Writer and Folk Musician
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 […]
In time for my two gigs at Sidmouth Folk Festival this summer, I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be putting out a digi-EP on July 26th. The Trial of Bill Burn Under Martin’s Act will include four tracks, one of which features the wonderful talents of my good friends Nick Hart (melodeon) and Mikey Kenney (fiddle). Subscribers to my mailing list […]
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?” Oh, It Was My […]
A quiet and unassuming man, it’s hard to reconcile the chap who sidles up to us with the boisterous youngster in those classic Top of the Pops re-runs. But let’s get one thing straight: Steve Diggle was there at the birth of punk. There are very few people who can honestly say they were at the forefront of a […]
Rachael McShane was the only female member of folk phenomenon, Bellowhead. You probably knew that. If you never saw Bellowhead live or on the TV, you’d have been able to find that much out from the internet. It’s probably why you’re here, reading this article. “Rachael McShane”, you’ll have thought. “She was in Bellowhead. I’ll […]
Here’s a great one for fans of traditional folk that love to see how songs change from place to place. Like many modern listeners, I first encountered ‘There Was an Old Man Came Over the Sea’ on Lankum‘s album, Cold Old Fire [2015] – a haunting, disturbing version featuring a spellbinding performance from singer, Radie Peat. […]