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Category: Folk music writing

Martin Simpson, ‘Trails & Tribulations’ – a review

The life of a folk musician in 2017 is something of a nomadic ritual. In search of audiences, you spend huge amounts of time traversing A-roads, B-roads, deserted night motorways lit in murky orange and country lanes lit by nothing at all. It’s time spent thinking, working things out, meandering down half forgotten memory lanes, wondering how many times you’ve known this road before or whether it’s a new one that just looks like all the rest of them. Many musicians find inspiration in the journey – others are driven round and round the bend. 

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Photos from Wickham Festival 2017

Wickham Festival is a decade and a half old, so you get the sense it ought to be better known. At the same time, you kinda hope it stays as intimate as currently is. Set on the southwesterly tip of the South Downs, it’s a real gem of a festival – a gorgeous location, an easy size to get around, a not-too-big-but-definitely-not-small audience, three well-sized stages… and performers that make you wonder just how the organisers can afford it all. Ours not to reason why, though. Ours but to get stuck in. 

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Rosie Hood on folk song collecting in the 21st Century

In the months that I’ve been interviewing folk singers for this blog, one thing that tends to come across perhaps more strongly than anything else is the sense of enthusiasm for the subject. It doesn’t seem as though traditional folk music, in England at least, is something you get into lightly. It becomes a bit of an obsession. You suddenly find yourself with a head full of stories and a library (you never had a library before!) full of obscure books and archaic biographers of people who were once as caught up in it all as you now find yourself.

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Marry Waterson on Bright Phoebus: an album of myth and magic for all the family

The great ‘lost’ folk album, Bright Phoebus, means a huge amount to a lot of people, most of whom assumed that it would remain lost given that its two central figures – Lal and Mike Waterson – have now passed away. But a springtime announcement changed all that when it was revealed that Lal’s daughter, the artist and singer Marry Waterson, had been working on a Bright Phoebus re-release in conjunction with David Suff and Domino Records. 

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Martin Simpson: The Trails and Tribulations interview

And so, here we are – my second Martin Simpson interview in the space of half a year. Is Grizzly Folk turning into a Martin Simpson fansite, you might wonder? The answer’s no. While I’m amazed as any other guitarist by what the man does, I think both of us would feel a little uneasy if I started documenting his every move.

In short, I love chatting with musicians whose work clearly consumes them, and not in an ego-driven way – people who (you get the sense) feel as though they’re in the service of music, rather than it being the other way around. As I hope comes across on the interview pages of this blog, I’m a music geek who loves talking to other music geeks, and I don’t think Martin would feel in any way slighted if I say that a conversation with him is a conversation with the ultimate music geek.

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Whitchurch, Hampshire and the songs of Henry Lee

One of my preoccupations in recent months has been the relaunch of the Whitchurch Folk Club (which you can find out more about here). I say ‘relaunch’ even though there never has been (to my knowledge) a club of that name. The local folk club that ran regularly throughout the folk revival of the 70s and closed 30 years ago was named after the pub in which it met – The Red House – and while we’re very keen to acknowledge the traditions that the organisers established (not least the amazing-sounding Whitchurch Folk Festival), it’s going to be very hard to do that without more volunteers. So, for now, the Whitchurch Folk Club will run as a series of folk performers (of some renown, I might add). If that goes well we’ll look into running sessions, singers’ nights, and – who knows? – maybe one day get the festival back on its feet. Fingers crossed. 

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Jack Rutter: Hills – an album review

Every folk fingerpicking guitarist longs to make a raw, naked, warts-and-all album at some point in their career – an album of single takes with zero overdubs that showcases their extraordinary talents, while at the same time worming their way into their listeners’ affections enough to entice them back again and again for the songs as much as the wizardry. It’s a tall order; very few manage it, and yet here comes young Jack Rutter with his debut solo collection, Hillsticking nearly all of the boxes at the first attempt. In fact, the only box he seems to have missed is ‘warts-and-all’, simply because there don’t seem to be any warts. As a 40-year-old fingerpicker myself, I have to say that this album is frustratingly good. 

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Bright Phoebus album: the very definition of a cult classic, reissued at last

Most fans assumed it couldn’t happen, but this morning Marry Waterson announced the re-release of a true classic: Bright Phoebus – Songs by Lal and Mike Waterson will see the light of day once again on August 4th (and can be pre-ordered in a variety of packages here).

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Bampton Morris Dancing, Whit Monday, 2017, in pictures

There’s a tendency for young(ish) people in the UK to scoff at Morris Dancing, dismissing it as a rather embarrassing pastime better left to the elderly and/or inebriated. Given this unfortunate presumption, it’s surprising to find that it continues to exist – which makes the longevity of the Bampton Morris tradition, and others like it, even more intriguing. 

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