Westbound - Debut album from Clem M Lovell (DON, 96-00)

“a stunning debut that effortlessly earns its place among the year’s best and firmly announces Clementine as folk’s new darling” Bright Young Folk

My mother sang us The Ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor as our bedtime lullaby. Epic and grisly folk ballads are the songs my three small sons fall asleep to now. The English folk sound is woven into my Herefordshire childhood, threaded through the hedgerows full of Queen Anne’s lace, mossy banks carpeted with primroses, the song of the cuckoo and rooks cawing in the woods. Later, Led Zeppelin became entwined with waterfall pools and walks in the Black Mountains. My parents’ vinyl collections - Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Steeleye Span, the Albion Band, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristofferson, John Mayall, Pentangle, and Fairport Convention to name just a few - were the soundtrack to our childhood, not just the music, but the crackle of the record player and the album covers so vivid in my memory.

Our childhood summers were spent in Ireland, taking the ferry over to West Cork. My paternal grandfather, the radio astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell, bought a small island there in the 1960s as a place to find peace and recuperation. It was previously used to graze cattle in the summer, and bare apart from gorse, heather and sally bushes. He planted many species of trees and shrubs and the family built a house there. It has a magical energy and is the place where I can go back to the core of myself. My parents took us to pub sessions on the mainland, and I became hooked on Irish music, the tunes weaving around my brain, an instant feeling of happiness and that landscape, a sense of coming home. My debut album is titled Westbound, and its songs and stories are rooted in these two places back West, places my heart lifts when I’m bound there, and places I’ll be bound to forever.

My grandfather, more directly, introduced me to classical music from a young age. I would sit at his Bechstein grand with him as we picked out the tune for the Faure Requiem Agnus Dei, and he took me to choral music concerts from age 9. My love of music was fostered through my early years of schooling, and when I moved to CCB aged 14 on a music scholarship, I embraced choral life there. I have many happy memories of singing in the chapel, and in Brecon Cathedral with the Choral Society. The fact that music and song are such an intrinsic part of Welsh culture appealed to me too, and this definitely resonates within the school. Before coming to CCB I attended a Waldorf Steiner School where music was a big part of the curriculum, and everyone participated, not just ‘musical kids’. This idea became important to me later when I began working in music and the arts, that music should be something accessible to everyone, that it could be a positive transformative force, and I became very passionate about this.

My A Level subjects at CCB were Music, English, and Archaeology, in part chosen for the wonderful teachers at the school who inspired me in these areas, Jonathan Leonard, Jonathan Cooper, David Bush, and David Morgan. I went on to study Archaeology & Anthropology at Cambridge University. After I graduated I worked as a field archaeologist in Herefordshire and then as Community Archaeologist for the county. My job was to engage people, for example training volunteers on excavations and talking in schools. But I wanted to explore a career in music and eventually I transferred these skills to producing in the arts. I moved to London and spent a year studying at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. I got my first taste of producing whilst there, organising some performances outside of the conservatoire at other venues.

I first experienced opera aged 21 and loved how it was so raw and yet so refined, it could get right to the core of human emotion if you stripped away the pomp that was often around it in its settings. I was interested in the idea that many people felt put off this art form by the formality around it and I wanted to challenge that. I spent two years living in Italy and saw how opera was a huge part of the culture there rather than something elitist. When I came back I set up a touring opera company, a kind of guerilla outfit called Pop-Up Opera, that took productions into barns, caves, tunnels, pubs and all sorts of quirky spaces around the country. My idea was to make the art form accessible and to change people’s minds about what it could be. If we really told the stories and conveyed the emotions then people could relate to it at some level. It did make a real impact on the UK opera scene and I ran it for some years, doing 100 shows a year around the UK.

But eventually I felt I had done what I set out to do and there was more I wanted to explore. After losing someone very close to me, the experience of grief and a sharp awareness of the fragility of life meant I re-examined what I wanted to be doing, the other lives I wanted to live! I decided to end the company on a high, and worked briefly at the Royal Ballet and Opera as a producer in their Linbury Theatre, a space for contemporary and boundary pushing work, and with the Youth Opera Company there. A job came up in artist development at Britten Pears Arts in Suffolk, running the residency programme there, and I loved that it would mean working across all genres of music, facilitating artist lead projects, including folk.

Throughout all this time I was still singing and playing my accordion, mostly in sessions, but something shifted in me when I was working in Suffolk and I began to write songs for the first time. I also began collaborating with James Keay (Sam Lee was one of our artists at Snape Maltings so we met through him), and I began experimenting with my accordion in new ways (for example playing with drones and creating atmospheric sound, using the sub bass effect with my accordion), looking at different kinds of repertoire. A strong creative drive took hold and I knew with a very deep certainty that I wanted to take it further, to work on the material and find collaborators, to get my songs out into the world, and develop my own sound. Folk was always where my voice and musical ideas felt the most natural and true (and where my heart is - this music resonates with my soul and is a part of my identity), and now there was the opportunity to develop it further, especially when the pandemic meant that producing work was on hold for some of the time, and things were in a state of flux. I spent a couple of years writing, reworking traditional material, and going to folk clubs to try things out.

Gradually I built up a network of musicians and chance meetings where people believed in my work, and this led to collaborations and gigs. I met all of the guest artists who perform on the album this way, they all have a significance in my journey up to this point and it is meaningful for me to have them on the album. I also met my trio musicians Carmen and Duncan, and that’s when things really started to have wings in terms of gigs and getting myself out there. Finding my sound, bringing together all the influences and experiences I’ve picked up along the way, writing these songs and getting them out into the world, is the most true to myself I have ever felt.

Recording the album was an amazing process thanks to my wonderful producer Marion Fleetwood (Feast of Fiddles, The Sandy Denny Project), and sound engineer Paul Johnston of Rhythm Recording Studios. I had never recorded in a studio before, but they created a relaxed and positive atmosphere, and found the perfect balance of support and stepping back to let me do my thing. I came into the studio with a clear vision of how I wanted the album to sound, and it was very exciting to create the layers of instrumentation and to flesh out the arrangements into something more rich and full.

Last week I launched Westbound with a very special gig, joined by 9 of the musicians from the album. FATEA Magazine wrote of the night: "On 24th June Clementine played to a full house at the iconic Water Rats as she launched her début album "Westbound" to a sell out audience. This location has been patronised by both Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, although they didn't play, but it was the first UK venue for Bob Dylan and has seen shows by Oasis and Katy Perry amongst others. Now there's a new name to add to the list...I've seen Clementine a couple of times now and several things strike me about her as a performer. The first is an incredible voice...and the second is the quality of her song writing. She can take an idea and turn it into something both wonderful and remarkable. She can take a simple concept and make it magical...The album, incredible and amazing, is now well and truly launched...For lovers of modern folk it's one to get hold of."

Website : www.clementinelovell.com

Bandcamp: https://clementinelovell.bandcamp.com/album/westbound

Instagram: @clementinelovell

Facebook: @clementinelovell