An interview with band Willow Switch: “Folklore is a living breathing thing”

Étienne Lavallée documents London’s current art scene with The Honey Dip Archives, a series of interviews with bands that performed at Honey Dip’s one year anniversary celebration. Here, he meets Andra Zlatescu and guest singer Tim of Willow Switch; Robin Henry, their third member, was unable to attend the interview.

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Willow Switch audio interview:

Étienne Lavallée: Your music has been described as “the crossroads between Appalachian and Black Sabbath.” How do you balance the traditional roots of banjo and folk with heavy, atmospheric drone elements?

Andra: I feel like it’s not very hard to balance because in traditional, old-time music you have all these themes of grief, you have themes of connection with the land, and a lot of grief and sadness, change, colonization, you see all of these themes in folk music, and all of this grief for consciousness that extends beyond the human. I think taking that into metal is very natural. I think people would have done that back then if they had the instruments and tools to do so. 

Étienne Lavallée: The musical saw is such a distinctive and haunting instrument. What drew you to it, and how do you feel it shapes the emotional landscape of your songs?

Andra: I saw it several years ago at a house show with a band called The Dirty Sisters, it was at a venue Robin used to have when I was still in high school. They had a saw and I thought it was so amazing and incredible. I ran out and found one the next day. It took a year of making strange alien noises before I could play a tune. One day I woke up, and it was all there and it clicked. Robin and I went busking, and that was how our band started. Everything fell into place from there.

Étienne Lavallée: You often sing open “doorways to other realms” and have songs dedicated to folklore entities like Baba Yaga. How do myth and the occult influence your songwriting?

Andra: I really believe that folklore is a living breathing thing, so by finding the elements that the land remembers, that our body remembers, and giving them a voice, we’re bridging that gap. We’re taking the traditions that are still relevant and that we need to create a world which we can thrive in – mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. We’re also creating a new tradition, a new folklore for our time that can awaken us into our bodies with courage to be present, to show up as creators of a world we can actually fucking survive in, because the one we’ve been given is absolutely soul-crushing.

Étienne Lavallée: It’s helping you to imagine better worlds, isn’t it?

Andra: Yeah! I believe that time is a circle. The past, present, and future are all spilling into each other, and it asks of us what kind of ancestor we are in the process of becoming as we walk upon this land? What does the land remember, and how can we take that and move forward? 

Étienne Lavallée: Hailing from London, Ontario, how has the local Southwestern Ontario environment (or the local music scene) influenced your “doom-folk” sound?

Andra: I’m originally from Romania. 

Tim: I’m from Toronto. Besides the gloom and doom sound of the band, I would say that it’s a lot of fun, people love it, there’s a strong sense of community. People come together for the scene. 

Andra: I think that’s part of the ritual. When I light the candle, I’m inviting my ancestors, I’m inviting the liminal space to be open, but the audience is meant to be part of the ritual too, it’s not just us on stage, it’s meant to be a collective experience, where their presence is part of that magic and that movement. We’ve been in Southern Ontario for a long time and definitely spend a lot of time swimming in the lakes and walking the train tracks, Sauble Falls is influenced by that. I think there are specific spirits that exist in specific places, and we want to call out to those spirits, and honour the relationships with them. 
Just because we’re in a room with concrete on the ground doesn’t mean we’re not in a specificity of space, doesn’t mean our bodies don’t have a really specific history of how we came to be here. A lot of those histories are fraught with violence and colonization, and a lot of suffering. I think that’s why it’s important to tell those stories, and also process our grief collectively, which is very much what our band is about.

Étienne Lavallée: Your debut album was released on Samhain. Do specific times of the year or nature cycles directly impact your creative process?

Andra: I think it happens naturally. I think we will often intentionally try to plan a release for the full moon, because the energy is growing and that feels like a way to be with the cycles of the seasons. Samhain is just our time, everyone seems to want to hear our music around October, and so it feels very natural for us to build up through the year towards a release or a big show or celebration. That’s also a time to be with or honour our ancestors.

Tim: On that too, we’re releasing our next album on Halloween. Besides that, I think it’s important to see the band live, to experience it with people, I think it captures something that’s impossible to get from a recording. I’m very interested to see how this one lands. 

Andra: I find that a challenge too, how difficult it is to convey just through sound when it is a very multifaceted, embodied experience to me. 

Étienne Lavallée: “Heavy meadow” and “folk noir” are great descriptors, but what are some non-musical influences, such as books, films, or visual art that inspire your work?

Andra: For me, I really love the original Wicker Man. It’s one of my favourite movies so that is a really big one for me. I love magic realism as a whole, and the visual elements of that. 

Tim: The tradition of very good folk music, the songs that Andra and Robin write are pulled from actual events in their life. 

Andra: It is definitely influenced by my Romanian background. My parents were in the revolution, having the experience of their upbringing in the Soviet Union, and that was the reason they came here, to escape what was still a very poor and corrupt country. The way my body comes to be here has a specificity, and I’m bridging that gap while being on this land. I’m drawing from the tradition of my own ancestors and honoring those stories.

Tim: Sometimes it’s directly from things that have happened. We have one song called Hare’s Song, after Andra hit a rabbit with her car, skinned it, and turned it into a stew, which I was told was quite delicious.

Étienne Lavallée: You didn’t waste it! That’s great!

Andra: I was really sad to see it get hit, but it was really funny. We were with our occasional drummer Kellen, he sort of fell upon the ground, and I told him, “Go get a plastic bag.” 

Étienne Lavallée: You have to act fast with those kinds of things if you don’t want their lives to go to waste. 

Andra: If you don’t want to get real sick.

Étienne Lavallée: How do you approach songwriting and arranging to ensure the live performance feels full and immersive?

Andra: It’s very ‘stream of consciousness’ for me. I’ll write a good hard part, and it’ll be a few months before the lyrics come. Sometimes I wake up from sleep and they’ll all be there. Sometimes it all comes at once. Sometimes the instrumentals come later. Sometimes it’s from another piece in time, and they later merge together. I don’t think I approach it with any logical, rational mapping of what I think it should be, but so many times it has naturally come together and we’ve created these songs together. I think what’s beautiful about music is every single person you play with, you’re coming with your own skills and experiences but the product will be completely different. The connection and the meeting of those people, their paths, the specific time. 

Étienne Lavallée: For fans who connect deeply with your spiritual, land-based dirges, what is the core message or feeling you hope they take away from a Willow Switch performance?

Andra: Our grief is sacred, the land is sacred, our bodies are part of the land. When we come home to our bodies, we come home to the land, and I hope it can give us the courage to create better worlds for ourselves and for each other, from a place of love instead of fear. 

Tim: Rather than be a conventional band you can dance to, I think it’s felt, so it becomes a very spiritually felt experience.

Étienne Lavallée: I always like to ask this to end the interview: what are you listening to right now?

Andra: We just heard the band Quotas and I am just absolutely in love with them. I love Amanda and I think that Amanda is a perfect human being. I’m really excited to see Big Brave, so I’m really excited to go to that show.

Tim: I’d like to give a special shout out to Oliver who drummed for us tonight. Oliver really changed the entire landscape of the music. Shout out to Robin who was too busy to do this interview. We love you, buddy.