Brian Willoughby
Seeds of Construction
by Anil Prasad
Headlines such as "The Artist Formerly Known As Contract-shackled Goes Indie" regularly appear in music magazines these days. Indeed, in an age of nefarious mega-label mergers and other corporate consolidation shenanigans, never has it been more in vogue to eschew "the biz." But for Brian Willoughby, guitarist of the British folk-prog-rock institution Strawbs, building a self-run label to launch his first solo album, Black & White, wasn't about trends or necessity. Rather, it was a decision that combined pragmatism with a sense of adventure.
"I decided to do it myself as a learning experience, thus my label PYO [Pick Your Own] was birthed," the soft-spoken Irishman explained. "The whole process is fairly mathematical — a bit like school exams. I've always been okay at filling out forms, so why should I pay a record company to do all that stuff? Admittedly, I've never seen so much paperwork. However, I did manage to do it all, and I've achieved as much as any small record company has by getting worldwide distribution. It's been a satisfying, but very costly road. I've made my bed, and now I must lie in it."
Willoughby, 49, also bucked conventional wisdom by keeping the album sparse, understated and primarily acoustic. It's a stark contrast to the electric, orchestrated epics Strawbs are known for. Black & White pairs Willoughby's lyrical guitar melodies with Cathryn Craig's warm, country-inflected vocals. She's known for her work with Emmylou Harris, Tom Paxton, and Bill Medley. Renowned British folk-pop singer and longtime musical compatriot Mary Hopkin also appears on a song she co-wrote. After more than 20 years playing electric guitar with Strawbs — he's the group's longest-serving member — Willoughby was concerned about potential fan reaction to the disc.
"I thought someone might get offended if I didn't use drums and bass. I also spoke to [Strawbs' keyboardist] Blue Weaver about doing some arrangements with string quartets," he said. "But I decided in the end to go the acoustic route, which makes it easy to reproduce the songs on stage. I tried to express what comes very naturally to me — fingerpicking and melodic solos as opposed to histrionics. I deliberately kept electric guitar down to two songs because I didn't want to try and compete with guitar technique players. In Strawbs, I'm more technical and flash, but Black & White represents the kind of things I sit and play at home."
Craig and Willoughby are currently touring Europe as an acoustic duo. It's a setting the guitarist is intimately familiar with. For more than two decades, he's worked with Strawbs vocalist/leader David Cousins in the same format during the band's many breaks. The collaboration has yielded two albums to date: 1979's Old School Songs and 1994's The Bridge. "If a song stands up in the acoustic format, it has much more value than having a lot of arrangements and fiddly keyboard bits," said Willoughby. "Dave and I still play acoustic and benefit from that. You have more room to be spontaneous. At a recent show, he was pulling songs out of the hat from 30 years ago, like 'Stay Awhile,' which Sandy Denny used to sing with Strawbs. Those really tested my memory because some of the songs were things I saw him play with the Strawberry Hill Boys [a pre-Strawbs band] when I was 15, at a folk club called the White Bear in Hounslow, West London. Dave and I became pals at the shows. I ended up running a folk club myself when I was 18 and booked them for £8, if you can believe it."
