Interview with Megson: ‘Putting together this album has been a refreshing journey for us’

Teesside folk duo Megson – aka Debbie and Stu Hanna – will release their tenth studio album Unknown Waters on 11 February 2022, featuring nine covers and one bonus track showcasing songwriters who have inspired them from the North East of England.

‘Megson’ is a reference to their old dog, Megan, who passed away: ‘We’d thought of calling ourselves ‘Ghost of Meg’ but our friends said it sounded like a metal band!,’ Debbie said.

The album title is taken from one of the tracks on it, ‘The Silent Boatman’ – “I’m waiting for the silent boatman to carry me across the unknown waters”: ‘It also signifies it is unknown waters for us doing a whole album of covers and that some of these songs may be unknown waters to some of our fans,’ Debbie said. ‘Hopefully, it will lead to them checking out some of the artists.’

All nine tracks have been written by their favourite north eastern songwriters and arranged for guitars, mandolin, banjo, fiddle and accordion. Each track tells a story, often political, from a moment in the region’s history. Their trademark soaring harmonies give a fresh touch to classics such as Chris Rea’s ‘Road to Hell’ as well as compositions from less well-known artists, such as Middlesbrough’s Richard Grainger. Their bonus track, ‘Through the Winter’, was written by them during the first COVID winter and tells the emotional tale of a couple making the most of a tough winter.

‘Putting together this album has been a refreshing journey for us,’ Debbie said. ‘We started with songs and songwriters we’ve always known and performed – like the wonderful Vin Garbutt’s ‘Not For The First Time’ and Lindisfarne’s ‘Marshall Riley’s Army’ – and it paved the way for us to record some songs from writers we’ve always admired but never found the reason to perform like Jez Lowe, Richard Grainger and Martin Stephenson.’

‘A lot of their songs are anthemic’

The opening track ‘One Law’, which is a cover of a Young Rebel Set song, feels like the perfect opener given the dire state of U.K. politics: ‘We were driving back one night (they now live in Melbourn in Cambridgeshire) listening to it, it gave us the idea, although there are a lot of Young Rebels Sets songs we could have picked,’ Debbie said. Stu agrees: ‘A lot of their songs are anthemic, they have great lyrics,’ he said.

Another song, ‘The Judas Bus’, highlights just how beautiful their harmonies are set against a backdrop of haunting, sorrowful violins: ‘We’ve known Jez Lowe, who wrote it, for a while, he’s known in the North East,’ Stu said. ‘He writes very clever lyrics, this is one of his most acerbic songs (laughs). It was written as one of BBC Radio Balance’s songs on a political theme. It’s about the miners’ strikes in the 1980’s. We weren’t sure at the start but this one felt like a good one to tie the album together. We’ve just been rehearsing it. With songs like this, you might have Jez Lowe fans in the audience, so there’ll be some pressure there!’

Protests are a theme weaving through several tracks on the album, including ‘Marshall Riley’s Army’, which has been in their repertoire for a while. Originally by English rock band Lindisfarne, it tells the real life story of the Jarrow March in 1936, an organised protest against the unemployment and poverty suffered in the English town of Jarrow during the 1930’s. Around 200 men marched from Jarrow to London, carrying a petition to the British government requesting the re-establishment of industry in the town following the closure in 1934 of its main employer, Palmer’s Shipyard.

As the track kicks off: ‘In October thirty-six they took a trip, the men who made the ships, searching for some kind of salvation. With heads held high, and dignified, the towns folk and passers by, held them in some kind of admiration.’

‘We’re looking for lyrics that take people to a place’

It turns out that they are both long-term fans of the original track, which was released in 1978: ‘It tells the story so well, we thought we could do a good version of that,’ Stu said. ‘We’re looking for lyrics that take people to a place and this song does. It has a very high note in it! I have to rehearse that. Debs always says that people don’t mind if I can’t hit it live, that they come to hear a song that’s not just like the record.’

One of the hardest things was picking which songs to cover: ‘We had at least five or six songs for each artist,’ Stu said. ‘Vin Garbutt has a vast selection of songs – we had a big Excel sheet!’ Their experience in singing together for 15 years made it easier to pick songs they thought they could best do justice to, according to Debbie: ‘Having tried a couple of songs, you get a feel for where the lyrics flow nicely and the lyrics sit right,’ she said. ‘You’ll think you can do good harmonies.’

