Brit Folk

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

James Elkington “Make It Up”

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On Wintres Woma, guitarist James Elkington reemerges at age 46 as an acoustic fingerpicking hero with a proper solo debut—an album that is at once beautiful, complex, and assured. Where plenty of guitarists have rediscovered themselves in the transition from electric bands to acoustic-minded singledom, such as Pelt’s Jack Rose and Cul de Sac’s Glenn Jones, Elkington stands apart among the wave of 21st century guitar soloists. This kind of reinvention has typically involved an embrace of John Fahey’s school of American Primitivism. But the British-born Elkington is neither American nor primitive. And while some of Elkington’s peers have evolved by jumping to singing and songwriting, he was already writing smart songs with his rock band the Zincs. Since that band dissolved a decade ago, Elkington has been an instrumental sideman for Steve Gunn, Jeff Tweedy, and Richard Thompson [ . . . ] More at – Pitchfork

The vibrant tradition of English folk song | The Spectator

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After hundreds of densely packed pages on folk song in England — a subject for which I share Steve Roud’s passion — I am none the wiser as to why folk song collectors assumed that a man singing in a pub for free drinks in, say, 1890 or 1920 was de facto a folk singer? A singer of folk songs, yes. A folk singer, maybe not. Such men were ‘professional’ singers of popular songs. They sung what people wished to hear, for recompense: a pint.

If a collector was lucky — and they often weren’t — he might hear on a particular evening the weal and woe and muck and mire of ‘auld ballets’, but they would be buried amid what the 19th-century ballad editor Francis James Child called ‘a veritable dunghill’ of broadside ballads and music-hall pastiches [ . . . ] More at: The vibrant tradition of English folk song | The Spectator

This Is The Kit: Tiny Desk Concert

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Effortless storytelling is at the heart of This Is The Kit. And the stories the band’s only permanent member, Kate Stables, weaves are profound but sweet with a tone that quietly reels you in.

“Bullet Proof” is the opening song at the Tiny Desk – and the opening track on her fourth album, Moonshine Freeze – a song that sees the darkest challenges in life as a way to begin again. “Everything we broke today/Needing breaking, anyway,” Kate Stables sings as she’s picking on her banjo with tides of percussion and bass flowing in. It takes two minutes before the perfectly punctuated guitar hits but completely worth the wait.

That gradual unfolding is the strength of these songs and this band. “Moonshine Freeze,” the last one they perform at the Tiny Desk, is the title track to the new album produced by John Parish. It’s a song taken from a children’s clapping game: Say “moonshine” three times, then freeze. But the song takes these images deeper, looking at patterns in the repetitive words, specifically patterns of three, which in Kate’s mind forms a triangle or a delta and it just gets deeper.

Lovers of Sufjan Stevens will appreciate the gentle ways Kate Stables can touch a heart with a song. And the band she plays with here is tightly in touch with how best to support these tunes.

Set List

  • “Bullet Proof”
  • “Hotter Colder”
  • “Moonshine Freeze”

MUSICIANS

Katherine Stables, Rosalind Leyden, Jamie Whitby-Coles, Noil Smith, Adam Schatz, Jonah Parzen-Johnson

CREDITS

Producers: Bob Boilen, Morgan Noelle Smith; Creative Director: Bob Boilen; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Morgan Noelle Smith, Bronson Arcuri, Alyse Young; Production Assistant: Salvatore Maicki; Photo: Jennifer Kerrigan/NPR

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Source: This Is The Kit: Tiny Desk Concert