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.…
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PREFER CDS? ORDER THE CD FROM BANDCAMP TODAY ‘Midlife’ is a collection of traditional and music hall songs and tunes from around Birmingham and the…
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Templecombe by The Grizzly Folk This train divides at Salisbury And heads on down to Templecombe Sometimes when I feel cut adrift I wonder if…
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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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It’s a big weekend for folk music, especially if you’re in London and you’ve got a thing about The Watersons. On Friday, The Gift Band (made up, in part, of Norma Waterson, Eliza Carthy and Martin Carthy), release their latest album, Anchor, on Topic Records (you can order it by clicking here), and that’s swiftly followed by a launch party on Sunday (it’s at the Union Chapel, and you’re all invited).
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This post is as much a tribute to one man as it is as history of ‘The Brave Dudley Boys’.
The more you delve deeper into traditional folk music in the UK, the more you encounter certain names – figures that may be little known outside the cannon, and sometimes no better known within it, but loom large over their own area of expertise. As soon as you start spending serious amounts of time with traditional and old songs from the Midlands, for example, you come up against the mighty Roy Palmer.
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I have a kind of modus operandi here on The Grizzly Folk blog. It was created to explore the world of traditional folk music and, as much as I’d like to review and chat to singer-songwriters who play non-trad folk, that’s not what this website is for. Usually, this works quite neatly. Occasionally, however, the lines get a bit blurred.
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If The Guardian is correct in its assertions, the Morris is making a comeback.
Maybe it’s because yesterday was Mayday and, for a few brief hours at least, also quite sunny, but a good number of people on the folkie social media channels (myself very much included) were getting quite giddy about the sudden revived interest. However, as I sat in a local cafe this morning and watched the weather threatening this weekend’s maypole celebrations, the cynic in me reappeared. The stereo pumped out a thumping, electronic Spotify playlist, and I wondered – as so many must have before me – quite where Morris dancing fits into 2018.
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