Sian Evans is attracted to the simplicity of folk music. “Being an acoustic artist appeals to me, I can entertain people at any time.”
Though she loves traditional folk – “it's where I came from” – she also concedes that one must “move with the times. I've tried to get my message across using less and less words. It could be that I have less to say now that I'm getting older, and I'm not so pissed off and angry.”
Ahead of their appearance at the Woodford Folk Festival, Sian will partake in The Pineapple Lounge's Christmas Party alongside 2Dogs (from Resin Dogs) and Golden Sound (special guest house band). Sian is confident about the show. “I'm definitely not nervous. These guys are all friends from years and years. It's exciting, it's another gig at the end of the day. I've been hosting, tag teaming with Jackie Marshall for the last couple of months, and I've also [hosted] the Pineapple Lounge at Woodford.”
Sian likes to keep her instrumentation basic. “I have a chronic phobia of anything technological,” she says. “I can't record myself, GarageBand even is beyond me.”
Low-tech her style may be, Sian reflects that if there was a Y2K-style technological apocalypse, the human race would be “brought back to the traditional folk music”.
This, she muses, is perhaps why folk is so popular in the bush, “a natural environment will lend itself to acoustic instruments that don't require electricity". Indeed, the music video for her own charmingly plaintive song, 'Take Me Home', features the beautiful vistas of the Glasshouse Mountains.
Her latest album, 'How Time Has Treated Thee', features a cover of the traditional bluegrass tune 'Blackest Crow'. “I went to a folk night and I saw this young Canadian boy with the fiddle, I was really moved by that song, so I decided to do my own version of it.”
The timeless emotion of the piece resonated with her. “Of all the people that you meet in your lifetime that you have to say goodbye to that deeply impact your life, you have moments when you think about them, you hope that they're well. So that song represents all the sort of gypsy loves and friendships that you create in life's journey.”
Sian's long and storied folk career is strongly influenced by the genre's predecessors. “My love of folk music and in particular bluegrass and old-time music is very much prevalent." While she credits her fierce artistic exploration to “getting bored easily”, but acknowledges that "it's a very fragile thing. You can never plan the magic in art really."
Written by Justin Smareglia
Sian Evans performs The Pineapple Lounge's Christmas Party at The Triffid 19 December, and at The Zoo on 28 January 2016.
