INTERVIEW: Barry Hyde

Image by Amelia Read

“When you’re from the North East, nine out of 10 people you pass on the street will have some kind of family heritage in the big industries,” says Barry Hyde, whose new solo venture is an oral history of perhaps the most prominent of them all. “Coal mining is one of those industries that nobody really wants back. It was a dangerous and unhealthy environment to work in, but the legacy it’s left gives us an insight into the incredible community spirit it engendered; all the rights, rituals and cultural high points created in the face of adversity.”

Commissioned by Sunderland City Council, new album Miners’ Ballads sees the Futureheads man delve deep into that heritage; from the ordeals endured by putters transporting coal to the pit eye, to the vanished pit ponies likely turned to glue or dogmeat.

“I didn’t know what it was going to be at first. I knew I wanted to record, produce and play the instruments myself, but I didn’t know whether I was going to write the songs from scratch, adapt traditional numbers or do some kind of conceptual soundscape.” In the end, all these elements feature in some form or another, in a collection less concerned with genre than weaving an authentic historical narrative. Crucially, whereas contemporary reflections primarily document the industry’s decline, Barry – via resources such A L Lewis’ lyric book Come All Ye Bold Miners and the recollections of retired miner Jim Moreland – sought to capture an industry and culture at its height: “to honour that community spirit and offer the broadest possible perspective.” Suffice to say, this is a Thatcher-free zone.

An especially poignant moment arose when he dug into his own family history. “I spoke with Keith Gregson, who’s a close friend and a retired history teacher,” he recalls. “He found out that some of our ancestors owned circuses, while another part of the bloodline was involved in coal mining in Trimdon.” Moreover, his research revealed that two of Barry’s relatives – Thomas (13) and Joseph (14) – were killed in the Trimdon Grange explosion of 1882, a disaster which claimed a total of 74 lives. The album’s final track, Trimdon Grange 1882, is dedicated to their memory. “I instantly felt more connected to the heritage than I’d previously realised,” he reflects. “From that moment this became more than a commission; it began to feel like a personal artistic project.”

I instantly felt more connected to the heritage than I’d previously realised. From that moment this became more than a commission; it began to feel like a personal artistic project

Elsewhere, Barry was so struck by Lloyd’s The Collier Laddie – an unrequited love song in which a rich land owner offers a local woman riches beyond her wildest dreams, only to be rejected for a humble collier – that he penned it a de facto twin. Hewn from a stray piano piece, Last Dance (At Londonderry’s Ball) picks up the tale from a landlord’s perspective – namely Charles, the sixth Marquess of Londonderry, notorious for evicting the entire village of Silksworth, Sunderland in 1891. “It’s about power and the greed which stems from it,” Barry details. “I felt the original song embodied the humility of the time – but also the reality that there was a lot of exploitation going on, and that many of the rights we have now stem from the trials and tribulations our forebearers endured.”

While the release and subsequent tour represents the culmination of many an album project, Miners’ Ballads remains an ongoing endeavour. “I don’t want to sit on my laurels because I did an arrangement of Hounds of Love in 2002,” Barry admits: “I need some kind of external pressure to remain creative – I need the potential for embarrassment!” To that end, Barry – alongside filmmaker Tim Goodill and commissioner/choreographer Paul Emerson – is in the early throes of turning Miners’ Ballads into a stage production. “We want to make a tragic, heart wrenching musical about coal mining. At the moment we’re looking to secure cultural funding so we can make a pilot of it. It might take us 10 years, but we want to make it as effective and powerful as we possibly can, without it costing 150 million quid!”

Certainly, there’s never been a better time for such an ambitious undertaking, thanks to Sunderland’s newfound status as part of the international Music Cities Network. Only the second UK city to join (following Manchester), it’s an initiative which recognises music’s place at the heart of the area’s cultural identity, as well as offering access to all manner of collaborative opportunities, resources and advocacy. As one of Sunderland’s most celebrated musical figureheads, it’s a development Barry seems as keen to discuss as the album itself.

“When The Futureheads formed in the late ‘90s, there were maybe only one or two dedicated music venues in Sunderland. We played our first gig in the function room of a cricket club. There’s nothing wrong with that – but it didn’t have a stage, for a start! Now, though, we must have at least a dozen proper music venues – including some real high end ones like The Fire Station – and there’s gigs on every night around the city. We used to organise a music festival here [Split Festival], and it was so hard to get Tyneside people to come through to Wearside – but over the past five years or so there’s been a real cultural transformation, and with it a mentality shift. Being part of this network puts us in a fantastic position to build even further – and after many years of neglect, there’s still so much headroom for improvement.”

A key cog of this development is enabling future generations – a pursuit Barry puts as much time and passion into as his own creative exploits, as co-founder of the Northern Academy of Music Education. “This is our fourth year of teaching, and we now have 70 students, a Masters degree at the University of Sunderland, and access to fantastic resources such as The Bunker, with its 17 rehearsal rooms,” he reveals. “The students are taught how to write, perform, improvise, engineer, mix, master, and we’re excited to continue to grow it. It’s the best time ever to be a musician in Sunderland – and I’d know, because I’ve been doing it for a long time!”

Miners’ Ballads is released on Friday 21st March.