After hearing that The Ciderhouse Rebellion were hitting the road for a mini UK tour, I wanted to find out a bit more about them. I’d heard that their live shows are electrifying as they create music ‘within the moment together’, so each performance is uniquely magical in its improvisatory focus, this led me to think that surely the tracks that they play at shows would sound completely different every time? Read on to find out the answer to this question as well as some fascinating facts about them both, their musical upbringings, the forthcoming project ‘Ironstone Tales’ and their likes and dislikes of touring….
The Ciderhouse Rebellion is a great name, how did it come to be?
The name is partly a symptom of our rebellion against the current fashion for wildly hoppy real ale. We both object to too many hops - only acceptable from rabbits - and have turned our attention to cider. Equally, a Ciderhouse seems the ideal place from which to orchestrate a rebellion, and who knows what else we might find we need to rebel against?
Your strapline on your website reads ‘PROFOUND AND ELOQUENT, EPIC AND HAUNTING, WILD, DRAMATIC AND OCCASIONALLY UNHINGED’ – Is this a fair representation of you?
Adam: Well, Murray says some profoundly silly things, so at least some of it is right.
Murray: In many ways I think this is a fair representation except for one word, ‘occasionally’
Please tell me a bit more about your musical upbringings, when and where you formed etc.
Adam: My grandfather was a fiddler - he even studied with the man who premiered Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, which is pretty amazing - I learnt to play from him, had great fun through formative years with the Leicestershire School of Music and went on to the Guildhall School of Music in London, ending up with a Diploma in Advanced Solo Studies. Then I really started to learn how to play through years of playing concertos and directing a small chamber orchestra. I always played folk music - that’s my ‘real’ playing in a way - but only fairly recently decided to make time to bring that side to stage (which has been extremely enjoyable).
Murray and I met when I depped for a violinist in a three-handed Edith Piaf show. The set included some fiddle and accordion duos, which we played through only once before being on stage - where we discovered that we had a unique instinctive rapport that meant we could bend and stretch the music in a way that usually takes planning (or years). We came of stage, looked at each other in bewilderment and agreed that we had to do something together. it took a while to find out what - but here we are.
Murray: I started my musical journey in quite a standard way, recorder at school followed by piano lessons. However, at the age of 8 my parents suggested I consider a second instrument and so gave me a list of all the possible choices for me to contemplate. From this exhaustive list I narrowed my choice to one of two, the bagpipes or the accordion. I think from that moment on my musical path was always going to be interesting!
Living in Manchester the nearest renowned teacher we could find for the accordion was Owen Murray at The Royal Academy of Music in London so for most of my teen years I travelled every fortnight to London for lessons, and finally at 18 I continued my studies fill time at the Academy.
After graduating the accordion has taken me into virtually every field of music, from contemporary classical performances, through jazz and commercial work to folk and traditional music.
Adam and I met when he played in the Edith Piaf trio I toured with, a one-off gig with him that proved to be life changing. We found that we played together with an instinctive interaction that is extremely rare and so we decided there and then that we should explore further.
The rest as they say is history, 2 books and 6 albums later, the music is still flowing and it never ceases to surprise me what we create together.
Do you both come from musical families?
Adam: Grandpa was musical - and a great player - and there was a lot of music in the generation before him. My sister played well, but didn’t pursue music. My parents were not musical, but very encouraging, which counts for a lot.
Murray: I would describe my parents as musical appreciators, both keen concert goers but who were never given the chance to play themselves. My sister is a professional flautist so the musical genes were obviously there.
Which acts or artists have influenced you over the years?
Adam: All sorts of little things influence you along the way, people you play with (both good and bad), people you admire, playing you really dislike … the horrible weasely tone of one particular cellist from the past springs to mind. I now refuse to play with weasels.
