Tom Kitching will be joining us on Monday 16th September, as he launches his new book and album, ‘Where There’s Brass’, along with Nordic mandola player Marit Fält. Ahead of the gig, we caught up with Tom to find out more about the project, his experiences living on a narrowboat and what the gig has in store for us. Here’s what he had to say…
Hi Tom, long time no see! What have you been up to since we saw you last?
Hi! Good to be back. It’s been a big year for me, mostly waterways related, bringing out ‘Where There’s Brass’, and also being involved in a project to create a soundwalk for the Manchester Bolton and Bury canal, working with artists from all over Europe.
We’re so pleased to be part of the launch tour for ‘Where There’s Brass’. Could you tell us a bit more about the project and how it came about?
The waterways are a fast-changing place, with vibrant if sometimes challenging new communities moving onto the water, all whilst the authorities who manage it deal with rapidly shrinking budgets. I wanted to capture the state of the network at this difficult and crucial moment in its circa 270-year history. I am a co-owner of ‘Spey’, an unconverted 1937 wooden hulled working boat, and the rest of the group kindly agreed to let me borrow it between October and April to live in London with it.
At heart, all of my projects are about doing something that is in and of itself enjoyable and illuminating for me. Six months living on the water, largely in London, with no rent to pay, seemed like a lot of fun, and I think that comes across in the book and the album as well as the more serious stuff!
The project documents 6 months of living on the waterways – tell us about that experience and the impact it had on you.
I loved it! It started with a journey to London – twelve days to traverse the network from Manchester before the winter stoppage schedule (lock gate replacements and the like) would have stopped me from getting there. Boating an old working boat hard against the schedule was the closest I’ve got to understanding what life was like for the families who worked the waterways and were paid on delivery. I am in awe of their skill levels and stamina.
What surprised you the most about life on the waterways?
Just how rapidly they are changing, and how unconnected the new communities are with the old. A lot of the new communities springing up – be that in London, Milton Keynes, on the Kennet and Avon canal or elsewhere – are at least partly the result of financial necessity. People looking for ways to live on low wages. It can be a hard life, but for many, even a very basic boat represents a step towards security and offers a personal and private space in a busy world. And almost everyone on the water wants to be there, with a sense of freedom and being amidst nature, even within the heart of the city.
What is happening on the water to some extent is a product of the national housing crisis, but those who choose the water as their answer generally want to engage with it and embrace what’s good about it too. My concern is that the traditions of the waterways are not being passed on. There is a barrier of communication between older and newer communities, and a mutual suspicion of each other’s motives.
What are the best and worst things about living on a narrowboat?
The freedom to moor up where you will and call it home for a bit is wonderful. You can be a tourist into different social classes, sampling the delights of upmarket areas like Broadway Market. Most communities in England tend to end up being populated by people of a similar socio-economic profile, but the waterways really are a melting pot of everyone.
People assume it will be cold, but far from it! With the range in, the little back cabin is a wonderfully cosy place to be, where the bed and the table fold down and everything is fitted within 8ft by 6ft. That said, it’s great for one person on their own, but it must have been awful bringing up a family in such a place.
The worst of it is the lack of facilities for boaters. The Canal and River Trust have no statutory obligation to provide anything besides drinking water, but in practice they provide bins, pump outs, elsan disposal, toilets, and more all around the network. In London, where demand for these is highest, they are being removed or let go to ruin on the basis of saving maintenance costs, which is a perverse way of looking at it. Basically, where they are lightly used, they remain, as they are cheap to run, and where they are heavily used, they get closed down to save money. The London boater is scrapping for fewer and fewer crumbs all the time, and no other authority wants anything to do with the waterways or the provision of basic facilities for their occupants.
The romance of living on the water is for real, and all very well, but if you’re not also comfortable carrying a plastic canister of your own excrement half a mile down the towpath to a disposal point that may or may not be broken, it’s not the life for you. Being a continuous cruiser with no fixed mooring is also a hard life in terms of getting post delivered, finding a doctor, and countless other admin issues that would be straightforward for anyone who lived at a fixed address, and the authorities seemingly have no interest in making these things any easier.
How did this project compare with ‘Seasons of Change’, in terms of your approach and creative process?
It’s very much a development of the same idea, a long-term lived experience documented and then performed as storytelling and music. The difference is that Seasons of Change was a series of busking visits to places all over England, generally for a few days each, a skim across the nation to get some sort of overall sense, whilst this is a deep dive into a community, a history, and a set of traditions in a world I know very well indeed. I’ve been a waterways man my whole life and I care deeply about their future. At heart, it is about the value of the golden thread of knowledge being passed on.
The project includes a book as well as an album. What can audiences expect from the live show, in terms of how the music and storytelling weave together?
The music is a suite of new pieces composed around the stories within the book. Several of them mimic the iconic sounds of the waterways, the rhythms and textures, dovetailing with the stories, allowing the performance to flow between the two. It’s a gritty story at times, about coal, spoil, diesel, effluent. And sometimes it’s about the perfect misty mornings, the days when every lock is in your favour, when the community comes together.
You’re working with Marit Fält again on this project – tell us about working with Marit, and the impact she’s had on the live show.
Marit is the best musician I know. She’s not just technically brilliant on her Nordic Mandola, but hyper-creative and utterly in tune with what I’m trying to do. We’ve been working together for ten years, across three projects, and we have that instinctive understanding now. Working with Marit really transforms the show from being some spoken word and some music into being a flowing, connected body of material.
What does it mean to you, to be able to livestream the show to people all over the world?
I am really looking forward to it! Livestreamed gigs are an essential part of any tour now, making shows accessible to anyone who can’t make an in-person event for any reason. I’m glad to have been with LTYLR since pretty much the start and hope to do gigs with you for many years!
We can’t wait to see Tom Kitching and Marit Fält in our living rooms on Monday 16th September. Find out more about the gig here, and get your copy of the book and album on Tom’s website.