Lucy Farrell
Lucy has been a member of several highly acclaimed bands including Eliza Carthy’s Big Machine and The Furrow Collective. An inveterate collaborator, many have been entranced by Lucy’s haunting and quintessentially English voice, subtle and instinctive musicianship, and her ability to connect emotionally with an audience.
Lucy works with ballads that inspire her own compositions, telling fantastical stories imbued with handed-down beauty and strangeness. Her albums include At Our Next Meeting, Wild Hog, and Fathoms with the Furrow Collective, The North Farm Sessions and Kite with Jonny Kearney, and a solo album coming out later this year. She's from Maidstone, Kent, where she grew up in a musical family.
"When we had our first work session for the project," she says, "I have to admit I was a bit nervous upon arrival -- but the nerves were eased as we began to discuss experiences, encounters, stories, and the storyworld of fairies in British folklore. This quickly turned into exploring how poems, spells, and songs about fairies and the supernaturale have traditionally been presented -- and how we could go about things differently. We talked about working with the juxtaposition and proximity of different art forms, and how to create a less controlled and more unexpected performance, with the idea of creating an 'experience' rather than a simple show. The artists selected for the project have all come from different backgrounds, and they've opened my eyes to how art and information can be shared in so many different ways."
Lucy was intrigued by the way that selkie legends and animal-bride stories speak metaphorically about women's lives today: about the transformations involved in becoming a wife or mother, and the "seal skins" shed when taking on new identities.
She was drawn to the "otherness" of selkies, belonging fully to neither sea nor land: reflecting the "otherness" that many people feel in their own lives (due to issues of gender, race, etc.). She was also inspired by stories about the fractured state of time of Fairyland, and how this echoes the fractured state of a tired new mother after giving birth.
