From Australia to Brighton for The Weeping Willows duo

Heading to the UK from Australia, they perform as The Weeping Willows with dates including Thursday, July 11 at The Folklore Rooms, 12 North Street, Brighton, BN1 3GJ at 7.30pm (tickets £16.50 on 01273 733238).

As Laura explains: “We have been together as a couple for 16 years. Music brought us together but The Weeping Willows as a project has been going for about 12 years. We met because 16 years ago a friend dragged me along to a gig and I had no idea who I was going to see but it was Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes. And I took a shine to the electric guitarist who was Andrew. We just struck up a conversation after the gig and I ended up singing with the band. I did backing vocals for them and then Andrew and I started doing our own little side project which was more folky and it just became Andrew’s outlet. And more and more it became The Weeping Willows rather than The Wildes.”

Andrew added: “With the name The Weeping Willows, we were thinking about the kind of folk music that we like and the sombre mystique behind all the songs that talk about weeping willows. We play that style of gothic music and murder ballads. We both write. In the early days when we started off it was pretty much all covers. These days there may be a trickle of covers that we put our own spin on but basically now it's pretty much 100 per cent original. It is about trying to emulate the sense of the past and the artists that we loved listening to, the traditional British and American folk music performers. We try to tell a story in our music that is timeless and universal. We never talk about iPhones. There are other artists that can do that very well. We don't talk about AI and things like that. There's a place for that in music but not in ours. The storylines are simple and universal, and those are the stories we tell.”

Laura added: “This is our third summer in a row in the UK. We were in the UK in 2018 and we were planning to come back in 2020 and then that which shall not be mentioned happened. So this is actually my fourth year in the UK but Andrew did a lot before that with Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes. They were doing six-month stints over there.”

Andrew added: “I know that the first time we came over in the 2000s, Oasis was still doing their thing and there was still the Britrock scene. Fortunately my dad is English and Lachlan’s mum is English so we could come and go to the country really easily. We bought an old post van and we just drove up and down the country. One year we did more than 20,000 miles. It was just up and down and up and down, and I think that's why it just feels like a second home.”

Laura added: “I have a lot of family that originally came from the UK so before this tour I sat down with my family and said ‘Right, where are we from?’ We've done a bit of research. For Andrew we're doing a gig in Southport which is where his family is from, and I was hoping to do a gig down in Cornwall which is where I think my family came from. But the first time we did our own tour I just loved the appreciation of the audiences.”