Podcast appearances and mentions of Eliza Carthy

For those who haven't heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a two-episode look at the song “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, and the intertwining careers of Joe Boyd, Sandy Denny, and Richard Thompson. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-one-minute bonus episode available, on Judy Collins’ version of this song. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by editing, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum For about an hour this was uploaded with the wrong Elton John clip in place of “Saturday Sun”. This has now been fixed. Resources Because of the increasing problems with Mixcloud’s restrictions, I have decided to start sharing streaming playlists of the songs used in episodes instead of Mixcloud ones. This Tunemymusic link will let you listen to the playlist I created on your streaming platform of choice — however please note that not all the songs excerpted are currently available on streaming. The songs missing from the Tidal version are “Shanten Bells” by the Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” by A.L. Lloyd, two by Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, three by Elton John & Linda Peters, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow” by Sandy Denny and “You Never Know” by Charlie Drake, but the other fifty-nine are there. Other songs may be missing from other services. The main books I used on Fairport Convention as a whole were Patrick Humphries' Meet On The Ledge, Clinton Heylin's What We Did Instead of Holidays, and Kevan Furbank's Fairport Convention on Track. Rob Young's Electric Eden is the most important book on the British folk-rock movement. Information on Richard Thompson comes from Patrick Humphries' Richard Thompson: Strange Affair and Thompson's own autobiography Beeswing.  Information on Sandy Denny comes from Clinton Heylin's No More Sad Refrains and Mick Houghton's I've Always Kept a Unicorn. I also used Joe Boyd's autobiography White Bicycles and Chris Blackwell's The Islander.  And this three-CD set is the best introduction to Fairport's music currently in print. Transcript Before we begin, this episode contains reference to alcohol and cocaine abuse and medical neglect leading to death. It also starts with some discussion of the fatal car accident that ended last episode. There’s also some mention of child neglect and spousal violence. If that’s likely to upset you, you might want to skip this episode or read the transcript. One of the inspirations for this podcast when I started it back in 2018 was a project by Richard Thompson, which appears (like many things in Thompson’s life) to have started out of sheer bloody-mindedness. In 1999 Playboy magazine asked various people to list their “songs of the Millennium”, and most of them, understanding the brief, chose a handful of songs from the latter half of the twentieth century. But Thompson determined that he was going to list his favourite songs *of the millennium*. He didn’t quite manage that, but he did cover seven hundred and forty years, and when Playboy chose not to publish it, he decided to turn it into a touring show, in which he covered all his favourite songs from “Sumer Is Icumen In” from 1260: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Sumer is Icumen In”] Through numerous traditional folk songs, union songs like “Blackleg Miner”, pieces by early-modern composers, Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs, and songs by the Beatles, the Ink Spots, the Kinks, and the Who, all the way to “Oops! I Did It Again”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Oops! I Did it Again”] And to finish the show, and to show how all this music actually ties together, he would play what he described as a “medieval tune from Brittany”, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”] We have said many times in this podcast that there is no first anything, but there’s a reason that Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention’s third album of 1969, and the album other than Unhalfbricking on which their reputation largely rests, was advertised with the slogan “The first (literally) British folk rock album ever”. Folk-rock, as the term had come to be known, and as it is still usually used today, had very little to do with traditional folk music. Rather, the records of bands like The Byrds or Simon and Garfunkel were essentially taking the sounds of British beat groups of the early sixties, particularly the Searchers, and applying those sounds to material by contemporary singer-songwriters. People like Paul Simon and Bob Dylan had come up through folk clubs, and their songs were called folk music because of that, but they weren’t what folk music had meant up to that point — songs that had been collected after being handed down through the folk process, changed by each individual singer, with no single identifiable author. They were authored songs by very idiosyncratic writers. But over their last few albums, Fairport Convention had done one or two tracks per album that weren’t like that, that were instead recordings of traditional folk songs, but arranged with rock instrumentation. They were not necessarily the first band to try traditional folk music with electric instruments — around the same time that Fairport started experimenting with the idea, so did an Irish band named Sweeney’s Men, who brought in a young electric guitarist named Henry McCullough briefly. But they do seem to have been the first to have fully embraced the idea. They had done so to an extent with “A Sailor’s Life” on Unhalfbricking, but now they were going to go much further: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves” (from about 4:30)] There had been some doubt as to whether Fairport Convention would even continue to exist — by the time Unhalfbricking, their second album of the year, was released, they had been through the terrible car accident that had killed Martin Lamble, the band’s drummer, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson’s girlfriend. Most of the rest of the band had been seriously injured, and they had made a conscious decision not to discuss the future of the band until they were all out of hospital. Ashley Hutchings was hospitalised the longest, and Simon Nicol, Richard Thompson, and Sandy Denny, the other three surviving members of the band, flew over to LA with their producer and manager, Joe Boyd, to recuperate there and get to know the American music scene. When they came back, the group all met up in the flat belonging to Denny’s boyfriend Trevor Lucas, and decided that they were going to continue the band. They made a few decisions then — they needed a new drummer, and as well as a drummer they wanted to get in Dave Swarbrick. Swarbrick had played violin on several tracks on Unhalfbricking as a session player, and they had all been thrilled to work with him. Swarbrick was one of the most experienced musicians on the British folk circuit. He had started out in the fifties playing guitar with Beryl Marriott’s Ceilidh Band before switching to fiddle, and in 1963, long before Fairport had formed, he had already appeared on TV with the Ian Campbell Folk Group, led by Ian Campbell, the father of Ali and Robin Campbell, later of UB40: [Excerpt: The Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Shanten Bells (medley on Hullaballoo!)”] He’d sung with Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd: [Excerpt: A.L. Lloyd, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” ] And he’d formed his hugely successful duo with Martin Carthy, releasing records like “Byker Hill” which are often considered among the best British folk music of all time: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, “Byker Hill”] By the time Fairport had invited him to play on Unhalfbricking, Swarbrick had already performed on twenty albums as a core band member, plus dozens more EPs, singles, and odd tracks on compilations. They had no reason to think they could actually get him to join their band. But they had three advantages. The first was that Swarbrick was sick of the traditional folk scene at the time, saying later “I didn’t like seven-eighths of the people involved in it, and it was extremely opportune to leave. I was suddenly presented with the possibilities of exploring the dramatic content of the songs to the full.” The second was that he was hugely excited to be playing with Richard Thompson, who was one of the most innovative guitarists of his generation, and Martin Carthy remembers him raving about Thompson after their initial sessions. (Carthy himself was and is no slouch on the guitar of course, and there was even talk of getting him to join the band at this point, though they decided against it — much to the relief of rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol, who is a perfectly fine player himself but didn’t want to be outclassed by *two* of the best guitarists in Britain at the same time). And the third was that Joe Boyd told him that Fairport were doing so well — they had a single just about to hit the charts with “Si Tu Dois Partir” — that he would only have to play a dozen gigs with Fairport in order to retire. As it turned out, Swarbrick would play with the group for a decade, and would never retire — I saw him on his last tour in 2015, only eight months before he died. The drummer the group picked was also a far more experienced musician than any of the rest, though in a very different genre. Dave Mattacks had no knowledge at all of the kind of music they played, having previously been a player in dance bands. When asked by Hutchings if he wanted to join the band, Mattacks’ response was “I don’t know anything about the music. I don’t understand it… I can’t tell one tune from another, they all sound the same… but if you want me to join the group, fine, because I really like it. I’m enjoying myself musically.” Mattacks brought a new level of professionalism to the band, thanks to his different background. Nicol said of him later “He was dilligent, clean, used to taking three white shirts to a gig… The application he could bring to his playing was amazing. With us, you only played well when you were feeling well.” This distinction applied to his playing as well. Nicol would later describe the difference between Mattacks’ drumming and Lamble’s by saying “Martin’s strength was as an imaginative drummer. DM came in with a strongly developed sense of rhythm, through keeping a big band of drunken saxophone players in order. A great time-keeper.” With this new line-up and a new sense of purpose, the group did as many of their contemporaries were doing and “got their heads together in the country”. Joe Boyd rented the group a mansion, Farley House, in Farley Chamberlayne, Hampshire, and they stayed there together for three months. At the start, the group seem to have thought that they were going to make another record like Unhalfbricking, with some originals, some songs by American songwriters, and a few traditional songs. Even after their stay in Farley Chamberlayne, in fact, they recorded a few of the American songs they’d rehearsed at the start of the process, Richard Farina’s “Quiet Joys of Brotherhood” and Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn’s “Ballad of Easy Rider”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Ballad of Easy Rider”] Indeed, the whole idea of “getting our heads together in the country” (as the cliche quickly became in the late sixties as half of the bands in Britain went through much the same kind of process as Fairport were doing — but usually for reasons more to do with drug burnout or trend following than recovering from serious life-changing trauma) seems to have been inspired by Bob Dylan and the Band getting together in Big Pink. But very quickly they decided to follow the lead of Ashley Hutchings, who had had something of a Damascene conversion to the cause of traditional English folk music. They were listening mostly to Music From Big Pink by the Band, and to the first album by Sweeney’s Men: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “The Handsome Cabin Boy”] And they decided that they were going to make something that was as English as those records were North American and Irish (though in the event there were also a few Scottish songs included on the record). Hutchings in particular was becoming something of a scholar of traditional music, regularly visiting Cecil Sharp House and having long conversations with A.L. Lloyd, discovering versions of different traditional songs he’d never encountered before. This was both amusing and bemusing Sandy Denny, who had joined a rock group in part to get away from traditional music; but she was comfortable singing the material, and knew a lot of it and could make a lot of suggestions herself. Swarbrick obviously knew the repertoire intimately, and Nicol was amenable, while Mattacks was utterly clueless about the folk tradition at this point but knew this was the music he wanted to make. Thompson knew very little about traditional music, and of all the band members except Denny he was the one who has shown the least interest in the genre in his subsequent career — but as we heard at the beginning, showing the least interest in the genre is a relative thing, and while Thompson was not hugely familiar with the genre, he *was* able to work with it, and was also more than capable of writing songs that fit in with the genre. Of the eleven songs on the album, which was titled Liege and Lief (which means, roughly, Lord and Loyalty), there were no cover versions of singer-songwriters. Eight were traditional songs, and three were originals, all written in the style of traditional songs. The album opened with “Come All Ye”, an introduction written by Denny and Hutchings (the only time the two would ever write together): [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Come All Ye”] The other two originals were songs where Thompson had written new lyrics to traditional melodies. On “Crazy Man Michael”, Swarbrick had said to Thompson that the tune to which he had set his new words was weaker than the lyrics, to which Thompson had replied that if Swarbrick felt that way he should feel free to write a new melody. He did, and it became the first of the small number of Thompson/Swarbrick collaborations: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Crazy Man Michael”] Thompson and Swarbrick would become a brief songwriting team, but as much as anything else it was down to proximity — the two respected each other as musicians, but never got on very well. In 1981 Swarbrick would say “Richard and I never got on in the early days of FC… we thought we did, but we never did. We composed some bloody good songs together, but it was purely on a basis of “you write that and I’ll write this, and we’ll put it together.” But we never sat down and had real good chats.” The third original on the album, and by far the most affecting, is another song where Thompson put lyrics to a traditional tune. In this case he thought he was putting the lyrics to the tune of “Willie O'Winsbury”, but he was basing it on a recording by Sweeney’s Men. The problem was that Sweeney’s Men had accidentally sung the lyrics of “Willie O'Winsbury'” to the tune of a totally different song, “Fause Foodrage”: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “Willie O’Winsbury”] Thompson took that melody, and set to it lyrics about loss and separation. Thompson has never been one to discuss the meanings of his lyrics in any great detail, and in the case of this one has said “I really don't know what it means. This song came out of a dream, and I pretty much wrote it as I dreamt it (it was the sixties), and didn't spend very long analyzing it. So interpret as you wish – or replace with your own lines.” But in the context of the traffic accident that had killed his tailor girlfriend and a bandmate, and injured most of his other bandmates, the lyrics about lonely travellers, the winding road, bruised and beaten sons, saying goodbye, and never cutting cloth, seem fairly self-explanatory: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Farewell, Farewell”] The rest of the album, though, was taken up by traditional tunes. There was a long medley of four different fiddle reels; a version of “Reynardine” (a song about a seductive man — or is he a fox? Or perhaps both — which had been recorded by Swarbrick and Carthy on their most recent album); a 19th century song about a deserter saved from the firing squad by Prince Albert; and a long take on “Tam Lin”, one of the most famous pieces in the Scottish folk music canon, a song that has been adapted in different ways by everyone from the experimental noise band Current 93 to the dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah to the comics writer Grant Morrison: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Tam Lin”] And “Matty Groves”, a song about a man killing his cheating wife and her lover, which actually has a surprisingly similar story to that of “1921” from another great concept album from that year, the Who’s Tommy. “Matty Groves” became an excuse for long solos and shows of instrumental virtuosity: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves”] The album was recorded in September 1969, after their return from their break in the country and a triumphal performance at the Royal Festival Hall, headlining over fellow Witchseason artists John and Beverly Martyn and Nick Drake. It became a classic of the traditional folk genre — arguably *the* classic of the traditional folk genre. In 2007 BBC Radio 2’s Folk Music Awards gave it an award for most influential folk album of all time, and while such things are hard to measure, I doubt there’s anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of British folk and folk-rock music who would not at least consider that a reasonable claim. But once again, by the time the album came out in November, the band had changed lineups yet again. There was a fundamental split in the band – on one side were Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson, whose stance was, roughly, that Liege and Lief was a great experiment and a fun thing to do once, but really the band had two first-rate songwriters in themselves, and that they should be concentrating on their own new material, not doing these old songs, good as they were. They wanted to take the form of the traditional songs and use that form for new material — they wanted to make British folk-rock, but with the emphasis on the rock side of things. Hutchings, on the other hand, was equally sure that he wanted to make traditional music and go further down the rabbit hole of antiquity. With the zeal of the convert he had gone in a couple of years from being the leader of a band who were labelled “the British Jefferson Airplane” to becoming a serious scholar of traditional folk music. Denny was tired of touring, as well — she wanted to spend more time at home with Trevor Lucas, who was sleeping with other women when she was away and making her insecure. When the time came for the group to go on a tour of Denmark, Denny decided she couldn’t make it, and Hutchings was jubilant — he decided he was going to get A.L. Lloyd into the band in her place and become a *real* folk group. Then Denny reconsidered, and Hutchings was crushed. He realised that while he had always been the leader, he wasn’t going to be able to lead the band any further in the traditionalist direction, and quit the group — but not before he was delegated by the other band members to fire Denny. Until the publication of Richard Thompson’s autobiography in 2022, every book on the group or its members said that Denny quit the band again, which was presumably a polite fiction that the band agreed, but according to Thompson “Before we flew home, we decided to fire Sandy. I don't remember who asked her to leave – it was probably Ashley, who usually did the dirty work. She was reportedly shocked that we would take that step. She may have been fragile beneath the confident facade, but she still knew her worth.” Thompson goes on to explain that the reasons for kicking her out were that “I suppose we felt that in her mind she had already left” and that “We were probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, though there wasn't a name for it back then.” They had considered inviting Trevor Lucas to join the band to make Denny more comfortable, but came to the (probably correct) conclusion that while he was someone they got on well with personally, he would be another big ego in a band that already had several, and that being around Denny and Lucas’ volatile relationship would, in Thompson’s phrasing, “have not always given one a feeling of peace and stability.” Hutchings originally decided he was going to join Sweeney’s Men, but that group were falling apart, and their first rehearsal with Hutchings would also be their last as a group, with only Hutchings and guitarist and mandolin player Terry Woods left in the band. They added Woods’ wife Gay, and another couple, Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, and formed a group called Steeleye Span, a name given them by Martin Carthy. That group, like Fairport, went to “get their heads together in the country” for three months and recorded an album of electric versions of traditional songs, Hark the Village Wait, on which Mattacks and another drummer, Gerry Conway, guested as Steeleye Span didn’t at the time have their own drummer: [Excerpt: Steeleye Span, “Blackleg Miner”] Steeleye Span would go on to have a moderately successful chart career in the seventies, but by that time most of the original lineup, including Hutchings, had left — Hutchings stayed with them for a few albums, then went on to form the first of a series of bands, all called the Albion Band or variations on that name, which continue to this day. And this is something that needs to be pointed out at this point — it is impossible to follow every single individual in this narrative as they move between bands. There is enough material in the history of the British folk-rock scene that someone could do a 500 Songs-style podcast just on that, and every time someone left Fairport, or Steeleye Span, or the Albion Band, or Matthews’ Southern Comfort, or any of the other bands we have mentioned or will mention, they would go off and form another band which would then fission, and some of its members would often join one of those other bands. There was a point in the mid-1970s where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport Convention while Fairport Convention had none. So just in order to keep the narrative anything like wieldy, I’m going to keep the narrative concentrated on the two figures from Fairport — Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson — whose work outside the group has had the most influence on the wider world of rock music more broadly, and only deal with the other members when, as they often did, their careers intersected with those two. That doesn’t mean the other members are not themselves hugely important musicians, just that their importance has been primarily to the folk side of the folk-rock genre, and so somewhat outside the scope of this podcast. While Hutchings decided to form a band that would allow him to go deeper and deeper into traditional folk music, Sandy Denny’s next venture was rather different. For a long time she had been writing far more songs than she had ever played for her bandmates, like “Nothing More”, a song that many have suggested is about Thompson: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Nothing More”] When Joe Boyd heard that Denny was leaving Fairport Convention, he was at first elated. Fairport’s records were being distributed by A&M in the US at that point, but Island Records was in the process of opening up a new US subsidiary which would then release all future Fairport product — *but*, as far as A&M were concerned, Sandy Denny *was* Fairport Convention. They were only interested in her. Boyd, on the other hand, loved Denny’s work intensely, but from his point of view *Richard Thompson* was Fairport Convention. If he could get Denny signed directly to A&M as a solo artist before Island started its US operations, Witchseason could get a huge advance on her first solo record, while Fairport could continue making records for Island — he’d have two lucrative acts, on different labels. Boyd went over and spoke to A&M and got an agreement in principle that they would give Denny a forty-thousand-dollar advance on her first solo album — twice what they were paying for Fairport albums. The problem was that Denny didn’t want to be a solo act. She wanted to be the lead singer of a band. She gave many reasons for this — the one she gave to many journalists was that she had seen a Judy Collins show and been impressed, but noticed that Collins’ band were definitely a “backing group”, and as she put it “But that's all they were – a backing group. I suddenly thought, If you're playing together on a stage you might as well be TOGETHER.” Most other people in her life, though, say that the main reason for her wanting to be in a band was her desire to be with her boyfriend, Trevor Lucas. Partly this was due to a genuine desire to spend more time with someone with whom she was very much in love, partly it was a fear that he would cheat on her if she was away from him for long periods of time, and part of it seems to have been Lucas’ dislike of being *too* overshadowed by his talented girlfriend — he didn’t mind acknowledging that she was a major talent, but he wanted to be thought of as at least a minor one. So instead of going solo, Denny formed Fotheringay, named after the song she had written for Fairport. This new band consisted at first of Denny on vocals and occasional piano, Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Lucas’ old Eclection bandmate Gerry Conway on drums. For a lead guitarist, they asked Richard Thompson who the best guitarist in Britain was, and he told them Albert Lee. Lee in turn brought in bass player Pat Donaldson, but this lineup of the band barely survived a fortnight. Lee *was* arguably the best guitarist in Britain, certainly a reasonable candidate if you could ever have a singular best (as indeed was Thompson himself), but he was the best *country* guitarist in Britain, and his style simply didn’t fit with Fotheringay’s folk-influenced songs. He was replaced by American guitarist Jerry Donahue, who was not anything like as proficient as Lee, but who was still very good, and fit the band’s style much better. The new group rehearsed together for a few weeks, did a quick tour, and then went into the recording studio to record their debut, self-titled, album. Joe Boyd produced the album, but admitted himself that he only paid attention to those songs he considered worthwhile — the album contained one song by Lucas, “The Ballad of Ned Kelly”, and two cover versions of American singer-songwriter material with Lucas singing lead. But everyone knew that the songs that actually *mattered* were Sandy Denny’s, and Boyd was far more interested in them, particularly the songs “The Sea” and “The Pond and the Stream”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “The Pond and the Stream”] Fotheringay almost immediately hit financial problems, though. While other Witchseason acts were used to touring on the cheap, all packed together in the back of a Transit van with inexpensive equipment, Trevor Lucas had ambitions of being a rock star and wanted to put together a touring production to match, with expensive transport and equipment, including a speaker system that got nicknamed “Stonehenge” — but at the same time, Denny was unhappy being on the road, and didn’t play many gigs. As well as the band itself, the Fotheringay album also featured backing vocals from a couple of other people, including Denny’s friend Linda Peters. Peters was another singer from the folk clubs, and a good one, though less well-known than Denny — at this point she had only released a couple of singles, and those singles seemed to have been as much as anything else released as a novelty. The first of those, a version of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” had been released as by “Paul McNeill and Linda Peters”: [Excerpt: Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”] But their second single, a version of John D. Loudermilk’s “You’re Taking My Bag”, was released on the tiny Page One label, owned by Larry Page, and was released under the name “Paul and Linda”, clearly with the intent of confusing particularly gullible members of the record-buying public into thinking this was the McCartneys: [Excerpt: Paul and Linda, “You’re Taking My Bag”] Peters was though more financially successful than almost anyone else in this story, as she was making a great deal of money as a session singer. She actually did another session involving most of Fotheringay around this time. Witchseason had a number of excellent songwriters on its roster, and had had some success getting covers by people like Judy Collins, but Joe Boyd thought that they might possibly do better at getting cover versions if they were performed in less idiosyncratic arrangements. Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway went into the studio to record backing tracks, and vocals were added by Peters and another session singer, who according to some sources also provided piano. They cut songs by Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “You Get Brighter”] Ed Carter, formerly of The New Nadir but by this time firmly ensconced in the Beach Boys’ touring band where he would remain for the next quarter-century: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “I Don’t Mind”] John and Beverly Martyn, and Nick Drake: [Excerpt: Elton John, “Saturday Sun”] There are different lineups of musicians credited for those sessions in different sources, but I tend to believe that it’s mostly Fotheringay for the simple reason that Donahue says it was him, Donaldson and Conway who talked Lucas and Denny into the mistake that destroyed Fotheringay because of these sessions. Fotheringay were in financial trouble already, spending far more money than they were bringing in, but their album made the top twenty and they were getting respect both from critics and from the public — in September, Sandy Denny was voted best British female singer by the readers of Melody Maker in their annual poll, which led to shocked headlines in the tabloids about how this “unknown” could have beaten such big names as Dusty Springfield and Cilla Black. Only a couple of weeks after that, they were due to headline at the Albert Hall. It should have been a triumph. But Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway had asked that singing pianist to be their support act. As Donahue said later “That was a terrible miscast. It was our fault. He asked if [he] could do it. Actually Pat, Gerry and I had to talk Sandy and Trevor into [it]… We'd done these demos and the way he was playing – he was a wonderful piano player – he was sensitive enough. We knew very little about his stage-show. We thought he'd be a really good opener for us.” Unfortunately, Elton John was rather *too* good. As Donahue continued “we had no idea what he had in mind, that he was going to do the most incredible rock & roll show ever. He pretty much blew us off the stage before we even got on the stage.” To make matters worse, Fotheringay’s set, which was mostly comprised of new material, was underrehearsed and sloppy, and from that point on no matter what they did people were counting the hours until the band split up. They struggled along for a while though, and started working on a second record, with Boyd again producing, though as Boyd later said “I probably shouldn't have been producing the record. My lack of respect for the group was clear, and couldn't have helped the atmosphere. We'd put out a record that had sold disappointingly, A&M was unhappy. Sandy's tracks on the first record are among the best things she ever did – the rest of it, who cares? And the artwork, Trevor's sister, was terrible. It would have been one thing if I'd been unhappy with it and it sold, and the group was working all the time, making money, but that wasn't the case … I knew what Sandy was capable of, and it was very upsetting to me.” The record would not be released for thirty-eight years: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Wild Mountain Thyme”] Witchseason was going badly into debt. Given all the fissioning of bands that we’ve already been talking about, Boyd had been stretched thin — he produced sixteen albums in 1970, and almost all of them lost money for the company. And he was getting more and more disillusioned with the people he was producing. He loved Beverly Martyn’s work, but had little time for her abusive husband John, who was dominating her recording and life more and more and would soon become a solo artist while making her stay at home (and stealing her ideas without giving her songwriting credit). The Incredible String Band were great, but they had recently converted to Scientology, which Boyd found annoying, and while he was working with all sorts of exciting artists like Vashti Bunyan and Nico, he was finding himself less and less important to the artists he mentored. Fairport Convention were a good example of this. After Denny and Hutchings had left the group, they’d decided to carry on as an electric folk group, performing an equal mix of originals by the Swarbrick and Thompson songwriting team and arrangements of traditional songs. The group were now far enough away from the “British Jefferson Airplane” label that they decided they didn’t need a female vocalist — and more realistically, while they’d been able to replace Judy Dyble, nobody was going to replace Sandy Denny. Though it’s rather surprising when one considers Thompson’s subsequent career that nobody seems to have thought of bringing in Denny’s friend Linda Peters, who was dating Joe Boyd at the time (as Denny had been before she met Lucas) as Denny’s replacement. Instead, they decided that Swarbrick and Thompson were going to share the vocals between them. They did, though, need a bass player to replace Hutchings. Swarbrick wanted to bring in Dave Pegg, with whom he had played in the Ian Campbell Folk Group, but the other band members initially thought the idea was a bad one. At the time, while they respected Swarbrick as a musician, they didn’t think he fully understood rock and roll yet, and they thought the idea of getting in a folkie who had played double bass rather than an electric rock bassist ridiculous. But they auditioned him to mollify Swarbrick, and found that he was exactly what they needed. As Joe Boyd later said “All those bass lines were great, Ashley invented them all, but he never could play them that well. He thought of them, but he was technically not a terrific bass player. He was a very inventive, melodic, bass player, but not a very powerful one technically. But having had the part explained to him once, Pegg was playing it better than Ashley had ever played it… In some rock bands, I think, ultimately, the bands that sound great, you can generally trace it to the bass player… it was at that point they became a great band, when they had Pegg.” The new lineup of Fairport decided to move in together, and found a former pub called the Angel, into which all the band members moved, along with their partners and children (Thompson was the only one who was single at this point) and their roadies. The group lived together quite happily, and one gets the impression that this was the period when they were most comfortable with each other, even though by this point they were a disparate group with disparate tastes, in music as in everything else. Several people have said that the only music all the band members could agree they liked at this point was the first two albums by The Band. With the departure of Hutchings from the band, Swarbrick and Thompson, as the strongest personalities and soloists, became in effect the joint leaders of the group, and they became collaborators as songwriters, trying to write new songs that were inspired by traditional music. Thompson described the process as “let’s take one line of this reel and slow it down and move it up a minor third and see what that does to it; let’s take one line of this ballad and make a whole song out of it. Chopping up the tradition to find new things to do… like a collage.” Generally speaking, Swarbrick and Thompson would sit by the fire and Swarbrick would play a melody he’d been working on, the two would work on it for a while, and Thompson would then go away and write the lyrics. This is how the two came up with songs like the nine-minute “Sloth”, a highlight of the next album, Full House, and one that would remain in Fairport’s live set for much of their career: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth”] “Sloth” was titled that way because Thompson and Swarbrick were working on two tunes, a slow one and a fast one, and they jokingly named them “Sloth” and “Fasth”, but the latter got renamed to “Walk Awhile”, while “Sloth” kept its working title. But by this point, Boyd and Thompson were having a lot of conflict in the studio. Boyd was never the most technical of producers — he was one of those producers whose job is to gently guide the artists in the studio and create a space for the music to flourish, rather than the Joe Meek type with an intimate technical knowledge of the studio — and as the artists he was working with gained confidence in their own work they felt they had less and less need of him. During the making of the Full House album, Thompson and Boyd, according to Boyd, clashed on everything — every time Boyd thought Thompson had done a good solo, Thompson would say to erase it and let him have another go, while every time Boyd thought Thompson could do better, Thompson would say that was the take to keep. One of their biggest clashes was over Thompson’s song “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”, which was originally intended for release on the album, and is included in current reissues of it: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”] Thompson had written that song inspired by what he thought was the unjust treatment of Alex Bramham, the driver in Fairport’s fatal car crash, by the courts — Bramham had been given a prison sentence of a few months for dangerous driving, while the group members thought he had not been at fault. Boyd thought it was one of the best things recorded for the album, but Thompson wasn’t happy with his vocal — there was one note at the top of the melody that he couldn’t quite hit — and insisted it be kept off the record, even though that meant it would be a shorter album than normal. He did this at such a late stage that early copies of the album actually had the title printed on the sleeve, but then blacked out. He now says in his autobiography “I could have persevered, double-tracked the voice, warmed up for longer – anything. It was a good track, and the record was lacking without it. When the album was re-released, the track was restored with a more confident vocal, and it has stayed there ever since.” During the sessions for Full House the group also recorded one non-album single, Thompson and Swarbrick’s “Now Be Thankful”: [Excerpt, Fairport Convention, “Now Be Thankful”] The B-side to that was a medley of two traditional tunes plus a Swarbrick original, but was given the deliberately ridiculous title “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”] The B. McKenzie in the title was a reference to the comic-strip character Barry McKenzie, a stereotype drunk Australian created for Private Eye magazine by the comedian Barry Humphries (later to become better known for his Dame Edna Everage character) but the title was chosen for one reason only — to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the song with the longest title. Which they did, though they were later displaced by the industrial band Test Dept, and their song “Long Live British Democracy Which Flourishes and Is Constantly Perfected Under the Immaculate Guidance of the Great, Honourable, Generous and Correct Margaret Hilda Thatcher. She Is the Blue Sky in the Hearts of All Nations. Our People Pay Homage and Bow in Deep Respect and Gratitude to Her. The Milk of Human Kindness”. Full House got excellent reviews in the music press, with Rolling Stone saying “The music shows that England has finally gotten her own equivalent to The Band… By calling Fairport an English equivalent of the Band, I meant that they have soaked up enough of the tradition of their countryfolk that it begins to show all over, while they maintain their roots in rock.” Off the back of this, the group went on their first US tour, culminating in a series of shows at the Troubadour in LA, on the same bill as Rick Nelson, which were recorded and later released as a live album: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth (live)”] The Troubadour was one of the hippest venues at the time, and over their residency there the group got seen by many celebrities, some of whom joined them on stage. The first was Linda Ronstadt, who initially demurred, saying she didn’t know any of their songs. On being told they knew all of hers, she joined in with a rendition of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”. Thompson was later asked to join Ronstadt’s backing band, who would go on to become the Eagles, but he said later of this offer “I would have hated it. I’d have hated being on the road with four or five miserable Americans — they always seem miserable. And if you see them now, they still look miserable on stage — like they don’t want to be there and they don’t like each other.” The group were also joined on stage at the Troubadour on one memorable night by some former bandmates of Pegg’s. Before joining the Ian Campbell Folk Group, Pegg had played around the Birmingham beat scene, and had been in bands with John Bonham and Robert Plant, who turned up to the Troubadour with their Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page (reports differ on whether the fourth member of Zeppelin, John Paul Jones, also came along). They all got up on stage together and jammed on songs like “Hey Joe”, “Louie Louie”, and various old Elvis tunes. The show was recorded, and the tapes are apparently still in the possession of Joe Boyd, who has said he refuses to release them in case he is murdered by the ghost of Peter Grant. According to Thompson, that night ended in a three-way drinking contest between Pegg, Bonham, and Janis Joplin, and it’s testament to how strong the drinking culture is around Fairport and the British folk scene in general that Pegg outdrank both of them. According to Thompson, Bonham was found naked by a swimming pool two days later, having missed two gigs. For all their hard rock image, Led Zeppelin were admirers of a lot of the British folk and folk-rock scene, and a few months later Sandy Denny would become the only outside vocalist ever to appear on a Led Zeppelin record when she duetted with Plant on “The Battle of Evermore” on the group’s fourth album: [Excerpt: Led Zeppelin, “The Battle of Evermore”] Denny would never actually get paid for her appearance on one of the best-selling albums of all time. That was, incidentally, not the only session that Denny was involved in around this time — she also sang on the soundtrack to a soft porn film titled Swedish Fly Girls, whose soundtrack was produced by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow?”] Shortly after Fairport’s trip to America, Joe Boyd decided he was giving up on Witchseason. The company was now losing money, and he was finding himself having to produce work for more and more acts as the various bands fissioned. The only ones he really cared about were Richard Thompson, who he was finding it more and more difficult to work with, Nick Drake, who wanted to do his next album with just an acoustic guitar anyway, Sandy Denny, who he felt was wasting her talents in Fotheringay, and Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band, who was more distant since his conversion to Scientology. Boyd did make some attempts to keep the company going. On a trip to Sweden, he negotiated an agreement with the manager and publisher of a Swedish band whose songs he’d found intriguing, the Hep Stars. Boyd was going to publish their songs in the UK, and in return that publisher, Stig Anderson, would get the rights to Witchseason’s catalogue in Scandinavia — a straight swap, with no money changing hands. But before Boyd could get round to signing the paperwork, he got a better offer from Mo Ostin of Warners — Ostin wanted Boyd to come over to LA and head up Warners’ new film music department. Boyd sold Witchseason to Island Records and moved to LA with his fiancee Linda Peters, spending the next few years working on music for films like Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange, as well as making his own documentary about Jimi Hendrix, and thus missed out on getting the UK publishing rights for ABBA, and all the income that would have brought him, for no money. And it was that decision that led to the breakup of Fotheringay. Just before Christmas 1970, Fotheringay were having a difficult session, recording the track “John the Gun”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “John the Gun”] Boyd got frustrated and kicked everyone out of the session, and went for a meal and several drinks with Denny. He kept insisting that she should dump the band and just go solo, and then something happened that the two of them would always describe differently. She asked him if he would continue to produce her records if she went solo, and he said he would. According to Boyd’s recollection of the events, he meant that he would fly back from California at some point to produce her records. According to Denny, he told her that if she went solo he would stay in Britain and not take the job in LA. This miscommunication was only discovered after Denny told the rest of Fotheringay after the Christmas break that she was splitting the band. Jerry Donahue has described that as the worst moment of his life, and Denny felt very guilty about breaking up a band with some of her closest friends in — and then when Boyd went over to the US anyway she felt a profound betrayal. Two days before Fotheringay’s final concert, in January 1971, Sandy Denny signed a solo deal with Island records, but her first solo album would not end up produced by Joe Boyd. Instead, The North Star Grassman and the Ravens was co-produced by Denny, John Wood — the engineer who had worked with Boyd on pretty much everything he’d produced, and Richard Thompson, who had just quit Fairport Convention, though he continued living with them at the Angel, at least until a truck crashed into the building in February 1971, destroying its entire front wall and forcing them to relocate. The songs chosen for The North Star Grassman and the Ravens reflected the kind of choices Denny would make on her future albums, and her eclectic taste in music. There was, of course, the obligatory Dylan cover, and the traditional folk ballad “Blackwaterside”, but there was also a cover version of Brenda Lee’s “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”] Most of the album, though, was made up of originals about various people in Denny’s life, like “Next Time Around”, about her ex-boyfriend Jackson C Frank: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Next Time Around”] The album made the top forty in the UK — Denny’s only solo album to do so — and led to her once again winning the “best female singer” award in Melody Maker’s readers’ poll that year — the male singer award was won by Rod Stewart. Both Stewart and Denny appeared the next year on the London Symphony Orchestra’s all-star version of The Who’s Tommy, which had originally been intended as a vehicle for Stewart before Roger Daltrey got involved. Stewart’s role was reduced to a single song, “Pinball Wizard”, while Denny sang on “It’s a Boy”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “It’s a Boy”] While Fotheringay had split up, all the band members play on The North Star Grassman and the Ravens. Guitarists Donahue and Lucas only play on a couple of the tracks, with Richard Thompson playing most of the guitar on the record. But Fotheringay’s rhythm section of Pat Donaldson and Gerry Conway play on almost every track. Another musician on the album, Ian Whiteman, would possibly have a profound effect on the future direction of Richard Thompson’s career and life. Whiteman was the former keyboard player for the mod band The Action, having joined them just before they became the blues-rock band Mighty Baby. But Mighty Baby had split up when all of the band except the lead singer had converted to Islam. Richard Thompson was on his own spiritual journey at this point, and became a Sufi – the same branch of Islam as Whiteman – soon after the session, though Thompson has said that his conversion was independent of Whiteman’s. The two did become very close and work together a lot in the mid-seventies though. Thompson had supposedly left Fairport because he was writing material that wasn’t suited to the band, but he spent more than a year after quitting the group working on sessions rather than doing anything with his own material, and these sessions tended to involve the same core group of musicians. One of the more unusual was a folk-rock supergroup called The Bunch, put together by Trevor Lucas. Richard Branson had recently bought a recording studio, and wanted a band to test it out before opening it up for commercial customers, so with this free studio time Lucas decided to record a set of fifties rock and roll covers. He gathered together Thompson, Denny, Whiteman, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Pat Donaldson, Gerry Conway, pianist Tony Cox, the horn section that would later form the core of the Average White Band, and Linda Peters, who had now split up with Joe Boyd and returned to the UK, and who had started dating Thompson. They recorded an album of covers of songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Otis and others: [Excerpt: The Bunch, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The early seventies was a hugely productive time for this group of musicians, as they all continued playing on each other’s projects. One notable album was No Roses by Shirley Collins, which featured Thompson, Mattacks, Whiteman, Simon Nicol, Lal and Mike Waterson, and Ashley Hutchings, who was at that point married to Collins, as well as some more unusual musicians like the free jazz saxophonist Lol Coxhill: [Excerpt: Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band, “Claudy Banks”] Collins was at the time the most respected female singer in British traditional music, and already had a substantial career including a series of important records made with her sister Dolly, work with guitarists like Davey Graham, and time spent in the 1950s collecting folk songs in the Southern US with her then partner Alan Lomax – according to Collins she did much of the actual work, but Lomax only mentioned her in a single sentence in his book on this work. Some of the same group of musicians went on to work on an album of traditional Morris dancing tunes, titled Morris On, credited to “Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield”, with Collins singing lead on two tracks: [Excerpt: Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield with Shirley Collins, “The Willow Tree”] Thompson thought that that album was the best of the various side projects he was involved in at the time, comparing it favourably to Rock On, which he thought was rather slight, saying later “Conceptually, Fairport, Ashley and myself and Sandy were developing a more fragile style of music that nobody else was particularly interested in, a British Folk Rock idea that had a logical development to it, although we all presented it our own way. Morris On was rather more true to what we were doing. Rock On was rather a retro step. I'm not sure it was lasting enough as a record but Sandy did sing really well on the Buddy Holly songs.” Hutchings used the musicians on No Roses and Morris On as the basis for his band the Albion Band, which continues to this day. Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks both quit Fairport to join the Albion Band, though Mattacks soon returned. Nicol would not return to Fairport for several years, though, and for a long period in the mid-seventies Fairport Convention had no original members. Unfortunately, while Collins was involved in the Albion Band early on, she and Hutchings ended up divorcing, and the stress from the divorce led to Collins developing spasmodic dysphonia, a stress-related illness which makes it impossible for the sufferer to sing. She did eventually regain her vocal ability, but between 1978 and 2016 she was unable to perform at all, and lost decades of her career. Richard Thompson occasionally performed with the Albion Band early on, but he was getting stretched a little thin with all these sessions. Linda Peters said later of him “When I came back from America, he was working in Sandy’s band, and doing sessions by the score. Always with Pat Donaldson and Dave Mattacks. Richard would turn up with his guitar, one day he went along to do a session with one of those folkie lady singers — and there were Pat and DM. They all cracked. Richard smashed his amp and said “Right! No more sessions!” In 1972 he got round to releasing his first solo album, Henry the Human Fly, which featured guest appearances by Linda Peters and Sandy Denny among others: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “The Angels Took My Racehorse Away”] Unfortunately, while that album has later become regarded as one of the classics of its genre, at the time it was absolutely slated by the music press. The review in Melody Maker, for example, read in part “Some of Richard Thompson’s ideas sound great – which is really the saving grace of this album, because most of the music doesn’t. The tragedy is that Thompson’s “British rock music” is such an unconvincing concoction… Even the songs that do integrate rock and traditional styles of electric guitar rhythms and accordion and fiddle decoration – and also include explicit, meaningful lyrics are marred by bottle-up vocals, uninspiring guitar phrases and a general lack of conviction in performance.” Henry the Human Fly was released in the US by Warners, who had a reciprocal licensing deal with Island (and for whom Joe Boyd was working at the time, which may have had something to do with that) but according to Thompson it became the lowest-selling record that Warners ever put out (though I’ve also seen that claim made about Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, another album that has later been rediscovered). Thompson was hugely depressed by this reaction, and blamed his own singing. Happily, though, by this point he and Linda had become a couple — they would marry in 1972 — and they started playing folk clubs as a duo, or sometimes in a trio with Simon Nicol. Thompson was also playing with Sandy Denny’s backing band at this point, and played on every track on her second solo album, Sandy. This album was meant to be her big commercial breakthrough, with a glamorous cover photo by David Bailey, and with a more American sound, including steel guitar by Sneaky Pete Kleinow of the Flying Burrito Brothers (whose overdubs were supervised in LA by Joe Boyd): [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Tomorrow is a Long Time”] The album was given a big marketing push by Island, and “Listen, Listen” was made single of the week on the Radio 1 Breakfast show: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Listen, Listen”] But it did even worse than the previous album, sending her into something of a depression. Linda Thompson (as the former Linda Peters now was) said of this period “After the Sandy album, it got her down that her popularity didn't suddenly increase in leaps and bounds, and that was the start of her really fretting about the way her career was going. Things only escalated after that. People like me or Martin Carthy or Norma Waterson would think, ‘What are you on about? This is folk music.'” After Sandy’s release, Denny realised she could no longer afford to tour with a band, and so went back to performing just acoustically or on piano. The only new music to be released by either of these ex-members of Fairport Convention in 1973 was, oddly, on an album by the band they were no longer members of. After Thompson had left Fairport, the group had managed to release two whole albums with the same lineup — Swarbrick, Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks. But then Nicol and Mattacks had both quit the band to join the Albion Band with their former bandmate Ashley Hutchings, leading to a situation where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport plus their longtime drummer while Fairport Convention itself had no original members and was down to just Swarbrick and Pegg. Needing to fulfil their contracts, they then recruited three former members of Fotheringay — Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, Donahue on lead guitar, and Conway on drums. Conway was only a session player at the time, and Mattacks soon returned to the band, but Lucas and Donahue became full-time members. This new lineup of Fairport Convention released two albums in 1973, widely regarded as the group’s most inconsistent records, and on the title track of the first, “Rosie”, Richard Thompson guested on guitar, with Sandy Denny and Linda Thompson on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Rosie”] Neither Sandy Denny nor Richard Thompson released a record themselves in 1973, but in neither case was this through the artists’ choice. The record industry was changing in the early 1970s, as we’ll see in later episodes, and was less inclined to throw good money after bad in the pursuit of art. Island Records prided itself on being a home for great artists, but it was still a business, and needed to make money. We’ll talk about the OPEC oil crisis and its effect on the music industry much more when the podcast gets to 1973, but in brief, the production of oil by the US peaked in 1970 and started to decrease, leading to them importing more and more oil from the Middle East. As a result of this, oil prices rose slowly between 1971 and 1973, then very quickly towards the end of 1973 as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict that year. As vinyl is made of oil, suddenly producing records became much more expensive, and in this period a lot of labels decided not to release already-completed albums, until what they hoped would be a brief period of shortages passed. Both Denny and Thompson recorded albums at this point that got put to one side by Island. In the case of Thompson, it was the first album by Richard and Linda as a duo, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Today, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, and as one of the two masterpieces that bookended Richard and Linda’s career as a duo and their marriage. But when they recorded the album, full of Richard’s dark songs, it was the opposite of commercial. Even a song that’s more or less a boy-girl song, like “Has He Got a Friend for Me?” has lyrics like “He wouldn’t notice me passing by/I could be in the gutter, or dangling down from a tree” [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “Has He got a Friend For Me?”] While something like “The Calvary Cross” is oblique and haunted, and seems to cast a pall over the entire album: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “The Calvary Cross”] The album itself had been cheap to make — it had been recorded in only a week, with Thompson bringing in musicians he knew well and had worked with a lot previously to cut the tracks as-live in only a handful of takes — but Island didn’t think it was worth releasing. The record stayed on the shelf for nearly a year after recording, until Island got a new head of A&R, Richard Williams. Williams said of the album’s release “Muff Winwood had been doing A&R, but he was more interested in production… I had a conversation with Muff as soon as I got there, and he said there are a few hangovers, some outstanding problems. And one of them was Richard Thompson. He said there’s this album we gave him the money to make — which was I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight — and nobody’s very interested in it. Henry the Human Fly had been a bit of a commercial disappointment, and although Island was altruistic and independent and known for only recording good stuff, success was important… Either a record had to do well or somebody had to believe in it a lot. And it seemed as if neither of those things were true at that point of Richard.” Williams, though, was hugely impressed when he listened to the album. He compared Richard Thompson’s guitar playing to John Coltrane’s sax, and called Thompson “the folk poet of the rainy streets”, but also said “Linda brightened it, made it more commercial. and I thought that “Bright Lights” itself seemed a really commercial song.” The rest of the management at Island got caught up in Williams’ enthusiasm, and even decided to release the title track as a single: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Neither single nor album charted — indeed it would not be until 1991 that Richard Thompson would make a record that made the top forty in the UK — but the album got enough critical respect that Richard and Linda released two albums the year after. The first of these, Hokey Pokey, is a much more upbeat record than their previous one — Richard Thompson has called it “quite a music-hall influenced record” and cited the influence of George Formby and Harry Lauder. For once, the claim of music hall influence is audible in the music. Usually when a British musician is claimed to have a music ha

Generations of singers have sung, played and loved the folk music found in the United Kingdom, and this week's podcast features some examples. Collectors A.L. Lloyd and Ralph Vaughn Williams transcribed and recorded traditional music and made it available to all through the English Folk Dance and Song Society. We'll listen to revivalist groups like The Watersons and the Copper Family, and then examine the electric side of the style with Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention. We will conclude with some of the bright lights on today's scene including Eliza Carthy and The Furrow Collective. A taste of old and new from the U.K. … this week on The Sing Out! Radio Magazine.Pete Seeger / If I Had A Hammer (excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian FolkwaysBert Jansch / M'Lady Fancy / Rosemary Lane / CastleA.L. Lloyd / Creeping Jane / Bold Sportsmen All / TopicJinky Wells / The Flowers of Edinburgh-Morris Dance Tunes-Bobbing Around-Morris Dance Tunes / Rig a Jig Jig / TopicThe Copper Family / Spencer the Rover/ The Copper Family of Rottingdean / TopicGargone's Athlone Accordion Band / Soldier's Joy & Reel/ Troubles They Are But Few / TopicIan Campbell Folk Group / Johnny Ladd/ This is the Ian Campbell Folk Group / TransatlanticShirley Collins & Davy Graham / Nottamun Town/ Folk Routes / TopicThe Watersons / Country Life / For Pence and Spicy Ale / ShanachieAnne Briggs / She Moves Through the Fair / A Collection / TopicBert Jansch / Sarabanda / Rosemary Lane / CastleThe Young Tradition / The Banks of the Nile/ Galleries / BGOFairport Convention / Genesis Hall / Unhalfbricking / IslandSteeleye Span / Skewball / Ten Man Mop / ShanachieThe Incredible String Band / Way Back in the 1960s / The 500 Spirits or The Layers of the Onion / ElektraEliza Carthy & the Wayward Band / Great Grey Buck / Big Machine / TopicThe Furrow Collective / King Henry / At Our Next Meeting / FurrowPete Seeger / If I Had A Hammer (excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways

This week we'll hear some tales from the North Woods, a classic song from James Keelaghan, and some great English story-songs from Eliza Carthy and Martin Simpson. Sing me another story … this week on The Sing Out! Radio Magazine.Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian FolkwaysTony Elman / “Raindance” / Earth Tones / AcornBrian Miller and Randy Gosa / “The Falling of the Pines” / The Falling of the Pines / Two TapCelia Evans / “Cutting Down the Pines” / Songs to Keep . TaunyKitty Donohoe / “Voyageurs” / Bunyan & Banjos / RoheenNorah Rendell / “Lost Jimmie Whalen” / Spinning Yarns / Two TapJames Keelaghan / “McConnville's” / House of Cards / BorealisTony Elman / “Planxty Frank” / Earth Tones / AcornJackie Oates / “The Trees They Are So High” / Saturnine / ECCMartin Simpson / “Reynardine” / Trails and Tribulations / TopicMartin & Eliza Carthy / “Blackwell Merry Night” / The Moral of the Elephant / TopicHal Cannon / “The Blizzard” / Hal Cannon / OkehdokeeMichael Cooney / “Old Beer Bottle” / Together Again / Cove HavenPete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways

1. (Intro) Ian A Anderson : Goblets & Elms from the CD Onwards (Ghosts From The Basement)2. Christy Moore : Palestine from the CD Terrible Beauty (Claddagh)3. Richard Dawson : Polytunnel from the CD End Of The Middle (Domino)4. The Bongo Hop feat. Moonlight Benjamin : Eko Eko from the DL album La Pata Coja (Underdog)5. Kin'Gongolo Kiniata : Lisekite from the DL single (Hélico)6. Janice Burns & Jon Doran : The Trees Are All Bare from the CD Great Joy To The New (Janice Burns & Jon Doran)7. The Unthanks : Tar Barrel In Dale from the CD In Winter (Rabble Rouser)8. Kathryn Tickell : Roman Wall Rambo from the CD Return To Kielderside (Resilient)9. Paul James : The Black Mill And The Three Priests from the DL album Au Coin Perdu (Paul James)10. Les Mecanos : Les Piafs from the CD Usures (L-EMA)11. L'Alba : Di Carne é D'Osse from the CD Grilli (Buda)12. Sam Amidon : Three Five from the CD Salt River (River Lea)13. Eliza Carthy & Ben Seal : The Black Queen from the CD Through That Sound (My Secret Was Made Known) (Hem Hem)14. Aboubakar Traoré & Balima : Turamagan from the CD Sababu (Zephyrus)15. Natu Camara : Cinko Mina from the DL single (Natuwenta)16. Afro Celt Sound System : N'Faly Foli from the CD Ova (Six Degrees)17. Mayra Andrade : Nha Sibitchi from the CD reEncanto (Komos)18. Lucibela : Lembra Tempo from the CD Moda Antiga (Lusafrica)19. Davy Graham : Mary, Open The Door from the CD box He Moved Through The Fair (Cherry Red)20. Davy Graham : Everything's Fine Right Now from the CD box He Moved Through The Fair (Cherry Red)21. Emma & Ellika : Johannas Brudpolska from the CD Väder (Kakafon)22. Stundom : Gennem Sneen from the DL album Hvis Ikke De Er Døde, Lever De Endnu (GO Danish Folk Music)23. Tamsin Elliott : Nightsong from the DL EP Music For Hospitals (Vol.1) (Tamsin Elliott)24. Tealeaf : Son Of A Lord from the DL album As It Fell Out (Tealeaf)25. Richard Trethewey : Richard Jose from the DL single Sons Of Cornwall (Richard Threthewey)26. Tamar Ilana & Ventanas : Ventanas Altas from the CD Azadi (Ventanas)27. AySay feat. Nature : Tu Bi Xer Hatî from the DL single (AySay)28. Helen Gentile & Lewis Wood : Temps Gris / Pigeonhawk from the CD Violet Sky (Grimdon)29. Alice Allen : Strathbogie Toast from the CD Bass Culture – Live At Celtic Connections 2024 (Ardgowan)30. Amy Goddard feat. Alan Prosser : Put Out The Lights from the DL single (Amy Goddard)31. Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis & Karine Polwart : Hold Everything from the CD Looking For The Thread (Thirty Tigers)32. Banning Eyre : Djelimady from the CD Bare Songs 1 (Lion Songs)You can find more details including past playlists and links to labels at www.podwireless.com

Roud 12 - THE ELFIN KNIGHT Historical guest: Brian Peters Singer Guest: Martin Carthy   Email us: intheroud@singyonder.co.uk Follow us on: Facebook Twitter   Instagram     Your host: Matt Quinn Website:  Facebook  Twitter Instagram     Historical Guest: Brian Peters  Brian Peters' website   Singer Guest: Martin Carthy Martin Carthy   Traditional recordings played:  Rosemary and Thyme by Allie Long Parker The Cambric Shirt by Sarah Ogan Gunning (album - Meeting is a Pleasure) Every Rose Grows Merry in Time by Sara Cleveland  Flim-a-Lim-a-Lee by Lawrence Older The Elfin Knight by Martha Reid Rosemary Lane by Liz Jeffries   Modern versions mentioned: Whittingham Fair by Eliza Carthy and Nancy Kerr The Cambric Shirt by Dr Faustus Strawberry Lane by Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne Scarborough Fair by Wood Wilson Carthy Rosemary Lane by Bellowhead   Folk song recourses: Sing Yonder The Vaughn Williams Memorial Library Sussex Traditions GlousTrad Tobas an Dualchais/Kist o Riches Jon Boden's A Folk Song A Day Andy Turner's A Folk Song A Week The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection   Record labels promoting recordings of traditional singers: Topic Records Veteran Records Musical Traditions One Row Records     Other Folk Song/Music podcasts: The Old Songs Podcast Every Folk Song Folk On Foot Fire Draw Near

Roud 11 - THE BAFFLED KNIGHT Historical guest: Steve Roud Singer Guest: Vic Gammon   Email us: intheroud@singyonder.co.uk Follow us on: Facebook Twitter   Instagram     Your host: Matt Quinn Website:  Facebook  Twitter Instagram     Historical Guest: Steve Roud Steve's books on Amazon   Singer Guest: Vic Gammon Information about Vic   Traditional recordings played: Blow the Windy Morning by Emily Bishop  Clear Away the Morning Dew by Sam Larner (album - Cruising Down Yarmouth) Hail the Dewy Morning by Cyril Barber  Among the New Mown Hay by Alfred Edgell There was a Shepherd's Boy by John Campbell   Modern versions mentioned: The Baffled Knight by The City Waites The Baffled Knight by Lucy Ward  Blow the Windy Morning by Faustus Among the New Mown Hay by Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick Dew is on the Grass by Lisa Knapp Stroll Away the Morning Dew by Andy Turner Blow the Winds by Eliza Carthy   Folk song recourses: Sing Yonder The Vaughn Williams Memorial Library Sussex Traditions GlousTrad Tobas an Dualchais/Kist o Riches Jon Boden's A Folk Song A Day Andy Turner's A Folk Song A Week     Record labels promoting recordings of traditional singers: Topic Records Veteran Records Musical Traditions One Row Records     Other Folk Song/Music podcasts: The Old Songs Podcast Every Folk Song Folk On Foot Fire Draw Near