Definitely Itzhak Perlman - he seems the most brilliantly natural violinist that I have ever seen and his recorded sound is superb; Roby Lakatos - phenomenal gypsy fiddler; Michael Cleveland - brilliant bluegrass fiddler; Chris Thile; Julie Fowlis; Bellowhead; Sheelanagig. The mad virtuosity of the world’s number one recorder player (really, there is such a thing), Piers Adams, has been quite a thing to share the stage with in our wild baroque group, Red Priest. That’s had an effect. I did a project with bodhran player Cormac Byrne (Stone Soup) and that distillation of just rhythm and fiddle also changed things in my ideas and in my playing.
And then, of course, Murray and I have embarked on this cider-soaked journey into the unknown. For years, the most directly creative thing for me was to improvise - now I find that without him, there is something lacking, so that’s interesting.
Murray: The accordion is a curious instrument, happily existing in so many worlds. As a classical player I was definitely influenced by my teacher Owen Murray and by other such luminaries as Mogens Ellegaard, Matti Rantenen etc. As I came back to my folk roots I have certainly learned a lot by listening to people such as Karen Tweed, Andy Cutting etc/
However I think I have learned the most by listening to instrumentalists other than accordionists, I think it is very important to listen to other instruments to learn music, not just an instrument. I remember fondly the BBC masterclass series with the cellist Paul Tortelier, his insights into the music rather than just the technique opened my eyes to the more important areas of performance.
Tell me something fascinating about either of you….
Adam: I was Robert Downey Jnr’s body double for a scene in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. I also taught him to mime (on my violin) to a track that I wrote. Unfortunately, they changed the plot of the movie and that scene (the grand denouement) was changed for something utterly different!
Murray: As far as I am aware I am the only person to give a performance on the BBC in a duo with an ice cream van.
Is there an album out there that is ‘perfect’ in every way?
Adam: I can’t answer! I don’t think I believe in ‘perfect’ in principle, so that makes it tricky. I can’t think of anything that I have heard recently where I love every track - but then again, I love some things that are far from perfect, for all sorts of reasons, so I am not sure that I care. One album that I can always listen to is Nickel Creek’s Nickel Creek. There’s nothing that I don’t like about it.
Murray: The simple answer is no, perfection is the death of creativity and so not something to aspire to
Social media can be a good and a bad thing at the same time, has it helped you in getting your music out there?
That’s certainly true - even the good things are usually secretly bad! Because we became this Ciderhouse version of ourselves only a very short time before the pandemic, by far the highest percentage of what we have done together has been on or via social media. Without those platforms we’d have struggled to exist. So, the answer for us is a big ‘yes, it has helped’, as clearly shown by our recent contribution of an entire music soundtrack to a Radio 4 audio drama - the producer came across Adam, and therefore us, through social media.
You create music ‘within the moment together’, so each performance is uniquely magical in its improvisatory focus, do the tracks tend to differ greatly from show to show?
Always - there will be commonalities, and some of our starting point tunes tend to stay a little bit more along a certain track than others, but one week’s version of a track can be entirely different to another’s. There was one occasion where a normally gentle track ended in real wildness.
What about when you get requests for songs, do you play these in an improvised way too?
Adam: That’s not happened yet - but the answer will be ‘yes’, assuming we know them at all … my listening is not only eclectic, but sporadic - so things that ‘everyone’ knows, I might not!
Murray: I am sure we would, in fact early on in the first lockdown we offered to do an improvisation of a tune chosen by an auction winner and in fact it worked so well that it became our single ‘The Skinny Orphan’, all started from an nice tune we were sent.
I read that you were awarded an Arts Council grant for your new project ‘Ironstone Tales’ which explores the echoes of a vanished industrial world and tells the story of the Rosedale and the Ironstone mines, how did the project come about?
Adam: I was walking with my wife and father on my father’s favourite walk, from his place in Rosedale to the Lion Inn (best pint of Old Peculiar to be had anywhere) around the disused railway that goes round the valley. We met an archaeologist poking around and I got talking to him - he offered that if we came back a couple of days later, he’d walk us round the site of the navvy camp that had been there as the railway was built. I went back with a very large bunch of family and he gave a tour. It was fascinating, and he had a great delivery. By the time he had finished, I was struck with the idea that we could make a series of programmes, filming him talking about the history, Ciderhouse improvising music at the various ruined buildings, my daughter, Jessie (an outstanding poet) writing poems based on the history and then the three of us performing them together, also out there in the wilds. Everyone said yes ….
