MY BIOGRAPHY

London Americana? Yes, it can be done!

Americana UK

 

I started playing my violin and singing in sessions round North London in the early 1990s. I picked up traditional tunes and began to hear lots of songs that I loved – traditional and more modern Folk, and often Americana. I was introduced to the music of Guy Clark, Steve Earle….. I was also going to the wonderful music section at Hackney Library and borrowing LPs. Anything that looked a bit folky or a bit country from the cover. Evenings in I would listen over and over and these songs have stayed with me in all their feelings and rough around the edges detail. The rawness of the instrument playing and the singing, and the poetry of the lyrics had me enthralled and deeply moved.

 

I wanted to sing these songs, so I realised I had to play the guitar. I had an old one at home, and learnt some chords from a book. I soon became one of the singers at the pub sessions.

 

I started writing songs around 2000. I had just had my second child and was working as a newly qualified teacher in London’s East End. I was so busy in those days, but I remember jotting down lyrics in any spare moment – often on the bus or the underground. I was very prolific in those years, I think because I had 30 years to write about, and I had started late, They don’t come quite so quickly now.

 

I was playing a lot with Shuggy Fisher, a great mandolin player, and he liked my songs, so we rehearsed, developed and performed them at various gigs, often tucked in with a more traditional set. My songs were urban, a bit hard-hitting (for folk!) and emotionally-understated as they were mostly story-based. We recorded 3 songs with Marcus Davidson at Sudbourne studios, and his enthusiasm encouraged me to make it a whole album. Shuggy left for Holland, so I used a lot of banjo on the recordings. I had bought one in a moment of madness after my Great Grandmother’s funeral, in a lovely little second hand instrument shop down in Devon. With my own fiddle and harmonica, I got the sound I was looking for.

 

The album was “Angel Way.” It took a while to finish, as the recording was done one song at a time, with me adding instruments. There was a lot of live recording as I remember – the early ones with Shuggy we just played a few times and took the best take. Then I had to start making separate tracks, as it was really just me and Marcus.  I met Garry Smith at Folk in the Cellar at The Constitution in Camden Town. I liked the sound of his tricone resonator, and he liked my songs, so we started doing some gigs together. He gave the songs a more country feel, and was(is!) also very encouraging. I decided to record the second album, and Garry features strongly on it. This one took even longer, years to make. Once a fortnight I travelled underground to Marcus’s studio in Brixton and would sometimes manage two tracks (tracks not songs) in our 2/3hour sessions. I just had a flashback of how heavy my Devon banjo is, carrying it with the guitar up Brixton Hill. Oooooohh…… Marcus moved to Norway towards the end, so there was a break where it remained unfinished. In the end I took an uncustomary wild decision and took myself and my daughter over to that lovely country and finished it off there! It was well worth the effort, as I love the second album, “Dusty Words and Motorways.”

 

“…what really caught me about her music were her lyrics. Dramatic and heartfelt, this introvert songstress painted vivid, expansive portraits of everyday life like a poetic Picasso. Ms Scarr invited the audience into her world where anguish and confusion could be overcome through song. “ Review of Partners In Rhyme @ Walthamstow Library | 04.08.12Written By Matthew “Eli” Bell

 

During this time, I had also been having a lot of fun playing in a kind of English Honky tonky country urban contemporary band with Johnny Black. The music was very upbeat and it was fun playing in a bigger band. We did mostly his songs and a few of mine too. Johnny is amazing at coming up with tunes, rhythms and ideas for songs, and I am good at writing lyrics, giving the song a lyrical structure and hopefully, I like to think, some poetry. We started co-writing. We wrote lots of duets. With our rather different musical backgrounds and personalities, I thought it might not work, but the tension coupled with the affection comes crashing together to produce some of the finest composition and arrangements that I have been involved in. The challenges of sharing creativity – compromise and flexibility, can be difficult, but I only have to listen to our album “North and South” to know it is all worth it. JB produced the CD in one summer in 2011. It is 13 tracks of beautiful, lively, heart-breaking/heart-warming songs that I could never have created alone and neither could he. Our second CD will be launched next month, and is called "Middle Aged Love."

 

I feel very lucky to have been able to enjoy a lifetime of making music. I have met and worked with loads of talented, mad souls, who will always give their time to this passion, because it is what keeps us alive.