Eddi Reader talks about Fairground Attraction, Thomas Dolby and folk music's connections with classical music

Singer-songwriter Eddi Reader might be known to some for the chart-topping album The First of a Million Kisses she fronted in the 80s band, Fairground Attraction, including the foot-tapping classics Perfect and Find My Love.

Now she's joining Scala Radio presenting a new series of shows honouring the folk music tradition and examining how folk music has influenced classical music composers. Hear it from 6pm, Sunday.

We spoke to her part-way through recording and asked her to tell us about some of the tracks that she's loved for, including Clare, her Thomas Dolby collaboration What You Do With What You Got, and Patience of Angels.

'Eddi' is a nickname, isn't it? How did you come by that?

My dad had a sister in the 1930s who passed away in childbirth. She was called Sadenia, after my granny Sadenia, her mother. So when I was born, I had to be Sadenia because I'm the oldest girl. That was shortened to Edna when I was a baby. So they all started calling me Edna. So when I was 14, I just kyboshed it, and eventually turned it into 'Eddi'.

I didn't want it to be 'Ed', so my mother said to me, 'Why didn't you just stick with Sadenia?' Everyone else's names in my generation, well it was Jeans, and Marys and and Brendas. I think Sadenia was kind of awkward-sounding in Anderson Glasgow, in 1960.

So I think my Mum was a bit frightened that people would end up calling me Sadie. So she just settled with this Edna thing, which was all right until I got to secondary school. And there was at the time the TV drama 'Edna, The Inebriate Woman' played by Patricia Hayes. And so I just got Edna all day every day at school.

My connection with a song is just whether I could stand anywhere and sing them without artifice. That's what folk music is - you can sit in front of a fire and sing a beautiful song, and the orchestra's in everyone else's head. It's in the listeners head. And that's kind of what I wanted to do as a singer was just present a kind of canvas that everybody could paint onto.

It was also the age of Germaine Greer. I was a baby of that age. I was coming of age just when all the women's lib movement was happening. So I thought I'd be I'd sort of make myself more equal by taking on a more masculine version of my name. You know what I mean? I mean coming from a family of a long line of women that had lots of kids and spent their whole days washing and cooking. I was determined to be something else.

We've been listening to a few of our favourite Eddi Reader tracks. Perfect from when you were working with Martin Nevin in Fairground Attraction is a good starting point of course, but tell us about another track on that album, 'Clare'.

There are a lot of different musical styles in that track - jazz, scatt, skiffle, shuffle, as well as a folk vibe. You'd think they wouldn't go together. But they seem to effortlessly.

I think all styles go together with the likes of me and other normal musicians. It's kind of a lesson as it puts it into genre pockets. We're all just walking about feeling the feeling for colors in the dark, if you know what I mean. I brought my folky-late-night party singing from my family into the mix. Mark Nevin had this incredible romanticism inside him and I think I helped him bring it out.

And then, of course, when you hear Clare, there's also the magic that was involved in it like I was squatting in London, with my flatmate, Clare, and Mark used to come around every day to play me new songs and I'd go off touring with the Eurythmics or Alison Moyet, or, you know, I'd be doing my thing. And when I came home, Mark would be sitting, chatting for hours with Clare.

And then one day he came in Clare said to him, 'I had a dream last night that Edna was singing at Ronnie Scott's in front of a jazz band. And they were singing a song and she introduced it as 'Clare'. And then Mark said, 'That's weird because I've just started writing the first verse of the song about a guy who's so in love with his clarinet that his partner is is moaning about it because of this musicians love for his 'Clare' this instrument, his clarinet. But when I sing it, of course, it sounds like a woman that's been hit in the stomach by his guy going off with another love, but it's really about a guy who's a musician.

How much of your folky-ness is in that Fairground Attraction album?

I think entirely. Mostly? Apart from the drummer, who was very jazzy - Roy Dodds. He used to play down the 606 in London and took me out to all the jazz haunts in London and introduced me to jazz proper. I didn't know anything about jazz except from my mother's American Songbook collection. So my connection with a song is just whether you could stand anywhere and sing them without artifice. That's what folk music is: you can sit in front of a fire and sing a beautiful song, and the orchestra's in everyone else's head. It's in the listeners head. And that's kind of what I wanted to do as a singer was just present a kind of canvas that everybody could paint onto.

Tell us about another track. 'What You Do With What You've Got'. You worked on that with Thomas Dolby, didn't you?

I auditioned for Tom with 'What You Do With What You Got'and I couldn't get a note! I couldn't get a note for weeks and weeks I tried and then Tom said to me, "Sorry hen, you're not getting the job!" But he loved me and he was interested in everything I was doing. So I sent him a tape of 'What You Do With What You Got', I'd heard it in a folk club in London and it blew me away. It just stopped me. It pinned me to the back of the wall. You know, the way songs can do that. For me, gorgeous songs would help me. They were things I'd feel like I needed in my life.

So I ended up recording a demo of 'What You Do With What You Got' for Tom. I put so many instruments on it. There was so many frequencies in it that you couldn't really hear the song. But that's the way I am. So I sent it to Thomas and Thomas said, 'Look, please let me just let me clear the mess with my carding comb. We sent all the master tapes to LA where he was living the highlife with his electric cars that nobody else had at the time and working with Joni Mitchell. And there I was a refugee from Fairground Aattraction with no idea how I was going to create music. After that he sent me a beautiful mixed version of 'What You Do With What You Got' with all the stuff cleared out of it. I think you hear the song really well.

Did you fall for Patience of Angels when you heard it?

Boo Hewardine is the author there, and he played it to me once. It was the best thing I've ever heard. LAUGHS I'm quite fickle. You know, I fall in love all the time. But once I'd heard it that very night, I had to sing it and I had to learn it. I had to let the audience hear it. You know, I know when I see somebody's face change when I'm singing something - I know that I've got right into their hearts and thrown them up in the air, because it does that to me when I first heard it. It is a beautiful acoustic song. I recorded it in LA with Greg Penney, and they they made it kind of big and produced which wasn't to my tastes completely, I must admit. But it is a beautiful piece of work and I still love singing it just with the acoustic guitar.

We're looking forward to hearing you on Scala Radio. Why did you say 'yes' to Scala Radio?

I wanted to do the job when they asked me because I thought that this would be an interesting exploration for me. I feel a little bit left out of the classical world. And yet, I know I love it. What I hear when I when someone plays me something I fall in love with it. You like Maria Callas' Ecco: Respiro Appena, which I bought on cassette for 50 pence sometime back in the 1980s. I fell in love with it. But classical isn't my background. My mum and dad are not classical lovers, they're rock and rollers. We lived in a council estate, so we're not it just wasn't part of our background. So I feel I missed out a bit and I wanted to learn a bit. But then I should tell you that my patron saint is Louis Armstrong quote is: "Folk music? It's all folk music. I don't see any horses playing the clarinet!" LAUGHS

When is Eddi Reader's Scala Songbook on Scala Radio?

Listen to Eddi Reader's Scala Songbook on Scala Radio from 6pm Sundays as she honours the folk music tradition and examines the influence it has had on classical music composers.

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