Tim Hughes speaks to the thought-provoking folk duo Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow

With their stirring harmonies, striking style and uncompromising subject matter, Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow are turning folk music on its head.

Forget cheery tankard-waving songs about some imaginary bucolic past, their music is dark and emotionally charged and rooted solidly in the real world. Feminism, migration, war, the environment and forbidden love are all staples. They even square up to Vladimir Putin in a spirited defence of Moscow girl-punks Pussy Riot.

It’s heady stuff, but sung beautifully and with feeling. And that has made this singular double act become folk’s new rising stars, winning accolades and awards. “We are just two women trying to make a career out of this,” says Heidi of her musical — and life — partnership with Belinda.

“And we are doing that by bringing forgotten people’s stories back to life.”

She is talking to me from the car in which she and Belinda, who is driving but chirps in occasionally, are travelling en route from their home in Yorkshire to a show in Suffolk.

“We are a right pair of old ladies on tour!” she laughs. “We spend a large amount of our time on the road, tootling around in an old Skoda looking for tea shops and real ale pubs.”

On Sunday the ladies headline the final night of Folk Weekend Oxford, the three-day festival of roots and acoustic music taking place around the city centre. “We have always wanted to play Oxford Folk Weekend together so we are really excited,” Heidi says.

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Belinda, who previously played with Mercury-nominated Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, played last year’s event, joining Summertown singer Jackie Oates on stage at the OFS for a set inspired by lullabies. This year’s show promises to be somewhat less soporific. “Expect a lot of harmony singing and a vast variety of topics and emotions as well as light-hearted banter,” she says. “There’ll be laughter and tears — though not at the same time. Or maybe there will.”

The pair have worked together for about five years, releasing debut Silent June in 2010 and following that up with The Feeling. A nomination followed for Best Duo in last year’s BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and since then they have released a provocative and politically charged third album, The Hum. The record stands as a very human riposte to injustice, deprivation and austerity. It features the instrumental stamp of producer and musician Gerry Diver, whose credits include Sam Lee’s Mercury-nod debut A Ground of its Own. Diver’s strings, percussion, pedal steel and electronica add focus to the earthy vocals and Belinda’s piano and accordion.

With the pair not only living together but writing, playing and touring as a pair, I wonder whether things ever get claustropho-bic? ”Musically it works well as we know each other so well,” she says. “We do bicker from time to time but nothing serious. It’s healthy. We bounce ideas off each other and when it comes to song writing we can be critical. There’s a kind of rude honesty which comes through in the music. We are in music as we are in life.”

While both share an Irish ancestry, Heidi also comes from German stock on her mother’s side and lived there as a child. With a true love for the underdog, a hatred of injustice, and a mischievous sense of fun, they tell the story of a diverse cast of characters, including British nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed for treason by a German firing squad in the First World War, as well as the Pussy Riot members arrested and imprisoned for hooliganism after staging and filming a protest against Vladimir Putin and the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, and beaten by guards in a protest during the Sochi Winter Olympics.

“We were captivated by what they did,” says Heidi. “We are interested in people using art to say something and stand up to the establishment. We’re disgusted with how they were treated.

“It was good to write a song about the issue, and with how things are developing in Russia and Ukraine at the moment, it is very timely.”

But O’Hooley and Tidow are also a true Yorkshire act, their music reflecting their love of life on the edge of the Pennines, near Huddersfield. The Hum refers to the buzz of activity in a local factory, Summat’s Brewin is all about the power of real ale brewing as a way of fighting back against the multinational corporations, while their cover of Ewan MacColl’s Just a Note tells of the navvies who built the M1 from London to Leeds.

“Where we live in the Pennines is quite a rough and barren landscape,” says Heidi. “It’s vast and you can get lost quite easily. There are also a lot of animals, so we use plenty of animal imagery in our songs. We are both from farming backgrounds so are real country girls. But we also write about social topics but from different angles. “What makes it folk is that we are telling the stories of ordinary people. The time and scenery may change, but challenges to working people come up time and again. We are just putting a different spin on it. These songs are about people standing up and making a difference on a small scale.

“They are emotional and intimate topics which people may not write about — such as adoption from the baby’s perspective. There’s a lot of music out there written about men and their experiences, which is valid, but we also wanted to write from a woman’s point of view and talk about the sacrifices they have made. We are trying to give a voice to people from history who may not have been written about.”

They include the 9th-century Yorkshire lesbian gentlewoman Anne Lister — whose story is told in the song Gentleman Jack.

“She was a businesswoman and entrepreneur who seduced women and kept diaries which were hidden away after her death. There’s not much in the history books about her, where as if she had been a man much more would have been written about her.”

So do they identify with the stereotype of the Aran-jumper clad folkie? “Well, we do have tankards and like a good pint of real ale at a festival,” she laughs. “And while we don’t have Aran jumpers, we like to have a good laugh — and beer song.”

And does she have any advice to young women hoping to forge a career in folk music? “Just be yourself,” she says.“Make music that matters to you and work hard. It’s a good life but it’s hard work — but I wouldn’t have it any other way. We live in a great period of humanity and have to keep moving forward. But we all have to stay true to ourselves.”

O’Hooley and Tidow
Randolph Hotel Ballroom, Oxford
Sunday     
                              
Part of Folk Weekend folkweekendoxford.co.uk