Podcast appearances and mentions of Maddy Prior

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

rWotD Episode 2833: Discworld Diary Welcome to Random Wiki of the Day, your journey through Wikipedia’s vast and varied content, one random article at a time.The random article for Tuesday, 4 February 2025 is Discworld Diary.The Discworld Diaries are a series of themed diaries based on the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. Each one (except the 2008 diary) is based on an Ankh-Morpork institution, and has an opening section containing information about that institution written by Pratchett and Stephen Briggs.The diaries feature a great deal of background information, far more than could reasonably be put into the novels. However, some of this occasionally finds its way into the series proper - the concept of female assassins, the introduction of Black Widow House, and the characters of Miss Alice Band and Mme les Deux-Épées were notable ideas that first appeared in the Assassins' Guild Yearbook, and later in the Discworld short story "Minutes of the Meeting to Form the Proposed Ankh-Morpork Federation of Scouts" in A Blink of the Screen, to then becoming characters and a playable Assassins' Guild House in Discworld MUD.The early diaries are illustrated by Paul Kidby.Those for 2015 and 2016 were by Pratchett aided and abetted by the Discworld Emporium, with additional illustrations by Peter DennisThe diaries are:Discworld's Unseen University Diary 1998 (1997); the cover art features the character Death, possibly the character who appeared in the greatest number of Discworld novels.Discworld's Ankh-Morpork City Watch Diary 1999 (1998); the cover art features the character Commander Samuel Vimes of the Watch, His Grace the Duke of Ankh, in his beloved street uniform, in other words, battered Watchman armor.Discworld Assassins' Guild Yearbook and Diary 2000 (1999); the cover art features the character Lord Downey, the Assassins' Guild leader, with his specialty peppermint (rumored poisoned).Discworld Fools' Guild Yearbook and Diary 2001 (2000); the cover art features Dr Whiteface, the Fools' Guild leader, bursting through a paper hoop.Discworld Thieves' Guild Yearbook and Diary 2002 (2001); the cover art features a "photofit" of Mr Boggis, the Thieves' Guild leader.Discworld (Reformed) Vampyre's Diary 2003 (2002); the cover art features Mr John Not-A-Vampire-At-All Smith, head of the Ankh-Morpork Mission of the Black Ribboners with a cup of steaming brown liquid, likely coffee or hot cocoa.Ankh-Morpork Post Office Handbook Diary 2007 (2006); the cover art features Moist von Lipwig, the Postmaster of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office, wearing his token golden suit and wingèd hat, with Lipwigzers on either side of him.Lu Tze's Yearbook of Enlightenment 2008 (2007); the cover art features Lu-Tze in the lotus position, with his broom in front of him, against a square with the phrase "It won't get better if you pick it" (from the Way of Mrs Cosmopolite).2015 Discworld Diary. First & Last Aid. We R Igors (2014); cover art features Igor.2016 Discworld Diary: A Practical Manual for the Modern Witch (2015); the cover art depicts Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax drawn by Peter DennisThe Terry Pratchett Diary. Terry Pratchett & Friends (2016), aided & abetted by the Discworld Emporium. Illustrations by Peter Dennis. Introduction by Rhianna Pratchett and contributions by Neil Gaiman, Dr Pat Harkin, A. S. Byatt, Professor David Lloyd, Roger Peyton, Colin Smythe, Bernard Pearson, Paul Kidby, Stephen Baxter, Sandra Kidby, Amy Anderson, Jennifer Brehl, Philippa Dickinson, Maddy Prior, Ian Stewart, Malcolm Edwards, Stephen Briggs and Rob Wilkins. Only the dates are given, not the days of the week, so it is suitable for use in any year.The Ankh-Morpork Archives Vol. 1 (2019) and Vol. 2 (2020); anthologies of material written for the Discworld Diaries.There were no diaries published for the years 2004-2006, and 2009-2015; The Discworld Almanak by Pratchett and Bernard Pearson was published in 2004.Due to their limited edition nature, Discworld Diaries become increasingly valuable as they grow older. As of 2016, the 1998 Discworld's Unseen University Diary was available for around £90.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:27 UTC on Tuesday, 4 February 2025.For the full current version of the article, see Discworld Diary on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm long-form Patrick.

