With a string of acclaimed studio releases to their name, folk seven-piece The Old Dance School have announced their next long-player will be a live album. And where better to record it than in their home city?
“We’ve done three albums now, with great production and in great studios. They’re quite polished, as we work on the fine details,” explains guitarist/vocalist Robin Beatty. “So it’ll be nice to capture what we do live.”
They’ll be recording their show at Glee Club on Tuesday for an official (as yet unnamed) release in the spring.
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“We just really wanted to capture the raw edge of a live performance,” Robin says of their decision to record live. “The last studio album – Chasing The Light – came out nearly two years ago.
"The band is constantly changing. We do two tours a year and it feels like the sound changes very fast. Capturing this transition period, before we do the next studio album in the summer, will be great.”
Though it may initially seem simpler than spending several weeks multi-tracking and mixing in a studio facility, recording live is not without its challenges.
“We’ve got violins, trumpet, whistle – we work hard to balance up acoustics, but it takes quite a bit of mixing,” he explains.
“We hope to capture the energy of the room.”
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Emerging from jam sessions at Birmingham’s Betty Fox School in 2006, Robin, Helen Lancaster (violin, viola), Samantha Norman (violin), Jim Molyneux (percussion, accordion), Aaron Diaz (trumpet, loops), Laura Carter (woodwind) and Adam Jarvis (double bass) have earned themselves a solid reputation thanks to their consistently striking live performances and three albums, the last of which won The Scotsman’s Folk Album Of The Year.
While rooted in folk music, The Old Dance School’s sound is far from traditional, calling on classical, jazz and other musical styles, as well as cinema and the varied landscapes of the British Isles.
It’s a sound they see as increasingly unrestrained by simple labelling.
“In the past, we’ve had a chip on our shoulders with pigeonholes. Folk is a cosy community, but this year, we’ve had this feeling of being released. Birmingham has this obsession with fusion – bands take a lot of different influences – and it feels like this year, we don’t have to call ourselves folk and that makes the [musical] palette much broader. We find that liberating, freeing.”
This change of attitude can be heard in new material, some of which will be aired at the forthcoming gig.
“Songs are more political, and the sound, we are experimenting more, working with ideas of sound, so it’s more about textures rather than just harmony, melody. There are lots of combinations of instruments with a seven-piece band, there’s a broad palette.
"That’s a feature. Also, we’re limbering up, we’re more danceable.
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"From the Irish/Celtic tradition, they take the melody as the first thing whereas this time around, we’re looking from the bottom up, the grooves, working on interesting rhythms, looking at it from that point of view.
"It’s more toe-tapping.”
While Birmingham has a notable folk history – from Ian Campbell and Fairport Convention’s Dave Swarbrick in the sixties to Birmingham Conservatoire graduate Jim Moray in the noughties – Robin believes the city’s contemporary folk scene, though lacking the strength of other cities, is very much a breeding ground for new ideas.
“In places like Sheffield and Newcastle, there’s a kind of strong folk scene. Birmingham is not one of those cities, but there’s a very strong sense of community – it feels very close, cosy, really supportive,” he says.
“There are some great folk musicians in Birmingham [and] Moseley Folk Festival is a kind of representation of that scene.
"It’s interesting how [the festival organisers] are coming at it from a not very traditional background –w there’s more poppy stuff, world stuff, and there’s this cross-pollination affect.”
- The Old Dance Quartet will be recording their fourth album at The Glee Club Birmingham on December 3. Tickets are £12.50, including a free copy of the album. For details see: