Kathryn Tickell Interview

This edition is from our archives, so it is presented as scanned pages rather than text.

FOCUS ON Kathryn Tickell

Kathryn Tickell talks to Alistair Anderson

First Steps
Alistair Anderson: When did you first hear the Northumbrian pipes?
Kathryn Tickell: I can’t remember the very first time — I’ve heard them all my life as people in my family play.
A.A. Can you remember first deciding to play them yourself?
K.T. I never actually decided to play the Northumbrian pipes: I always wanted to play the fiddle. I started learning the fiddle and the pipes at the same time, just by accident really. There were pipes available that I could play — well, that it was possible to get out the box and have a try. A lot of kids used to have a go on the pipes just for a laugh really, we used to make really screechy noises. I never used to do very well with them and everybody used to say ‘stick to the piano, you’ll never be able to play them.’ So I decided that I was going to carry on and learn to play them. It was funny because I wanted to play the fiddle so much and I was never particularly bothered about the pipes. I would have thought that if I was going to be good at any particular instrument it would have been the fiddle, but as it turned out I found the fiddle very difficult, and I have never had all that much trouble with the pipes.
A.A. I remember you at our place that New Year when you were eleven, playing the fiddle while we were all dancing. You were playing strongly, making a real workmanlike job of it. I can’t remember if I’d heard you play the pipes at that stage — I suppose so, but you were playing the fiddle out before you were playing the pipes.
K.T. Actually, I’m saying that I had no real problem playing the pipes, but I recently heard a recording of myself playing at a school concert when I was eleven — and I couldn’t believe it! I can remember playing at the concert, finishing the tunes and thinking ‘I played those quite well’. But I heard this tape and it was awful.
A.A. Did you have any formal tuition when you were first playing?
K.T. No, I used to go along to an Arts centre in Wallsend on a Saturday morning. They had a folk workshop there which was run by Anthony Robb. These weren’t formal lessons — it was a lot of kids running around playing banjos, guitars, and whistles. I’d sit in the corner and play the pipes and if I was doing anything wrong Anthony would come over and tell me. Another thing about these sessions was that there was another piper going along there, and at that time there weren’t many pipers around. Chris Ormston was there; he was about three to four years older than me and he’d been playing for a little while and was very good. So, he was there playing a lot better than I could and it really made me practice. I always wanted to catch up with him.

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A.A. I think there was a time when there was a great mystique about this tremendously difficult instrument that hardly anyone could play, but once you started seeing a few people like Chris around just getting on and playing it, it began to break down the mystique. K.T. It really did push me along having him to work towards.

Competitions
A.A. Were you going into any competitions at that time?
K.T. Yes, I’d been playing for about two years when I started going in for competitions, and again Chris was always in the same competitions as me, or maybe the one ahead of me — he always used to win them. But I can remember I’d been in one competition, I think it was Rothbury, and the way competitions in Northumberland are run is that you try the Novice, when you’ve won the Novice you enter the Intermediate, and after you’ve won the Intermediate you go on to the Open. In this particular competition there weren’t very many pipers and somebody suggested that I enter for the Novice and the Intermediate just to bulk the numbers out. I didn’t win the Novice, but I won the Intermediate because I was the only one in it! That meant that, if I was going by the rules, the next competition I entered would have to be the Open! Nobody sticks by the rules, everybody goes in for the Novice maybe ten times, wins it ten times and then goes on to the Open. So I went to the next competition which I think was Bellingham and happily went into the Intermediate, but there was an awkward judge who told me that, as I had won the Intermediate I must enter for the Open. The pipers who were going into the Open at that time were of a very high standard and I was nowhere near them. But I think that’s what pushed me on — having to get up to that standard fairly quickly.
A.A. So do you feel that competitions are constructive?
K.T. Yes, definitely. They used to give me somewhere to play and somewhere to hear other pipers playing good tunes that they had practised. It gave me something to practise for, and motivation to practise. I can see the bad side of it, where you get bitchiness, or where one judge thinks one thing and another judge at a different competition thinks entirely the opposite. But if people don’t want to go in for a competition they don’t have to.
A.A. Do you think there’s a problem with competitions tending to standardise playing techniques too much, in other words developing a competition style?
K.T. Yes, sometimes there is. What I found was that you tended to get certain tunes cropping up all the time and … eventually you would get to know that such-and-such is judging at Rothbury so you would play a certain type of tune in a certain style because you knew that was the way he likes people to play. You might fall into the trap of playing to the judges rather than playing what you want to play.