In Episode 16 Antonia and special guest Theodore Shack take ‘The Rolling English Road' (by GK Chesterton) as they ramble through discussions of belonging and nationalism, John 6:1-15 and a place close to both of their feet – Arthur's seat. Music: Fern Hill by William Fairhead, and if you want to hear an excellent rendition of Chesterton's ‘The Rolling English Road' set to music listen to Maddy Prior's version. Florilegium is a programme on Radio Maria which seeks to weave together liturgy, literature and  gardening in rambling, hopefully fruitful ways. It is written and presented by Kate Banks and Antonia Shack. About the Creators Antonia leads a patchwork life with jobs including but not limited to mother, book designer, editor, actor and teacher. She and Kate began discussing poetry, liturgy and gardening at the Willibrord Fellowship reading group in London and are delighted to be continuing these conversations on Radio Maria.  Kate (currently on leave from Florilegium) is a teacher of Literature, Philosophy and Theology, with a particularly keen regard for the poet and artist David Jones around whom many of her studies and her teaching-subjects have been based. She also briefly worked as a gardener in London, though she now lives with her little boy on the river Exe in Devon. If you enjoyed this programme, please consider making a once off or monthly donation to Radio Maria England by visiting www.RadioMariaEngland.uk or calling 0300 302 1251 during office hours. It is only through the ongoing support of our listeners that we continue to be a Christian voice by your side.

Many a feast (a solemnity even) feature in this coming week... or do they? Listen and find out. Here's the song list: 1. And can it be? (Charles Wesley) sung by Maddy Prior andthe Carnival Band 2. Iudica me Deus, introit from the 5th Sunday in Lent in the setting by Andrea Gabrieli, Conducted by Marco Gemmani with the ensembl I Cantori di San Marco 3. Misa Criolla - Kyrie sung by Katherine Jenkins 4. Unless a grain of wheat by Bernadette Farrell 5. Vexilla regis prodeunt with Peter Stevens and Martin Baker, Westminster Cathedral Choir 6. Vexila regis prodeunt (Kreuzeshymne) , S. 185 · Orchester Wiener Akademie with Martin Haselböck 7. Shirley Collins - "Wondrous Love", from 'Heart's Ease', out now on Domino 8. Ave Regina Caelorum · Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles

There was a crippling blizzard in Iowa in April of 1973. Over a foot of snow fell, coupled with 50-70 mph winds. But, inside my dormitory at U of I, I was warmed by the eternal sunshine of Pentangle's evocation of the 12th century. The plangent voice of Jacqui McShee, accompanied by John Renbourn and Bert Jansch's jazz infused “baroque folk” sustained me throughout that challenging season. Not usually one to subscribe to any woo-woo, New Ageist practices, I nonetheless became convinced that I had lived before as a medieval troubadour - a sensation that recently resurfaced when I was introduced to the Witcher saga, because I strongly identified with Dandelion, that narrative's ironic balladeer. Ms. McShee was my gateway drug to the time-traveling vocal intoxications of Anne Briggs, Shirley Collins, Maddy Prior, June Tabor, Sandy Denny, Kate Rusby, and others. A.L. Lloyd and Richard Thompson became my “spirit guides” through the library of Child ballads; a path which eventually led me back home to the USA via Alan Lomax and Pete Seeger. Song research became my professional passion and mission. Willy O Winsbury (Child 100), a traditional Scottish ballad, has many variations and possible derivations, one of which originates in the recounting of James V's courtship and marriage to Madeleine de Valois of France. In Pentangle's deft retelling, Willy and Janet's love triumphs over shame and death. You cannot ask for more than that. 