When it comes to songwriting, their methods can vary: ‘We’ll have a bit of a theme with an album and try to generate more songs,’ Stu said. ‘I sing random melodies into my phone (laughs).’ I ask what it’s like writing songs with a long-term partner and they both laugh: ‘You can be quite honest with each other but annoyed if the other disses your idea,’ Debbie said, laughing. Stu agrees: ‘ I find it easier to write songs with Debs than someone else, I respect her. The hardest thing is finding the time and space to write songs – we’ve got noisy dogs! We book in an album tour for at least a year and a half ahead.’

‘It was nice to hear someone singing songs about Teesside’

For me, one of the most beautiful songs on the album is their cover of Vin Garbutt’s ‘Not For The First Time’, an incredibly upbeat mandala-led track, which belies the reflective, more political lyrics about poverty and hardship in the region: ‘He was a big name growing up in Teesside,’ Stu said (Vin Garbutt passed away in 2017.). ‘You’d see his posters everywhere but we didn’t know he was part of the folk scene then. We’ve performed with him a few times.’ Debbie nods: ‘It was nice to hear someone singing songs about Teesside, he’s got so many good songs.’ Stu joins in: ‘He’d write about specific areas of Teesside. We covered this one a few years ago and Pat (his wife) and son came to see it. We wanted to play it for a Radio 3 session but they wouldn’t let us, they said it was too political.’

One of the stand-out tracks is ‘The Silent Boatman’ which, sonically, has a very different feel to the other tracks. It’s more pared back and I say that Debbie’s vocals on it remind me of Julianne Regan, the former frontwoman of All About Eve: ‘There’s a lot of space in it musically,’ Stu said. ‘It’s by Ruth Copeland, she’s from Durham, she went from being a steelworker’s daughter to singing for Parliament Funkadelic, a pysch band in Detroit! She did huge concerts in the 70’s. In their version, you can hear a bit of the folk ballad getting introduced to the Detroit funk sound. Some of it is crazy in the way music is designed to be.’

‘Ring Of Iron’ by Teesside singer-songwriter Graeme Miles is a natural closer for the album, and is believed to be about Middlesbrough in North Yorkshire. As the chorus goes: ‘It’s all around the town. All around the town. It’s all around the town. This hard ring of iron.’ In many ways, it feels like a love letter to the North East, citing its ‘factories, stills and rolling mills…fields and pastures green’: ‘We knew that one, Graeme Miles wrote a lot of songs about the North East,’ Stu said. ‘We’d heard a few versions of it. Ours is more reflective, it felt like a nice way to end the album.’

‘I attack the banjo like the deafening crash cymbal!’

Growing up, Stu says he was inspired by everything: ‘I’d soak up music,’ he said. ‘I loved Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers – they sampled Glenn Miller, I was obsessed!’ Debbie is a classically trained singer: ‘We met singing in the county youth choir,’ she said. ‘I like classical stuff. I love a lot of choral music from the likes of Purcell and Handel to more modern day Durufle & Britten,’ she said. ‘And the Swingle Sisters from the 70’s, they sing acapella and cover Bach’s Fugue in G minor as doobie doo stuff.’ Stu has an interesting past: ‘I played in a punk rock band from 15 to 21,’ he said, happily. ‘I attack the banjo like the deafening crash cymbal!’

After school, Debbie moved to London to study classical music and opera, and Stu followed her south, bookkeeping for a prog rock producer whilst playing gigs and trying to do deals. ‘We live in Melbourn in Cambridgeshire now, we didn’t know anyone round here when we moved,’ Stu said. He switched from electric to acoustic guitar, learned to play the mandolin and they started to write folk songs, inspired by some of the traditional songs Debbie had been learning as part of her classical training. It’s clear to see from the tracks they picked for this album – and their own original songs over the years – that folk is a natural fit for them, given the importance of storytelling to them both.

If he could have collaborated with anyone, Stu picks Stephen Sondheim, an American composer and lyricist, who found fame reinventing the musical and who passed away last year, and June Carter, the second wife of Johnny Cash. Debbie goes with Simon & Garfunkel. Their dream line up would be a mix, according to Stu: ‘We’d want a mix of sound, a lot of brass in it,’ he said. ‘I want Miles Davis,’ Debbie said, and he looked at her: ‘We wouldn’t cope with it,’ he grinned.

They’ve had some funny and endearing moments on the road: ‘You’ve done a gig and you have to stay in a Travelodge and this one time, we were coming up to Christmas and went to a garden centre and bought a seesaw with Santa and his elf with fairy lights on it,’ Debbie laughed. ‘In the middle of a tour with time on our hands and that’s what we buy. We still put it out the front every Christmas!’