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A.A. With the number of young pipers coming through and the acceleration in the improvement of standards, I think one has to say that competitions have done a lot to help.
K.T. If you get a group of pipers together in a session they’re going to play to the standards of the least able among them and the tunes that he or she can play. However, in competitions they play tunes that are pushing them to the limit and you hear what they’re really capable of.

Instruments

A.A. How many instruments do you take with you on the road?
K.T. I take a set of pipes in F, and recently I’ve started taking a spare G chanter with me in case anything happens to the F chanter (like I sit on it or something!), and if there’s a piper there who only plays in G then I can use the G chanter.
A.A. Do you enjoy playing the pipes with other instruments?
K.T. Not in a session I would prefer to play the fiddle.
A.A. . . . but in other situations, in bands . .
K.T. Yes, on my records I have used guitars, piano, mando-cello, all sorts of things.
A.A. . . . usually with the F chanter, or the G chanter?
K.T. It’s always been the F.
A.A. . . . to get that particular sound that the F chanter has?
K.T. I much prefer to play in F, I prefer the sound of the chanter.
A.A. There’s a difference in timbre, it’s more than just a difference in pitch. The F chanter you play is the standard working model? How many keys and what range does it have?
K.T. The set that I play at the moment I’ve been playing for a year and a half and it doesn’t actually belong to me! My own set which I played for seven to eight years was a nine-keyed chanter made by Archie Dagg from Rothbury and when I put it in for is ten thousand mile service about a year and a half ago I got this set from Mike Nelson in Cambridge. It’s a thirteen-keyed chanter and once I started playing the extra notes I found I was writing tunes with the extra notes — with the F naturals in . . . So what’s happened is that, although I’ve got my own set back, I’m just carrying on playing the Mike Nelson set.
A.A. . . . very evenly balanced right across, Mike makes some tremendous chanters. The G chanter I play is Mike Nelson’s.
K.T. It seems a little strange that you, Joe Hutton, and myself are all getting Northumbrian pipes from a maker in Cambridge! My G chanter (which doesn’t belong to me either) was made by Dave Shaw who makes some really nice G chanters.
A.A. Have you got any other chanters?
K.T. I’ve got a C set, I think it was the first set ever to be sold. It was made by Colin Ross. Actually they are my Dad’s. He doesn’t play, but he bought them

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because he sings and he likes to be accompanied by the pipes. He’s got a deep voice so he bought the C set in the hope that I’d be able to accompany his songs. The only trouble is that whenever we try to rehearse we have arguments — they don’t get played often. Oh, and I’ve got the Lord Mayor’s set as well. As the Lord Mayor of Newcastle’s official piper, I have a set that were presented to the Lord Mayor. I keep them to play on official occasions. That set was made by Dave Burleigh. It’s a real show-piece of a set made in ivory and silver with seventeen keys and five drones. In fact it’s a lovely set with a beautiful tone. A.A. The ivory sets have a particular tone, it’s not always to everybody’s taste but it’s especially recognisable. K.T. I didn’t think I’d like playing them, but on my last album, Borderlands, I played them on ‘Flowers of the Forest’. I used the Lord Mayor’s pipes on this piece because it had the extra notes. A.A. Do you have much difficulty if you play one set of pipes one day and another the next? Even on two F sets the holes are never quite the same distance apart . . . K.T. I tend to stick to the same set, although sometimes I use the G chanter and it takes the first few minutes of playing to get used to. A.A. I know from my own experience that it can be hard to make a sudden change between pipes of different sizes, the key settings are just that bit different . . . Do you have much trouble with travelling abroad, when there’s a great temperature change? K.T. Not really. The Archie Dagg and Mike Nelson sets have both been very stable and I haven’t had much problem. If anything ever does start going wrong I’d never attempt to do anything to the reeds myself — I send them back to the maker. I play the pipes, but I’m no expert on reeds — I send them to the experts.

