Despite being very much in demand as a key member of various folk groups and projects, singer and double bassist Miranda Sykes has found time to release a new solo album.
Titled Out of the Woods, the record was released in March and Miranda will be performing tracks from it, alone and unaccompanied, at the Cambridge Folk Club later this month.
“I’m just about to tour my new album, Out of the Woods,” notes the Lincolnshire-born-and-raised musician, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from where she now lives in Totnes in Devon, “which I recorded myself at home – which was a lovely experience actually.
“So I’m really looking forward to getting that on the road, and I’m also working with Jim Causley and John Palmer on a project celebrating the centenary of Sabine Baring-Gould [bit.ly/3xESLqW].
“So there’s lots of new projects going on, which is really nice.” Miranda, who is also part of popular folk collective Show of Hands with Steve Knightley and Phil Beer, reveals that her latest long-player “has been a long time coming”.
“It has seen me through lots of different life events, from cancer to lockdown, and I had the title ‘Out of the Woods’ before all of that,” she explains.
“And it’s been very, very fitting and the tracklisting has been very fluid and has been ever-changing, depending on where I’ve been in my head.
“But it feels very liberating and I’m really excited to sing the songs.”
Miranda was diagnosed with breast cancer at the start of 2020, which was around the same time she initially had the idea for the album.
She notes that it’s “taken four years to actually whittle down the tracks and to get them recorded”.
Miranda, who was classically-trained on the double bass from the age of eight, says she knows the Cambridge Folk Club “very well”, adding: “It’s a fairly local one for me to Lincolnshire.
“I remember doing a floor spot there when I was just starting out as a solo artist and still living in Lincolnshire – and I always have a lovely night there.
“I’ve been there with the Phil Beer Band, with Kirsty McGee, Rex Preston… so it’s nice to be returning solo.”
She adds: “They’ve got a fantastic set-up there, with an in-house sound engineer… and it’s reassuring; you always turn up and know that it’s a well-run club, it’s got a great following, and it’s always a great night there.
“And of course it’s got the connections with the Cambridge Folk Festival as well.”
Unsurprisingly for one of the genre’s busiest performers, Miranda has played the Folk Festival on a number of occasions.
“It’s always a real privilege to play there,” she says. “I haven’t played there for a while, but I’d love to do it solo actually one time!
“But yeah, I’ve played there obviously with Show of Hands and again with Kirsty McGee.”
Interestingly, Miranda began her music career playing bass guitar in a country rock band, having taken up the instrument at around the age of 16 or 17.
She purchased her first bass guitar “from an old biker, who sold it to me for a packet of pork scratchings and a pint”.
She recalls: “I was doing a BTEC pop music course and I saw a poster up at college and it said: ‘Bass guitarist wanted with current passport for a country rock band’.
“So I went and auditioned with them and they initially turned me down because I was female, I found out at a later date, which was just rotten, but they took me back and asked me to join because they were desperate for a bass player.
“And I toured all the kind of working men’s clubs playing for line dancing – so that was my first introduction to touring life.”
Miranda, who is also part of Daphne’s Flight, another very well-established folk collective, will be performing solo – on a variety of instruments – at the Cambridge Folk Club on Friday, 31 May.
Tickets are £16 (door), £15 (advance) and £14 (members). For more information, visit cambridgefolkclub.co.uk. For more on Miranda, go to mirandasykes.com.