Murray: It’s all Adam’s fault!
When will ‘Ironstone Tales’ be ready for all to see and hear?
It should all be ready by the end of the year, so it is scheduled to appear in April. There will be the films, two discs and a book of poetry.
You’re currently on a small tour of the UK, what is it about touring that you enjoy?
Adam: I love the gigs, if everything feels right on stage. I enjoy the bars and restaurants after a gig, if it is that kind of tour. UK touring is slightly more likely to mean a quick pint and then driving for hours - and then it is the gigs and the friendship that make it worthwhile.
Much of my touring has been global, though. I love being in another city at the far side of the globe exploring. Most of all, though, I love the natural world and I have been very lucky with where I have toured and that I have been able to bend time to enjoy it: glaciers in Alaska; geysers and snow covered bison in Yellowstone Park; the deserts of Saudi Arabia; dawn in a windy and, for once unpolluted, Beijing; penguins and albatrosses in New Zealand … an endless list of things that I feel incredibly lucky to have seen.
Murray: The audience is the vital 3rd member of our duo so after so long off the road I am really looking forward to the interaction and inspiration that it brings to our playing. A different stage every night brings challenges but that is half the fun! Being on the road also gives us time to enjoy each other’s company and conversation, there is nothing quite like a late night conversation after a gig!
And what DON’T you like about touring?
Adam: It’s not great when you are still on the road at 4am and all you can find on the radio is an in-depth programme about Hong Kong’s economy on BBC World Service.
I really dislike airports and the time you have to spend as a sheep (particularly if it is in Chicago airport, being shepherded at machine gun point). Even worse is the fact that my sinuses do vile things on flights to the US (not usually to anywhere else) and I arrive with a splitting headache … which lasts for the first week!
Also, it is hard to find good cider on tour, even in the UK, unless you are passing Gloucester services frequently.
Murray: Travel, traffic, delays…. Bad food, bad cider….
You’re playing at The Great British Folk Festival in Skegness on November 27th, which of the other bands performing are you excited about seeing?
Adam: I’ve recently come across Harri Endersby and I’d love to hear her live. I’m interested to see Ben Savage and Hannah Sanders - she has a lovely voice and I like their stuff. I want to check out Gabriel Moreno and The Quivering Poets (not only because it is a great name...)
Murray: Unfortunately this year I have a second gig on that day so will have to zoom off straight after our gig.
Do you have any confirmed festivals planned for 2022 yet?
Between The Trees – there are others in the diary but all still TBC
There are millions of bands and acts out there, please tell us about 3 that we should be checking out.
Adam: Kirsty Merryn, Francis Mcllduff, Myrkur (Folkesange album)
Murray: The Haar, Alice Jones, Hoven Droven
And finally, would you prefer to fight a dinosaur sized chicken or 10 chicken sized dinosaurs?
Adam: I own a dinosaur sized chicken (I know this because I have a slab of Jurassic sandstone with dinosaur footprints on it that I found near Whitby, and his feet fit), but we don’t fight because he has come to learn that that is unwise. So I choose him.
Murray: As I believe the chicken is a descendant of a dinosaur, a dinosaur sized chicken would just be a dinosaur so I think the choice is 1 big dinosaur or 10 small ones…. I think I might cope against the smaller ones….. my accordion would most likely scare them.
So there you have it folks, pretty much EVERYTHING you’d ever want to know about The Ciderhouse Rebellion, as I mentioned earlier, they’re currently on tour throughout the UK, check the dates and venues HERE and if they are playing in your area, why not get some tickets and head down with your friends for what is guaranteed to be an incredible evening of music.
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