SY MeetsJohnny Flynn

Beautiful people making beautiful music as effortlessly as cutting a slice of cheese; the folk lot are an achingly pleasant bunch aren’t they, all simple gorgeousness.

Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling are right in front of the barge boat too, casually meandering on the folk river, probably on cycling swans.

Sometimes they join together on a gondolier and make music like the stunning single, The Water, on Flynn’s latest album, Been Listening.

Their impressive talent and wondrous audible merge of nature, voice and instrument is stunning.

Johnny Flynn is soon to begin a UK tour with his band, The Sussex Wit (playing the Trinity Centre in Bristol on Thursday 9th December), something he is very enthusiastic about after a solo tour of America: “I’m really psyched to be playing with the band again.

We are really tight at the moment. I have been in America solo so it will be great to play with them again.” It is New York where I call him on the blower to talk music past, present and future and, after an initial hazy kerfuffle and ultimate disregard of Skype (grrr!), he is lovely.

Swoon…! Flynn has been sleeping in a hammock, driving across the desert in November (“weird to be warm near to Christmas,” he ponders) and he has just got to New York: “It’s a great place but I miss friends and family in England.

New York is exciting though, it’s definitely a good place to be...” So over the Atlantic pond, here, and indeed, around the world it’s impossible to dispute the power of folk at present.

What’s it like being part of this mighty movement? “Folk is what people have been doing in regions all over the world for a great many years.

Acoustic music has become very popular recently in the cities though. The music is a reflective parallel of how the world is. It’s about friendship, community and supporting each other. People help each other through music. The growth in its popularity is reflective of the world, as communications becomes easier and the world becomes more complicated.

It’s a way to hang on to things.” Apparently Flynn likes to use storytelling as a way of making sense of the world.

His acting background gives conviction to the delivery of his songs but he leaves the meaning of the analogies and metaphors up to subjective interpretation.

This merges well with the fantasy of his Barnacled Warship video. This song is my personal favourite on latest album Been Listening, it’s honest and true with instruments mirroring words.

The aforementioned video was directed by Christian DeVita, the story board artist for The Fantastic Mr Fox; this can only be a great thing.

And it is, see:

“Christian DeVita previously worked on the video for my single, The Box.

Him and his partner took me around the studios of Fantastic Mr Fox. We discussed animation. I had a strong visual idea in my head and I wanted it to be complimentary to the song. Another parallel version of it. The songs are metaphorical and I am aware that people may have visions of the songs in their head themselves but having images perhaps gives the songs a certain atmosphere, having the visual element rather than the literal.

” To create an album, there must have been a million influences to reign down. From literary (he is currently reading Jack Kerouac, Big Sur, “he has a lot of soul in his writing”) to the land, sea and heart.

He says there were no deliberate references to anything, but how did he mould his thoughts into the shape of an album? “I went away to Spain on my own for a while, with a one-man tent.

It was important for me to do this, to connect with myself and to spend some time in an unknown place.

I couldn’t speak Spanish (I actually got kicked out of my Spanish class at school) so I had a translator that I used to speak into; however, after listening to one translation, I had thought I was talking to someone about under the water, when in fact I was saying something about ‘underwear’!” Finally will he meet up with New York folk legend Jeffrey Lewis whilst he’s in town? “We have the same drummer so we normally have a discussion about drummers.

I will probably go to the Sidewalk Café where everyone hangs out though, yes.” I’d love to chat more, he’s so thoroughly nice but will have to be content with catching him live at the Trinity Centre in December.

www.johnny-flynn.com Helen Martin Illustration by Abby Wright