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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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‘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…
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Who Hung The Monkey deals with the tale of the Hartlepool monkey (named Pug in this song) that washed up on a beach during the Napoleonic Wars and…
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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…
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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 have a read of that.”
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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. Maybe, like me, you made the assumption that it was an Irish song, but the briefest of glances beneath the bonnet shows that it comes from nowhere and everywhere. We’ll come to that later.
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