As the singer-songwriter of Bristol Indie-folk group Goldfinches, I visited Tony Plato at Trobridge House (on the outskirts of Crediton) last summer to discuss the possibility of recording an album with him there, in the home he shares with Gina Williams. Tony is well-known locally, as a regular performer at the Moon Jazz Club in Crediton and also as the drummer of the CowPunk Americana band Yellabellies. As he was showing me around, I asked Tony where he’d acquired a very striking, large wooden Buddha which occupied a window-seat halfway up the stairs. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Tony had carved the Buddha himself! This happy discovery led to the Buddha becoming the centrepiece for the artwork of ‘Shanti Time’, Goldfinches’ debut album.

‘Shanti’ is the Sanskrit word for peace, a mood the album explores throughout many songs: it is also commonly found in the Eastern chant ‘om shanti’, used in Buddhist and Hindu prayers. As such, Tony’s Buddha seemed a perfect fit for the album cover and we photographed it from a low angle on the lawn in front of the house to exaggerate its size. But what about the Buddha itself? How was it made? I’ll leave it to Tony to pick up the story from here.

“It was cut from a fallen Monterey Pine in Morchard Bishop by a friend, Vaughan Gallavan, in about 1986. He followed the chalk lines I drew on the section of the tree. I carved it in the front garden of our cottage in Crediton using a small brass Buddha that I brought back from India in 1980 as a guide. This Buddha is naked which means technically it is portraying a Bodhisattva, as Buddhas are normally draped in a cloth. I would get friends to pose for me, so it has Gina’s sister Anne’s knees, Steve Clarke’s back, my hands, etc as I wanted it to be somewhat androgynous. I knew this sort of pine had strong radial rays and so got Vaughan to rough out the piece I used so as to try and make the rays radiate from where the heart would be. I give it a new coat of linseed oil every decade or so. 

I chose the cupped ‘Dhyana mudra’ position for the hands as it is the mudra for peaceful meditation. I gave the Buddha to my Mum who was converting a barn in Snodhill, Hereford, and it sat on a special shelf by her stairs for 35 years. She had been a practising Tibetan Buddhist for many years and would say her morning and evening prayers to it each day and I knew she would appreciate it the most. I knew it would be hard to part with it, so we held a Buddha farewell party and invited all our friends to say goodbye to it. It was a wild party in the end with many explosions! The Buddha came back to us here when Mum had to leave her house about 5 years ago and I think of her love for it and her prayers every time I pass it, as it lives half way up our stairs now. It was the first proper sculpture I made, apart from a whittled chinese dragon I made with a penknife. I have since mainly made things from copper or bronze.”

Goldfinches are thrilled to announce that Tony’s Buddha will ‘manifest’ at our album launch gig at Crediton Arts Centre on Friday 6th June. It should be a very special occasion, bringing together the band’s Bristolian songs with the ‘genius loci’ of where the album was recorded. Our opening act for the evening will be Crediton’s very own Triffles, who describe themselves as “suppliers of sundry songs silly, sarcastic and (sometimes) sincere”. We hope to see you there.

Tickets are available now from the Crediton Arts Centre website.