When Sheffield folk artist Jim Ghedi was approached by director Michael Sarnoski to score The Death of Robin Hood, starring Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer, he was stepping into unfamiliar territory.
With his first major film score now heading to UK cinemas, he speaks to Exposed about overcoming imposter syndrome, bringing a local flavour to the project and embracing a darker side to one of England’s most enduring folk legends.
Last time we caught up was around a year and a half ago, just after Wasteland came out. What’s happened since then?
Yeah, it’s been a bit of a mad one, really. Last time we chatted, Wasteland had just been released and we’d done the album launch tour, which went really well. Off the back of Wasteland, things have just been really busy. You never really know how it’s going to go, but it seems to have done really well. We’re still touring off the back of it now, which is great. Right in the middle of that, in the summer, I started working on the film score. That was a mad one that came in. The reason we couldn’t really continue touring Wasteland in the way that we were was that I had to work on the film score for a good few months during that summer.
How did the offer to work on The Death of Robin Hood first come about?
We’d just released ‘Wasteland’, the single, with the music video and album announcement. Almost straight off the back of that, the director Michael Sarnoski sent me a DM and basically said, ‘I’m just reaching out on a personal basis. I want you to do my next film score.’ I thought it might fall through, but before I knew it, I was having calls with producers, then me and Michael had a Zoom call and really got on. That was it, really.
I had to keep it under wraps. I couldn’t say anything to anyone because you’re under strict confidentiality, NDAs and all kinds of stuff like that. So I was working away and no one really knew what I was doing. That lasted for about four and a half months.
Do you think Wasteland opened the gate to that opportunity? Had Michael heard the album and thought, ‘That’s the sound’?
I think the timing was really fortunate, to be honest. Michael said he was playing a few tracks while they were on reccies, going out to locations where they were filming. Then the announcement of the next album and the ‘Wasteland’ music video in particular had a couple of themes that tied in with the film. I think the timing of that maybe helped – here’s a new album, here’s a new music video with similar ideas. It all kind of helped.
But there was one track in particular that he loved, ‘Lamentations of Round-Oak Water’, which is based on a John Clare poem and ended up making it into the film. He said he was playing it on reccies and everyone was like, ‘Oh, this is it. This is the sound.’
Folk narratives have always been part of your music and folk legends don’t come much bigger than Robin Hood. What did you make of the idea when you first heard it?
When they sent the script, I wasn’t sure what I thought about Hollywood or big film names doing English mythology. I wasn’t really sure how it was going to look or how it was going to land. But the script made a lot of sense because Michael’s approach ran parallel to how I look into folk music and traditional stuff, where I’m really digging at something deeper and more alternative, trying to bring out the darker human side of it. I really connected to it.
Were there nerves in tackling something as culturally weighty as Robin Hood?
The mythology around it was an easy thing to get distracted by – the weight of what that legend and myth is.
The more I got nerdy with it and went, ‘Oh, there’s these ballads and this is set in this time and this is Robin Hood…’, it got into my head and started to become academic or something. But as soon as I started going, ‘Right, what’s the emotion here? What’s the person going through?’ and just trusted what I do and what I can bring out, that helped a lot.
It’s that classic thing of: ‘Well, you called me.’ You’ve got to back yourself rather than trying to fit into what you think a modern film audience wants.
They were really encouraging of that. For me, there was massive imposter syndrome because I’ve never done anything like this before, especially at this scale. But I was really lucky with them and the whole team because they kept bringing it back to: ‘We just want you to do what you do.’ I think it would have been a harder task if I hadn’t been so supported by the director, producers and editors in that way.
How did the process actually work after receiving the script?
They started sending visuals. They’d have first edits, so they might send me reel one, which would be 20 minutes of the first bit of the film. They put temp music in there to give you an idea of when they want and what the theme or feel is, then you have to start writing something for it. That was a lot of trial and error because I would just throw in loads of stuff.
