Somewhere in the rolling hills of Dorset, near Poole, I catch up with one half of the folk duo Ninebarrow. Jon Whitley sits down with me (via Zoom) as partner Jay LaBouchardiere takes their two-year-old, Josh, for a quick walk up the track.
Music, family, history and the natural world are at the forefront of what the pair do. In his studio, in a striped jumper and cropped beard, Jon beams, filled to the brim with passion for all the couple does.
Ninebarrow will return to the stage this spring for a brief run of carefully selected performances, including at St John of Jerusalem Church in South Hackney on Friday 27 March. The tour marks a gentle return to performing after a quiet period following Josh’s birth.
“Life is… it’s wonderful, but slightly more complicated than it used to be”, Jon tells East End Review.
Jon and Jay have known each other since they were teenagers and have built both a life and career together. From early on they have played extensively through rural touring schemes, in village halls and social clubs up and down the country. Churches, like the one they are set to play in Hackney, quickly became their preferred place to play.
“We just loved [them] so much”, Jon adds. “The buildings are just built for sound. They’re built to resonate, and for our music in particular - as a duo that is primarily harmony singing - there is nothing better than arriving at a beautiful church, and bringing people together and making music”.
The pair often partner directly with churches to host fundraising concerts, helping to support historic buildings and local communities and raising more money through drinks and extras than a “literal month of Sundays”.
The spring tour will see them visit a range of venues, from Hackney to far more remote settings.
Jon continues: “Some of the other [gigs] we play are more intimate, but they’ve all got their own qualities.”
Another highlight of the upcoming run is their ongoing collaboration with choir director Roy Rashbrook, who they met almost 10 years ago at a house gig.
“We actually thought he was asleep, he had his eyes closed for most of the concert”, Jon says. “We were slightly put off, to be honest. Turns out he was just very deep in thought”.
Roy suggested the pair perform alongside community choirs, something they were initially sceptical about. But Roy’s musical expertise soon won them over.
The collaborations eventually led to a charity recording project during the Covid-19 pandemic when the planned concert at Milton Abbey had to be cancelled.
Members of Hart Voices and The Chantry Singers recorded their parts individually from home using mobile phones, raising money for the mental health charity, Mind.
Jon says: “It’s amazing. [...] We’re all in separate places, all in separate houses, but the whole thing came together in such a beautiful way”.
The project raised around £8,000 and eventually grew into a full collaborative album, The Hour of the Blackbird.
“I don’t think anything we’ve done, before or since, has been quite so fulfilling on a creative level”.
Due to touring limitations, the choir will stay at home on this occasion. “Can’t take them on the road really, touring in a Skoda”, Jon jokes.
Looking ahead to the Hackney gig, Jon says the pair will perform a few songs from the most recent album to the sound of a pre-recorded “virtual choir”, which Jon says they will try to “meld together” with the live performance.
“It’s a little bit complicated, a little risky I have to say”, he admits with a slightly nervous laugh.
Beyond music, the duo are also impassioned environmentalists. Five years ago they planted the Ninebarrow Woodland in Dorset on family land, creating a long-term rewilding project comprising 1,000 trees.
Jon says: “It was me, Jay, Jay’s mum and her partner Kev, we planted the whole woodland in five days. It nearly broke me, I have to be honest.
“[The woodland] has just turned five years old. Some of [the trees] have done particularly well. The right species in the right soil.”
The woodland is now beginning to mature, with the trees growing beyond their protective shelters.
“The trunks have got to the stage where they’re big enough to stand on their own. Just watching the biodiversity of the site becoming established, that was the whole plan really”.
This connection with nature is intrinsic to the band’s music, which draws heavily on landscape, folklore and history.
“For us, it's always been about narrative and storytelling paired up with the natural world”, Jon adds.
Their approach reflects what many musicians refer to as the “living tradition” of folk music.
“You sort of realise that you are separated by hundreds of years but it’s the same things that inspired us to write that inspired those people to write.
“I love making music, I love the outdoors, I love walking and I get to combine all those things together and call it work, what an enormous privilege that is”.
Before music became his full-time career, Jon worked as a primary school teacher. Jay is still a practicing GP, “fitting that work around the music and not the other way around”.
While he doesn’t miss many aspects of his former job, Jon admits there are elements he looks back on fondly.
“I miss the kids”, he says. “I do miss the camaraderie of the workplace.”
After the spring tour, Ninebarrow plan to turn their attention back to songwriting. With a new home studio finally set up, they are raring to go.
“I haven’t written a song in over three and a half years”, Jon says. “We are both feeling the creative buzz again. We are extremely excited about being on the precipice of writing another album”.
Get tickets to Ninebarrow’s upcoming Hackney show here.
