. She continues to win awards and garner high praises for her contributions to keeping this music alive and relevant. Her latest project, "Ocean: Songs for the Night Sea Journey", was 7 years in the making and is perhaps one of the most in depth, profound, and innovative albums of the last decade. Since this album hit my desk I have wanted to know more and Jennifer graciously obliged me. Here's what she had to say about her music, the new album, and of course. This is Spinal Tap.  By Mark Fisher

Jennifer Cutting:

An Interview with Elegant Relevance

by Mark Fisher

www.jennifercutting.com

Mark Fisher: First off let me say that this album is absolutely amazing. It's probably one of the most in depth and comfortable sounding records I have ever heard. Would you mind taking us back in time a bit and filling us in on how and where the concept for Ocean: Songs for the Night Sea Journey originated?

Jennifer Cutting: Back when the earth's core was still molten, the oceans (as we now know them) formed. I took that idea and ran with it.

More recently (about 10 years ago, actually) I experienced what I can only call a great sea change in my life.  It was as if the dry land under my feet had suddenly been pulled out from under me, and I was treading water.  Nothing about the way I had been doing things worked any more. Memories and emotions I'd been suppressing for a lifetime surged over the floodgates. My dreams were filled with images of water, floods, sea crossings.  I decided to honor that, to just "go with the flow" and use it, since I couldn't fight it. 

M: When you decided to definitely pursue this concept did you think that it would possibly take 7 years to complete? Was there any point over that stretch of time where you considered not completing it?

J: It actually started out as being another album, called "Johnny Has Gone Electric."  (Look for it, seven to ten years from now.)  "Johnny" was going to be the second New St. George album, the one where you get to be weird and everything, because you've been a good girl and followed all the rules the first time out. The band then decides you're too weird and goes back to whatever it was they were doing before you came along, and then, Voilá, you've got a solo career! 

No, that's not really what happened. The band did break up, though, and I found myself with several really interesting demos, all dressed up with nowhere to go.  Only two of these songs made it onto Ocean.  They are Sands of Time and Forgiveness. 

After the band broke up and everything was swirling around, all amorphous, with chair legs and bits of flotsam bobbing up and down in the wreckage, I decided. well, why not just write about that?  If music is an effort to make sense out of what happens to us, why not write about how things dissolve and come back together again? 

As to how long it would take, I had no idea!  I was just putting one foot in front of the other at that point.  There were definitely times when it all seemed overwhelmingly complex, and I didn't know where I would find the patience, or the money, or the time, to finish it. At those points, I'd put it down and let it rest and focus on something else, until I could come back to it. One of the biggest crises was right at the end of the tracking and mixing.  I'd got almost to the finish line, and I felt like I just couldn't jump. Luckily, some people around me practiced some tough love, and pushed me out of the plane!   


M: There are a lot of well known, and some that should be well known but are not, musicians on this album. Is this more of a collaboration of old friends or are these people you met throughout this journey? Or perhaps even people you admired and greatly desired to work with?

J: Some of each, really. Maddy and Peter I'd met when New St. George opened for Steeleye Span on several occasions.  Lisa and Rico and the string quartet I'd worked with in NSG, and John Jennings I knew from his having produced a few cuts on High Tea.  John introduced me to Dave Mattacks, who was working with him in the Mary Chapin Carpenter band at the time. A member of Slaveya works with me at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and she introduced me to Tatiana Sarbinska, which is how they ended up on the album. Polly Bolton I heard on a charity compilation album and resolved to hunt out wherever she was (which turned out to be on a farm in a remote village in Shropshire, England).  Gabriel I met at a showcase gig in New York City, when his agent asked if I could house him when he played in D.C. And on and on.      

M: When all is said and done and you are looking at this as a finished project, what are you most proud of about it?

J: The joy of the creative process is to see these pieces forming slowly, layer by layer, and then after it is all finished, marvel that it all congealed into what it is now -- knowing that the combination of all the premeditated stuff, the time and work that went into it, and the seeming chance meetings that led to collaborations, were all part of the same package.    
I'm proudest of how it seems to hang together and tell a story.

M: What kind of reaction do you hope this album solicits in its listeners? Is/Was there a particular goal in respect to that for this album?

J: My goals are two-tiered.  Wherever people are in their lives, I hope Ocean works as just plain good music. For people in a transition of some kind, I hope Ocean gives an arc to the story they are living. an arc that lets them know that if they keep their eyes open and learn as much as they can on that particular journey, they will come home in the end.

M: A lot of people thought Celtic Folk was all but dead however this album seems to be getting a tremendous response. Have you been surprised about the response you've gotten so far? If so, what has been the most surprising aspect of its reception?

J: The Celtic regions of the world are all very much living, breathing cultures with music central to their lives. They were making music before it became saleable to the mainstream, and they will go on making music regardless of trends in the music industry.  Unlike some styles of music, Celtic folk is not strongly a product of a particular decade, the way say disco had a best-by date in the 70's, or how ten years from now, today's pop based heavily on rhythm loops is going to sound dated, a product of the early 2000's. Even from the perspective of the mainstream music industry, I'm not sure where the idea that Celtic folk is dead comes from. Except that, for those concerned with fashion rather than music, no fashion is allowed to continue for long. I don't see greatly decreased activity in this genre. Some of the most visible and popular artists (Enya, Loreena McKennitt) have not been so active of late, but I'm pretty sure that is for personal reasons and not because they can't sell records.  I don't believe the people who enjoy Ocean are much swayed by music fashion, and I don't think the fans of Celtic folk just disappear if the industry focuses on something else. 