I was being quite unconventional in the way the process worked for me. A lot of composers nowadays work with MIDI. They’ll knock something up on programmes and MIDI keyboards, then for the final recording the real musicians come together in the studio and start making it sound like a piece of music.
But I don’t work like that. One of the music editors, Tony Lewis, was like, ‘Your approach is how it was done 30 or 40 years ago.’ I was actually working with musicians in real time and working on ideas from the demo stages. They’d send me visuals and, because it was all done here in Sheffield with a lot of musicians I know from the scene, I just started doing stuff with them. They’d either come round to mine, or we’d go to a studio and start working on these ideas with instruments, doing it live.
It’s great that you were able to bring other Sheffield artists into it too.
It was really important to me. I made a conscious effort early on in the Zooms because I could have flown out and gone elsewhere, but it was like, ‘Nah, if you want what I do, it needs to be in Sheff and it needs to be with people who are here, who I know and who I’ve worked with.’
We recorded at Tecna Studios. David Glover, who’s the engineer there, is a good pal of mine. I’ve worked with him for years and he’s amazing at what he does. Doing it that way was really important. Another local guy, Sam Proctor, mastered it here in Sheff as well.
There’s something fitting about that with Robin of Locksley – which, some argue, is an old spelling of Loxley. There’s that tug of war between South Yorkshire and Nottingham now, so it feels like you’ve managed to do your bit to stake our claim on a Hollywood production.
I mentioned that to someone yesterday. The whole Sheffield connection and the Peak District itself is so heavily steeped in the myth. It’s only in recent years that we’ve started to reclaim it – various people like Jo and Nigel at Sensoria and the Reclaiming Robin Hood book by Dr David Clarke. There’s been that movement of trying to reclaim it back into Sheffield and South Yorkshire culture, so it was nice for me to have that link in my head.
The myth and the legend was supposedly based here and around these areas. If you go for a walk in the Peaks, it’s so easy to let your imagination roam free. You can walk up to Hathersage and literally stop by Little John’s grave. It really helps creatively.
Have you been plunged into the world of glitzy film premieres yet?
No. They had a couple of previews down in London. I went to one of them early on and it was an interesting world to be dropped into when you’ve never been around any of that.
You don’t strike me as somebody who’d feel completely at home rubbing shoulders with film industry types and movie stars.
Ha! Don’t I? Yeah, I’m not my most comfortable in those situations, for sure. I’m at my most comfortable when I’m in the studio or working on something. That’s where I’m at my best. But it was important for me to get the Sheffield premiere at the Showroom. I really wanted that.
Of course. You used to work at the Showroom, didn’t you?
Yeah, I used to work at the Showroom for years. We had a meeting there with Sam, who’s involved in programming there, trying to be all professional and that, and I were like, ‘Come on, I used to clean the popcorn machines!’
There’s going to be a Q&A talking about certain bits of the process, then obviously the film screening. Then I’m going to do a few tracks live with a fiddle player who I work with. It’s just a little thing to make it a special event. It was more about having a bit of a send-off in Sheffield for family and friends. I didn’t really expect it to sell out as quickly as it did. The original plan’s kind of gone to shit because loads of pals obviously waited a bit before getting tickets.
Maybe you underestimated what happens when people hear ‘Robin Hood’ around these parts.
Yeah, right! It’s already been released in America, so all that was happening over there in June. I think the UK and Ireland release is going to be really interesting because it’s obviously so steeped in English mythology, especially around parts like this in Sheff.
It’s going to be interesting to see people’s reactions to it. It’s quite a gritty take. If you go in with the idea of Robin Hood being this giver to the poor, I think it’s going to divide a bit of the audience because it’s not that. It’s a completely different take on it, but it’s healthy to have different interpretations. It’s healthy to have different sides of the story.
That’s what makes it interesting, though. It’s a story that’s been told so many times, so how do you find something new to say with it?
I find stuff like that fascinating with folk music anyway – that’s kind of what I do. The idea of stripping things down a little bit and having different takes on material like that is needed because, a lot of the time, we are dealing with myth.
