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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I pack the last of the chairs away and crawl out from the cupboard under the Whitchurch Folk Club stage, where Eliza and Martin Carthy…
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There’s a growing sense that 2018 may be the Year of Lucy Farrell – the year that the perennial band-member and session musician steps out from the sidelights and takes centre stage. If that’s the case, it has been some time in coming. Lucy has been a very sturdy cog in the traditional folk machine for a good while, notably as a member of the Johnny Kearney & Lucy Farrell duo, The Emily Portman Trio, The Coracle Band, Eliza Carthy’s Wayward Band, and the award-winning Furrow Collective. Her viola, vocal and saw (yes, saw) skills are in great demand, which is probably why the highly-anticipated solo career has been on the back burner for so long.
Leave a CommentAhead of Normafest 2018, I chatted with Eliza Carthy about the festival’s history, the lineup for the coming event, the where to goes and what to knows. Along the way she chatted openly about her mother’s illness, the importance of the Bright Phoebus album, the contraband on sale in pubs around Robin Hood’s Bay, the new Gift Band album, a forthcoming and very exciting tour, and why Norma Waterson was once seen carrying a platypus on a board. Just a typical conversation with Eliza Carthy, then.
Comments closedWickham 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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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…
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There’s a sense among reviewers of Big Machine, Eliza Carthy’s new album on Topic Records, that this collection marks the artist’s coming of age moment. I’m not sure how she must feel about that herself. I imagine she’s lost count of the number of times people have said that of her latest albums over the years. From Anglicana through Dreams of Breathing Underwater and ever-onward, Eliza Carthy must’ve come of age more times than her years naturally allow.
Leave a CommentNormafest 2017 took place at Whitby Pavilion, January 6-8, 2017. Sadly, Norma Waterson was too ill to attend, as was guest star, Richard Hawley. However, those that did make it were in rude health, the excesses of New Year already a distant memory.
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On a visit to the Cecil Sharp House library earlier this month, I came across a rather wonderful book called The Sounds of History: Songs and Social Comment by Roy Palmer. I must have been in something of a naughty-minded disposition, as I quickly found my way to the chapter on ‘The Sexes’ – a discourse on intimacy as portrayed in traditional song – and was delighted to learn of a sadly forgotten pastime known as “night visiting”, a hobby so popular that it seems to have become a genre of its own.
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