Enjoy this classic episode from August 2018Eliza Carthy inherited her love of English music from her famous folk singing parents, Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson. Norma had recently suffered a serious illness and Eliza moved back to the family home in the North Yorkshire fishing village of Robin Hood's Bay to look after her. Eliza takes Matthew on a walk along the cliffs near her home, reflecting on her family heritage and then on to the farm where the whole extended family used to live when she was a child. Martin, Norma and Eliza's aunt Ann and cousin Marry gather at the kitchen table for a rousing and emotional sing.---We rely on support from our listeners to keep this show on the road. If you like what we do please either...Become a member and get great rewards: patreon.com/folkonfootOr just buy us a coffee: ko-fi.com/folkonfootSign up for our newsletter at www.folkonfoot.comFollow us on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram: @folkonfoot---Find out more about Eliza at https://eliza-carthy.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1. (Intro) Ian A Anderson : Goblets & Elms from the CD Onwards (Ghosts From The Basement)2. Jon Langford & The Bright Shiners : Discarded from the CD Where It Really Starts (Tiny Global)3. Flo Perlin : Feels Like Yesterday from the CD Clay (ECN)4. The Wilderness Yet : Cocks Are Crowing from the CD Westlin Winds (Scribe)5. Bowker & Morse : Whose Hands Are These from the DL EP Bowker & Morse (Bowker & Morse)6. Seckou Keita : Ni Mala Beugue from the CD Homeland (Hudson)7. Ahmed Moneka : Treed Trooh from the CD Kanzafula (Lulaworld)8. Teddy Thompson sings Linda Thompson : Those Damn Roches from the CD Proxy Music (Storysound)9. Richard Thompson : Singapore Sadie from the CD Ship To Shore (New West)10. Eliza Carthy sings Linda Thompson : That's The Way The Polka Goes from the CD Proxy Music (Storysound)11. Dylan Fowler : Joy from the CD Ebb & Flow (Acoustic Music/ Galileo)12. Laura Jane Wilkie : Mermaid from the CD Vent (Hudson)13. Conor Caldwell & Ryan Molloy : Bonnie Kate from the DL Oh, Listen To The Band! (Caldwell & Molloy)14. Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer with Chao Tian : Nan Ni Wan from the CD From China To Appalachia (Community Music)15. Peni Candra Rini : Jenang Gula from the CD Wulansih (New Amsterdam)16. Paul Armfield : Oak Tree from the CD Trees (Paul Armfield)17. Holly Blackshaw : Blue Mountain from the DL single (Holly Blackshaw)18. Alden & Patterson : Safe Travels from the DL single (Alden & Patterson)19. Phønix : Nådelands Ø from the CD Nådelands Ø (GO Danish Folk Music)20. Maré : Tau, Tau, Tau from the CD Maré (Sons Vadios)21. Robb Johnson : More Than Enough from the CD Pennypot Lane (Irregular)22. Brooks Williams & Aaron Catlow : Sweet Greens & Blues from the CD Greens & Blues (Red Guitar Blue Music)23. Rory McLeod : I've Moored Everywhere from the CD Tow Lines (Talkative)24. Grupo Polo Montañez : La Suegra from the CD Joyas Del Guajiro (Lusafrica)25. Atse Tewodros Project : Set Nat from the CD Maqeda (Galileo MC)26. Naragonia : Calimero – Live from the CD 20th Anniversary Concert (Trad)27. Alicia Svigals : Levitt Bulgar from the CD Fidl Afire (Borscht Beat)28. Alula Down : Nailmaker's Lament from the DL Here I Am Where I Must Be (Alula Down)29. Too Sad For The Public feat. Ana Egge : Shake Sugaree from the CD Vol 2 - Yet And Still (Storysound)30. Africa Negra : Lourença from the CD Antologia Vol 2 (Bongo Joe)You can find more details including past playlists and links to labels at www.podwireless.comPodwireless can also be heard streamed live on Mixcloud.Follow the links for previous podcasts.

JB with great sounds from the likes of Steve Tilston, Eliza Carthy, Heisk, Brooks Williams and folk winners at this year's Guild . .

Programa completamente dedicado a nuevos discos que nos traen, para empezar, poderosos cantos portugueses, para seguir por Inglaterra con voces y violines inspiradores. Seguimos la senda de las músicas del centro y este de Europa con rusos exiliados, barceloneses cosmopolitas y conexiones desde Serbia con la Europa central. Terminamos con otros dos encuentros intercontinentales, que reúnen a músicos de España, Polonia y Marruecos, por un lado, y de la India y Estados Unidos, por otro. A program entirely dedicated to new albums that bring us, to start with, powerful Portuguese chants, followed by inspiring voices and violins from England. We continue along the path of music from Central and Eastern Europe with exiled Russians, cosmopolitan Barcelonians, and connections from Serbia with Central Europe. We conclude with two other intercontinental encounters, bringing together musicians from Spain, Poland, and Morocco on one hand, and from India and the United States on the other. – A Cantadeira – Onde estão as cantadeiras – Tecelã – Eliza Carthy – May morning – No wasted joy – Tom Kitching – The churn – Where there’s brass – Dobranotch – Lalebi – Vander ikh mir lustik – Barcelona Gipsy balKan Orchestra – Sam Klez – 7 – Alice in WonderBand & CISI – Ko peva zlo ne misli – Ko peva zlo ne misli [single] – Gordan – How a mountain fairy divided the two Jakšić brothers – Gordan – Andres Coll Odyssey – Sandia – Sunbird – Sharon Isbin, Amjad Ali Khan, Amaan Ali Bangash, Ayaan Ali Bangash – Sacred evening (raga Yaman) – Live in Aspen 📸 A Cantadeira (Vasco Ribeiro Casais)

JB plays music from the likes of Eliza Carthy, Martin Simpson, Maddie Morris and Barrule - and many others plus his usual round-up of live local gigs

New releases by Eliza Carthy, Chris Smither, Rum Ragged, Martin Simpson, Aaron Collis, and My Black Country - an incredible collection of songs performed by the likes of Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell, Sista Strings, Sunny War, Valerie June, and Leyla McCalla. Plus more highlights of the recent CFMAs and our trip to St. John's; concert previews: and more tasty offerings than you can shake a stick at - if that's your idea of a good time!

Hello! I'm currently in the middle of producing a new series of The Outdoors Fix podcast. So in the meantime, I've got a special episode for you that I think you'll enjoy! Some of you will remember an episode I recorded with Matthew Bannister back in 2020 - he's the founder of the multi-award winning Folk on Foot podcast where he goes walking with leading folk musicians in beautiful spots that have inspired their music. I really loved chatting with Matthew and hearing all about how and why he started Folk on Foot, and I've devoured each episode over the years. It's an absolutely stunning podcast, and complete escapism, even if you're like me and don't know a huge amount about folk music. So I'm thrilled that he's let me share with you one of my favourite episodes of Folk on Foot which I think you'll love. It's Matthew's walk and conversation with the author Raynor Winn, who's bestselling book, The Salt Path, tells the story of her journey along the 630-mile South West Coast Path with her husband Moth, after they'd become homeless and he'd been diagnosed with a terminal neurodegenerative disease. Raynor has also been collaborating with the Gigspanner Big Band to create a show which marries her words about the South West and traditional music from the area. The Outdoors Fix has always been about sharing conversations and inspiration so we can all fit more of the outdoors into our lives - so I hope you enjoy Matthew's wonderful chat and walk with Raynor and you take away something from it too. There are dozens of other episodes of Folk on Foot available, recorded all over the country, from Shetland to Port Isaac, and with musicians like Eliza Carthy, Johnny Flynn and Karine Polwart. One of my favourite episodes is with Sam Lee where he sings among nightingales in Sussex - I'd definitely recommend listening to that one. Just search for Folk on Foot wherever you get your podcasts, or find them @folkonfoot on social media. If you'd like to listen to my conversation with Matthew on The Outdoors Fix, where he tells me all about his outdoors life and why he set up Folk on Foot, it's the episode from July 2020. And stay tuned for a brand new series of The Outdoors Fix podcast in the next few weeks! Until then, enjoy your adventures outside - we all know it's the best place there is. Liv x The Outdoors Fix is a podcast produced and hosted by Liv Bolton @liv_outsideuk You can find photos and videos from the recordings on Instagram @TheOutdoorsFix The Outdoors Fix book is now available: http://bit.ly/3GJDLJc Folk on Foot team: Host: Matthew Bannister Producer: Natalie Steed Digital marketing manager: Owen Ralph The post Feed swap: The Salt Path author Raynor Winn speaks to the Folk on Foot podcast appeared first on The Outdoors Fix.

Americana, Roots, Folk, Blues and Country music. Featured Artists . New and classic tracks.Episode includes Charlie Crockett, Brandi Carlile,  Hurray for the Riff Raff and  Eliza Carthy. Elton John and  Leon Russell are featured.

Fiddler and folk musician Eliza Carthy and choral conductor Tim Rhys-Evans join Cerys Matthews and Jeffrey Boakye as they add the next five tracks. Starting at a famous masked ball in Vienna, they then head for the Genoa docks, rounding off with a cheeky Soca hip-thrusting classic. In the penultimate episode of the current series, recorder player and baroque flautist Heidi Fardell demonstrates some of her collection of early instruments.Producer Jerome Weatherald Presented, with music direction, by Cerys Matthews and Jeffrey BoakyeThe five tracks in this week's playlist:'Ach, ich darf nicht hin zu dir!' From Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II La Partenza (The Parting) by Trallaleri of Genoa Gagliarda by Giorgio Mainerio How High The Moon by Ella Fitzgerald Dollar Wine by Colin Lucas Other music in this episode:Hotel California by The Eagles The Flower Duet from the opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes Eye of the Tiger by Survivor Battalia a 10 by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber Die Katz (The Cat) by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber Mack the Knife by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, sung by Ella Fitzgerald

In this week's episode Esther & Susie showcase talents even they didn't know they had. And they probably don't. Let's just say, Eminem does NOT need to worry... They discuss talent v success, and if baby is born with it or if it's maybe-learnt. Again, Eminem does not need to worry! Thankfully someone with a tangible talent is their special guest this week. Namely, musician Sam Sweeney. Sam has been described as 'one of the defining English fiddle players of his generation' (Mark Radcliffe) and this was cemented when he won Musician of the Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award in 2015 - his fourth time of being nominated. He is a veteran of folk juggernauts, Bellowhead, former and inaugural Artistic Director of the National Youth Folk Ensemble, a founder member of ground-breaking trio Leveret as well as a passionate and experienced educator. He has collaborated, recorded and performed with The Full English, Eliza Carthy, Martin Carthy, Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings, Fay Hield and Emily Portman as well as creating his own theatre production Made In The Great War. Sam's first two albums, The Unfinished Violin (Island Records) and Unearth Repeat (Hudson Records) were received with international acclaim. Sam is currently touring his third solo album, Escape That - tour dates. Sam's chat with the gals is wide-ranging and hugely entertaining. He tells them about joining the biggest folk band in the world aged 18, and how it feels to rock (folk) out at the Royal Albert Hall. He talks about his experiences in movies - Disney's live action 'Little Mermaid', and Richard Curtis's 'About Time'. There are some super questions from our wonderful listeners, and, as an extra treat, Sam performs live on the podcast! LTO's first live musical performance and it is magical. (Sam is available to tour when you need him, Arcade Fire - just putting that out into the universe!) With sketches, live music, surprising rapping and a joyful interview, this is an episode to savour. We hope you enjoy it!   OTHER USEFUL LINKS: SPIRO Watch - We Wish To Be Absorbed   Sign up to be an LTO Patron now at: Patreon.com/LimitedTimeOnlyPodcast LTO now has a PATREON page which means you can become an LTO Patron. Patrons get a raft of lush stuff including exclusive bonus content and access to exclusive LTO live events online and in-person. The next Patron-only LTO Live Online event is later this month! Details on Patreon! Susie & Esther are thrilled to be back in your ears. And over on Patreon too! Limited Time Only. A pick-me-up in podcast form.   Instagram @limitedtimeonlypodcast Twitter @limitedtimepod Facebook Limited Time Only Podcast Email: limitedtimepodcast@gmail.com   Music by Joel White aka Small Plates Listen to his music on Soundcloud Other sound effects from https://freesound.org

Jack Rooke drew on his own life for his hit Channel 4 sitcom Big Boys which focussed on an unlikely friendship between two first year university students – both working class with one struggling to explore his gay sexuality and the other an apparent Jack-the-lad who is really anything but. As Big Boys returns for a second series, he talks to Samira about making comedy out of loss, mental health, and male friendship.Musician Eliza Carthy is Front Row's wassail Queen as she sings live on the programme some traditional songs from Glad Christmas Comes - her new album with Jon Boden lead singer of Bellowhead. Her performance joins in with many others happening across the country this month to mark the January ritual of blessing fruit trees in hope of a bountiful harvest.Simon Broughton reports from the Mugham festival of music and poetry in Baku, Azerbaijan. Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer: Tim Prosser

In the Official Folk Albums Chart of the Year Show 2023, Matthew Bannister counts down the biggest selling and most streamed folk albums of the year. There are guest appearances by Sean Cooney of the Young'Uns, Kathryn Tickell, Shirley Collins and Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane, plus exclusive performances from James Yorkston and Nina Persson, Angeline Morrison and Katherine Priddy. Matthew also features highlights of the December chart, including an interview with Jim Moray and music from Spell Songs, Eliza Carthy and Jon Boden and Kate Rusby. --- We rely entirely on support from our listeners to keep this show on the road. If you like what we do please either... Become a patron and get great rewards: patreon.com/folkonfoot Or just buy us a coffee: ko-fi.com/folkonfoot Sign up for our newsletter at www.folkonfoot.com Follow us on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram: @folkonfoot --- Subscribe to the Folk Forecast to explore all the gigs and album news we ran through in the show: https://thefolkforecast.substack.com/

This is the free-for-all version, featuring folk music royalty Eliza Carthy and Jon Boden, playing songs from their new album of wassailing wonderments and telling stories. Plus lots of tracks I hope you've never heard before but will love for ever more.

Clive Anderson and Kofi Smiles are joined by Barrie Rutter, Richard Bean, Leah Brotherhead and Kat Hudson for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Eliza Carthy and Chiedu Oraka.

Chris Addison has built his career on laughter, as a stand-up comedian, a panellist on shows such as Mock the Week, and as an actor and director. You perhaps saw him as Ollie, the hapless junior Whitehall adviser in The Thick of It, the political satire created by Armando Iannucci. He's worked as a director on another highly-acclaimed comedy in the corridors of power: the Emmy Award-winning Veep, set in and around the White House. He has also co-created and directed Breeders, a brutally honest sitcom about parenthood, starring Martin Freeman. Chris has also performed in opera on the stage at Covent Garden – though in a speaking role. He is an opera fan, so his musical choices include Mozart and Rossini but also folk music by Eliza Carthy and a Swedish Christmas song.

Eliza Carthy joined us at Wickham Festival 2023.

