When Futureheads singer Barry Hyde was commissioned by Sunderland city council to create an album inspired by the north-east’s mining heritage, he was astonished to discover an unexpected personal connection to the project.
“A historian friend of mine – Keith Gregson – told me that at least two and perhaps more of my ancestors had died in the Trimdon Grange mining disaster,” the singer says, referring to the 1882 explosion in County Durham that killed 69 men and boys. “My great-grandmother’s sons, Thomas and Joseph, were 13 and 14 respectively. There was also another Joseph Hyde, 23, and William J Hyde, 26, who we think might be related.”
The discovery has given his resulting album, Miners’ Ballads, extra emotional wallop. The tragic story of Hyde’s young ancestors is directly referenced on the final track, Trimdon Grange 1882, on which the singer adapts words written after the explosion by “pitman’s poet” Tommy Armstrong. “I just couldn’t sing the line, ‘Be a father to the orphans, never let them cry for bread,’” the singer admits. “I just kept choking up.”
We’re talking in the Peacock, the beautiful Sunderland pub that Hyde runs with family members, which houses an events space, recording studio and rehearsal facility. It’s a long way from coal mining, but the pub was previously called the Londonderry and its former name is still visible carved in the glass of one older window. “The Marquis of Londonderry owned lots of the mines,” Hyde says. “Mining’s this huge thing that has been lost, but the legacy is all around us.”
The Futureheads man has done commissioned work before, from music for a colliery band to a prison songwriting project. For Miners’ Ballads, he says he felt “a deep responsibility to make it authentic, having never been a miner”. So he delved into archives to immerse himself in how these workers lived. “Imagine people going to work not knowing if they’re coming home at the end of the day,” he says. “They worked in virtual darkness and the job was to remove the walls around them. If a pickaxe released a pocket of gas, it caused an explosion. The other side of that is how the fear of loss bound communities together.”
Similarly, adapting old mining songs and books gives the lyrics a genuine, vivid feel. “I found these great old songs about camaraderie, unionisation, love and disaster,” he says, “and it just became this epic storyline.”
Hyde plays virtually all the instruments on the album and the eclectic mix of uplifting anthems, folky pop and gentle orchestrations captures the full spectrum of the mining experience, from tragedy to togetherness. For the haunting The Endless Ropes, he was inspired by Gavin Bryars’ remarkable track Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (which features a loop of a homeless man singing) to put musical backing to ex-miner Jim Moreland’s chilling narrative about how a co-worker lost a limb in a mining accident. Hyde found the lyrics for rousing unionisation anthem Come All You Colliers in AL Lloyd’s 1952 book Come All Ye Bold Miners. “For the drums I channelled the energy of my dearly departed friend Dave Harper,” he says, referring to the drummer of Futureheads contemporaries Frankie & the Heartstrings, who died in 2021. “He was such a primal drummer.”
In a way, Miners’ Ballads is the latest instalment of the unusual journey Hyde has been on since 2013, when the Futureheads took a few years out (they returned in 2019). First he became a pastry chef, having been introduced to finer cuisine by Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill when he produced their eponymous 2004 debut album. “He’d say, ‘Have you ever tried partridge?’” Hyde chuckles. “‘How about kimchi?’” Cooking became “an occasional hobby, then a job”, but after realising it wasn’t for him he then became a music teacher. He grins. “I remember standing in front of a crowd of kids in primary school who were all singing, thinking: I used to do this at Glastonbury!”
He still teaches, but got involved in the Peacock after taking on part of the building to establish a music school; he was then offered the opportunity to renovate the derelict pub downstairs. “It was full of black mould and rats and had holes in the roof,” he says. You’d never know it now. After we stop talking we take a short, wet drive up to nearby Kelloe, where “William J Hyde, 26” is among the names on the memorial to the 1882 disaster. “A lot of them are buried under there,” Hyde says, sadly, staring at the stone column in torrential rain. “Because they never got out.” He admits that making Miners’ Ballads has been “a life-changing experience. What matters is doing something meaningful. I feel I’ve created something I can be really proud of.”
• Miners’ Ballads is out now on Sirenspire Records. Hyde performs Miners’ Ballads with Durham Miners Association brass band at Redhills Durham Miners hall as part of Durham Brass festival on 14 July.