If you’re sitting in Fagans or the Grapes and you hear a story – my grandad’s got tonnes of them from Sheffield – as time goes on, they all slightly change. They’re altered. The fact that you can’t pinpoint it, that it’s not 100 per cent certain or certified, is part of the beauty of it. It’s the mysticism around it. It’s the what-ifs.
It’s a completely different take on it, but it’s healthy to have different interpretations. It’s healthy to have different sides of the story.
Since the film came out in the US, has your phone been blowing up?
Ha! Not quite. There’s been a couple of interesting things and conversations, but I wouldn’t say it’s been blowing up. It has been overwhelmingly positive in terms of messages from people in the States. People have been getting in touch saying how blown away they were by the score, which has been really nice to hear.
I really struggle with stuff like that because I think it’s a really Sheffield thing. Basically, I don’t think we take praise very well. We don’t really know what to do with it, do we? But it is nice and I think I’m trying to get better at that. I’m trying to be like, ‘Look, this is a mad opportunity. I have to be able to accept and enjoy that’, so I’m trying not to be too Sheff about it.
What was it like finally sitting down and hearing your score alongside the finished film on a big screen? How does that compare to the feeling of performing live?
It’s really different. We did the final mix in London, you’re in these mad studios, the monitor screen is huge, and you’re sat back listening and watching. You’re seeing Jodie Comer, you’re seeing Hugh Jackman, and it doesn’t really feel real.
Funnily enough, when I was touring in June, a lot of the bandmates hadn’t heard the final mix. We listened to the soundtrack and I got a bit emotional at the end. I think it was because I’d had so much time and space away from it and there was something about showing it to the bandmates. It got to the last piece and I got quite emotional. That’s why I think the Sheffield premiere is going to hit me. Now there’s been enough time and space away from it, I’m actually starting to realise what it is.
A gig’s very different. When you’re on tour, these little routines start setting in. You get in a car, load in, soundcheck, go for something to eat, gig, get the buzz, sell merch, feel good and then go off and do the same thing again.
With the film, I didn’t have any of that. You’re not getting that same immediate response. You’re very much solitary and you’re just going, ‘Shit, is this going to work? I hope this is all right.’
Now you’ve done it once, is film scoring something you’d like to explore further?
Definitely. It’s something I’ve been thinking about because I haven’t come into this as a jobbing composer. I’ve come into it as a musician and artist first. So I think if I’m creatively connected to something – and not to sound picky or diva-like – but as long as that’s creatively there, then yeah, man, I’d love to do more.
In an ideal world, are there any directors or types of film you’d particularly like to work on?
Definitely Robert Eggers. I love Robert Eggers’ stuff. And Ben Wheatley – I’ve been a massive fan of all of his stuff.
Anything that’s digging into the same sort of world or with the same themes, I guess. Any dark mythology wherethere’s a real vibe of something there to tap into, below the surface. That’s what excites me creatively.
There’s a Threads remake in the offing. Maybe give Warp a bell?
Oh, I’ve heard about this! I’d have to shout up Dean Honer straight away on that one if it comes in.
You could lock yourselves in a nuclear fallout shelter for a month and just jam.
One hundred per cent. We’ll get some dried crackers and minimal water supplies in, so we can really feel the intensity of a nuclear fallout.
Finally, September sounds fairly manic. What have you got coming up?
Yeah, September’s a busy one. The film’s being released on 2 September, we’ve got the Sheffield premiere at the Showroom on the third, then there’s a film Q&A in Derby and Nottingham’s doing a film Q&A in the same month.
So the first few weeks are tied up with the film stuff, then we’re on tour off the back of that. And I’m trying to finish off the next album too.
So yeah, it’s busy, busy, but I’m not complaining. It feels really good to be occupied with a bunch of stuff at the moment.
The Death of Robin Hood releases in UK cinemas on 2 September and the soundtrack is available to stream and purchase online now. Follow @jimghedimusic on Insta for upcoming tour dates and new releases.
