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The Gillies, described by Norman Druker as ‘the lost child of Emmylou Harris and George Jones’ are an Americana influenced alternative folk duo, based in South-East London, Susan Turner (vocals, tenor guitar), and Mark (Gilly) Evans (guitar, dobro).
“Our songs seem to have a lull of sadness attached to them” Susan says. “The darkness of lonely rooms and street lit nights. Growing up in Norfolk seemed to do that to us. Long conversations and lost train lines to Yarmouth across the Breydon marshes to Art College, driving down the Acle straight… bizarrely these memories seem to haunt our songwriting, always going back to our Norfolk roots.”
With Susan’s poignant, Emmylou-tinged vocals laid above the intertwining picked guitars, The Gillies have brought their own personal flavour to their songwriting, their songs have influences of English, Celtic, and American folk traditions, a sense of darkness, a twist of fate, the complications of tangled relationships and a timeless sense of mystery. The Gillies characteristically capture the sounds of haunted landscapes and crows: “There’s always crows - crows in the parks, crows in ploughed Norfolk fields, crows on telephone wires”.
‘We have really worked on how the two guitars work together, creating intricate picking patterns that fall and conflict and harmonise with each other. It’s taken a few years for us to find the sound we were looking for. We didn’t know what that was until recently” – Gilly’s, dark, sweet-sounding Gibson contrasts with the cold brightness of Susan’s tenor guitar. ‘Finding the tenor guitar was a breakthrough for me. I found something I could play. It gives our sound a kind of lonesome feel, sadness in the strings.’