Jo Girdlestone is a Greenwich based musician who takes her inspiration from all around her. We spoke at Live in the Living Gives Back about her music, her creative process and the importance of staying connected to the Earth.
On Sunday 7th April, Owen Morgan, owner of Live Country LDN, hosted the second writer’s round of the day at The Bedford pub in Balham, London. Here, Jo Girdlestone, Rhiannon Paige and Cat Rose Smith showcased their varied talents in aid of Dementia UK. “It felt really supportive…a really good spirit between the three women on stage,” Girdlestone says about performing in her round.
Girdlestone was joined on stage by new duo partner, Malcom MacWatt, playing the banjo and fiddle, which really accentuated her folky sound. “He’s a singer songwriter very much in his own right – he’s just released an album called Dark Harvest which is doing really well. Aside from that, he’s collaborating with me on my songs,” she says about MacWatt. The pair will be performing at Chill on the Hill festival in Northamptonshire next month - think: sitting atop a hill looking down at a flatbed truck with live music on it - a perfect springtime day.
Having taught herself the guitar as a child, Girdlestone has continued to use the instrument throughout her life to reflect what she sees in the world. She has ‘worn many hats’ in her career; actor, director, playwriter, songwriter but the latter has been the most important to her. “Songwriting is a very important means of expression for me. I didn’t realise it would take over so much.” As she walks to work, Girdlestone always has her iPhone with her to record voice memos whenever inspiration strikes, “I normally have a number of ideas rattling around in my head but it’s when I’m walking that I get my best musical ideas”. She talks about life in the city and its drain on our creativity and connection with the natural world. “You’re surrounded endlessly by constructs,” she says about London life, “increasingly I’m writing about that – escaping the city and getting back out into the countryside and remembering what we used to know and are dangerously forgetting”.
After spending some time in a remote area of France recently, Girdlestone was reminded of the power of nature when the river flooded next to her house, requiring the whole family to swim to a rescue boat. “We live close to the river so there is always that chance and it has before but never so high and never so fast,” she says about the ordeal, “it was incredibly alarming and a real wake up call. Anyone who says climate change is imagined just need to sit by a river and wait for it to flood”. It’s this kind of message that is written into her music, reminding us of the power of the natural world.
Jo Girldestone takes her inspiration from artists like Joni Mitchell and other singer songwriters like Suzanne Vega. She is also out on the live music scene a lot locally, “I think a lot of the inspiration I take is from people who are not famous”. We laugh as she calls herself a dinosaur without Spotify. Her own album, Somewhere Before, is available through a label called Global Fusion which is a Greenwich based charity.
Watch the full writer's round here
This interview was conducted in collaboration with Live in the Living Room
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