Photograph: Phil Wilkinson
IF AN award existed for the hardest wo
rking woman in folk music, Karine Polwart would win it. In the past year, she has recorded two albums and at some point also found time to have her first baby and go on tour. "Looking back, it was all a bit daft and panic-fuelled," says this softly-spoken, Stirlingshire-born woman. "I just thought, let's go for it. Then the reality kicked in, and it was absolute madness, exhausting. I've just got a pathological need to be useful."
Not that she seems exhausted today. She is full of energy and ferociously smart, speaking at great length on all manner of subjects from the non-musical aspects of the folk world to a local tale of a 13th century 'queen of the fairies', who apparently resided somewhere near Galashiels.
I've come to Polwart's house in the Borders, a quiet, lush, green corner of the world that has been creeping more and more into her songwriting of late. Her last record, The Fairest Floo'er, featured the classic Borders ballad 'Dowie Dens Of Yarrow'. Her new album, This Earthly Spell, includes an eight-minute meditative yarn inspired by the Borders legend of Thomas the Rhymer, accompanied by the atmospheric drone of an Indian shruti box.
"I've never felt a particular connection to an area, but this part of the Borders really interests me," she says, as she seats me in front of a coal fire in the kitchen and insists on giving me the last biscuit from the tin. "I want to be more connected with what's going on here on my doorstep."
Next door, Polwart's husband, Mattie Foulds, a producer who also plays drums in her band, is looking after their nine-month-old son, Arlo. Partly named after Woody Guthrie's son, they were also drawn to 'Arlo' because it means hill fort, and they live near one. It's an explanation that illustrates Polwart's pragmatism and romanticism, an opposition that makes her such a compelling and compassionate songwriter, whether she's singing about sex trafficking, or telling the story of a Scottish missionary in Auschwitz.
"There's this idea that you become more mellow and cut yourself off from the world when you're a parent," she says. "But I feel more politically motivated now, not less. A lot of this album has that sense of feeling disappointed, let down by the world, and not just on my own behalf, but for my son, too. Being a parent has made me more assertive, more motivated and more connected."
She has written a song for Arlo on This Earthly Spell, an intimate love letter to the ties that bind generations called 'Rivers Run', a companion piece to her award-winning song, 'Daisy', written years ago for her sister's unborn child (who turned out to be a boy). "'Rivers Run' is the mushiest song on the album," she says, almost apologetically. "But it would have been odd to be a songwriter and have a baby and not have something to say about it."
Polwart, who in 2005 swept the boards at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards when she won three awards for her debut album, Faultlines, at the age of 35, may be relaxed now, but a few months after she had Arlo, she attempted to go on tour and made herself ill with exhaustion. "I saw it all coming towards me and I just kept wishing I hadn't taken it on," she says. "It was too much, and I got burnt out and had to cancel shows. The exhaustion was overwhelming. Theory into practice… it never quite works."
For her forthcoming tour, Foulds will stay at home with Arlo while Polwart hits the road. They have been in the Borders since Polwart took the plunge several years ago, left her job at Women's Aid – prior to that she did a Masters in philosophy and taught the subject in schools – and sold her Edinburgh flat to invest everything in her solo career. "I've never looked back," she says. "There's a lot to be said for taking a gamble."
For the past two years, the couple have been renting this small house where, upstairs, The Fairest Floo'er was recorded, while just 20 minutes away This Earthly Spell was made. It's a remote area, just outside the village of Oxton, and when Polwart gives me instructions on how to get there she warns me that I'll be the only person getting off at the bus stop. She's right.
"The trajectory is all wrong, and I'm supposed to be several houses down the line now, not renting," she says. "But it hasn't worked for me like that, and it doesn't have to."
Most of This Earthly Spell was recorded when Polwart was heavily pregnant, though songs such as 'The Good Years', her collaboration with Edwin Morgan for last year's Ballads Of The Books, have existed for longer.
On more politicised efforts, as in the strident 'Better Things', written in a single afternoon before a Bin The Bomb rally, Polwart seems, as she puts it, "genuinely pissed off". When her strong, clear voice sounds out the lines, "Is this the best that we can do? / I can think of better things, can you?", you can tell she really means it.
"I feel a bit less obligated to write throwaway songs now," she says. "I've always been drawn to darker subject matters but before, I felt I had to undercut that with levity. Now, I definitely feel more politicised than I have in a long time, though I'm always aware it's a fine line between being political and patronising."
This Earthly Spell is Polwart's third album of new songs and it's a much more stripped-back affair. "Before, I thought the songs wouldn't be credible unless they were really layered," she says. "This time I've taken the layers away. Other musicians get more complicated. I seem to be going the other way."
And she's not the only Polwart to end up in music. Her brother plays guitar in her band, while her sister is the lead singer in Glasgow indie outfit The Poems. "My mum is a great singer, but we didn't grow up in a house with a piano or anything like that," she says. "It's very strange that three out of four of us have ended up in bands. Actually, even the fourth one plays tambourine in his pal's band. If you'd looked at all of us when we were 16, you'd never have guessed it."
Still, Polwart has doubts that getting to live off "the hobby that used to keep me sane when I did a desk job" will last. "I'm just delighted that I get to do this at all, and I'm constantly waiting for it all to go wrong," she says with a hearty laugh. "What's been good about slowing down a bit is that I've realised that it is possible to take a wee breather. People won't hate you for it, and they might still be interested in what happens next."
Even though Polwart was in her first band when still at school (The Banknock Kids, which included the local taxi driver on drums and their teacher on guitar), she never thought she would do it for a living until she reached her now-or-never point in her late twenties. Sometimes, her pragmatism still prevails. "Because I did something that was of very practical benefit to people before I was a songwriter, there are times when I go: 'What on earth is this about, getting paid to write songs and sing them to people? It's the height of self-indulgence.' But then I think the world doesn't just function on practicalities, and I get such a buzz when people say they get something from my songs."
I'm starting to understand what Polwart meant when she once described herself as a social worker with a guitar.
"I never expected huge returns," she says, with a shrug. "I don't for a second think that it was my due or that it will last. I just take it as it comes, and I always know that I can do other things, because I always have. My life does not depend on being a musical success." v
• This Earthly Spell is released on March 10 (Hegri). Karine Polwart plays a series of Scottish dates in April,
www.karinepolwart.comThe full article contains 1435 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