Let's praise and celebrate women in Celtic music with the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast #606. Logical Fleadh, Hanneke Cassel, Clare Sands, Boxing Robin, Karan Casey, The Bow Tides, Amelia Hogan, The Langer's Ball, Alli Johnson, The Bookends, Lissa Schneckenburger, Eliza Carthy and The Restitution, Mary Beth Carty, Tan and Sober Gentlemen, Jen Midkiff GET CELTIC MUSIC NEWS IN YOUR INBOX The Celtic Music Magazine is a quick and easy way to plug yourself into more great Celtic culture. Subscribe and get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free. VOTE IN THE CELTIC TOP 20 FOR 2023 This is our way of finding the best songs and artists each year. You can vote for as many songs and tunes that inspire you in each episode. Your vote helps me create next year's Best Celtic music of 2023 episode.  Vote Now! Two weeks after the episode is launched, I compile your votes to update a playlist on Spotify and YouTube. These are the results of your voting. You can help these artists out by following the playlists and adding tracks you love to your playlists. Follow us on Facebook to find out who is added each week. Listen on Spotify and YouTube. THIS WEEK IN CELTIC MUSIC 0:02 - Intro: Teresa Finley of IrishFest Atlanta 0:13 - Logical Fleadh "The White Petticoat" from Logical Fleadh (17 - Track Album) Emily Albright (fiddle, vocals) Dana Joras (flutes, whistles, vocals) 1:58 - WELCOME 3:27 - Hanneke Cassel "Blackberry Festival Footrace / For Reals" from For Reasons Unseen 7:14 - Clare Sands "Awe na Mná (Praise the Women)" from Clare Sands Pronunciation: Awe na Mná   -  Awe (just like the english word here) nah Man - awe 10:52 - Boxing Robin "Iain Ghlinn Cuaich" from The View From Here Pronunciation: Iain Ghlinn Cuaich  -  Ee - an (like the name) Glinn Coo - ick Gypsy Youngraven -  vocals, guitar, and bodhrán 12:52 - Karan Casey "I Live in a Country (feat. Pauline Scanlon)" from Nine Apples of Gold 16:59 - FEEDBACK 20:10 - The Bow Tides "The Wee Boy's Lament for his Pet Dragon" from Sailing On Ellery Klein, Jessie Burns and Katie Grennan (fiddle) 26:45 - Amelia Hogan "King of Ballyhooley" from Taking Flight 30:30 - The Langer's Ball "Slip Jig: Rocky Road to Dublin" from Appetite for Tradition Hannah Rediske (accordion, whistle, vocals) 32:20 - Alli Johnson "Wayfaring Stranger" from Into the Hollows 35:58 - The Bookends "Dinny Donegal" from A Celtic Celebration: The Bookends with the Stratford Symphony Orchestra Miriam Fischer (Piano • Accordion) Cait Watson (Whistles • Flute) 39:06 - THANKS 41:39 - Lissa Schneckenburger "Someday Soon" from Falling Forward 45:25 - Eliza Carthy and The Restitution "Jacky Tar" from Queen of the Whirl 48:40 - Mary Beth Carty "Trinity Avenue" from Crossing the Causeway 52:01 - Tan and Sober Gentlemen "You'll Never Know" from Regressive Folk Music Courtney Barefoot (Lead Vocals & Guitar) 55:19 - CLOSING 56:17 - Jen Midkiff (she/her) "Waterfall" from Collage The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather and our Patrons on Patreon. The show was edited by Mitchell Petersen with Graphics by Miranda Nelson Designs. Visit our website to subscribe to the show. You'll find links to all of the artists played in this episode. You'll get access to our Best of this Year Playlist. Todd Wiley is the editor of the Celtic Music Magazine. You can subscribe and get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free. Plus, you'll get 7 weekly news items about what's happening with Celtic music and culture online. Best of all, you will connect with your Celtic heritage. Finally, please tell one friend about this podcast. Word of mouth is the absolute best way to support any creative endeavor. Promote Celtic culture through music at http://celticmusicpodcast.com/. WELCOME CELTOPHILE TO CELTIC MUSIC * Helping you celebrate Celtic culture through music. I am Marc Gunn. I'm a musician and podcaster out of Atlanta, Georgia. This Podcast is here to build our diverse Celtic community and help the incredible artists who so generously share their music with you. If you hear music you love, please email artists to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. You can find a link to all of the artists in the shownotes, along with show times, when you visit our website at celticmusicpodcast.com. Do you have the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast app? It's 100% free. You can listen to hundreds of episodes of the podcast. Download it now. Hey Celtic Bands, I'm looking for new music and stories in 2023. To submit your band, just complete the permission form at 4celts.com. You'll also find information on how to submit a story behind one of your songs or tunes. Get a free Celtic Musicians Guide to Digital Music eBook. email gift@bestcelticmusic THANK YOU PATRONS OF THE PODCAST! Because of Your kind and generous support, this show comes out at least four times a month. Your generosity funds the creation, promotion, and production of the show. It allows us to attract new listeners and to help our community grow. As a patron, you get music - only episodes before regular listeners, vote in the Celtic Top 20, and you get a private feed to listen to the show.  All that for as little as $1 per episode. A special thanks to our Celtic Legends: Bill Mandeville, Marti Meyers, Meghan Walker, Dan mcDade, Carol Baril, Miranda Nelson, Nancie Barnett, Kevin Long, Lynda MacNeil, Kelly Garrod, Annie Lorkowski, Shawn Cali HERE IS YOUR THREE STEP PLAN TO SUPPORT THE PODCAST Go to our Patreon page. Decide how much you want to pledge every week, $1, $5, $10. Make sure to cap how much you want to spend per month. Keep listening to the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast to celebrate Celtic culture through music. You can become a generous Patron of the Podcast on Patreon at SongHenge.com. TRAVEL WITH CELTIC INVASION VACATIONS Every year, I take a small group of Celtic music fans on the relaxing adventure of a lifetime. We don't see everything. Instead, we stay in one area. We get to know the region through its culture, history, and legends. You can join us with an auditory and visual adventure through podcasts and videos. In 2023, we're going on a Celtic Invasion of County Mayo in Ireland. We're gonna explore the area and get to know Grace O'Malley, the Pirate Queen. Learn more about the invasion at http://celticinvasion.com/ #celticmusic #irishmusic #celticmusicpodcast I WANT YOUR FEEDBACK What are you doing today while listening to the podcast? You can take a screenshot of the podcast on your phone. You can send a written comment along with a picture of what you're doing while listening. Or how about a picture you took of a band that you saw. How would you like to introduce an episode of the podcast? It's super easy. Contact me for details. Email me at celticpodcast@gmail, message me on Facebook, or contact me through Mastodon @celtfather@c.im. Karl Smith emailed some photos: "Hey Marc! I've taken a few pics on my drive home while listening but never actually got to sending it in. So here's some that are halfway decent. I typically listen on my Friday drive home, it's the perfect soundtrack to a drive through the boonies of coastal Northern California. Finally signed up for the patreon after years of free music. Thanks for all you do! And happy st Patrick's day!" David Doersch emailed a St Patrick's Day photo: "Hey Marc, Here you go. Eireann's Call performing at Boxi Park, Orlando, FL." Anne Roos emailed: "Hi Marc! This is an older photo, but fun just the same: Wish I had a funny Celtic song to share with you. Alas, I do not. I hope you'll include some funny jokes in the show, too. Thank you for asking. I appreciate you keeping in touch : - )" Rene St.Aubin emailed a photo: "Here I was sharing Irish music in the Toronto area in Ontario Canada"  

The fifth episode of the Sounding Jewish podcast features Dr. Phil Alexander. We discuss his background as a performing musician, entrance into the academic field of Jewish music studies, research for his recent book Sounding Jewish in Berlin, and ongoing work on the musical life of the Jews of late 19th and early 20th century Scotland.Dr. Phil Alexander is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, where he works on Scottish-Jewish musical interactions. As part of his research, Phil has championed Russian-born Scottish cantor and composer Isaac Hirshow as part of the BBC's Forgotten Composers project, and he is currently working on a book and radio projects with the aim of bringing his work on Scottish-Jewish music to both academic and lay audiences. Phil is the pianist, bandleader, and driving force behind acclaimed Scottish world-folk band Moishe's Bagel, and also performs regularly with maverick English folk singer Eliza Carthy and many other UK jazz and folk musicians. He is also active as a composer, with commissions including the Hippodrome Festival of Silent Film, Northern Ballet, and Edinburgh Tradfest – this last resulting in a concert celebrating the diverse musics of recent immigrants to Scotland. Phil has written widely on klezmer, salsa, Scottish music, and accordions, and his monograph Sounding Jewish: klezmer and the contemporary city was published by OUP in 2021.

Matthew Bannister on Paul O'Grady, who made his name as the drag queen Lily Savage, and went on to become a much-loved TV and radio star. Gordon Moore, the tech entrepreneur who founded the chip maker Intel and came up with Moore's law which says that computer processing power doubles every two years. Vera Selby who challenged sexist prejudice to become the women's world snooker champion – twice. And Simon Emmerson who put together two hugely influential bands – the Afro Celt Sound System and the Imagined Village. Eliza Carthy pays tribute. Producer: Gareth Nelson-Davies Interviewee: Zoe Kleinman Interviewee: Harvey Fineberg Interviewee: Eliza Carthy Interviewee: Johnny Kalsi Interviewee: Hector Nunns Interviewee: Keith Green Archive clips used: Paul O'Grady show, BBC Radio 2 03/06/2018; YouTube, uploaded; Lily Savage at the Filth concert in aid of the Terence Higgins Trust, Youtube uploaded 23/09/2014 ; Parkinson, BBC ONE, 28/02/2004; Paul O'Grady on Royal Vauxhall Tavern Raid, Peter Tatchell Foundation, YouTube, uploaded 29/03/2023; Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 28/12/2003; Inheritance Tracks, BBC Radio 4, 04/01/2020; Vera Selby on Ladies Day, World Snooker Tour, Youtube uploaded 26/04/2016; Vera Selby: How to play snooker, Youtube uploaded 26/03/2009; Gordon Moore, Frontiers, BBC Radio 4, 01/10/2010; Oral History of Gordon Moore, Computer History magazine, Youtube, uploaded 24/03/2008; A Discussion with Gordon Moore and Harvey Fineberg, Moore Foundation, Youtube uploaded 24/08/2016

Fire Draw Near Episode XLII is a moody frontline assemblage of traditional folk adjacent magic with new tracks from Jonny Dillon, A Clatter and Drone, Áit Ait, Cormorant Tree Oh and Eliza Carthy, recently discovered tracks from M(h)aol and Perinne Bourel as well as old time classics from John Griffin (the 5th Avenue Bus Man), Stefan Shkimba & Co., Cyril Biddick, the Young Tradition as well as none other than the legendary J.R. R. Tolkien. Tracklist: Perinne Bourel – Rigodon du Château d'Ancelle A Clatter and Drone - The Day That Broke Winter Jonny Dillon – Rose Gardens & Requiems Áit Ait – Miss Brown Mhaol – Oró Sé Do Bheatha Bhaile J. R. R. Tolkien – Sam's Rhyme of the Troll Cyril Biddick – Old Daddy Fox The Young Tradition – Daddy Fox John Griffin – The Real Old Mountain Dew Stefan Shkimba & Co. – LemkoWedding pt 11 The Kossoy Sisters – Down in a Willow Garden Cormorant Tree Oh – All Of It Eliza Carthy & The Restitution – Whirly Whorl Jonny Dillon – The Corridor Of The Heart https://campsite.bio/firedrawnear

Musician Eliza Carthy was born into an English folk dynasty. The daughter of acclaimed folk singers Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, she joined the family business at a young age as a singer and violinist, playing with her parents as Waterson Carthy and with her mother, her aunt Lal and her cousin Marry as The Waterdaughters. As a solo artist and bandleader, Eliza has explored the roots of folk and expanded the repertoire. Awarded an MBE in 2014, she was twice nominated for the Mercury Prize for album of the year, and in 2021 became the president of the English Folk Dance and Music Society. She tells John Wilson about the first time she attended the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in 1989, aged 13. Standing on the main stage at sunset overlooking the mountains and sea was a defining moment at the start of her career. She also discusses the influence that singer Billy Bragg and Scottish folk rock band Shooglenifty had on her music. Eliza also talks about the impact of the pandemic on the folk music community and the personal loss of her mother. Producer: Edwina Pitman

Episode 8 of the second series of The Old Songs Podcast, supported, so very kindly, by the English Folk Dance and Song Society, is an unusual one as it focuses on an old tune rather than an old song. Prepare yourself to delve into the background of one of the most well-known Morris dancing tunes, 'Princess Royal'. Joining Jon Wilks to discuss the tune is one of the country's finest melodeon players, John Spiers, or "Squeezy" as he's fondly known as on the English folk scene. Many of you will know Squeezy as a founding member of Bellowhead, not to mention a myriad of other bands he steps in and out of when the road calls. Over the course of an hour or so, the pair look at the history of 'Princess Royal' tune. Did it start life as an accompaniment to English Morris dancing, or does it stretch further back and over greater distances than that? Squeezy tells us a bit about growing up, somewhat hesitantly, in the Morris tradition, and talks about the difference between being a musician performing this tune on stage and a musician playing for a Morris side. He explains what a jig is, what a reel might be, how to recognise a slow, and who's wearing the trunkles in this relationship? Squeezy mentions video clips and different versions throughout, which we have listed and embedded below. LinksOver the course of the episode, John Spiers and Jon Wilks mention the following things:The English Folk Dance and Song SocietyThe story of Cecil Sharp and Headington Quarry MorrisMat Green (Magpie Lane) playing and dancing 'Princess Royal' on YoutubeTrack listingJohn Spiers playing the Abingdon version on the Spiers and Boden album, Bellow, 2003Spiers & Boden playing the Bampton version on their album, Vagabond, 2008Magpie Lane playing 'Princess Royal' on their 2006 album, The Oxford RambleClannad playing 'Mrs McDermott' on their 1973 album, ClannadMat Green of Bampton Lane, performing the tune while dancing a jig (see above)The Unthanks singing 'The Scarecrow Knows' from the soundtrack to the TV series, Worzel Gummidge, released in December 2022Jim Moray singing ‘Gypsies' from his 2003 album, Sweet England'Princess Royal' from Morris On, released in 1972A snippet of Eliza Carthy and Nancy Kerr performing the B part on their 1995 album, The Shape of ScrapeJohn Spiers performing an exclusive version of the North Leigh version, spoken about in an earlier part of the conversationFor more info on John Spiers, head to johnspiers.co.uk.

