Interview with Amelia Coburn: ‘We couldn’t find the title for the EP for ages but it’s in ‘Oh Captain’, so it fits, metaphorically and literally. I liked the idea of the ebb and flow of life.’

Middlesbrough folk singer Amelia Coburn has released her single ‘Please Go Gently’ today (4 March), a beautiful tribute to her grandfather and the first track from her upcoming EP, ‘The Ebb and The Flow’, which explores age, mortality and navigating the way through the unpredictability of life, and which will be released on 1 April. 

‘Please Go Gently’, the opening track, feels like a lullaby and takes its cue from Dylan Thomas’ famous poem “Do not go gentle into that good night”, but reverses the sentiment, hoping for a peaceful journey for a loved one at the end of their life. It was written against the backdrop of her beloved grandfather’s ailing health and following the death of a lifelong pet. The pared back but emotive recording is a simple live take of Coburn accompanying herself on a baritone ukulele with additional texture from a sparse, delicately played piano part by Harriet Bradshaw.

‘I was struggling for material, I had drastic changes in my life,’ she said. ‘I was always really close to my grandad, who was dying, he lived just round the corner. My pet who I’d had since I was two also died. I love the Dylan Thomas poem with the lines “Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day” but I wanted to say the opposite, I wanted to wish my grandad a peaceful journey to the end instead.’

As the track begins: ‘By the time you’re reading this, I hope you feel no pain. Relief is found in silver lined clouds to wash over you like rain.’

‘I liked the idea of the ebb and flow of life’

The EP title is taken from the closing track ‘Oh Captain! Guide Me Home’: ‘I had these songs that fitted in the same theme of ageing and mortality,’ Coburn said. ‘We couldn’t find the title for the EP for ages but it’s in ‘Oh Captain’, so it fits, metaphorically and literally. I liked the idea of the ebb and flow of life.’

I say that ‘Where The Leaves Are Blown’ on the EP reminds me of Nick Drake, with its beguiling melancholic melody and she’s visibly delighted: ‘I LOVE Nick Drake! I love his album Five Leaves Left (1969),’ she said. ‘My gran on my dad’s side, she wrote poems a lot before she had dementia. I found a folder of her poems and I took the inspirations for the lyrics from one of them. I love the themes of nature going through the song. I’d use my gran’s lyrics again, it’s like an intergenerational collab!,’ she said. ‘It’s a tribute to her because I couldn’t ask her if I could use them. I hope she’d be pleased, though. Before the dementia, she was always into literature and sang a bit like me.’

The lyrics are, indeed, poetic: ‘Fog remains, it penetrates the river as it flows. Amid the ceaseless motion, I begin my governed dance.’

Coburn describes her voice as her “main instrument”, although she also plays the ukulele, baritone ukulele and stick dulcimer: ‘I did a lot of musical theatre as a kid, I was in the local dramatic society,’ she said. ‘I was around 15 or 16 when I started playing the ukulele properly. My first one was a pink, plastic one (laughs). I love the ukulele, it can sound really beautiful. It can be a very affordable and accessible instrument.’ I ask her if she’s heard Eddie Vedder’s incredible Ukulele Songs album (2011). ‘I have, isn’t he amazing?,’ she enthused. ‘I don’t know how anyone can even play like that!’ Coburn describes the baritone ukulele as being “between a ukulele and a guitar but tuned like a guitar”: ‘I bought it recently, it’s nice to mix things up,’ she said.

‘I write the best on a new instrument, it’s the best way to get inspired’

I say that I didn’t realise until I bought my guitar recently that the chords are very different to on the uke: ‘I can’t really play the guitar,’ she laughed. ‘If I can’t remember the chords, I just play the ukulele ones! My latest instrument is a dulcimer (she shows me a picture), it sounds like a cross between a banjo and a sitar, it looks like an elongated ukulele. I saw it on the wall at my local music shop for £100. I write the best on a new instrument, it’s the best way to get inspired. I might use weird tuning!’

Another track on the EP, ‘Sandra’, turns out to have been inspired by a real-life woman, albeit of a different name, and has an absolutely fascinating backstory: ‘I lived with her in Paris as part of my course doing languages,’ she said. ‘She spoke no English, we spoke French. She had a tragic life. The song is inspired by her abusive, alcoholic ex-husband. You know you hear about people getting revenge? Well, she got post-mortem revenge (laughs). His one dying wish was not to be cremated, so that’s exactly what she did!’

Coburn studied French, Spanish, Russian and Serbian at Nottingham University. She says she picked Russian and Serbian because she loves a challenge and wanted to try something completely different. Her love of languages and travel has permeated some of her songs, most notably ‘The Cheese Song’, which is her love letter to Mexico and the city there, Puebla, where she lived for five months as part of her studies. I say I lived in Pachuca in Mexico for a year, which is not far from Puebla, and it turns out that her boyfriend taught at the American school there.

‘There are a few cheese-related play on words that people who know Mexico will get’

I tell her that I love ‘The Cheese Song’ (2021), it’s so infectious, it is impossible to listen to it without being transported back to Mexico and it always leaves me craving Mexican food and she laughs: ‘It’s so nice to be able to talk about it with somebody who’s been there and knows what this food is,’ she said. ‘I’d just come back from Mexico, I’d written songs like ‘Sandra’ and ‘Where Leaves Are Blown’ but they were a bit morose (laughs) and I wanted something happier. One of my friends said why didn’t I try to write a song about all the things I loved to eat in Mexico, so I did! There are a few food-related play on words that people who know Mexico will get. (There’s a sweet reference to ‘elotes’ – sweetcorn – being “corny”.)The ‘doctor’ bit in the chorus was nicked from Harry Nilsson’s ‘Coconut’!’

The song is essentially a list of her favourite things to eat there, from flautas (fried, rolled, filled tortillas) to tacos and chalupas – thin tortillas typically coated in tomato salsa, shredded chicken and cheese that are every bit as good as they sound – her response to them in the song is ‘holy cow’: ‘I’d love to live there again,’ she said. ‘The people, the food, I’d go back in a heartbeat. I think music and family go hand in hand there, don’t they?’ I say that they do and the days like Day of the Dead are testament to that, when families go to the cemeteries to pay respect to the dead, taking food and playing music at their graves and she agrees. ‘It’s different to here, people listen to music together more there,’ she said. ‘It’s a big part of society.’

Living in Paris, Puebla and Russia in 2018 and 2019 has had a profound impact on her: ‘Paris was similar to living in the UK but Mexico was the easiest to get used to,’ she said. ‘Other than people being really late! When I went to my first uni lecture there, the lecturer was 45 minutes late! It took me a while to adjust to plans not going to time – I can’t keep it up for long here!’ Interestingly, she is the only one in her family who is fascinated by languages: ‘No-one in my family speaks any languages but I love etymology, I love finding out about words,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school – music was just a hobby at that point – but I knew I loved languages. It’s good for the brain to use those parts. Being able to talk to people in Mexico was amazing. I’ve got my mum into it now, she’s been learning Spanish with Duolingo and watching Spanish films but I have to tell her not to put the subtitles on!’

She asks me which language I dream in and I have to think about it. I say mainly in English but sometimes in French because I live in a French speaking city and she nods: ‘I’ve dreamt about ‘Sandra’ in Paris and I’m speaking French with her in the dream,’ she said. ‘When I was in France, I dreamt in French but now I dream in English again – sadly!’

‘I’ll be messing around on the ukulele and the lyrics can come out, like a stream of consciousness’

Typically, she writes her songs on the ukulele: ‘It does vary but I’ll be messing around on the ukulele and the lyrics can come out, like a stream of consciousness and I think: I’ll keep that. I rarely have the lyrics first, though. I normally have the melody first.’

‘Oh Captain! Guide Me Home’ is a great closer, oscillating between the major and minor key but on the whole, the song has a minor feel to it, providing the perfect backdrop to lyrics that are more upbeat than the music would suggest: ‘It was one of my recent ones, it’s about a person who guides you through life,’ she said. ‘It started off with me and the ukulele, it was grandiose. I really like Joni Mitchell, so I detuned my ukulele for it like she often did. It has a Spanish sound but I didn’t want it to be too obvious.’

As the song goes: ‘A stillness so fragile, ruptured by the clock striking noon. In broad light of day, at dawn or at dusk, through twilight’s velvet hue, I will sail with you on this ship…’

She is trying to write ‘more and more’ and would eventually like to bring out a full-length album towards the end of next year. She is currently involved, as a mentee, in the English Folk Expo mentoring scheme and has a string of live dates across England in March and April, with more to follow, including an appearance at the Cambridge Folk Festival, Focus Wales, The Austrian Ukulele Festival and plans for other European dates, too, including an event near Strasbourg, France, on 21 May.

‘I really like the Tin Pan Alley songwriters’

Musically, her biggest inspirations include Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Harry Nilsson: “I really like the Tin Pan Alley songwriters (the name given to a collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated popular American music in the late 19th century and early 20th century), like Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, the old musicals, it was a great era.’ Recently, she’s been getting into English-Brazilian singer Liana Flores: ‘I like her a lot, she’s half bossa nova, half folk,’ she said.

Coburn has had some endearing encounters with people recognising her in her hometown: ‘Even though I’m far from being famous, it makes me feel like a bit of a minor celebrity when I’m walking through town and someone stares at me and says “Excuse me, are you Amelia Coburn, the one that plays ukulele?!” One time my best friend and I were rowing a boat along the river and someone on another boat shouted “Hiya Amelia! I saw you perform in Stockton last week! You were dead good!” From across the water!,’ she laughed.

She has an interesting TV dream: ‘I don’t watch much television, but my favourite show of all time is The Simpsons so I’d love to one day be immortalised as part of a Simpsons gag, and be a cameo voice actor!’ I ask her what her dream line-up would look like. ‘One day, if I could bring him back, I’d love see Scott Walker sharing the stage with Kate Bush, I love her, I’d love to do a duet with someone so legendary. Maybe Bob Dylan, he’s a great legend and songwriter. And Electric Light Orchestra, I love Jeff Lynne. I saw them with my dad a couple of years ago. You forget how good they are. Their songs are very timeless, they transcend the ages, don’t they? Out of the Blue and A New World Record by them are two of my favourite albums of all time. It’s soooo hard to write a song as good as ‘Mr. Blue Sky’.’