Brit Folk

The Watersons, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Kate Rusby, Jake Bugg, The Unthanks

PREVIEW: 10 acts to see at Cambridge Folk Festival 2018 

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In exactly three weeks time, Cambridge Folk Festival returns for what will be its 54th consecutive year to the very familiar and most picturesque surroundings of Cherry Hinton Hall which lies just to the south-east of Cambridge city centre. It is one of the longest-running and most highly regarded folk festivals in the world and one look at this year’s tremendous line-up tells you all you need to know about its continuing success.Over the course of its three full days and four glorious nights, more than 100 acts will perform across Cambridge Folk’s five main stages and performance areas in what surely has to be one of the festival’s strongest bills in many a year. Looking forward to the event, God Is In The TV has chosen 10 acts that we are incredibly excited about seeing at this year’s festival [ . . . ]

Continue at GOD IS IN THE TV: PREVIEW: 10 acts to see at Cambridge Folk Festival 2018 | God Is In The TV

Ewan MacColl: An Introduction to Ewan MacColl 

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It is nearly 30 since Ewan MacColl died and other recording labels have stolen a march in the issuing of compilation CD’s in the meantime so this collection of his recordings for the Topic label is perhaps long overdue. It is, nevertheless, an interesting collection and a worthy snapshot of his folk singing career. Sadly, the Radio Ballads, perhaps some of MacColl’s most influential work, are absent from this collection – they were issued by Argo Records – but there is still much here that reminds us of his powerful influence in the early days of the folk revival, an influence which prompted one obituary to describe him as the godfather of the folk revival. The material also reflects what Peggy Seeger has described as ‘the policy’ from The Ballads and Blues Club (a title that says much about the material that was performed in those early days of the revival) which MacColl founded in 1953 with a few kindred spirits, namely when you’re onstage you sing folk songs from your own culture. There are songs here which reflect MacColl’s highly politicised upbringing in Lancashire to Scottish parents and the lives of what politicians are wont to describe these days as ‘ordinary working people’ (sic).

The album opens with an early recording – it dates from 1952 – of perhaps his most famous composition, Dirty Old Town, written in 1949, about Salford, the city of his birth. Even at this early stage in his recording career, his characteristic quavering voice is very much in evidence, helped along with a slightly bluesy guitar accompaniment [ . . . ]

Continue at FRUK: Ewan MacColl: An Introduction to Ewan MacColl | Folk Radio

The story behind “On The Shore” by Trees

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The English Folk Dance and Song Society headquarters in London, otherwise known as Cecil Sharp House, became a Mecca in the late 1960s to young musicians and singers. Different than those who flocked the place in previous decades, they were armed with electric guitars and smoked rolled cigarettes that smelled funny. Like their predecessors they mined the vast library of traditional folk songs that passed unrecorded through generations of singers for nuggets of melodies and harmonies to make their own.

Fairport Convention, mavericks of the style known as folk rock, did just that and in 1969 released two of the genre’s most celebrated albums, Unhalfbricking and Liege and Lief. The following year another band followed the same pattern and released two wonderful albums that put a new spin on traditional folk songs.

They were much less successful commercially and short lived as a result, but their albums survived the test of time very well. This is the story of Trees, who in 1970 released two albums, the second of which – On The Shore, is a true classic [ . . . ]

Continue at Music Aficionado : The story behind On The Shore, by Trees

Richard Thompson speaks at Folk Alliance 

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Richard Thompson at 2018 Folk Alliance

Richard Thompson and John Oates separately discussed what’s kept their careers sustainable.

Thompson said his guitar-playing technique also evolved with the times. By using alternate tunings and bending the strings and the neck, he used the electric six-stringed instrument to create a sound “closer to the human voice” or to a bagpipe, especially when interpreting or extending Scottish folk traditions on songs like “A Sailor’s Life, “Matty Groves” and “Meet on the Ledge.”

Regarding his practice in recent decades of alternating solo acoustic performances and recordings with those of an electric band, Thompson said he likes the intimate solo concert because it’s “sort of like being in church. It’s heart to heart.”

 

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