claire Watts
Folk singer Claire Watts has fond memories associated with this city - and as she prepares to play at Bath Folk Festival, she tells Sally Bailey about busking, toy pianos and her granny’s china
LATE in the evening when merry punters were spilling out of the pubs in Bath city centre, Claire Watts would sing. With her enchanting Irish accent and clear, light voice she would bring the streets to life with her music, singing on Union Street or outside the abbey for five hours straight, to catch the after-work crowd and those going home after a night out. “There’s something special about singing in the open wind,” Claire says. “And the acoustic in Bath is gorgeous. “I’d start when the streets got quiet, and play from 5.30pm to 10.30pm. I liked the atmosphere, and people coming out of the pubs were generous if they were imbibed. It’s a really nice audience to have and you’re very free to explore because it’s a transient crowd. “My mother wanted me to be a nurse, so she wasn’t pleased when I said I wanted to busk but my Dad would have understood in terms of me being a free spirit. “Busking was how my writing started. I consider it my apprenticeship.” Although born in Galway, Claire’s dad moved the family back to his hometown of Bath when the recession hit Ireland just before Claire sat her A levels. His initials – AW – are still on a wall on The Hollow where he scrawled them when he was a boy. Claire, 46, also called it home for many a year. Indeed it was here that her love for music really took shape. The first time she played a piano it was a toy, belonging to her grandmother’s neighbours in Southdown. She was so enthralled by the sound it emitted that she was allowed to take it back to her grandmother’s house while she visited her. It quickly became clear that she had both talent and dedication; she was soon playing the tin whistle and piano, learning both traditional and classical disciplines before adding the flute at nine or 10, then songwriting and the fiddle in her 20s. “My parents couldn’t get me off of the toy piano so they took me for lessons,” Claire remembers. “The first time I laid my hands on a real piano I was just in love with the instrument. “We didn’t have one so my teacher drew the piano keys on the back of my music book so I could practice at home. When I was about nine my parents got me a piano. It took three men to get it into our sitting room. I had to work to get good at it, for sure, but there was a big draw to music. It was about who I was and what I yearned for.” Claire and her husband Gerry Hegarty are excited about their annual trip to perform at Bath Folk Festival. They load up their camper van, packing lots of
Lego for their seven-year-old son Jack, and look forward to seeing old friends and new people in the audience. “I really enjoy Bath Folk Festival,” she says. “It’s a lovely intimate festival and there’s a great community, we see the same people coming back every year. I think we’ve only missed one year.” Claire loves playing in cafes, doing house calls where people invite her to perform in their sitting rooms for their friends, and has even sung in a polytunnel. But this year’s folk festival sees her play a venue that holds a special place in her heart – The Bell on Walcot Street. She will launch her new album Landmark at the Arts Café at Komedia with support from guitarist and singer Ali George. She also performs with trio Mal’bay at The Bell, alongside husband Gerry Hegarty on fiddle and vocals, and Ray O’leary on the accordion. Claire will sing, and play the flute and fiddle. “There was a great music scene in Bath when I was growing up and I used to go to The Bell a lot to see live music. I loved it, so to be going there to play is a dream,” she says. These days Clare lives in Milton Malbay, on the coast of County Clare. She can hear the sea when the windows are open and regularly walks along its shores with Jack and her giddy border collie Rosie. It’s a place that attracts traditional Irish musicians and has inspired one of the songs on the album, Landmark. “The first verse of My Heart Lies in Milton Malbay talks about the women asking me ‘have you done a winter here yet?’ The winter can be very bleak on the west coast of Ireland but there’s a real beauty to it. We’re so lucky to live here.” Other songs notice the difference in the colour of the sand seen on a train ride to Devon to the grey sand of Milton Malbay’s beaches, and pay tribute to the little refugee boy, Aylan Kurdi, whose body was pulled from the sea when he drowned while trying to reach Europe with his family. Another pays tribute to her grandmother. “My granny had great stories in her, she’d brought up her family and survived when Bath was blitzed, she remembered hiding under the table with my dad and aunts. The willow-pattern china that’s on the cover of my new album was hers, it survived the blitz too. I use it on a Sunday but I have coffee in it instead of tea, which is a bit sacrilegious.” Landmark is the culmination of three years’ work and Claire is particularly proud of it, believing that her age and motherhood have contributed to her creating her best music to date. “Becoming a mother was something I’d wanted for a long, long time. It really changed my process and my whole attitude, it opened up the space for the writing to happen... I gave myself permission. Now I feel I’m making up for lost years.”
» Claire Watts is performing with Mal’bay at The Bell, on Walcot Street, Bath, at 1pm on Sunday August 12. Her other gig showcases the album, Landmark, at Komedia’s arts café, Westgate Street, Bath at 8pm on Wednesday, August 15.
» Visit bathfolkfestival.org to book tickets and find details of Bath Folk Festival and Traditional Music Summer School events, which runs from August 11 -19.