Repertoire

A.A. You have a wide range of tunes, where do you get your repertoire? K.T. Some of it is the basic piper’s repertoire that I learnt in the first two or three years of playing, from playing with other pipers, going to Northumbrian Pipers’ Society meetings, and from the Society’s tune-book. I pick tunes up all over the place . . . I’m playing some fiddle tunes from my friend Dick Mosscrop who used to play fiddle with Joe Hutton’s dad! He’s taught me some tunes that no one else plays. In the last couple of years I have started writing my own tunes . . . A.A. Do you write them on the pipes? K.T. Yes, usually. I write some on the piano, but mostly I find that when I am in the mood to write a tune I get the pipes out and start messing around. Eventually I hit on a few notes that sound good together and I build the rest of the tune around that.

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A.A. Yes, Will Taylor was saying the same thing this weekend — you just get a little theme or corner and build around that.
K.T. You don’t start at the beginning of a tune and go through to the end. You might start at the second half and work backwards, for example.
A.A. Do you have any trouble when you’re using a lot of chromatics against the drones?
K.T. No.
A.A. I have never noticed any problem listening to you play, because the tune never drifts too far from the key although you use a lot of accidentals. There are other tunes that seem to get away from the key, perhaps because they’ve been written for other instruments.
K.T. Sometimes I play with the drones off to practise fingering and check that it’s clean, but when I’m writing tunes I have the drones on all the time.
A.A. Do you tend to choose, say, fiddle tunes by hearing someone play and thinking that that tune would sound good on the pipes?
K.T. I very seldom get a fiddle tune and put it on the pipes, it’s either one thing or the other. Some accordion tunes, especially Scottish accordion tunes, with a lot of arpeggios, sound nice on the pipes. Someone once handed me a sheet of music, ‘Jean’s Reel’, and said I bet you can’t play that on the fiddle — and I couldn’t. So I played it on the pipes instead! That one is an accordion tune.
A.A. There are a lot of tunes out there and only some will work well on the pipes but there’s no quick way to tell.
K.T. I’m never worried about changing tunes — they’re going to change anyway after you’ve played them for a while. So I change and even re-write bits sometime.

Variations

A.A. There used to be, and still is, a tradition of pipers writing variations on tunes do you do much of that?
K.T. Not so much now, but in the competitions one of the rules used to be to play three contrasting tunes, or more often you’d have to play a slow air and any two of jig, reel and hornpipe, one of which must be an air with variations. This is something that you never come across in any other competitions. It is unique to the Northumbrian Piping competitions because of the tradition of playing variations. I always used to have problems finding airs with variations that not everybody plays, there are quite a number of them but they all tend to be pretty well worn. So I used to write variations a lot more in order to play them in the competitions. Now I tend to just write a straight tune because the variations tend to get a bit over-long and ‘notey’.
A.A. Yes, they can get rather formula.
K.T. What I like to do sometimes is to get a well-known tune, like the ‘Mason’ Apron’ or ‘De’il among the Taylors’ and add a few variations to it, not too many, and just for fun — I like doing that.

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A.A. Many of the airs with variations that are traditionally played are for the keyless chanter, or the one just immediately after that, with a very limited range. It would be interesting to see some people making variations that use the full range of the chanter.

K.T. The only tune that I have come across like that was the ‘Londonderry Hornpipe’ for which Richard Butler wrote some variations. They were absolutely amazing.

