Darren Hayman is visiting all 54 Thankful Villages
When did you first hear of the Thankful Villages and what has inspired you to undertake this project?
I was in a car with my friend Ian Button from Papernut Cambridge. He had discovered the phrase and the phenomenon through a conversation with his 94-year-old father, Ken. A Thankful Village is a village where every soldier returned from WWI alive.
Can you explain to me what your Thankful Villages project entails?
There are 54 Thankful Villages though the number changes through research and different places list different numbers. The plan is simply to visit every one and react artistically to the place. The theme of WWI is a very secondary and in fact rarely mentioned on most of them. It is about a quirk of history dictating my working process and where I do it. Initially I wanted a piece of music and film from each visit, though I think that definition is getting stretched a little now. The sound part of the project can include interviews, field recordings, sound experiments, all sorts.
How many of the Thankful Villages have you visited so far?
At time of this interview 36, though a couple need re-visiting.
You have recorded a song in each of the Thankful Villages, with a proposed three volumes of songs to be released. Could you tell me about the writing and recording process and how the songs have come together?
I expected to react musically just to the places, and that was largely it. I felt that to walk about a location then try and capture it musically was enough of a project. Pretty soon the idea of research and interview came into it and I was getting people from the villages to talk to me, once again the story didn’t have to be to do with the war it could be anything. Scoring these interviews and creating albums that include speech but are still re-playable is the biggest challenge now. In a way, I’m not completely sure what I’m making. But it is a patchwork, artistic representation of village life.
Many villages and towns across the country will have memorials to those who never returned from World War I. What about the Thankful Villages - I presume because everyone arrived back their involvement in the war isn’t memorialised in any way?
No, quite a few do. They are usually smaller. A few have stain glass windows. The memorials memorise the war effort and the safe return, they tend to have slightly different wording that you don’t first notice. As stated previously the number of Thankful Villages fluctuates and that is partly due to the attitude to collective grief at the time. In a strange way a lot of places wanted to claim a loss, so often someone who was born in the village but didn’t live there is often memorialised on a monument.
Is it correct to say that just because everyone returned back from WWI it doesn’t mean that everyone returned back in good health?
Exactly and once again this causes discrepancies in what is and isn’t deemed a Thankful Village. I believe in one village a poor soul died a year later from the after effects of the gas poisoning and his village lost its status. I think ultimately this project will rest on my own definition, which I will have to work out as I start to plan the third and last volume.
Regarding the Nottinghamshire Thankful Villages, Cromwell, Maplebeck, Wigsley, Wysall; what can you tell me about each of these and what were you experiences of visiting each one?
I haven’t done Wysall yet but my plan currently is take some or all of the Wave Pictures there as it is very near their home village.
In Cromwell I interviewed Bill and his now deceased wife about a tragedy that occurred on the weir there in the seventies where twelve RAF men were drowned in a training exercise.
Maplebeck is going to be a film based on Judith and her attempts to put a name to every grave in the cemetery. I am also playing a show there on the Friday 3 June.
In Wigsley I wrote and recorded a song at the disused control tower, where there was an airfield in WWII. I tell the story of a plane crash and how the field became known as the cemetery of lights. I still very much wish to know if the runway which is now a road, has a road number. No-one seems to be able to tell me with any surety.
Aisholt, Somerset - Thankful Villages #09 from Darren Hayman on Vimeo.
Why have you decided to have the album launch at Maplebeck?
A little bit of chance. The fact that they have a well-equipped village hall. I’ll show films, talk about a lot of the villages, sing a few songs. We will hear some interviews from other villages too.
What have been the biggest challenges you have faced when pulling the project together?
Quite possibly loneliness and in the early stages just having faith in what I was doing. Now that people are helping me releasing it and people like you are interviewing me it makes me have more faith in what I’m doing. It also makes me more adventurous about what the project can be. Long, long drives.
And what have stood out as the highlights while working on this project?
I still think what happened in Stocklinch feels like something out of an Alan Bennet play, or his life. I was invited for a cheese sandwich randomly by a church warden who found me almost asleep in the church. She told me a story about a painting that travelled between the two churches.
It feels, to me at least, that this project is not just about writing songs inspired by the Thankful Villages, but it’s also about documenting village life and perhaps a way of life that is in threat of dying out. Is this the case?
It’s more about that in fact. It is exactly that. There is also a secondary narrative. It’s not been a great year for me. The journeys have been my redemption. It will be interesting to see if that narrative is apparent to anyone.
What’s next for the Thankful Villages project?
There’s a bit of a pause. Releasing and promoting Volume 1 coincides with me finishing Volume Two. So I think the visits are on hold for a few months. I have found a choir in one village who will sing my song for me!
Going away from Thankful Villages, you recently sang on the song Sad Bone by the Notts artist We Show Up On Radar. Could you tell me how that collaboration came about?
He did sound for me a few times, we played gigs together and remix. Just a very modern, distant, but creative relationship.
Thankful Villages Volume One is released via Rivertones / Caught By The River on 3 June 2016.
A very special album launch in one of the Thankful Villages, Maplebeck, will take place on the same day. Click here for tickets.
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