Writer and Folk Musician
Published in 1833 by Whitings, a street ballad seller who appears to have had limited success in the songs world, the “Pretty Girls of Brummagem” has the kind of title you might associate with bawdy singsongs. However, it’s quite the opposite, being something of a sweet, melancholy look at how various Brummie men of the […]
Here we go, then! Gearing up for my first big outing of 2020. I’ll be hitting all the places linked below, so make sure you come along and see me if you can. As always, Brummie songs aplenty, with a few tidbits and morsels thrown in. If you’re interested in seeing a very rare performance […]
I love traditional folk songs that are linked to specific place. For the last 18 months I’ve been playing songs from Birmingham, as it was where I spent my first 20 years. My following 12 years, however, were spent in Japan. My wife is Japanese. My kids are half Japanese. Japan is where I’d be […]
As promised, here’s some background to ‘The Trial of Bill Burn Under Martin’s Act’. Unfortunately, there’s not nearly as much info here as there was for ‘Holly Ho’ (click here to confront that juggernaut), or even as much as ‘Who Hung the Monkey?’. Still, it’s a great song from a great story, and it’s worth […]
Part of the fascination I have for traditional folk songs is the way in which they humble the singer. As a singer/songwriter, I spent years thinking about the ways in which a song represents the self – a snapshot or meditation on the writer in that moment. What grabbed me about traditional song was how much […]
Before we get started, you can read more about The Trial of Bill Burn Under Martin’s Act (the song itself) by clicking here. The Trial of Bill Burn Under Martin’s Act includes four tracks, one of which features the wonderful talents of my good friends Nick Hart (melodeon) and Mikey Kenney (fiddle). It was released as a digital-only recording on July 2nd, […]
On June 9th, I took the Midlife songs back to Brum. Performing at Kitchen Garden Cafe, I was delighted to see folk writer and presenter, Mike Davies, in the audience. He subsequently sent me the following review. Thanks, Mike! ‘Wilks is the sort of performer folk circles mean when they talk of the living tradition’ […]
‘Poverty Knock’ is nothing short of a classic. I first heard it while painstakingly trying to pick it out on a piano, struggling to read the music in Roy Palmer’s book of the same title (not that Palmer scored it badly – my sight-reading is woeful). It’s one of those “folk songs” that makes the […]
The second song on the digi-single I released this month is a weird little thing from Hartlepool. Who Hung The Monkey deals with the tale of the monkey (named Pug in this song) that washed up on a Hartlepool beach during the Napoleonic Wars and was hanged by the locals for being a French spy. An easy mistake […]
Yep, you read that title correctly. I remember sitting in the library at Cecil Sharp House with a friend of mine, back when I started researching Midlands folk songs, when he held up a book opened at this song and whispered, “This can’t mean what we think it means, can it?” Amazon.co.uk Widgets See more […]