Underground Roots” is the first release under The Beatroot Road project. How does this track set the tone for the musical journey you’re embarking on with this collective?
We thought we’d ease into the thing gently with a short, hopefully catchy song – Underground Roots is quite straightforward compared to some, but still represents the type of genre-free musical world that lives inside my head – the addition of a surf guitar line is a hint of more style bending ahead. The song is about the power of roots – strong roots are the driving force when you are trying to grow a new tree or song or a project. Basically, it’s important to know the way home if you are going somewhere new.
You’ve both had established careers before The Beatroot Road. What inspired you to launch this new project and explore this collective, experimental format?
There is virtually no money in original or creative music since streaming algorithms driven by similarity took over music promotion, so if you free yourself from believing in the cartoon carrot of a professional career as an artist (as opposed to an entertainer), it’s really liberating – you can split the two up. We can make music which is artistically and creatively free, in a way we want to make it in a world where no one is forced to listen to it. We’ve had enough musical success in the past to see from underneath how the big stars live and work, and frankly you can count us out. We’d rather keep control of our own musical identity, integrity and lives, and just be content to try to break even. We make money in all the usual ways musicians make money, and have enough time to make something new as well, and that has taken a huge responsibility off our shoulders. Hopefully, some other people that are as fed up listening to the same tired old riffs as we are might get something refreshing out of it as well.
This music is made out of love for rhythm and sound without a reason to expect fortune or fame, which makes it real and honest at least.
The fusion of African, Latin, and Irish elements in “Underground Root”‘ is compelling. How did your diverse experiences as musicians influence this eclectic blend?
We have both made a living playing Irish and Scottish music in the past, and I’ve been learning African based music since I was a teenager – my first music teachers were West African and Afro-Caribbean musicians, and those music forms are still my main love and influence. I recently started learning South American Conga styles which I’ve wanted to do for decades. Very different drum techniques and philosophies though, making it a steep learning curve, so I’m just trying to get a basic tumbao rhythm in the pocket at the moment. I’ve enjoyed battering timbale for years though.
Hazel has been playing with processed violin and music technology since we came to Canada, and we liked the idea of having rhythm fiddle in place of a guitar. As well as suffering from genre fatigue, we both get dismayed by the lack of originality in instrumental choice or their fixed roles in the genres.
The song itself was written by the late, great, but largely unsung Demmy James – who I knew since we were toddlers, but I can’t remember who wrote the bass line, which is the killer part of the music for me. It came from either Demmy, Stuart Atkins, Chris Hopkins or a combination I think.
Mark, you’ve described The Beatroot Road as a journey. How does the track “Underground Roots” reflect where you are right now on that path?
That’s hard to answer as it is pretty spread out: It was written in the 1980s, and most of the music for this version was recorded around 2014, with the vocals being completed last year. It was chosen to represent the beginning or roots of this journey as I mentioned before, so in terms of the path we are on, I guess we are standing looking forward, with this track having a history showing where we have come from. This whole journey is deliberately not rooted in a time or place, which is reflected in this track.
With Lucinda Karrey and Fuki Anditi lending their talents to “Underground Roots,” how do you approach selecting collaborators for each release?
One of the advantages of the internet is that the network of independent musicians and artists has gone global. It’s easy to find and share music and ideas with artists from anywhere in the world, and since they can work in their own time from their own homes, this community has become large and is growing quickly. Particularly with non standard work, it used to be hard to find a good fit, but it’s quite a painless process these days. I get a kick out of working in my studio in the Rockies thinking of Lucinda singing in her studio in Kenya, and Anditi in hers in Nigeria. We also have contributors to other tracks from Austria, Canada, China, Jamaica, Korea, Moldova, Punjabi, UK, USA, and Venezuela, ….so far. Basically, I email them backing tracks, they record a separate track singing or playing along to it and send the files back to me where I line them all up for mixing. Now that the technology to do this is convenient and affordable, it’s become a growing cottage industry for independent artists.
The music video combines 3D animation with live footage. What was the creative process behind bringing together such diverse visual elements?
