Getting Jiggy With It

Robert Steadman, youngest member of indie folk quartet Stornaway, is considering his future. “I finished A-levels last summer so I’m in my gap year,” he says. “I could do music or art or something. I was considering doing environmental science, a degree with a career at the end of it.”

“You could combine it with touring,” muses multi-instrumentalist Jon Quin. “At each gig you could take a soil sample.”
Everyone nods sagely. Singer and songwriter Brian Briggs starts reminiscing about his own time studying environmental science in Oxford where he focused specifically on duck ecology.
“I was studying the use of water ponds in South West London by a particular breed of duck,” he recalls. “Someday if this goes tits up I’ll go back to it.”
Ah, it’s so nice and refreshing to meet a band who aren’t ashamed to be educated, who are smart enough to know their career has a shelf-life, and who don’t equate ostentatious rudeness and wilful ignorance with cool. Briggs was diverted from his environmental career by a chance meeting with Quin, then a Russian scholar, and after their first conversation they had put an advertisement in the local free-sheet.
“Ollie [Steadman, bass-player] was the only person who responded,” says Briggs. “So we had to take him.”
Luckily Ollie came as a sort of package with his younger brother Rob and a four-piece band was soon born. They called the outfit Stornaway after a town on the Isle of Lewis, which they only got around to visiting the week before our interview.
“It’s not quite on the regular touring schedule,” Briggs laughs. “And I don’t think the people who came were necessarily following us or knew us. It was just a lot of sceptical locals: ‘Who are these southern upstarts who’ve taken our name?’ But we bought them a whiskey and I think that won them over.”
That gig came with some practical problems.
“The engine on the ferry broke and we had to stay for an extra night,” Briggs explains. “It was great because we got to see the island but it meant we missed a gig on the mainland. So we went over the next day and played at 11 in the morning in the blazing sunshine. It was the most amazing day weather-wise and what they got was way better than what the gig would have been the day before I reckon. It was totally acoustic and really friendly and informal.” He beams. “It was my favourite gig so far.”
Stornaway (the band not the town) don’t quite emerge from the same roots as the other ersatz folk acts on the circuit (Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling et al), most of whom came from one extended scene in London, nor did they design their music for that zeitgeist.
“This is just what comes out,” Briggs shrugs. “There’s always been bands doing this sort of thing, but I think the media have just decided that now it’s going to be trendy for a bit and then probably electro pop will take over again. We just happened to be at the right place at the right time.”
In fact, if you were to trace the Stornaway sound back via the timbres in Briggs’s voice, one of the strands is clearly the choir music he grew up on.
“Really?” he asks. “I don’t often make the comparison between what I did then and what we do now. Being a choirboy isn’t especially rock ‘n’ roll. I got a choral scholarship when I was in school and it meant singing every day. As a kid I was singing in the morning, evening – every day I was singing, practicing or performing. I suppose if you use your voice a lot you get better control.”
So you’re properly musically trained?
“He is,” says Quin with a sigh. “But he still feigns ignorance.”
“Seriously, I never know what chords I’m playing on the guitar!” insists Briggs. There are polite protestations. Everyone laughs. Then they go and soundcheck.

Stornaway play Electric Picnic on the Sunday