The most surprising aspect of Ocean's reception has been the wide age range of the folks who are buying it and loving it. A friend of mine puts his 8 and 10-year-old kids to bed with the CD, and I've had rave reviews from women in their eighties. The other thing is that some pretty hard-core male prog fans say this is the only CD that they and their wives can listen to and enjoy together.     

M: There are a number of important artists on this record. Is there a single performance (or maybe two) that really stand out at you above the others? You know, the kind of performance that sends chills up and down your spine.

J: Given that Ocean isn't an instrumentally demonstrative record (no flashy solos), I think the vocal performances certainly stand out. Maddy's vocal for Forgiveness was done informally in the control room of Chipping Norton Studios, not as a real take, but just trying the song out in a new key, and it ended up being the one that gave me goose bumps in the last verse, it was so vulnerable.  Lisa's vocal on Sands of Time dates from the Pleistocene era, when I was recording to ½-inch 8-track reel-to-reel tape in the back room of my house. it was so magical, and so full of feeling, I had to use it for the CD. Polly's multi-layered mermaid vocals on Call of the Siren were amazing to witness.she improvised different parts, track after track, high, medium, and low, not stopping between takes, almost like it was stream of consciousness.  Grace's vocal for My Grief on the Sea was also taken in my back room as an experiment, to see how her voice would fit the song. It was so incredibly intimate that I couldn't even imagine re-recording it after that performance (even though I had to remove the sound of a motorcycle pulling out of our driveway!) 

In terms of the instrumentals, oddly enough, it's some little parts mixed into the background I remember the most.  I was sitting in BIAS Recording Studio with the late great Tony Cuffe, and asking him if he could do that great double-whistle sound I fell in love with on his solo album When First I Went to Caledonia in my arrangement of an obscure traditional Irish song, The Gladdest Breeze.  Hearing him layer the high and low whistles, creating melodies on the spot that just curled 'round the vocal but would have made lovely solo parts on their own, was an incredible joy to behold.  To this day, I listen for his whistle parts behind Grace's vocals in that song.  They are so graceful and sweet and perfect.       

M: You have always had a unique approach to what many would simply call folk music. Of course you are very well respected now but I am curious if there were points in your career that you were "kept at a safe distance" because of your approach to your music?

J:  Oh, I remember several finger-in-the-ear folk festivals back in the mid-80s, where they would see New St. George's drum set arrive and start walking the other direction as fast as they could!  And there were DJs that simply wouldn't play my stuff because it had a drum set or a synth on it.  But those things don't seem to happen to me any more, perhaps because I've made such a feature of it being electric, and I'm plugged into a whole different network of radio stations, gigs, and audience members.      


M: As a writer I'm sure you are inspired by many different things. Is there one particular medium that you are motivated by more than another? Perhaps books more than music, etc.

J: I'm a tremendous bibliophile. In fact, I'm in danger of being crushed by the wall of self-help books currently next to my bed.  It was the printed word, more than anything that influenced the concepts in Ocean. I'd been reading a lot of mythology, especially deluge, or flood myths; as well as Jung and all the Jungian writers. Marion Woodman, Jean Houston, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Robert Johnson, Helen Luke. The idea of The Hero's Journey really resonated with me seven years ago when I was in the middle of my own dark night of the soul. So I took that as the theme of my musical work.  There was one film that spoke to me during that period as well. Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film version of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, which my German housemate insisted that I watch. In it was this whole planet covered with Ocean, and the Ocean was able to materialize the figures in the imaginations and fantasies of the humans near it.  In the language of dream interpretation and also Jungian astrology, the ocean symbolizes fantasy, imagination, and emotions, and this film captured a really eerie side of that.  Plus, the soundtrack has a beautiful Bach organ piece in it!              

M: You have been very successful and have had a long career in this business, which is rare. Is there any piece of advice that you feel is valuable that you wouldn't mind offering up to younger artists reading this?

J: Yes, and that piece of advice is:  Don't wait around for other people to give you permission - just be up and about doing the thing that you do. I waited for years for the New St. George album High Tea to be signed to a nationally distributed label, being dangled by this and that record company. During that time, we could have sold thousands of copies off of the stage. Also, I spent years waiting to be blessed by the patriarchs of my genre, courting their approval. That approval never came, but I kept true to my own vision and now, a decade later, some of the greats of the genre are guesting on my album, playing and singing my work. So just keep doing your work, your way. That way, you'll be on the radar screen, and your helpers can find you (rather than the other way around).     

M: Since we are both Spinal Tap fans, may I ask what your favorite scene is?

J: The food tantrum.  Definitely the food tantrum.  You know, the one where the band is in their dressing room before the show, and Nigel has a fit over the miniature bread?  I really relate to that one. I once had a food tantrum on tour with the New St. George after being forced to eat a McDonald's Fish Fillet sandwich for breakfast for the third day in a row.  

M: Do you plan to tour in support of this record at all? If so, what band pieces will be included in the live show?

J: My live version of the Ocean Orchestra has had a tremendous time playing the material from the album in the Washington, D.C. / Baltimore area over the past year. Next year, we plan to expand to regional performances, and then, very judiciously, accept gigs that are farther afield.   

M: Thanks so much for your time. Any parting thoughts to offer our readers?

J: Thanks for your eyeballs. I will leave you with my favorite Irish blessing: "May your joys be as deep as the Ocean, and your troubles as light as its foam." Peace out.