We begin with today's O Antiphon, sung by the Dominicans again. Listen to this week's episode of the Liturgical Looking Glass as we look at Christmas and beyond. Here's what we heard: 1. O Rex Gentium, sung by the Dominican Friars 2. Rorate Caeli, sung by the choir of King's College 3. There is no Rose, by Paul Hillier and sung by Theatre of Voices 4. Adam Lay Ybounden, sung by the Cambridge Singers 5. Eya martyr Stephane, by La Reverdie 6. Sans Day Carol by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band 7. Coventry Carol by the Vienna Boy's Choir 8. Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day, sung by the Cambridge Singers

Rev'd Dr Tim Macquiban is a recently-retired Methodist minister, currently a chaplain at Chester Cathedral, and a volunteer at Englesea Brook Museum and Chapel - the 'home' of the Primitive Methodist Church, where, for the last years of his ministry, he was Research Officer, with a particular interest in the life and ministry of Hugh Bourne and William Clowes, founders of Primitive Methodism. On today's programme, Tim talks about his own ministry - deeply involved in both the past history and present mission of the Methodist church - that's taken him from Yorkshire to Rome via Salisbury, Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford! He also talks about the origins of the Primitive Methodist Church - and how it might influence our mission and outreach today. Music is by Maddy Prior with the Mellstock Band and Choir, and there's the usual notice board news, too Items for the notice board can be emailed - judithley@manxradio.com

“The snow it is lying on Bewcastle Fell And the wind strips the skin from my face. The bare bones of a tree give some shelter to me But still it's a draughty old place.” Come to “the least populated area of the least populated county in England” and take shelter from the elements in the warm welcome of Stones Barn where Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span and her daughter Rose-Ellen Kemp are hosting one of their acclaimed singing weekends. Guest tutor Martin Carthy reveals how he discovered the joys of traditional singing when he was just seventeen years old – and Maddy and Rose-Ellen take us to Bewcastle Church to see the 6th Century cross commemorating St Cuthbert and sing in its glorious acoustic. --- 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 --- Find out more about Stones Barn at https://stonesbarn.co.uk/

ELUSIVE GODDESSMary Hopkin possesses one of the most achingly beautiful voices in creation. You wouldn't be blamed, though, for only remembering her for the Paul McCartney produced debut single, “Those Were the Days” from 1968. That song was ubiquitous and sold a million and a half copies in the US alone. She and the cute Beatle followed it up with “Goodbye”, which also hit big. Then, this, her second album, produced by future husband Tony Visconti, was recorded. After, that… relative silence, until 18 years later with the release of 1989's “Spirit”. She is quoted as saying that Earth Song Ocean Song was the album that she wanted to make, and so she refrained from scratching the Show Business itch, dedicating herself instead to raising her children. She made some appearances, and even starred in a BBC 1 TV series, but, mostly she took charge of her own choices, as opposed to being formed and manipulated by others. This is indeed a definitive folk music showcase, lovingly produced by Visconti, with covers by Cat Stevens, Ralph McTell (Streets of London), and string arrangements by the majestic Richard Hewson (of Beatles' and Nick Drake fame). It is an obscure gem by one of England's finest folk muses. Mary Hopkin was victimized by her massive early success. “Those were the Days” was an anomalous monster pop hit for the 18 year old, unrepeatable and out of sync with its own times. Mary's hope of establishing a respected recording career after that was akin to Henry Winkler's struggles to escape the popular effect of being The Fonz. He did it eventually, with Bill Hader's BARRY, but it took over 40 years of trying. Put the Welsh goddess Mary Hopkin on the roster of the greatest British female folk vocalists like Sandy Denny, Jacqui McShee, Shirley Collins, Anne Briggs, June Tabor, and Maddy Prior. Discover and enjoy.

Three Vicars: Christmas Part 2. James Runcie talks to Michael Berkeley. Ian Rose uses the metaphor of Caterpillars changing into butterflies. Philip Noble tells us not to be downhearted. MUSIC 1. Dunedin Consort - "O thou that tellest good tidings" from Handel's Messiah. 2. Alexander Armstrong - "In the bleak midwinter". 3. Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band - "While shepherds watched". 4. Clifford Hughes - "Child in the manger".

