Mumford and Sons have returned with a second album surging with passion and spirituality. Ted Dwane and banjo kingpin Winston Marshall talk to Alan Corr about belief, life on the road, and playing with Dylan
It is a few hours before Mumford and Sons play two Dublin gigs, one in spit-and-sawdust environs of Toners on Baggot Street and another later in Dublin music’s spiritual home of Whelans, and the band are in chill out mode.
As befits the mood, bass player and guitarist Ted Dwane is eying up a freshly-poured pint of plain while banjo player Winston Marshall, the man who gives Mumford their rousing banjo sound, is sipping mineral water. Disappointingly, neither is wearing a waistcoat and neither speaks in the broad vowels of country folk.
We are sitting in the chintzy bar of the Westbury Hotel and going by their rustic, rootsy music at least, Dwane and Marshall should by rights be outside with their noses pressed against the window as their social betters talk about world affairs and property prices.
Across the way at another table, sits band leader Marcus Mumford, a burly chap who does have the decency to look like he’s on secondment from a BBC period drama set in Wessex. But such is the power of music and especially the power of Mumford and Sons’ music; they may play big, bold and beefy folk with declamatory lyrics about spirituality and belief and their name may conjure up images of an antiquated family business selling pewter dishes and carbolic soap but boy, are they just a bit posh.
Mumford and Sons on stage in Whelans last night
Mumford are back in Ireland, a country which they regard as a second home, and the Irish do seem to have clutched M&S to their bosom to the extent and in America, which has also fallen for their charms; they are often mistaken as an Irish band.
“I think maybe it’s more the instruments we play,” says Ted. “I honestly don’t know but people’s preconceptions of us are that we’re an Irish folk band.” “Irish people never think we’re Irish,” chips in Winston. “Americans think we’re European or French . . . “
Ah Winston! The banjo-playing dynamo (who has an Irish girlfriend by the way) got himself into a bit of bother the last time he was here when he made a video to promote the band’s gig in Galway last summer. In the clip (watch it here) he put on an exaggerated Oirish accent and certain people, perhaps not already predisposed to Mumford’s designer folk, were not best pleased.
“That was me, yes,“ he says scratching his scrub of beard. “I got a little bit of feedback from it but I got more positive feedback than negative feedback.” “I think most people thought it was really funny,” says Ted drily. “I thought it was a bit of a laugh.” “When we were in Galway we got asked about it and someone said don’t you think that it was a bit racist,” says Winston. “I pointed out to her that it was, in fact, xenophobic and not racist. Fortunately the majority of Irish people have a pretty good sense of humour.”
It appears no lasting damage was done and the band’s second album Babel (read review here) is sitting pretty at the top of the Irish album charts. Babel is an album that is even more consumed by table-thumping spirituality and crises of faith and the search for meaning down in the band’s west London neighbourhood.
Is spirituality a common bond in the band? “We all definitely have our individual beliefs . . . “ begins Ted. “Maybe religion is too strong a word but we all believe in something greater than ourselves and in the broadest way that is what unites us.”
“It varies doesn’t it?” says Winston hesitantly. So you’re the agnostic in the band? “No, no. This is a stupid conversation because it changes every day. We all have an interest in it. I don’t think, `it’s all bullshit and I don’t want to know about it. Between us it’s all pretty varied - from very interested to hardly interested.”
Ted explodes into very hearty laughter. So what does Winston do when the rest of the band are praying? “Hahahahahaha. You’ve got it all mixed up!” Ted says. “I dunno, it’s not a weird or unfashionable thing to be thinking of as you grow old and mature and you start to wonder about the beliefs you grew up with and the beliefs that were sometimes imposed on you and the relevance they have on your life as you change as a person. We’re certainly not preaching or even endorsing religion in any way. We’re just exploring faith in various ways.”
It may explain a large part of Mumford’s success in the States, a country with a long tradition of god-fearing country and folk music. In fact, the last band with such spiritual fervour to seize imaginationson this scale were U2, a good thirty years ago.
“There are definitely people who are Christian who come up to us in America, even over here, saying can we pray for you?” says Ted cautiously. “And while that is a lovely gesture and I know it’s not malicious and it’s a nice thing to do it’s a bit oooohhhh and it’s kind of thrown me off in quite an alien way. No one’s asked us to bless their baby but it’s a bit like, you need healing! We can saaaave you!”
No one expected M&S to go dubstep grime on their second album but Babel really is a bold elaboration of their mega-selling debut album, Sigh No More. “That’s how we see it,” says Ted. “We work within our limitations. We don’t have a drummer, we play a handful of instruments each and that’s us, that’s our sound.”
“On the first record we had quite a lot of horns and strings,” says Winston. “But yes, we are quite open about our limitations. Hahahahha.”
Mumford got banjoed in Toners of Baggot Street last night
Some limitations. Since forming as part of Marshall's raggle-taggle folk night, Bosun's Locker, in 2006, Mumford and Sons have sold five million albums and broken the notoriously difficult American market. Their timing was perfect. Arriving at a time when austerity was biting, their sturdy, manly folk and hair shirt and ashes image somehow chimed with people looking for a dose of authenticity.
“We are so unqualified to talk about our appeal. To us it’s a complete mystery,” says Ted. “We know what we like in music and we got into music to try and give back what we got out of it,” says Winston.
“We give it ourselves continually. Playing every night in any kind of band you get to do something you love. Things we imitate and love in other bands, we love bands that play fast with lots of energy, not that we don’t like slow, vibey songs but we love the energy aspect because we’ve all got quite a lot of energy, that punk side of things, I’m not saying we’re a punk band, and then lyrically we like sincere stuff.”
When they joined Bob Dylan on stage at last year's Grammy Awards (along with The Avett Brothers) it looked like a good match but did they feel like The Band? “A little bit,” says Ted in a small voice but with a big smile.
“It was one of those moments where . . . it’s great when you get offered something like that especially with really high profile acts like Dylan. You just don’t know what people are going to make of it. We were really excited and we threw ourselves at it 100% but you just don’t know how people are going to perceive it so you just can’t really care about it. It was very exciting and very nerve wracking.”
“We were in the Staples Center which is huge,” says Winston. “Suddenly we’re doing Maggie’s Farm in a circus with these people you’ve been brought up and you’ve seen on the telly sat in front of you . . . we didn’t speak to Dylan much. He’s very quiet, perfectly nice. It must be tiring being Bob Dylan for the past 50 years. People act like he’s not even human which must be hard work. Every room he walks into just goes quiet. We’d just do the same thing – silence.”
Babel is out now
Alan Corr
