Fireside Stories: Josienne Clarke on Sandy Denny

For me, doing a Sandy Denny song is like going into a vintage shop, finding a great old sheepskin coat that just fits perfectly and looks amazing on you, and you know that it’s been loved and worn by someone else, someone who fitted into it perfectly too. But somehow, it’s meant for you and the universe has brought it to you, and now it’s yours. Her vocal range is note-for-note where mine sits, so I don’t have to change the key to any of her songs or any of the notes, they’re exactly where you want them to be. And because the melody writing is so careful, the stresses are exactly where they need to be, they are written that way, there can never be wild variation because it’s written to wring the most emotional impact out of that melody, so I find the whole process incredibly intuitive.

I first found out about her when I went to a folk sing-around and sang a Joan Baez song, and someone said to me, “You sound like Sandy Denny.” I was 17 or so. I went and looked her up and found this endlessly brilliant music that resonated both [in the] melancholic nature of the writing and the singing.

I’m cautious not to push myself into this too much, but there is a line to be drawn between her approach to songwriting and mine, how she uses tension and release, which comes from the balance between melancholy and hope. Her songs are not devoid of hope, but they are incredibly melancholy. I’ve always related to that. That push and pull creates great tension in the songs, and songs are only ever tension and release.

This stage show is something I always wanted to do, and I feel now I’ve got to a point where I can understand and absorb her songs from a songwriting perspective myself. For example, some of the tiny little harmonic changes she does – there’s something deceptively simple about her songs, yet when you come to rehearse them, there’s always something that slightly catches you out.

I think that is what gives them such longevity. You hear a new thing every time you listen. I think if they were genuinely simplistic, you’d get bored, but you don’t, because they’re not. There’s all this complexity smuggled into this lovely tune that just washes over you. It’s so natural but so carefully made. It’s not complexity for complexity’s sake; it’s more intricacy and nuance, and always in service to the song and its emotional narrative and power.

Across the Evening Sky was always going to be the show’s title. If you go into a room and sing ‘Across the evening sky,’ everyone will go, ‘All the birds are leaving…’ ‘Who Knows [Where The Time Goes?]’ is the most important song to most people and also, what a great opening line! You think, “Where are we going with this?” and you know you want to hear the end of it. All of those reds and oranges, all those hues, that weird dusky melancholy. It’s got everything.

For the show, I’ll start with ‘Reynardine’ and hold ‘Who Knows...’ ’til near the end. Two of the songs I’m really excited about are ‘Like an Old Fashioned Waltz’ and ‘Fotheringay’. They are like paintings or plays; they have so much nostalgia and conjuring of imagery. ‘Solo’ is her big torch song, and I’ll definitely do that. And then you have songs like ‘At the End of the Day’ that draw it back in and bring it down again. It’s an interesting process. Half the job is making them make the right shape in the setlist. Rather than a history of her life and times, I’ll try to find a narrative that weaves all those songs together, a narrative that’s in the material itself.

Balancing all that out so it takes the audience on exactly the right kind of journey is hard and wonderful work. There isn’t another artist to whom I could attribute quite so much influence to my own singing and songwriting than Sandy. I love Joni and Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen, but when people ask, “Who’s the person who influenced you the most?”, it always circles back to Sandy.

As told to Tim Cumming

+ Josienne Clarke’s Across the Evening Sky tour begins in January: josienneclarke.com/live/