2022 was a great year for folk albums and Matthew Bannister will be celebrating them when he presents The Official Folk Albums Chart of the Year Show 2022. He'll count down the top 40 best-selling folk albums of 2022 and we'll hear from many of the artists who made them, including Rachel Newton, Karine Polwart, Eliza Carthy, Seth Lakeman, Robert Macfarlane and Julie Fowlis, Kate Rusby, Becky Unthank and Bernard Butler. --- Delve deeper into the Folk on Foot world and keep us on the road by becoming a Patron—sign up at patreon.com/folkonfoot. You can choose your level and get great rewards, ranging from a stylish Folk on Foot badge to access to our amazing and ever expanding Folk on Foot on Film video archive of more than 150 unique performances filmed on our travels. Sign up for our newsletter at www.folkonfoot.com Follow us on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram: @folkonfoot

Latest up from Spoken Label (Author / Artist Podcast) features the wonderful Sophie Parkes. Her bio advises She "was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire in 1985. Following degrees from the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University, Sophie is currently studying for a PhD in creative writing and folklore at Sheffield Hallum University. She won a Northern Writers' Award in 2017 and has published a biography of musician, Eliza Carthy, and co-wrote the autobiography of endurance athlete Dave Heeley." In this Spoken Label episode, we talk about her work with Mosley Writers and The Tameside Workshop in addition to her debut novel historical fiction ' Out of Human Sight'. Follow Sophie on twitter: @Sophparkes

Come away human child to the faery world on the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast #590. Jen Midkiff, Seán Heely, Shelli Le Fay, The Crossjacks, Lauren Oxford, Poitín, Wolf Loescher & Mark Kenneth, Jesse Ferguson, Eliza Carthy and The Restitution, St. Stephen's Green, Brad Tuck, The Celtic Kitchen Party, La Unica, Tan and Sober Gentlemen, Patsy O'Brien VOTE IN THE CELTIC TOP 20 FOR 2023 This is our way of finding the best songs and artists each year. You can vote for as many songs and tunes that inspire you in each episode. Your vote helps me create next year's Best Celtic music of 2023 episode.  Vote Now! Two weeks after the episode is launched, I compile your votes to update a playlist on Spotify and YouTube. These are the results of your voting. You can help these artists out by following the playlists and adding tracks you love to your playlists. Follow us on Facebook to find out who is added each week. Listen on Spotify and YouTube. GET CELTIC MUSIC NEWS IN YOUR INBOX The Celtic Music Magazine is a quick and easy way to plug yourself into more great Celtic culture. Subscribe and get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free. THIS WEEK IN CELTIC MUSIC 0:02 - Intro: Kris Colt 0:11 - Jen Midkiff "Garryowen" from Collage 3:04 - WELCOME 5:05 - Seán Heely "The Dram Circle / Colonel Crawford's / Aunt Susan's Favourite (Bob McQuillen's)" from Edge of the Bow 8:52 - Shelli Le Fay "The Stolen Child" from Feral Heart 13:03 - The Crossjacks "Irish Washerwoman / Swallowtail Jig / Calliope House (Medley)" from The Crossjacks 16:49 - Lauren Oxford "What Rings True" from Lauren Oxford 21:56 - FEEDBACK 25:24 - Poitín "Blackleg Miner" from One For The Road 27:27 - Wolf Loescher & Mark Kenneth "Glenlogie" from Loescher+Kenneth 31:57 - Jesse Ferguson "Will Ye Not Come Back Again?" from The Bard of Cornwall 35:31 - Eliza Carthy and The Restitution "Good Morning Mr Walker" from Queen of the Whirl 39:31 - St. Stephen's Green "Soon May the Wellerman Come" from Shadows of Green 43:26 - THANKS 45:07 - Brad Tuck "Anchor Down (feat. Chris Andrews)" from The Rocky Isle 48:18 - The Celtic Kitchen Party "Sean Ryan's Polka / Irish Rover" from Last Call 53:29 - La Unica "Aun" from Jigs Reels and Rancheras 58:33 - Tan and Sober Gentlemen "Kelly Sullivan" from Regressive Folk Music 1:01:25 - CLOSING 1:03:18 - Patsy O'Brien "Where The Sunflowers Grow" from Onward The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather and our Patrons on Patreon. The show was edited by Mitchell Petersen with Graphics by Miranda Nelson Designs. Visit our website to subscribe to the show. You'll find links to all of the artists played in this episode. You'll get access to our Best of this Year Playlist. You can subscribe to our Celtic Music Magazine and get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free Irish Music. Plus, you'll get 7 weekly news items about what's happening with Celtic music and culture online. Best of all, you will connect with your Celtic heritage. Finally, please tell one friend about this podcast. Word of mouth is the absolute best way to support any creative endeavor. Promote Celtic culture through music at http://celticmusicpodcast.com/. WELCOME CELTOPHILE TO CELTIC MUSIC * Helping you celebrate Celtic culture through music. I am Marc Gunn. I play Celtic music in Atlanta, Georgia. The Podcast is here to build our diverse Celtic community and help the incredible artists who so generously share their music with you. If you hear music you love, please email artists to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. You can find a link to all of the artists in the shownotes, along with show times, when you visit our website at celticmusicpodcast.com. Do you have the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast app? It's 100% free. You can listen to hundreds of episodes of the podcast. Download it now. Hey Celtic Bands, I'm looking for new music and stories in 2023. To submit your band, just complete the permission form at 4celts.com. You'll also find information on how to submit a story behind one of your songs or tunes. Get a free Celtic Musicians Guide to Digital Music eBook. email gift@bestcelticmusic THANK YOU PATRONS OF THE PODCAST! Because of Your kind and generous support, this show comes out at least four times a month. Your generosity funds the creation, promotion and production of the show. It allows us to attract new listeners and to help our community grow. As a patron, you get music - only episodes before regular listeners, vote in the Celtic Top 20, and you get a private feed to listen to the show.  All that for as little as $1 per episode. A special thanks to our newest Patrons of the Podcast: Ben P, Brian M HERE IS YOUR THREE STEP PLAN TO SUPPORT THE PODCAST Go to our Patreon page. Decide how much you want to pledge every week, $1, $5, $10. Make sure to cap how much you want to spend per month. Keep listening to the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast to celebrate Celtic culture through music. You can become a generous Patron of the Podcast on Patreon at SongHenge.com. TRAVEL WITH CELTIC INVASION VACATIONS Every year, I take a small group of Celtic music fans on the relaxing adventure of a lifetime. We don't see everything. Instead, we stay in one area. We get to know the region through its culture, history, and legends. You can join us with an auditory and visual adventure through podcasts and videos. This June, we're going on a Celtic Invasion of County Mayo in Ireland. We're gonna explore the area and get to know Grace O'Malley, the Pirate Queen. Learn more about the invasion at http://celticinvasion.com/ #celticmusic #irishmusic #celticmusicpodcast I WANT YOUR FEEDBACK What are you doing today while listening to the podcast? You can take a screenshot of the podcast on your phone. You can send a written comment along with a picture of what you're doing while listening. How would you like to introduce an episode of the podcast? It's super easy. Contact me for details. Email me at celticpodcast@gmail, message me on Facebook, or contact me through Mastodon @celtfather@c.im. Jolena posted on Mastodon: "Hi Marc. I'm listening to the podcast you did for yesterday and I really love it. I'm jamming out to it on a cold day, but the music lifts my spirits and puts a smile on my face. Thanks for putting these shows together. I love learning more about celtic music." John and Debbie emailed a photo and said: "Love it Padraic O'Toole commented on Facebook: "Listening to Walking Ireland today, Marc, while recovering from Bunion surgery! I won't be walking far, or dancing a jig anytime soon, but I'm thoroughly enjoying the music. Thanks for supporting Celtic music and musicians!" Learn more about County Mayo on my blog.

Philippa Perry joins Nikki Bedi and Richard Coles. The psychotherapist, writer, agony aunt and broadcaster is married to the artist Grayson Perry. Her works include The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (And Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did). Peter Lantos tells the story of how he survived the Holocaust as a small child in Bergen-Belsen. He offers an extraordinary perspective of not just living through terrible events, but on making sense of them as well. Sean Gandini is a renowned juggling artist and performer. He grew up in Havana, Cuba, where he developed a fascination with magic and mathematics, eventually leading him to take up juggling at the age of 16. Eliza Carthy chooses her Inheritance Tracks: Good Morning, Mr Walker by Mighty Sparrow and Killer Queen by Queen. It's been 21 years since a 12 year old Dani Harmer first appeared in children's drama The Story of Tracy Beaker, based on Jacqueline Wilson's books about growing up in a care home. Harmer has had a varied career outside the famous TV series, but explains why she's happy to see what Tracy's up to. The Boy Who Didn't Want to Die by Peter Lantos is out now. Sean Gandini with Kati will be performing The Games We Play as part of Mime London 2023 at The Place on the 20th and 21st of January. Eliza & Martin Carthy, and her band The Restitution, will be at The Barbican in London on Saturday 4th of February. The new series of The Beaker Girls starts on Friday 13th January at 6pm on CBBC and can be seen afterwards on BBC iPlayer. Producer: Claire Bartleet

Good Morning Mr Walker by The Mighty Sparrow and Killer Queen by Queen

1. Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros : Bhindi Bhagee from the 4CD set Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years (Dark Horse)2. Sears Orchestra : Bela Aurora from the 4CD box Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History Of The World's Music (Dust To Digital)3. Angeline Morrison : Black John from the CD The Sorrow Songs (Folk Songs Of Black British Experience) (Topic)4. Nick Hart : Lemany from the CD Nick Hart Sings Ten English Folk Songs (Roebuck)5. Oumou Sangaré : Kélé Magni from the CD Timbuktu (World Circuit)6. Joan Shelley : Home from the CD The Spur (No Quarter)7. Lady Maisery : Tender from the CD Tender (Lady Maisery)8. Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard : Who's That Knocking? from the CD Pioneering Women Of Bluegrass: The Definitive Edition (Smithsonian Folkways)9. Son House : Forever On My Mind from the CD Forever On My Mind (Easy Eye Sound)10. Eliza Carthy & The Restitution : Two Tears from the CD Queen Of The Whirl (HemHem)11. Leyla McCalla : Vini Wé from the CD Breaking The Thermometer (Anti)12. Meïkhâneh : Chaque Jour Nouveau from the CD Chants Du Dedans, Chants Du Dehors (Buda)13. Glenn Jones : Kathy Maltese from the CD Vade Mecum (Thrill Jockey)14. Folkatomik : Lu Trainu from the CD Polaris (ItalySona) You can find more details including past playlists and links to labels at www.podwireless.comPodwireless can also be heard streamed live on Mixcloud.Follow the links for previous podcasts.

This month's Official Folk Albums Chart Show from Folk on Foot features an interview with Eliza Carthy as she celebrates her astonishing 30 year career. There's music from Janice Burns and Jon Doran, Albion Christmas Band, Burd Ellen, Magpie Arc, The Mary Wallopers and Lady Maisery. Plus the Chief Executive of the charity Help Musicians, James Ainscough, talks about the unique pressures facing musicians as 2022 draws to a close. --- Delve deeper into the Folk on Foot world and keep us on the road by becoming a Patron—sign up at patreon.com/folkonfoot. You can choose your level and get great rewards, ranging from a stylish Folk on Foot badge to access to our amazing and ever expanding Folk on Foot on Film video archive of more than 150 unique performances filmed on our travels. Sign up for our newsletter at www.folkonfoot.com Follow us on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram: @folkonfoot

Emily Portman, Rob Harbron and Jon Wilks discuss the traditional ballad, ‘The Trees They Do Grow High' [Roud 31], a song that Emily and Rob have recorded for their new album, Time Was Away. Subjects covered include the duo's first encounter with traditional folk music, their work with the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Emily's interpretations of the song's themes, its history, the source singer that Emily learned the song from, the modes and the melody, and how Rob goes about creating accompaniments for traditional songs. They also chat about the album itself and the forthcoming tour to support it. The Old Songs Podcast can be found on all decent streaming platforms.The Old Songs Podcast is supported by the English Folk Dance and Song Society.‘The Trees The Do Grow High' podcast notesLinksOver the course of the episode, Emily Portman, Rob Harbron and Jon Wilks mention the following things:The English Folk Dance and Song Society‘The Trees They Do Grow High' [Roud 31] on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library websiteFolkWorksMonday Folk Singers OnlineThe Vaughan William Memorial Library archiveFind Emily Portman and Rob Harbron gigs on the Tradfolk Events CalendarThe initial songs released from Time Was Away on SpotifyTrack listing‘The Trees They Do Grow High', as performed by Martin Carthy‘Long-A-Growing', as performed by Steeleye Span‘Growing (The Trees They Do Grow High)', as performed by Eliza Carthy & Nancy Kerr‘Long A-Growing', as performed by Mary Ann Haynes‘Long a-Growing', as performed by Emily Portman and Rob Harbron‘Long a-Growing', as performed by Emily Portman exclusively for The Old Songs PodcastPhoto Credit: Camilla Greenwell

1. (Sig) Ian A Anderson : Goblets & Elms from the CD Onwards (Ghosts From The Basement)2. Eliza Carthy & The Restitution : Jacky Tar from the CD Queen Of The Whirl (HemHem)3. Marlais : Bird In The Bush from the DL album Stream Of Forms (Kin-Ship)4. Hedera : Waterwheel (unreleased) (Cuculi)5. Spöket i Köket : Polska Till Wik from the CD Kurbits & Flames (Gammelthea)6. Cory Seznec : Been All Around This World from the CD Eyes On The Rise (Captain Pouch)7. John Townley : If You Haven't Any Hay from the CD The Old Sailor (The Lollipoppe Shoppe)8. Duo Ruut : Liisa Pehmes Süles from the DL single (Duo Ruut)9. Claudio Merico & Giulia Tripoti : Si Veriash A La Rana from the CD Aljama (Karkum Project)10. Mauskovic Dance Band : Bukaroo Bank from the CD Bukaroo Bank (Bongo Joe)11. Banda Blondeau : Folksteady from the CD Banda Blondeau (Felmay)12. Kottarashky & The Rain Dogs : Zalvera from the DL album Doghouse (Asphalt Tango)13. Christina Alden & Alex Patterson : Etta's Song from the DL single (Alden & Patterson)14. Nic Zuppardi : Alpardi McPatterzup from the CD North Cape (North Cape)15. Noel Dashwood feat. Emily Winng : Raratonga from the CD Noel Dashwood (Noel Dashwood)16. Kumbia Boruka : Fiesta En Las Calles (2022) from the DL single (Boa Viagem)17. Wesli : Makonay from the CD Tradisyon (Cumbancha)18. Josephine Foster & Alasdair Roberts : A Leaf Must Fall from the DL album Spirit Of Clive : A Tribute To The Music Of Clive Palmer & COB (Isolation Jams)19. Sharron Kraus : Eleven Willows from the DL album Spirit Of Clive : A Tribute To The Music Of Clive Palmer & COB (Isolation Jams)20. Yoni Avi Battat feat. Laura Elkeslassy : Will Her Love Remember from the CD Fragments (Yoni Avi Battat)21. Orkestra Shkodra : Ti Je Krejt Si Nj' Ganxhe from the DL album Like Nightingales In The Spring (Oda 3)22. Derya Yildirim & Grup Simsek : Bal from the CD Dost 2 (Bongo Joe)23. Josienne Clarke : The Month Of January from the DL EP Now & Then (Corduroy Punk)24. Wookalily : Ghost from the DL single (Wookalily)25. Iftin Band feat. Axmed Sharif Killer & Siteey Qosol Wanaag : Deriskaagi Waa Kugu Jahowareeray from the CD Mogadishu's Finest : The Al-Aruba Sessions (Ostinato)26. Electric Vocuhila : Kidola Dola from the CD Kiteky (Another/Capsule)27. Julie Murphy : A Very Good Year from the DL EP Six Out Of Nine (Julie Murphy)28. One Leg One Eye : Only The Diceys from the DL album …And Take The Black Worm With Me (Nyahh)29. Luke Daniels & The Cobhers : Cucumber Jungle from the CD Luke Daniels & The Cobhers (Gael) You can find more details including past playlists and links to labels at www.podwireless.comPodwireless can also be heard streamed live on Mixcloud.Follow the links for previous podcasts.

