Winston Marshall
Winston Aubrey Aladar deBalkan Marshall (born 20 December 1987) is a British musician. He is best known as the former banjoist and lead guitarist of the folk rock band Mumford & Sons. Prior to this he was in the bluegrass sleaze rap group Captain Kick and the Cowboy Ramblers. With Mumford & Sons, Marshall won multiple awards, including a Grammy and two Brit Awards. He has performed music with different supergroups and collaborated with Baaba Maal and HVOB. After leaving Mumford & Sons, Marshall started an interview podcast with The Spectator.
Not to be confused with Winton W. Marshall.
Winston Marshall
Country Winston
- Musician
- songwriter
- podcaster
2007–present
- Sir Paul Marshall (father)
- Penny Marshall (aunt)
- Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy (great-aunt)
- Banjo
- guitar
- bass guitar
- resonator guitar
- vocals
Early life and family[edit]
Winston Aubrey Aladar deBalkan Marshall was born in Wandsworth, London, on 20 December 1987,[1][a] to Sir Paul Marshall, a British tycoon who co-founded the Marshall Wace hedge fund and is the co-owner of GB News,[5] and Sabina de Balkany,[6] from a genteel European Jewish family.[7] He has a sister, singer/songwriter Giovanna.[8] His mother is French,[9] and his maternal grandmother was property tycoon Molly de Balkany,[10] one of the first female property developers in France;[11] Marshall's maternal great-uncle was the billionaire developer and collector Robert Zellinger de Balkany.[12][13] Through Robert's marriages, Marshall's great-aunts include Genevieve François-Poncet, daughter of André François-Poncet, and Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy.[14][15] Molly and Robert were the children of Hungarian-Romanian businessman Aladar Zellinger-Balkany,[16] with the family relocating to France after World War II;[15] they added the nobiliary particle "de" to the name upon arrival in France without actually being ennobled.[17] Marshall has said that thirteen members of his family "were murdered in [...] the Holocaust", and that his maternal grandmother was a survivor.[7][18] Marshall was educated at St Paul's School, an independent school in London.[19] In 2010, The Guardian wrote that "there's [nothing] inherently wrong with musicians being privately educated. It's just a bit grating when one of them insists on going by the name "Country" Winston Marshall".[20]
Marshall began playing guitar aged thirteen and started a ZZ Top cover group called Gobbler's Knob.[21][3] While the other members of Mumford & Sons were influenced by jazz, Marshall described the genre in 2013 as "the lowest form of art".[21] He was inspired to play banjo after seeing O Brother, Where Art Thou?, switching to folk music and wearing his hair in dreadlocks. Referring to his youth exploits, he saw himself as a trustafarian, and chose not to attend university in order to play music.[21] Marshall and future bandmate Marcus Mumford met as teenagers[22] at church, playing worship music at a church group together and in a worship band, with Mumford saying Marshall is "magnetic to be around".[21][23] Marshall, a multi-instrumentalist, has said that he chose to focus on banjo over guitar because there were fewer banjoists and so it was easier for him to get session jobs.[24]
Career[edit]
Early music[edit]
In the early 2000s, Marshall was in a bluegrass sleaze rap band[25] called Captain Kick and the Cowboy Ramblers, who had songs such as "Jesse the Gay" and "Country London".[26][27] Marshall was credited as "Country Winston Driftwood" and played the banjo, guitar, dobro, mandolin, and harmonica.[28] With Captain Kick and the Cowboy Ramblers,[25] Marshall ran a jam night "for teenagers who wanted to drink and play music"[2] at Bosun's Locker, a tiny music club beneath a pasty shop on the King's Road in Fulham.[29] The jam nights attracted a number of musicians who had an affinity for earthy acoustic music,[30] including Noah and the Whale and Laura Marling.[25]