A.A. Yes, Mike has a tape of you playing that. Can you still play it?
K.T. No. It was funny because Richard wrote these variations and I think he gave up on them, he didn’t have time to get them up for performance, they take an awful lot of work. I learnt them for a competition and I got about ninety per cent of the way with them, then I let them go and I’ve never actually played them again.

A.A. Have you still got the music?
K.T. No, but Mike’s got the tape.
A.A. We could spend some time jotting them all down! Seriously though, I would like to see the music because it was certainly very impressive.
K.T. Yes, it really used the full range of the chanter, every key was used in it.
A.A. So there are interesting avenues yet to be explored.

Future Plans
A.A. Talking of interesting avenues to be explored, what sort of plans do you have for the future?
K.T. It’s hard to say — there are many things that it’s possible to do. I’ve just got to wait and see which one comes along first. My motto is wait and see and everything will work out eventually. I’d like to get a band together, but I haven’t found the right people yet. It’s not just musically, it’s personality as well. It takes an awful lot to put a good band together. In the meantime I’m ninety-five per cent solo, although when I do get a chance to play with other musicians I really do enjoy it. In fact, I’ve been playing with a — I don’t quite know how to describe them — a Cajun R and B band (?) from Newcastle called Dust on the Needle. They’re great fun and have a big line-up: full drum-kit, congas, bass guitar, lead guitar, accordion, and occasionally sax and trumpet as well. I’ve been having a great time working with them.

A.A. There are always things you can do with a band that you can’t do solo. Do you find there are things you can do solo that you can’t do with a band?
K.T. Yes, there are quite a few tunes that, due to their very simplicity, work best with a single person playing alone on stage. This is an effect that you can’t get with a band. There are many bands going around at the moment, but there are very few solo instrumentalists.

A.A. Watching you on stage — when everything’s going well — there’s a very tight focus, it’s very intense and very different from the sound and effect created by a band.

K.T. It’s not just the playing, it’s the whole performance. I do an awful lot of talking to the audience — probably too much! I find it a lot easier talking to the audience when I’m standing on the stage alone. If there’s another person on stage with you, unless you’ve worked with that person for a long time, you’re always conscious of them sitting there, looking at their watch, or cleaning their nails.

A.A. So you think that if you do get a band together you’ll still want to play solo as well?
K.T. I’ll always do solo work, yes.

Records

A.A. Can you talk a little about the records that you’ve made?
K.T. I’ve made three records so far: From Sewingshields to Glendale (Mawson and Wareham 1033), On Kielder Side (Savdisc Records: SDL 343), and the new one, Borderlands (Black Crow Records: CRO C210). Borderlands has got a variety of instruments and instrumentalists on it, including yourself on concertina, Rod Clements (the bass player from Lindisfarne) on fretless bass, and Martyn Bennett from Edinburgh playing Scottish Small Pipes in duet with my Northumbrian pipes . . . From Sewingshields to Glendale features Joe Hutton (Northumbrian Pipes), Willy Taylor (fiddle), Will Atkinson (mouth-organ), as well as yourself on Northumbrian pipes . . .
A.A. These records cover two extremes of you current musical spectrum. Sewingshields is straightforward traditional music, well-played and some very nice stuff, but even so it has some modern arrangements and evolution or development of the tradition. With Borderlands some of the tracks are very straightforward and others, with different instruments have some very exciting new ideas being developed.
K.T. I was very pleased to play on the Sewingshields to Glendale record, to play with Willy, Will and Joe, because that’s the sort of music I’ve heard all my life, the sort of music my grand-parents and family enjoy. They like traditional music, they don’t really like folk music very much. When I brought this album home they liked it very much — the Border dance bands, real traditional stuff. That’s definitely my base — that’s what I’ve been brought up with.
A.A. That’s where you’re drawing the energies from to play in many different fields . . .

(The interview was transcribed by Biddy Wells and edited by Peter Stacey.)

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