Brendan Ashton and Martin Roberts. Cross-pollination in the Potting Shed..


I spent sunday afternoon with Brendan Ashton and Martin Roberts hoping to tap into a conversation that has been going on since they met at college in the 80's. 

Martin and Brendan have shared and swapped music for as long as long as they've known each other, records and songs are points in the road, junctions in a long friendship.  They were City And Guilds Horticulture Students in Penrith, and both worked at Holker Hall in the Nursery where Martin was Kitchen Garden Manager "(A Genius at it, says Brendan.)


They talk about listening to tapes at work among the seedlings in the potting sheds,  gradually changing and taking on each others tastes, of the voices of beloved radios and sound systems, and of experiments with Dorothy Squires. 

Their ears are wide open; nothing gets shunned; at the core is a love for traditional music and an interest in what you can do with it and to it. Sharing second and third-hand finds they searched the ground opened up by the two key LPs from the English electric folk movement; Steeleye Span's Hark The Village Waite, and Fairport Convention's Liege and Lief, and to their calling -on songs that served as manifestos for founder Ashley Hutchings' life's work. 

 Hutchings (right) is also a gardener. He planted something a long time ago in Brendan and Martin, which they have nurtured through their friendship. 
Hopefully we'll be hearing  the results over the course of the project.. 

 



 

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