As band-building chat-up lines go, “We’ll be your Albion Dance Band” is certainly niche. Still, it worked when US indie-rockers the Decemberists approached Olivia Chaney to form Offa Rex. They were long-term lovers of folk-rock; Chaney was a well-known collaborator but relative newcomer (her 2015 debut album, The Longest River, nevertheless gained her support slots with Robert Plant and Shirley Collins).
She has a magical voice, full of heft, soul and sunlight, reminiscent of Sandy Denny and Maddy Prior, while feeling refreshingly heartfelt and true. Add Colin Meloy’s brilliant band, and this collection of traditional songs sounds stirringly new. Take the well-known Willie O’Winsbury, or The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face: guitars, harmonium drones and Chaney’s control lift them to different places. Surprises lurk too. Lal Waterson’s To Make You Stay becomes an iridescent, piano-drizzled duet, while Sheepcrook (the Steeleye Span staple) gains brilliantly filthy, Black Sabbath rock edges. Everything works, though, loudly and proudly. From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jul/13/offa-rex-queen-of-hearts-review-folk-rock-thats-full-of-heart-soul-and-sunlight
JEFFREY BROWN:
At this summer's Newport Folk Festival, an early English ballad called "The Queen of Hearts." It dates back in various forms to at least the 1700s. In the 1960s, it was taken by the likes of Joan Baez and the influential English folk singer, Martin Carthy. Now, looking back once again comes a group called Offa Rex, a transatlantic collaboration of the English singer Olivia Chaney and the American indie rock band The Decemberists led by Colin Meloy.
COLIN MELOY, Musician:
The first thing is my love of old folk songs, and particularly narrative songs, the melodies, the focus on the voice and the story, that really simple approach, sort of like really rudimentary rock ideas being brought into these centuries-old songs.
JEFFREY BROWN:
The Decemberists formed in Portland, Oregon, in 2000, and have put out seven albums to date. Olivia Chaney is a classically trained singer who plays several instruments. She first received wide notice on this side of the Atlantic with her 2015 debut album, "The Longest River."
OLIVIA CHANEY, Musician:
We kind of figured it out as we went along, and sometimes we didn't agree on things. And we would say, well, I want to do this song or I want to do it this way. And we — I think that was the beauty of the project, is we came from different cultures and different relationships to the history of the music.
JEFFREY BROWN:
On this project, the two are consciously picking up on the 1970s electric folk revival of traditional music by bands like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, from whom Meloy says he learned the "Blackleg Miner."
COLIN MELOY:
And I selfishly wanted, I was like, if only I could have a time machine.
JEFFREY BROWN:
Nostalgia for a revival of a revival of a revival. The music goes back centuries. But you're talking about something that goes back 50 years.
COLIN MELOY:
A nostalgia for a time, you know, mostly I wasn't even alive during, but that itself was recreating or reviving old music by injecting something new. It is a sort of love letter to that era.
JEFFREY BROWN:
Chaney says she first listened to '60s and '70s folk revival music as a young girl with her dad. She never saw herself as part of a pure folk scene, but was eager to arrange anew several of these traditional songs, including "Willie O Winsbury."
OLIVIA CHANEY:
When I sit down and try to arrange a song as I did for this project, I'm never trying to sound like any of those singers. I have learned from them, absolutely, but when I arrange something, I am really trying to get to the essence of that song. But also, I think I am trying to make them a bit more contemporary. You know, the paradox of you tying to protect something or preserve it, and then it dies because you're trying to protect it, I wouldn't want to be guilty of that. I hope not.
From: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/offa-rex-revives-centuries-old-folk-songs-new-sound
