The Salt Path author brings musical team up to North Devon

With the big screen version of The Salt Path coming to cinemas in May, author Raynor Winn and folk supergroup The Gigspanner Band have joined forces to create the Saltlines show to mark the occasion.

The combination of folk song and original prose will be presented at the Plough Arts Centre in Torrington on Saturday, May 3 as part of a tour to celebrate the release of the new movie starring the X Files’ Gillian Anderson.

Raynor or Ray’s best-selling 2018 memoir The Salt Path recounted her journey along the 630-mile South West coast path with her husband Moth after they lost their home.

It inspired millions of readers around the world and follows a journey of loss and redemption against a background of great loss and Moth’s diagnosis of terminal illness.

Featuring some of the most influential and celebrated names on the British folk scene, Saltlines is billed as a seamless prose and music odyssey.

It reaches into the rich and visceral history of the South West Coast to celebrate the area’s beauty and enduring traditions, and with a gentle hand considers the social and environmental issues that face not only coastal communities, but the world at large.

The Gigspanner Big Band felt there were still more stories to be told from this historic and evocative part of the world.

The legendary music collector Cecil Sharp had travelled this path, gathering traditional songs of the South West. He captured songs that would have otherwise died out due to the fading of oral traditions in a post-industrial Britain.

The compositions in Saltlines are created from a mix of these traditional tunes performed alongside soundscapes and prose written (and performed) by Ray Winn for this ground-breaking collaboration.

Raynor said: “The coastline of the South West holds a rich past, a vibrant present and has changed my life in ways without measure, so to find inspiration for Saltlines wasn’t hard.

“The Gigspanner Big Band brought together a beautiful collection of songs from the area to form the basis of the project and my words have come in response to the history, texture and sense of place those songs evoke.

“As an author I mostly work alone, so to work alongside the band in the development of Saltlines has given me a rare experience of artistic community and collaboration – a space in which to learn and grow.

“But to watch this group of musicians take a traditional song and lift it into the present, to transform it until it speaks of generations past and ones yet to come, through an almost unspoken passion and understanding of the music itself – well, that’s been the greatest privilege.”

The Salt Path movie is released in UK cinemas on May 30.

The Saltlines show at the Plough on May 3 starts at 8pm. For tickets and more information visit www.theploughartscentre.org.uk or call 01805 624624.