If the name of today's special guest is familiar to you, it may well be that you have heard him sharing a Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 2 ore leading Sunday Service and Prayer for the Day on BBC Radio 4 He's Rev'd Richard Littledale and - to use his own description - he's been making good use of words for the past 35 years! Richard has just retired as Pastor of Newbury Baptist Church in Berkshire, and recently made his first-ever visit to the Island, at the invitation of the Island Spirituality Network. The talk he gave to that group was entitled "I don't believe in prayer" - but is that really true? We'll find out as we talk about his ministry, his broadcasting, and his writing - including his recent book written following the death of his beloved wife Fiona. They'd been married for around 30 years when Fiona died, following a 7-year battle with cancer. The programme also includes music composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams, as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth this month. It's sung by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band. There's also a packed notice board - if you have items for the notice board, email me - judithley@manxradio.com And if you'd like to know more about Rev'd Richard Littledale, you can find him on line at https://richardlittledale.co.uk/ If you'd like to read Richard's blog - called "The Preachers' Blog - reflections on preaching, communication and story" - go to http://richardlittledale.me.uk/ Ruth Rice is back too - with another letter from her personal Alphabet of Wellbeing - and there's still time to book into Ruth's wellbeing retreat at Thie Dy Vea - our retreat house in Peel. Look on line for more details - www.retreathouse.im

Singer Maddy Prior and violinist Peter Knight were at the heart of the success of folk rock pioneers Steeleye Span. In this candid interview with Matthew Bannister on stage at the Indoor Festival of Folk at Cecil Sharp House, they recall the heady days of rock n roll excess during the 1970s and movingly describe the role of music in their lives. Peter reveals he once appeared on Top of the Pops dressed as a Womble and Maddy describes the gig where they dropped thousands of pound notes onto the heads of the audience. The band is famous for having countless different line ups and they speak about the rows that often led to one or more members departing.  A fascinating conversation with two legendary names of the folk world. --- 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 --- Find out more about Maddy Prior at https://stonesbarn.co.uk/ Find out more about Peter Knight at https://www.peterknight.net/

It's another epic ballad this week as I catch up with Franz Andres Morrissey to learn more about this song, that was originally collected in Scotland. We also chat about the ups and downs of the Swiss folk scene, have a good old gossip about Robert Burns, and I learn where Martin Carthy gets his tunes from.Brown Adam, or Broun Edom, is a rare song with some old, even pre-Christian, themes and motifs. It unfolds in true storytelling style and includes such colourful characters  as a False Knight, a faithful Lady, and Brown Adam himself, a magnificent young Smith. Shenanigans ensue and there's quite a bit of gratuitous bird shooting before the story moves on. Who needs Netflix when you've got songs like this?Franz is an academic (though he carries it  lightly) and an experienced folk musician, and we talk about his book, Language, the Singer and the Song. We also discuss his play which tells the stories of slavery through words and song.His band Taradiddle (https://taradiddle.ch) has just recorded an album that will be out soon, and there's a rumour that there'll be tour dates announced shortly. You can hear more of Franz's music on Soundcloud.MusicBrown Adam was performed and produced by by Franz. The episode also features three live recordings by Taradiddle: Benediction Song, Who's The Fool Now, Hey Ca' Thro and Leaving Limerick. You can find more here. There's also a snippet of the song that Franz and I recorded together remotely, Now Westlin Winds.AcknowledgementsFranz and I met through The Barnstoners, a self-organising group of musicians who have all been to the fabulous Stones Barn run by Maddy Prior and Rose-Ellen Kemp up in Cumbria. It goes without saying that we're big fans of theirs and recommend them highly.