I’ve always liked animation and live action in music videos, plus at a practical level the organization and finance needed for a live shoot – with interesting and relevant backgrounds, legal permissions, the right light and weather etc. – is massive in comparison. Like our musical collaborators, we found both animators on the internet – coincidentally both from Türkiye. Lucinda has access to a small video studio where they shot her live action against a white wall which we masked out for the animations. It’s the same basic process as the music, all three sent us the raw files which we edited into the video here in BC.
What’s your favorite venue to perform at?
I’d have to say for me personally its Winnipeg Folk Festival. It may sound an odd choice in a world of iconic venues, but as well as being a fabulous world music festival, they rented an entire hotel in town for all the musicians and had the top floor as an all night open jam session for the performers after each day of the festival – with beer and pizza. Busses took the artists to and from the festival which was held at a nearby park, and the jam just continued on the bus. One bus trip had a Zulu chant led by a guy with a spear with backing from a bluegrass band, tam tams, guitar and some steel pans. This global language of music is what excites me most and I loved every minute of that. It’s part of the programme too, as they ran ‘workshop’ stages at the festival where this mix and match musician’s jam is actually contracted into the schedules. The amazing Canadian festival volunteers and staff need a mention as well – everyone gets pampered, and as far as I know it is still run the same. The festival is only marred by mosquitos the size of seagulls.
Do you have a specific process or ritual when creating new music?
Specifically not. Many people do start off with a building process that gets them going, but I found that I get badly stuck if I think about it too much, so learned to work from the first idea that excites me. It’s a case of finding a piece of string and pulling it to see where it leads. It often leads nowhere, but I love the process so it doesn’t matter too much if the idea faceplants; just start again. Personally I like listening to fairly short pop song formats with repeated sections, so that’s what I use as a basic rule, but mostly because it’s what I know. I add far too many textures, remove the ones that annoy me, and then try to fine tune the rest. I don’t care what happens in a piece, but it has to ‘Do The Thing’. Whatever that is – I have no real idea until it happens. It’s a feeling where I stay emotionally involved in all the changes in the music to the end of the piece. Music psychologists describe it in unflattering terms as a tension process of promising but then withholding musical resolutions for as much time as you can. I don’t read or write music so just hunt for notes, sounds, or combinations I like, which I call a major advantage to creativity, though others disagree.
Short version is I love playing with noise, so just start and then kick back and enjoy the ride.
If you could collaborate with any artist, alive or dead, who would it be?
Hard to answer – there are so many I am totally in awe of. Chuck Berry would have been my teenage choice, I should say Lee Perry as my number one life long guru, but he could be, erm, challenging to work with. As a drummer, Mono Neon is my bass player of the moment. Boris Blank produces my favourite sounds but works mostly with samples, but I am going to say Ren, because I think that the video ‘Hi Ren’ is the best work of art I’ve experienced this century at least. He makes me think that music as an original emotional art form is alive and certainly kicking, though I wouldn’t want the life that produced his art.
What is the biggest challenge you find in today’s music industry?
That there really isn’t a music industry any more. Just tech giants that resent paying up to 0.004 of a cent per stream for the work they call ‘content’. That means that when 1000 people enjoy your music you get up to $4 split between everyone involved, including expenses. As I said, all artists must impress algorithms that rely on familiarity for judgement to get their music played, which is the exact opposite of creativity, so I don’t think humans are involved in the processes nearly enough these days. It’s hard for me to understand how all that can be called an industry. I live in hope there will soon be a live music back lash from an anti-digital youth music movement who shun auto tune and time correction, and have the same emotional sincerity that the original punks had.
For reasons I don’t understand, Napster gave away everyone’s musical work for free on the internet to anyone who wanted it in the 1990s, and no one did anything about it for years. I can’t imagine another ‘industry’ where that could have happened. It’s produced a culture where people resent paying anything at all for music now; In 1975 it cost roughly half an hours minimum wage to buy one vinyl single with two tracks on it. Now, it’s roughly the same for a month of unlimited listening to more or less all the music that has ever been produced in the world anywhere, and it is normal for people to resent paying even that. I’m no economist, but that’s some size of a whoopsie from something calling itself an industry to allow that to happen.
Because we can make art now so economically, and because there are so few people now willing to pay for it, we personally took the decision to simply ignore the industry altogether and just make music instead with The Beatroot Road.
So with alarmingly little irony, I think – at least from an artist’s perspective – that forming a credible music industry is the biggest challenge facing the music industry today.
