Cara Dillon on song for RNLI's 200th anniversary Radio 2 series

Among the musical beachcombers is Dungiven-born singer/songwriter Cara Dillon, 48, and musician husband Sam Lakeman, who have joined forces with a kayaker, yachtsman and former soldier, to write a song about his relationship with the sea.

​The song, called Flow, will feature on Radio 2’s 21st Century Folk series next week, with this year’s theme about people whose lives are intertwined with the sea as the RNLI marks its 200th anniversary.

Cara, who lives in Frome, Somerset, has been paired with Jeff Allen from London, who has dedicated himself to boat-building and kayaking as a way to find peace, and leads expeditions on water around the world.

Explaining how the song came to fruition, Cara said: “We were initially sent a little film that Jeff had made and we got to hear his story and it was just so inspirational. Then we got to speak to him on Zoom and there was such a connection then – it was a really beautiful moment.

“Jeff described that he had a difficult upbringing and he had experienced quite a lot of trauma in his life. He found himself taking to the sea (he had never been drawn to the sea before this) and he decided that it was just calling him.

"He said he had been in quite a desperate place at that stage of his life, and he took to the sea and was kayaking and became an adventurer and he said it saved him. The whole idea of being out on the ocean, on his own, the ebb and the flow, the movement of the water and the sea spray, it sorted his head out and he decided he was going to live his life like that and he was going to help people.”

Although Cara is one of the most original and stunning folk singers of songs about love won or lost, departures, emigration, loss, longing, the aching, stubborn heart that refuses to let go, she had never written a song for someone before. “I’ve been singing folk songs my whole life and interpreting my own version of folk songs, but that’s a very different thing to being asked to sit down and write a song for someone about their life.”

She added: "I was a bit nervous about it to start with. There was quite a bit of procrastination, and then one day Sam was playing the guitar in the kitchen and I started scribbling down some ideas and it came so easily and so naturally because it made me think a lot about the whole idea of what a folk song is, they are songs for the people and the songs are like the passing on of an oral tradition. Lots of the folk songs I sing are about people who have had an adventure or emigrated and you are carrying on that story and you’re getting to know the character and what they were like. And so, here we are with someone (Jeff) who is alive and well and thriving on the sea, and it all came so easy."

Cara admits she felt nervous performing the song for Jeff.

“I based the lyrics on just what he had told me, and the different aspects of his life that I felt a connection with. The minute we started to perform the song, I can’t describe it, there was like an energy in the room. It was just beautiful and you could see that he was really, really moved. We let him read the lyrics afterwards and you could see it was a very emotional time for him and me and Sam.

"It’s (the song) a nice thing for him to share with his friends and family and he said that we just hit the spot, we really just seemed to sum it all up and he was delighted.”

This other contributors and singer-songwriters taking part in Radio 2’s 21st Century Folk series are : Anna Heslop, the first female helm at RNLI Cullercoats’, who has had her bespoke song – called Anna – co-written and performed by Lady Nade and Boo Hewerdine.

Vicky Murphy from Cornwall, who was eight months pregnant when she was rescued from a flooding cave with her husband Marc, and their song - called Chapel Porth Beach – is written and performed by Martyn Joseph.

Emma Neave-Webb lives in Orkney and is a marine conservationist whose work and efforts to save a stranded whale has inspired the song – called Pilot Whales - written and performed by Kris Drever. Emma recently commented to the media when 70 whales were beached on the beach on Sanday, just seven days after the photo shoot for 21st Century Folk took place.

Rescued from the sea then becoming an RNLI lifeboat volunteer in London, Al Kassim’s song - called Brave Volunteers – has been co-written and performed by Seth Lakeman and Fisherman’s Friends.

Although Cara hadn’t written any songs about the sea up until this point, she added: “I’ve sang so many folk songs over the years about the sea and the crossing and what it means physically and spiritually and symbolically to cross the sea and also in my latest album, Coming Home, I talk about one of my favourite places in the world, which is Inishowen and growing up swimming in the Atlantic Ocean and how we spent the whole summer down round Moville and Greencastle.

“There is a therapy about being by the sea. I would love to end up living by the sea. I think it’s so good for the soul and maybe that’s why I was so drawn to this story of Jeff’s – I get it, I get why he turned his back on everything and found a great inner peace when he took to the sea.”

Away from briny matters, Cara’s latest album Coming Home, features entirely original material, including spoken poetry, it’s a serene, ethereal, and lyrical landscape in which to spend time, her staggeringly beautiful voice balm for weary souls.

She said: “The album has been so incredible in so many different ways. It was an album that I never expected to come to light. I wrote the pieces without the idea of anyone ever hearing them. They started off as poems and it all happened during lockdown. I was just writing for myself, it was almost like a therapy so I could feel connected to my family, because obviously I am here in Somerset and my mother is a lot older now, and I was missing everybody.

"I was thinking about who I am and what’s my place in the world and suddenly these pieces just started to appear. Everybody has got a story and I am very lucky that I’ve got someone like Sam who is able to put the lyrics into such beautiful musical pieces."

Cara and her band will be touring Coming Home again later this year and next, so look out for dates.

On a less happy note, last July as Cara walking with Sam in Frome when she was shot in the eyeball, eye socket and cheek by someone with a pellet gun in a passing car, but she is characteristically sanguine about the incident.

“It was a bit of a shock at the time, but I’m fine. When you go out of an evening you just don’t expect to be shot like that. Thankfully, just apart from some bruising, it didn’t do any damage at all and for that I’m really grateful. Those pellets can do quite a lot of damage and I’ve heard some terrible stories since that happened.”

Cara, who has three children, 17-year-old twins, Colm and Noah, and daughter, Elizabeth, 13, goes “ back and forward all the time” to Dungiven.

“I was there three weeks ago. The children are all off school now, so we’ll all head over in August at some point to see everyone. I think when you are the only one in a big family who has left home, you keep going back all the time because if you don’t you see too many changes, and I don’t like that.”

The family were on holiday in Egypt a couple of months ago, but so far no summer trips abroad.

“I think it’s nice to be at home as well and let everyone take a breather when school ends. You can keep going all the time in search of something, but I’ve realised when you get a bit older you just think, sometimes everybody just needs to be.”

Hear the songs, contributors and songwriters in 21st Century Folk 2024 on BBC Sounds from July 29 and on BBC Radio 2 on August 4, 8-10pm; and watch the five songs being performed in 21st Century Folk 2024 on BBC iPlayer from July 29.