Eliza Carthy is celebrating 30 years as a professional musician with a new album, Queen of the Whirl. She talks about this, the legacy of her musical family – as the daughter of Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy – the way traditional music develops, and her own song-writing, and performs live in the Front Row studio. Double Palme d'Or winning Swedish director Ruben Östlund tells Samira about his first English language film, Triangle of Sadness - a satire on the fashion industry, influencer culture, and the world of the super-rich. Plus the threat to brutalist architecture. Last year the Dorman Long Tower in Redcar was demolished, and now the Kirkgate Shopping centre in Birmingham is condemned too. Brutalist architecture provokes both love as well as hate, but around the country its buildings are in peril. Author John Grindrod and Duncan Wilson from Historic England discuss how much is being lost, and if it matters. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May Photo: Eliza Carthy. Credit: Elodie Kowalski

New releases from some of my favourites, including Gambia's Sona Jobarteh, Algeria's Souad Massi, England's Eliza Carthy, and The Unthanks. Features on upcoming "Rogues" Talisk, Rocket Revellers, Bill & The Belles, and Eilen Jewell, and some exhilarating Celtic and African music bookending the show.

'Shallow Brown' [Roud 2621] is a much-loved and rather mysterious traditional folk song. Collected on both coasts of the United States, as well as the South coast of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Canada, the most common versions of this mesmerising sea shanty hint at heart-breaking experiences of the transatlantic slave trade. In this, the fourth episode of the second series of The Old Songs Podcast, folk singers Angeline Morrison and Jon Wilks discuss the song's known history, the singers and collectors involved with it, and their own experiences of first hearing and performing the song. LinksOver the course of the episode, Angeline Morrison and Jon Wilks mention the following links:The English Folk Dance and Song Society‘Shallow Brown' [Roud 2621] on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library websiteThe Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du BoisShanties from the Seven Seas by Stan HugillTrack listing‘Shallow Brown', performed by Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith'Shallow Brown', performed by Norma Waterson, Eliza Carthy & the Gift Band'Shallow Brown', performed by John Francis Flynn'Shallow Brown', performed by June Tabor'Shallow Brown', performed by Sting'Shallow Brown', performed by Angeline Morrison exclusively for The Old Songs PodcastFor more info on Angeline Morrison, head to angelinemorrisonmusic.bandcamp.com

What is the multi-award-winning Folk on Foot all about? The Telegraph calls it “a restorative breathing space in sound”.  In this sampler, host Matthew Bannister shares beautiful extracts from episodes featuring Karine Polwart on Fala Moor, Eliza Carthy and family at Robin Hood's Bay, Jenny Sturgeon in Shetland, Richard Thompson in Muswell Hill, Duncan Chisholm at Sandwood Bay, The Unthanks on the Northumberland Coast, Robert Macfarlane and Johnny Flynn at Wandlebury, Peggy Seeger in Iffley and The Young'uns in Hartlepool. Dip your toe in the water here before diving into all our glorious episodes.  --- Delve deeper into the Folk on Foot world and keep us on the road by becoming a Patron—sign up at patreon.com/folkonfoot. You can choose your level and get great rewards, ranging from a stylish Folk on Foot badge to access to our amazing and ever expanding Folk on Foot on Film video archive of more than 150 unique performances filmed on our travels. Sign up for our newsletter at www.folkonfoot.com Follow us on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram: @folkonfoot  

Angeline Morrison's eagerly awaited album 'The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience' reflects the lives of Englands's historic black population. These are stories about real people, real places, and real events. Produced by Eliza Carthy the album is released on the prestigious Topic label.  As usual, interviewer Jon Bickley is asking the questions. If you want more information about us please go to https://invisiblefolkclub.com/ Featured songs (in order of appearance): 01 Angeline Morrison - The Brown Girl * 02 Angeline Morrison - Unknown African Boy (d1830) ** 03 Angeline Morrison - Slave No More ** 04 Angeline Morrison - The Flames They Do Grow High ** *  from 'The Brown Girl and Other Folk Songs' ** from 'The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience' Links for Angeline: https://www.facebook.com/angelinemorrisonmusic https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2022/08/angeline-morrison-the-sorrow-songs-folk-songs-of-black-british-experience/ https://angelinemorrisonmusic.bandcamp.com/

On this episode of The Paul Weller Fan Podcast, I chat to an incredible folk musician who is celebrating her 30th career anniversary in 2022. Eliza Carthy MBE is, without doubt, an innovator and leading light of England's folk scene - an amazing solo artist, band member, singer, songwriter and fiddle player. Eliza rose to prominence in the mid-1990s both as a solo artist and a member of Waterson-Carthy, the group she formed with her parents, folk icons Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy (Martin himself played with Paul on the album True Meanings in 2018). She has covered Paul Weller's Wild Wood for her LP Angels and Cigarettes, played with him on Studio 150 and with The Imagined Village and has performed live on stage with Paul for a BBC4 session - so plenty of lovely stories to hear on this one. Find out more in the show notes for this podcast at paulwellerfanpodcast.com/episode-108-eliza-carthy If you enjoy this episode of the podcast - please share on your social media channels - and leave a review and if you want to support the podcast financially, you can buy me a virtual coffee at paulwellerfanpodcast.com/store  

Sunday 17 April: Who are The Folk in folk music? With Ross Cole.

Matthew Bannister on Bamber Gascoigne, the broadcaster and author best known as the long serving host of the TV quiz show 'University Challenge'. Norma Waterson, the revered singer who was part of the Waterson Carthy dynasty that played a leading role in the English folk revival. We have a personal tribute from her husband Martin Carthy and daughter Eliza Carthy. Claire Tomlinson, who broke down barriers to become one of the UK's best polo players. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese-born Buddhist monk known as the 'father of mindfulness'. Producer: Neil George Interviewed guest: Christina Gascoigne Interviewed guest: Wasfi Kani Interviewed guest: Martin Carthy Interviewed guest: Eliza Carthy Interviewed guest: Mark Tomlinson Interviewed guest: Brother Phap Huu Interviewed guest: Jeff Wilson Archive clips used: BBC Radio 4, Desert Island Discs 01/11/1987; Granada TV, University Challenge 01/09/1987; BBC Two, The Young Ones - Bambi 08/05/1984; Granada TV, The Christians e03 The Birth of Europe 16/08/1977; BBC Radio 3, Music Matters 31/03/2018; BBC Radio 4, The King of Games 21/08/1984; BBC SOUND ARCHIVE, Hurlingham vs Scotland 02/09/1980; YouTube / Is Secret, Namo Avalokiteshvara Plum Village Chanting 13/08/2014; BBC Two, Arena: Stories My Country Told Me 14/07/1996.

I want to say a massive thank you to Tim Eriksen for his time, words and music. You can explore more of his work by heading to www.timeriksenmusic.com. You can purchase his albums through Bandcamp. I also highly suggest exploring any number of Tim Eriksen's many collaborations, not limited to but including: - Bottle (a collaboration between Tim & Eliza Carthy) - Žabe i Babe, (Bosnian folk-pop group, composed of Tim, his late wife, Minja Lausevic, Trista Newyear & Donna Kwon. The group recorded one album, Drumovi, in the 90's as a statement against the genocide and war happening in the former Yugoslavia). - Northampton Harmony (Sacred Harp music)- Cordelia's Dad (hard-core punk, turned ballad-singing folk musicians)If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with friends, supporting my work through Patreon, or subscribing and rating it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. These days, the only way a podcast can grow is directly through the listeners. Special thanks to the band Enkel for use of the song Taho as our opening theme. To read the monthly articles on these episodes, head to www.folkworks.org and subscribe to their mailing list.

I didn't have to travel far to meet this week's guest, my friend, kinda neighbour and fellow Whitchurch Folk Club organiser, Paul Sartin. In the wider folk world he's probably best known as a member of Faustus, Belshazzar's Feast and, or course, a former member of Bellowhead. But it's Paul's encyclopaedic knowledge of traditional folk music, and, in particular, songs from in-and-around Hampshire, that make episode 5 of The Old Songs Podcast particularly special. Regular listeners will notice that we've returned to a few topics we've already covered, and we re-meet characters that have cropped up before, but it's so worth it when you're with someone as scholarly as Paul. In particular, it's his knowledge of the folk song collecting process that took place close to 120 years ago. As a direct ancestor to Edith Sartin and Marina Russell, two particularly noted source singers, Paul has spent a lot of time looking at the biographical detail of these people and what these songs meant to them. While we're ostensibly discussing ‘An Acre of Land', the song allows us to touch on a variety of other old songs. In the course of this episode you'll hear performances from Eliza Carthy & the Gift Band, PJ Harvey, Martin Carthy, Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, Tom Newman, Spiers & Boden, and, of course, the mighty Faustus. Here, then, is my friend and yours – Paul Sartin, freshly dosed on good coffee, hoeing down hard on ‘An Acre of Land'. Who featured in this ‘An Acre of Land' podcast?A quick recap of the songs you've just heard. Clicking on the links below will take you to places to buy the songs.The podcast opened with ‘An Acre of Land', performed by Faustus on their eponymous album.You heard Eliza Carthy & The Gift Band taking on ‘The Elfin Knight', which appeared on the Anchor album.PJ Harvey sang ‘Acre of Land' with Harry Escott on a standalone single.You heard Martin Carthy's seminal performance of ‘Scarborough Fair' from his debut album.Cohen Brathwaite-Kilcoyne's brilliant, rousing performance of ‘Country Carrier' is from his solo album, Outway Songster.The source singer you heard was Tom Newman, singing ‘All For Me Grog' or ‘My Old Hat That I Got On' to Mike Yates. For more on this song, see my blog post.Spiers and Boden performed ‘The Quaker / Brighton Camp' on their Through and Through collection.And the two songs you heard from Faustus were, of course, ‘An Acre of Land' and a clip of ‘Next Stop: Grimsby' (which I mistakenly called ‘Last Stop: Grimsby' – my apologies, both from their Faustus album (see the link above). That's all for this week's episode. See you in a couple of weeks with… well, you'll have to wait and see. So many people to speak to, so little time! 

This episode we're joined by Martin Green who is challenging you to reimagine Lyke Wake Dirge, an ancient funeral chant about the soul's journey through purgatory. Martin is a multi-award winning musician and composer who has collaborated with many artists and musicians including the likes of Eliza Carthy, Joan Baez, Anais Mitchell and Aidan Moffatt. As a member of Lau he has won four BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards for Best Group and in 2015 he was nominated in the Best Musician category. In 2019 he won the Ivor Novello award for his sound walk “Aeons” that was part of The Great Exhibition of the North. We first came across Martin's work in his 2015 show Flit, a multimedia, collaborative song cycle on the theme of migration. As a performer steeped in traditional music but with a process informed by sampling, electronics, and interdisciplinary storytelling, we wanted to get his insight on how he traverses these multiple planes Check out Martin's recent project The Portal here. /// TAKE PART /// Charts: example score, chords & lyrics (.pdf) Playlist: Spotify playlist of existing versions of Lyke Wake Dirge. Find a quick guide on how to submit here. Martin will be back to listen to your takes in the second part of this episode released on Monday 27 September. If you'd like to be included in the podcast then try and get your version to us by Monday 20th September to get your versions included in the podcast. Drop us a message if you have any questions. /// COMMUNITY /// If you're interested in getting deeper into the conversation, come and join our group on Facebook. There's been some amazing chats over the last month with people sharing demos, feedback and ideas. /// MUSIC CREDITS /// 10:54 - Strange Sky - Martin Green (featuring Becky Unthank) [From Flit] 17:10 - Etteridge - Martin Green (featuring Brìghde Chaimbeul) [From The Portal] 19:46 - A Place Of Crisps And Pianos - Martin Green 28:48 - Lyke Wake Dirge - The Young Tradition 34:30 - Lyke Wake Dirge - Martin Green (featuring Becky Unthank) 39:41 - A Lyke Wake Dirge - Alasdair Roberts 42:06 - Dirge from Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings - Benjamin Britten (featuring Peter Pears) 43:45 - Lyke Wake Dirge - Trumpets of Death 46:55 - Lyke Wake Dirge - Tom Chapman, Claire Chapman and Dave Allen (members of the Lyke Wake Walking Club) Facebook | Instagram | Twitter Latest news and more at oldtunesfreshtakes.com Hosted by Jack The Robot and Hevelwood

Anne McElvoy explores whether it is worth getting hot under the collar about blue collar history with historian Alison Light, David Almond and Eliza Carthy. Once upon a time the working class were heroes; their close-knit communities were celebrated. Has this working class disappeared along with the great industries- steel -coal and ship building - that brought them into being? Is the working class now a figment of other people's dreams or nightmares? This event was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage, Gateshead on 02.11.14.

Harriett Gilbert invites Deborah Meaden from Dragons' Den, and folk-singer and songwriter Eliza Carthy to discuss their favourite books: 'Everything is Illuminated' by Jonathan Safran Foer, 'The Instance of the Fingerpost' by Iain Pears and 'The Emperor's Babe' by Bernardine Evaristo.