Bessy (or Betsy) Bell and Mary Gray were two bonny lasses, and they may even have been historical figures, but the plague came from yon borough town and slew them both regardless. And thus was created a most romantic and picturesque place of pilgrimage.Bessy Bell is also a tune and we take a look at it's surprising history, from being scrawled in a book of sermons to the part it played in the heyday of a theatrical phenomenon. The tune we sing today isn't the traditional one; a quite different tune accompanied this song for a couple of hundred years. And yet there's a far better tune lurking in an old broadside, and I'm giving it a world premiere as the tune for Bessy Bell and Mary Gray.MusicInstrumental version of Betsy Bell and Mary Gray (trad)Betsy Bell and Mary Gray in the style of Maddy Prior and Martin CarthyHarp improvisationBessy Bell tune (trad)Go To Bed Sweet Muse (Robert Jones)Bessy Bell to the tune of A Health To Betty (trad)Beggar's Opera Overture (Johann Christoph Pepusch)'Twas Within A Furlong of Edinburgh Town (tune from Playford but sometimes attributed to Henry Purcell; words quite possibly by D'Urfey, arranged by Jayne Morrison)Betsy Bell and Mary Gray - full song (trad)FX from Freesound contributors djangoaltona, inchadney, boodabomb and bruno-auzetReferencesFrancis James Child (1904) English and Scottish Popular Ballads https://archive.org/details/englishscottishp1904chil/page/n13/mode/1up Letter written by Major Barry: http://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/arch-scot/article/view/168/166 Highland Notebook, Robert Carruthers: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CZsHAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Bertrand Harris Bronson (1976) The Singing Tradition of Child's Popular Ballads: https://archive.org/details/singingtradition0000bron Fourpence Halfpenny farthing, from A Pepysian garland : black-letter broadside ballads of the years 1595-1639, chiefly from the collection of Samuel Pepys (1922) https://archive.org/details/pepysiangarlandb00pepyuoft/page/322/mode/2up Bessy Bell from Orpheus Caledonius https://digital.nls.uk/special-collections-of-printed-music/archive/91483447 Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes: https://archive.org/details/oxforddictionary0000opie/page/n9/mode/2upJulie Bumpus (2010) BALLAD OPERA IN ENGLAND: ITS SONGS, CONTRIBUTORS, AND INFLUENCE: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=bgsu1276055885&disposition=inline Miscellaneous works of that celebrated Scotch poet Allan Ramsay: https://deriv.nls.uk/dcn23/1056/7480/105674805.23.pdf Edinburgh Literary Journal, 1829 https://www.proquest.com/openview/f7929bf2f574263f/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2773 

It's May. The meadows and hedgerows are in bloom, the sun is ablaze and the lark is on the wing.Song: The Lark in the Morning - CSPoem: The Lark Ascending (extract) by George MeredithTune: The Lark Ascending by R Vaughan Williams/The Lark in the morning (jig)Poem: The Green Cornfield by Christina RosettiSong: All Things Are Quite Silent - CarysPoem: Extract from The Night's Tale by Geoffrey ChaucerSong: The Skylark, words by Fredrick Tennyson, tune by Neal Jolly - Neal JollyPoem: Extract from Cymbeline by William ShakespeareTune: The Chirping of the Lark, from Playford, arr. J ShawLetter regarding a lecture given by Cecil Sharp, dated December 23rd, 1931 - Paul ReeveSong: The Lark in the Morn, as collected by Cecil SharpSong: The Lark in the Morn - Paul ReevePoem: To a Skylark (1805) (extract) by William WordsworthTune: My Singing BirdPoem: To a Skylark (extract) by Percy Bysshe ShelleySong: Kate of Arglyn, collected by Cecil Sharp from John Murphy in Marylebone Workhouse 1909Poem: The Lark Song by James W Wilt - Diana WhittakerSong: O Nancy My HeartPoem: To a Skylark (1825) (extract) by William WordsworthSong: Pleasant and DelightfulPoem: To the Lark by Robert HerrickSong: Lark in the Clear Air - Diana WhittakerPoem: Lottie Lane (broadside ballad)Song: Lark in the Park by John Devine - John DevinePoem: Limerick by Edward LearTune: Lark in the Morn arr Lynne Morley - Lynne MorleyLark song FX recorded by urupin, from FreesoundWhere not attributed, songs and poems performed by Jenny ShawSome of the songs were discovered using the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, others came out of our memories or our imaginations.The Barnstoners is a group of people who have loved their time at Stones Barn and continue to stay in touch. This podcast would never have been born without the support and encouragement of The Barnstoners, and the hugely empowering tuition at Stones Barn from the amazing Rose Ellen Kemp and Maddy Prior.

We start with a plug for our northern neighbors before talking about what our deaths might bring; heaven, hell, or something else altogether?   Plus, we apologize for Jon's sound quality - microphone issues :(   Notes Episcopal Dictionary https://episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary/all BCP Online https://www.bcponline.org Visit us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/subversiveundercroft     Music Be Thou My Vision, Jaimie Jorge Come Away to the Skies, Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band

Larry Gentis represents the Angel Gabriel. Alan Sorensen tells us to Cheer Up! Jeremy Irons reads Psalm 137. Deirdre Powrie has a Blue Christmas. Mary Haddow encourages us with the story of a Christmas Baby. MUSIC 1. St Michael's Singers - "Joy to the World" 2. Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band - "Angels from the realm of Glory. 3. St Michael's Singers - "While Shepherds Watched". 4. Academy of St Martin in the Fields - "For unto us a child is born". 5. Dave Clifton with Ikos - "Away in a Manger". 6. Norwich Cathedral Choir - "O come all ye Faithful".

