Category: Writing
-
Sam Sweeney: “We don’t have the budget for leaping in Eliza’s band”
It took yonks to track Sam Sweeney down, but only a few minutes to realise why that was. Just take a look at this interview. The man is involved in a million things at once and incredibly passionate about doing them without half-measures. He joined Bellowhead on the cusp of adulthood, and he seems to…
-
Ye Mariners All (A Jug of This) | Folk from the Attic
Forgive me if it feels like I’m just doing the folk Greatest Hits here, but certain songs I just can’t resist. This week’s ‘Folk from the Attic’ is ‘Ye Mariners All’, a song I first heard when I was at university in the mid-90s, back when I was the only person on campus with a…
-
Paul Sartin on Bellowhead, Faustus, The Transports and a life in folk music
This week’s folk conversation is sprawling to say the least, but that’s to be expected when your chatting with a man who has been a fiddle and oboe player in Bellowhead, a musicologist, one of the blokes in Faustus, one of two Pauls in Belshazzar’s Feast and the musical director of the triumphant recent production…
-
Sandgate Dandling Song (or the Liverpool Lullaby) | Folk from the Attic
If Martin Simpson is to be believed (and I’ve no reason not to), one of the definitions of a folk song (or a traditional folk song, at least) is that nobody can remember who wrote it. If that’s the case then this article is not about a folk song at all. It’s about a song by…
-
Emily Portman on studying folk music at university, collecting supernatural folk songs and how to be a touring mum
A folk music conversation with Emily Portman is a many splendored thing. A prominent part of the contemporary scene as an in-demand performer and songwriter, she is also deeply fascinated by the academic side of the tradition – willing and eager to talk at length on everything from the lives of the collectors to the themes…
-
The Bedmaking | Folk from the Attic
As Ian Carter of Stick in the Wheel said in our interview last week, in the hands of Martin Carthy ‘The Bedmaking’ is one of those songs that makes guitarists sit up and wonder what the hell he’s doing. You’ll commonly read of his influence, but his prowess really shows through whenever he sits down to…
-
Stick in the Wheel on their new field recordings, gentrification and why there won’t be a folk revival anytime soon
Stick in the Wheel barely need an introduction these days. On the folk scene, they’re as known for their stark and direct debut album as they are for their similarly unflinching performances, and their leap from local pubs to festival stages has been swift. Meeting singer Nicola Kearey and guitarist Ian Carter in the basement cafe…
-
Eliza Carthy – The Mega Interview
I interviewed Eliza Carthy three times over the course of two years, and I’m sure I’ll do so again. What appears on this page is an amalgamation of the first three interviews, put together in one place so that you don’t have to keep pinging about and looking on different pages. Eliza Carthy, the Mega…
-
From Lynched to Lankum: Ian Lynch on folk song collecting and the ‘pure drop’
Lynched or Lankum; Lankum or Lynched? Rumours have been doing the rounds for some time that the acclaimed Dublin four-piece would be changing their name, and sure enough, in the days following this interview, they published the following statement, confirming that from here on in, Lankum they would be: