IT WAS a track by Jo Mango that first gave Lloyd Meredith the inspiration for It Is Something To Have Been, the recent EP from his Olive Grove Records label.
Wisps Of Something sees Mango’s voice flutter over delicate guitar work, her voice as gentle as those words imply. “Explode from your windows/expand from your town,” she sings, evoking a spirit set free from its bodily confines.
It became the title track to the EP, released on Friday, November 25, which would have been the 66th birthday of Meredith’s father, who passed away suddenly in the same month last year.
“Jo passed me the poem by Keith Chesterton in the January after he died,” says Meredith of The Great Minimum, a eulogistic poem the last line of which gave the EP its name. “She said it had helped her and hoped it would help me.”
For Meredith, who started Olive Grove Records with Halina Rifai in 2010, it was a coming together of different strands that were to make for a touching tribute to his father, who had championed the label and its acts.
The impetus had come during Over The Wall in 2015, a summer festival that Meredith has curated for the past three years in the grounds of Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow’s West End. Launched to mark 200 years of organised psychiatric care in the west of Scotland, it aims to offer a taste of the summer festival experience for patients of the hospital.
Mango, pictured below, was playing, as were The Son(s), whose bluesy Mississippi features on the EP. De Rosa’s Martin John Henry was performing alongside harpist/accordion-player Gillian Fleetwood of The State Broadcasters, the Olive Grove supergroup, who also are included on the EP.
“It was a beautiful day,” he remembers. “Karl from Son(s) said he wanted to do something together and I said I already had an idea around Jo Mango’s track Wisps Of Something. I love that track, it’s perhaps my favourite thing that she has done. She knew she didn’t want to put it on an album but we wanted to do something with it. So we knew we wanted to do a split release and that it would be coming out at the end of this year.
“After dad died, things fell into place in my mind,” adds Meredith, who runs the label himself now Rifai’s time is more taken up with her own Bloc+Music DIY label. “I always have a lot of ideas fermenting away – it’s part of keeping a label on the go. Dad was a massive supporter of the label and he loved the artists.”
A few years ago, Peter Meredith (pictured below) and Lloyd's mother moved up north to Ardersier, near Nairn, home to the soaring, emotive music of collective Call To Mind, whose ethereal Hole In The Heart closes the EP.
“He knew who they were, and he knew Jo Mango. He would sometimes embarrass me by turning up to gigs with his Olive Grove T-shirt on. He was always asking about the label and people tell me up in Ardersier that he was always talking about the label and the bands.”
Meredith’s first experience of releasing a record was in 2010, with A Month Of Lost Memories, the debut EP by I Build Collapsible Mountains aka Leith-based singer-songwriter Luke Joyce. It was to become the only release from Meredith’s then music-blogging alter-ego Peenko.
Following a nervous phone call from Rifai asking if he wanted to set up a DIY label, Olive Grove Records was born. Since then, the label has released 28 EPs, albums and singles, including almost all the output by Randolph’s Leap, the baroque pop octet that Meredith manages and who plan to stage another of their I Can’t Dance To This Music all-day music festivals.
The previous instalment at Maryhill’s Community Hall featured folk raconteur James Yorkston and award-winning songstress Kathryn Joseph, and Meredith hints at similarly exciting guests for the forthcoming event in the new year.
Release 29 will be Free Me From The Howl, an uneasy slice of shimmering post-rock from Croy’s Campfires In Winter. Out tomorrow, the digital download presages Ischaemia, their debut album, which is due out on Friday, February 24.
That Olive Grove hasn’t just survived but thrived over these six years (it’s easy to date the label, Meredith says, as his daughter is about the same age) is testament to Meredith’s tenacity and creativity. DIY labels have never been easy to maintain, but things are getting trickier, he notes.
“The DIY music scene online doesn’t seem to be as big as it was when we started,” he says. “There were more podcasts and music blogs. I still have my go-to people but it’s getting harder, there’s no doubt about that.”
Meredith voices his admiration for fellow Glasgow indie Fuzzkill Records, responsible for early releases by rising stars like Catholic Action and Spinning Coin (who recently supported Teenage Fanclub at their homecoming Barrowlands show). Fuzzkill largely release on cassettes, limiting costs to the label and artists. Still, there’s no magic formula to a label’s success, he notes.
“Things are different with each release,” he says. “We had the Ette album recently, which is Carla Easton from TeenCanteen, and [influential Radio 6 Music DJ] Mark Riley is a big fan. And once someone like him has it, others pick up on it, like Bandcamp, which featured it for a while. Without a platform like Bandcamp I don’t think we would know what to do.”
Though all Olive Grove records have been released digitally, almost all have had a physical format too. Meredith believes in the importance of artwork in helping to form the identity of the label and its artists, and often uses the design work of Kris Ferguson, bassist with Glasgow pysch-popsters Mitchell Museum, who have new album in the offing for early next year.
“I don’t know whether that’s the wisest move because I’ve got a lot of CDs and vinyl kicking around in my attic, but it’s what I like, a physical thing,” he says. “And I think it’s what the artists want too. It makes me happy to have a physical thing knocking around, something you can show for all your hard work.”
That hard work involves a healthy live schedule, with Celtic Connections gigs for Ette, The State Broadcasters and The Moth And The Mirror in January, following the last shows (for now) from much-loved Mariachi-tinged folk-rockers Woodenbox, pictured below, as frontman Ali Downer is moving to Australia.
“It’s sad but such an honour to have put out their stuff,” says Meredith. “I was a huge fan of them to begin with, so it was kind of a fanboy thing for me. But I love all the releases. They’re all special. In a way they, especially the albums, are like children.”
Woodenbox's final gigs are on Saturday, Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh, 7.30pm, £6 and Thursday December 15, Mono, Glasgow. Both 7.30pm, £6. Tickets from tickets-scotland.com
Olive Grove bands Randolph's Leap and Ette play The Christmas Effect on Sunday. A celebration of the Christmas single in aid of Scottish Women's Aid and the Scottish Refugee Council, the night will also feature BooHooHoo, BMX Bandits, Eugene Kelly, Emme Woods, Mark W Georgsson, Mt Doubt's Leo Bargery and Annie Booth and more covering their favourite festive songs.
Sun 11, Mono, Glasgow, 7pm, £10. Tickets from lastnightfromglasgow.bigcartel.com
Ette, The State Broadcasters and The Moth And The Mirror play Celtic Connections. See www.celticconnections.com for dates and tickets.
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