Brewery concert series welcomes folk duo Hildaland
By Michael Witthaus
A wry and oft-repeated maxim at Berklee College of Music is that booking so many gigs that there’s no time for class is a worthy goal, even if it means not graduating. That was fiddler Louise Bichan’s plan when she arrived from Scotland in the mid-2010s, but the connections she made at the Boston school changed her mind.
“I was playing in a band that were kind of doing well and taking off back home when I left for Berklee and I planned to go back and rejoin after a year,” she said in a recent Zoom chat. “It didn’t work out that way; there were so many great people to learn from and to play with … there was so much I wanted to get out of it. So I ended up staying.”
One of the musicians Bichan met was mandolin player Ethan Setiawan. The two became members of Corner House, a four-piece band that formed at Berklee and had their first gig at the 2017 Fresh Grass Festival in the Berkshires. In 2019, they spun off as Hildaland, taking their name from a Scottish folk tale about shape-shifting seals.
Setiawan, during the same Zoom call, said the intimacy of a duo appealed to them. “We can be more improvisational and spontaneous within the framework that we’ve created in these songs and tunes because there’s one line of communication.” A band, on the other hand? “It’s exponential.”
Bichan, a native of Scotland’s Orkney Islands, and Indiana-born Setiawan carry on a lovely musical conversation. In 2019 they recorded an EP, less a debut than an attempt at defining themselves.
“We don’t really sound much like that anymore,” Setiawan said. “It was very experimental … just kind of us playing around.”
Synthesizing those rough beginnings with a few years playing together led to Sule Skerry, an 11-song album that includes reworked traditional tunes like the lovely title track, and uplifting originals. “Silver Dollar,” Bichan’s instrumental tribute to her aunt and uncle’s 25th wedding anniversary, is a standout.
Another gem is Setiawan’s “Weezy & Vera,” with ebullient interplay between the two. There are also covers of Gillian Welch’s “Everything Is Free” and “Fall On My Knees,” a standard that’s been done by Red Clay Ramblers, The Freight Hoppers and others, along with a lush interpretation of the 19th-century Scottish love poem “Ettrick.”
“Our main inspiration comes from my Scottish roots and Ethan’s roots in old-time American and maybe a little bluegrass — and Ethan also is a great jazz musician,” Bichan said. “And the more we’ve worked up new material and played together, the more we’ve refined what our sound is.”
Innovative Celtic harpist and Berklee instructor Maeve Gilchrist was a helpful mentor early on. They worked together in the studio on Corner House’s debut LP.
“Maeve is such a complete musician; we talked about many different aspects of tune writing,” Setiawan said. “She has such a grasp of harmony, and a great sense of playing a melody.”
Hildaland will perform at Blasty Bough Brewing in Epsom on April 18, part of the ongoing Blasty Trad roots music series spearheaded by brewery head Dave Stewart. Bichan performed there a few years back with another band. Surprisingly, she learned about the local series, which began in 2018, while playing overseas.
“David’s daughter Madeline is a great fiddle player; we met in Glasgow, where I used to live,” she said. “We did a live session at BBC Radio Scotland. It was four of us, each in a corner of a big studio; we went around the room and everyone played something. That’s how we met.”
Bichan and Setiawan, who live together in Cornish, Maine, are working on an EP to follow up Sule Skerry.
“It goes back to our tune playing roots,” Setiawan said of the songs, which have developed during their live shows. “That will be coming out later this year. Then we definitely have an eye towards the next sort of full record that will have some more songs and a mix of things.”
Hildaland
When: Friday, April 18, 7 p.m.
Where: Blasty Bough Brewing Co., 3 Griffin Road, Epsom
Tickets: $30 and up at cocoatickets.com
Featured photo. Hildaland. Courtesy photo.