Q&A with Josienne Clarke: ‘The beauty of songwriting is in the alchemy of combining words and melody’

When folk singer Josienne Clarke signed to Rough Trade Records in February 2016, its founder Geoff Travis described her as writing ‘songs that rearrange your internal emotional landscape…reinventing the popular song structure’.

With a rare gift for poetic melancholy, her elegant, nuanced and emotive storytelling draws you in. Her first solo album, In All Weather, which was released last year, has been described as ‘a thing of gossamer beauty’ by Uncut magazine. Here, she talks to The Bucket Playlist about what she’s been writing in lockdown, which songs are hard to sing, and new beginnings following the end of her decade-long creative partnership with Ben Walker. 

Have you been  writing  some songs during lockdown and do you have plans to release any this year?  

Yes,  our industry has virtually ground to halt and quite suddenly – that was a little hard to get used to at first. I didn’t write or make anything at all until about May. The situation  affects people in different   ways and I took a while to feel normal enough to write amongst it all. I found the combination of perpetual anxiety and inaction a bad mix for creative thought!  

What I’ve been working on more recently is my next album, so a follow up to ‘In All Weather’,  sort of the next stage of the story, my story, the one I’m always writing  about what life looks and feels like in my season and time. This new one is looking to be a bit stronger, more self-assured and dare I say it maybe ‘happier’ at moments! 

One new song is ‘Super Recogniser’. I started writing it last year but managed to finally finish it during lockdown. ‘Super Recogniser’ in its normal usage is a term used to describe people with extremely good facial recognition, being able to recall a very high percentage of faces. The song is about connection between very observant people that goes beyond the standard, a reciprocal recognition of concepts that sometimes go beyond what even language can grapple with. The type of person you feel you’ve known forever such is the mutual understanding you have of how each other’s mind works. This mirrored recognition you get from those rare people leads to a great understanding of yourself.

Who inspires you musically? 

A great many but Sandy Denny and Nick Drake redefining a folk sound in the 60’s & 70’s, the great sax players like Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz. More recently, Fiona Apple, I hugely enjoyed the latest record.  Also  Julia Jacklin, Phoebe  Bridgers, Amelia Curran, Anna  Tivel, the last Kacey Musgraves record ‘Golden Hour’ was full of bangers, I’ve gone back to it loads!  I could go on….forever….  

In All Weather is one of the most beautiful albums I have ever heard. It’s hard to listen  to in places because it feels so raw, especially  ‘Walls and Hallways’, with the lines:  “We worry at the words, the ones we have not said, because you felt so strongly, you chose some weaker ones instead.” It’s very powerful and emotive, is it hard to sing? 

Yes,  that song is always a tough one to get through, I’m usually pretty close to tears by the end of it. It’s about trying to relate to someone who isn’t capable of a meaningful connection. For some people, love is a weakness they refuse to express, this is so confusing when you’re an open-hearted, open-handed personality.

You can be hurt because the more you try to care about that person and show that you care  with a hope  to  inspire  reciprocation the more they double down on their withholding. So,  you always exist both with them and without them until you  realise  you’ve built yourself a prison  with  a total stranger.  Although, there’s a kind of relief in the pure sadness of that, knowing you tried your best but now you can stop trying to fix it now because it  just  isn’t possible.   

Do you have a songwriting process and any rules that you adhere  to? 

I do have somewhat of a process and I certainly have a few personal rules. I generally write lyrics and melody together. It is my belief that the beauty of songwriting is in the alchemy of combining words and melody. Songs aren’t poems set to music or music with some words added, so I generally find work on them happens simultaneously, the words dictate the melodic shape and the shape of a melody affects which words you can attach to it. Things like sax lines are usually the last thing to be written, merely the ‘icing upon the song cake’ as I like to call it!  

You wrote In All Weather after breaking up your creative partnership with Ben Walker, with whom you were part of celebrated folk duo for a decade, moving to the remote Isle of Bute in Scotland to embrace the concept of “onliness”. Did you feel  more free to take your music in a different direction/try things you hadn’t tried before?  

