Adrian Crowley, a musician from Galway, began an unexpected online collaboration born from a social media post a few years back. While walking through the labyrinthine lanes around his Dublin residence during the lockdown, Crowley felt a pull to document the moment on Facebook. The moonless night around him, coupled with his interest in nocturnal photography, led him to mark the conjunction of what he observed, felt, and heard.
Crowley was enjoying the duet album “Death Had Quicker Wings Than Love,” released in 2017 by English folk artists Marry Waterson and David A Jaycock, at the time of his walk. Crowley had been an admirer of Waterson, the daughter of the late English folk legend Lal Waterson—her voice, he was familiar with; her mother’s singing, he cherished. This record, however, was the first to fully captivate him.
After seeing Crowley’s post, Waterson promptly extended an offer for a potential partnership. Crowley recounts, “She left a message at the conclusion of my lengthy ramble, something like, ‘If you’d ever consider collaborating, I’m always looking for new projects,’ it lifted my spirits,” so he contacted her the next day with a snippet of his new work. Initially clueless of the undertaking’s scope, they wondered whether it might result in a single song.
Despite never physically crossing paths, the duo began trading lyrics, melodies, and voice notes. Years later, following their digital encounter, they’re on the verge of releasing their joint book of songs, “Cuckoo Storm”. It’s a contemporary folk offering in structure but offers an eternal, homemade sensation. Their vocal harmony is extraordinary, with Waterson’s elastic tunes flawlessly complementing Crowley’s reflective tone.
Waterson discloses that she was privileged to develop and hone her singing skills in the company of her family, with whom she started recording at the tender age of twelve. Her upbringing endowed her with a ‘folky’ voice unique to the Waterson bloodline, a paradox given her embrace of diverse genres that bolster her storytelling. However, she mentions sharing a commonality with her duet partner – both their voices lie in the lower register and the intimacy it creates is appealing to her.
Waterson and Crowley come from starkly different backgrounds, with Waterson a member of the Waterson-Knight-Carthy folk clan, whereas Crowley independently navigated into the realm of folk. Despite their varied backgrounds, they found commonality in their mutual respect for words. Crowley remarks that both artists harbour an appreciation for impactful lyrics and attention to detail in songwriting. He recalls the enthusiasm with which Waterson responded to his lyrical compositions, appreciating the mutual fascination that spanned more than just song but also the intricacy of words.
Waterson’s journey into songwriting started with penning poems. Although she doesn’t play any musical instrument or have formal knowledge in reading music, she reveals how phrases spontaneously emerge that insinuate music, thus giving birth to melody and rhythm. She documents her musical ideas in voice memos which she then shares with her collaborators.
Despite her lack of proficiency in an instrument, she acknowledges her voice to be her instrument and has evolved from composing melody to Adrian’s lyrics. On their joint album, they’ve each contributed an equal number of songs. While she’s been the predominant lyricist in her past collaborations, composing melody for someone else’s lyrics was a refreshing experience. She maintains that even though she doesn’t play an instrument, her different approach is an advantage, with a cappella singing offering freedom. She identifies poetry as their shared love.
“The Leviathan” is acknowledged by both as a cornerstone track of the album. Crowley experienced notable exasperation formulating the lyrics from his desk, leading to an impromptu sojourn to the seafront at Clontarf, clutching his notebook. “I perched on the grass and in a sudden creative surge, I penned down every word of ‘The Leviathan’,” recounts Crowley. The text was shared with Marry straight away, and the subsequent day she texted him, singing the very words he had written. This inspired the formation of the rest of the song, setting a routine model for their creations, and sparking the question, ‘Do we continue and convert this into an album?’
The song creation process differed slightly between them. Crowley’s inspiration for “‘Heavy Wings”, a song formulated a few years earlier, originated from the real-life saga of the 19th-century ‘L’Inconnue de la Seine,’ the tale of a young woman whose body was recovered from the Seine river in France. Her eerie and calm death mask became a popularly displayed item in French households. He had tried recording the song for his album but failed to obtain the perfect note.
“Far into our collaboration with Marry, I got an idea to share ‘Heavy Wings’ with her to know her opinion,” Crowley says. “I was afraid she might find it too intense. However, she enthusiastically replied, ‘Yes. Yes. Yes. I am going to lend my voice to this song,’ and she really did. It was a tremendous feeling to hear her sing those words. It sent shivers down my spine,” he nostalgically reminisces.
Frequently, Waterson incorporates the “blackout” method while penning lyrics. The technique has been considerably successful on album tracks like “Undear Sphere” and “Distant Music”. Explaining the process, she says, “It starts with skimming through pages of a second-hand book from a church jumble purging or ‘blacking out’ sections of the original text to leave only certain phrases and words .” She thoroughly enjoys this creative freedom, comparing it to doodling because of its unplanned and organic outcomes.
The track titled ‘One Foot of Silver, One Foot of Gold’ was originally penned by her mother, Lal, who passed away in 1998. The lyrics, she explains, were an ode to Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet. “I took over from where she left off, composing a melody for the lyrics. As I was singing, a small bird landed on my windowsill, seemingly engaged in my performance. It was a poignant moment for me, as I thought of it as a positive omen, and I couldn’t help but becoming tearful. I momentarily stopped recording as I wondered whether it was her way of returning to comment on my rendition of her song,” she shared.
She constantly feels the presence of her mother. “Our singing voices are so similar that there have been moments when I’ve been convinced she has added her voice to mine, despite being fully aware that it was only me singing. I believe my mother would have genuinely enjoyed listening to these works. Despite her illness, which often hindered her ambitions, she had a desire to collaborate with other artists who shared her passion,” she admitted.
The album was created online, hence, Crowley and Waterson didn’t meet until they had just two days left to begin recording. Crowley was once picked up by Waterson from a silent Scarborough train station, in the middle of the night. She took him to her countryside home, located in the scenic village of Robin Hood’s Bay. They used those two days to rehearse, before journeying to Bristol, to record in producer Jim Barr’s studio.
Recalling his first morning there Crowley said, “As I reached the stairway, I noticed daylight pouring through the windows. When I entered the kitchen and looked out of the window, the view was the most spectacular I had ever seen from any dwelling. It was as if there was some digital painting placed on the window”. He chuckles. “After relishing some delicious food and savouring coffee, we sat down in her comfortable, inviting living room with a warm fire crackling and sang our songs face to face for the first time. We later took a stroll in the village, visited the harbour and meandered through its narrow zigzag streets. It was as if we were walking among the spectres of past smugglers. That experience was truly mesmerising,” he reminisced.
Currently, there are no touring intentions for Cuckoo Storm as Waterson’s spouse is undergoing treatment for blood cancer, necessitating a simplified lifestyle for her to manage, she explains. Nevertheless, both artists acknowledge that the extended production period of the record has offered them self-revelations.
Waterson shares her struggle with fluctuating between introversion and extroversion and occasional lapses in self-assurance. She’s still growing into her identity as a musician, as her main method of execution is vocal, not instrumental. Her composition combined with Adrian’s lyrics indicates progress in her career. Formerly, she admits to relying on surrounding musicians to transform words into music, recounting a past interaction with Martin [Carthy], who made her realize that her vocal organ was her actual instrument.
Crowley also shares his self-realization as a flexible artist, something that might go unnoticed when working individually. The experience wasn’t solely based on his perspective but shared with Waterson. It demonstrated his capacity for collaboration without sacrifice, an invaluable learning experience. He promotes the importance of discovering more about oneself through real-life trials, emphasizing the unending opportunity for growth.
Cuckoo Storm is set to be launched by One Little Independent Records on the 8th of March.