The multi-award-winning talents and wide musical influences of Nancy Kerr, Martin Simpson, Findlay Napier, Tom A Wright and Alex Hunter combine in The Magpie Arc who tour to Shoreham’s Ropetackle Arts Centre on February 9.
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00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. It's really
00:06lovely today to speak to Nancy Kerr up in the north, the frozen north, but you're heading
00:10down south before long with the Magpie Arc and you're at the Rope Tackle Arts Centre
00:15in Shoreham on Sunday the 9th of February. Now this is a band that with, well, slightly
00:21unfortunate timing, came together just before the pandemic, but somehow it's all worked
00:25out, hasn't it? Tell me how it happened. Yeah, well, we were a bunch of musicians really,
00:32really interested in folk and folk rock and lots of other kinds of music too, and we knew
00:37we wanted to make something, so we all kind of got together online and on the phone and,
00:45you know, remotely and started creating things. Didn't make it to a stage until about 2022.
00:52I wish you'd been together for a few years. Exactly, yes, that's right. We'd been collaborating
01:00across the miles. Some of us are based in Sheffield, myself, Martin Simpson and Tom
01:07Wright, our drummer and producer, and the other two, Finlay Napier and Alex Hunter are
01:13up in Scotland. Finlay's on the Isle of Arran, so we were already a cross-border collaboration.
01:18We did a lot of that remotely, and then we're able to finally come together and we've been
01:23going strong since then. So before you were even able to play together live, thanks to
01:27the pandemic, you were able to demonstrate, as you were saying, that music is all about
01:31connection, isn't it? I wouldn't say thanks, but yeah, exactly. We were, like so many people,
01:37music was our lifeline to staying a bit sane, you know. So, I mean, I remember in the depths
01:43of it, Alex and I would probably speak once or twice a week or so, you know, just to kind
01:48of say, you're still out there, we're still up for playing, we're still doing this. And,
01:52you know, I know that there were networks of music doing that hundreds and thousands
01:56of times over the country and globally, of course. And were you all extra raring to go
02:02once the pandemic was over? Exactly, raring to go and really nervous as well when we finally
02:07made it onto a stage, I was, I had quite the wobbly knees that, you know, that we
02:13were performing live to a real audience again. So, yeah. And the fact is, even though times
02:18are still a bit uncertain, people don't book ahead, as you were saying, but the band has
02:22done well and you're in a good place as you head to Shoreham. Yeah, we've been really
02:27lucky. We love Shoreham, by the way, super venue, super spot. So we'll be delighted to
02:31come back to there. So yeah, we've been tremendously lucky. We love that people do, you know, do
02:38that, take that leap and come to see us and buy the tickets and feel, you know, hopefully
02:42connected by the music and hope they're feeling that they're seeing something, you know, familiar,
02:48but something new with it, which I think is that magic of sort of. And you say something
02:52new, you're working towards a new album later this year. Could there be any material from
02:56the new album in the gig? Definitely. Yeah, absolutely. We'll be trying, trialling all
03:00sorts of things as well as playing things from the Glamour in the Grey album that we're
03:04still really, really proud of that came out a couple of winters ago. So yeah, some new
03:08and some old, but everything feels new. We're still, you know, a young band in that respect.
03:14So yeah, so we're up for new people coming in and discovering us. We've got lots of stuff
03:19online that you can listen to and our website magpieark.co.uk. So yeah, just come and check
03:26us out, which would be lovely. And we'll maybe see you at Shoreham. Have a great time in
03:30Shoreham. Lovely to speak to you. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.