Yes certainly, ‘In All Weather’ is a sort of ‘break-up’ album but not in the conventional, romantic sense. I felt quite trapped into the duo, but I was finding it increasingly painful to sustain and it’s all the songs I was writing during that time. From finally deciding to leave, to having left. I think to be honest it was an album I needed to make and was driven mainly by emotional reasons. I didn’t have a ‘sound’ I was looking for, I had some songs that I’d written at a difficult time and each musical decision was made to serve the narrative of those songs.   

One of things that happened A LOT during my time in the duo was that people would assume Ben, a man, had written all the music and that’s obviously not how it worked. I would bring him finished songs and we set about  producing  them together in his studio. The gender bias in some music reviews tended to  give the male an assumed intellectual and creative primacy, crediting him with stuff he hadn’t done.

He largely refused to even attempt to correct this growing mythology,  giving the impression he thought it  arrogant and shallow of me to need to have the full credit for my work. He preferred to stay silent, leave the inaccuracies, I suppose because he benefited from them. So,  in releasing a record in just my name I’m free to enjoy the fruits of my own labour, to succeed or fail at my own hand.   

‘In Leaving London’, you sing: “I’ve given him my best years and he’ll never give them back” and in  ‘Host’  you have the amazing line “Sorry is the key to a door that you will come through and hurt me some more”.  When you set out to write this album, what were your goals? Did you have any idea at the start as to what sort of album it was likely to be?  

I was damaged by ten years of a dysfunctional and  what felt, at times, like an emotionally abusive and  gaslighty  working dynamic. I needed to write about it to put it outside of myself to express it once and for all. To prove to myself that it was over. I think at the time I was making it I thought it was defiant and bold  but when I listen to it now it all sounds so wounded.  In retrospect, I was very vulnerable,  quite distressed and  running away  from  it. I didn’t have any career goals or musical ones as such, I just needed to say the  thing  I’d been carrying round with me secretly for ages, I thought that if I could get these words out that I could somehow exorcise myself of this painful chapter. That the truth would set me free of the partnership.   

‘Onliness’ feels different to the other songs on the album, as if you were in a slightly different place, emotionally, when you wrote it. 

Yes,  I think your sense is correct. ‘Onliness’ was what I  wanted and I was finally away, and alone. ‘Onliness’ means both solitude and to be one of a kind and that’s how I was happiest, being myself, by myself! I was no longer carrying another person’s  expectations and fears with  me so I felt much lighter by this point.    

Has Ben heard this album? 

I honestly don’t  know,  I haven’t spoken to him since  the  29^th   of November 2018.  I left the stage after our set in Belgium  and  got in  the  car intent to never see him again. I knew I was leaving the duo before our last record ‘Seedlings All’ came out in March 2018. But I had a contract to honour with Rough Trade  Records and two subsequent tours to do before I could leave so I couldn’t tell anyone then that I was planning my exit. I had to continue to pretend  in  public that everything was ok. I gave myself the best chance of retaining some semblance of a career when I left the duo but in truth at that point,  I would gladly have never played another note if it meant I didn’t have to be in that situation anymore.    

I mean him no harm by saying  it  now, obviously I cared about him and he’s a talented guitarist,  I hope he finds whatever it is he needs in life, I just don’t want to be a part of it.   

If you could collaborate with anyone musically – dead or alive – who would you pick? 

To be honest I’m a bit done with collaboration for the time being! I’m  really enjoying  doing  more and more myself, I’m going to produce my next record by myself too. However maybe  I won’t always feel that way, my hopes of singing with Peter Green are now dashed of course…  

Gigs have been cancelled this year but do you have any plans to tour towards the end of this year or next year?  

I have dates in from September onwards but of course we can’t know if they’ll go ahead yet. I’m willing and able to tour as soon as the world is safe for me to do so. I might be touring the new album by then!