On this episode of Thank Folk For Feminism, we chat to the one and only Maddy Prior and her super talented daughter and business partner, Rose Kemp. We talk about their roots, their shared teaching hub Stones Barn, stepping into your own creative voice and Maddy and Rose reflect on growing up in the industry.

From Revd John Davies, vicar of Clapham with Keasden and Austwick with Eldroth in the Diocese of Leeds. Prayers and reflections from the Churches Weekly Newsletter in a time of the coronavirus: 11 July 2021, The Sixth Sunday after Trinity. Featuring 'Lord of the Dance' (Sydney Carter, 1963) performed by Shusha, Maddy Prior, Melanie Harrold, John Kirkpatrick, Robert Johnson, Sydney Carter from Lovely In The Dances: Songs Of Sydney Carter, 1981; 'You have called us by our name' (Bernadette Farrell) from the collection Journeysongs Third Edition: Volume 16, 2012; and Love divine, all loves excelling' (Charles Wesley, 1747), performed by the Wallingford Parish Church Choir, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Adam Langston & Dr Sue Ledger, from The Hymns Album, 2011. Including my reflection for the day 'Redeeming Salome: let the little daughter dance', also available with all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.

Maddy Prior

From Revd John Davies, vicar of Clapham with Keasden and Austwick with Eldroth in the Diocese of Leeds. Prayers and reflections from the Churches Weekly Newsletter in a time of the coronavirus: 21 March 2021, The Fifth Sunday of Lent. Featuring 'Lord of the Dance' (Sydney Carter © 1963 Stainer & Bell). Performed by Shusha, Maddy Prior, Melanie Harrold, John Kirkpatrick, Robert Johnson, Sydney Carter in the collection ‘Lovely In The Dances: Songs Of Sydney Carter', 1981, and 'When Christ was lifted from the earth' (Brian A. Wren, 2003), performed by song leaders from Granite Bay and Sacramento Central Seventh-Day Adventist Churches,from their online collection ‘Daily Hymns': https://youtu.be/gkxkF6Hf9Kk. Including my talk for the day, "I will draw all people to myself”, available with all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.

It's February, and that means Valentine's Day. We think there's no better way to celebrate than a month-long, two-part look at Jane Austen's wannabe-Cupid herself, Emma Woodhouse! In Part 1, we're discussing: Jane Austen's original 1815 novel The 1972 miniseries, directed by John Glenister, written by Denis Constanduros, and starring Doran Godwin and John Carson The 1996 theatrical movie, written and directed by Douglas McGrath, and starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Toni Collette, Ewan McGregor, and Jeremy Northam The 1996 TV movie, directed by Diarmuid Lawrence, written by Andrew Davies, and starring Kate Beckinsale, Mark Strong, Samantha Morton, and Olivia Williams The 2009 miniseries, directed by Jim O'Hanlon, written by Sandy Welch, and starring Romola Garai, Jonny Lee Miller, and Michael Gambon The 2020 theatrical movie, directed by Autumn de Wilde, written by Eleanor Catton, and starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, and Bill Nighy In Part 2, we'll be taking a look at some of the less traditional adaptations (and yes, that means Clueless). Footnotes: Our previous looks at Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) and Sense and Sensibility The Librivox dramatic reading of Emma (starring Arielle Lipshaw as Miss Bates) Emma: A BabyLit Book by Jennifer Adams and Alison Oliver Our two-part look at Jane Eyre (Part 1 and Part 2) Maddy Prior and Steeleye Span Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit, A Larum, and Song One (2014) Miranda Hart and Miranda (2009–2015) Green Wing (2004–2007) You can follow Adapt or Perish on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and you can find us and all of our show notes online at adaptorperishcast.com. We're also on Patreon! You can find us at patreon.com/adaptcast. We have multiple reward levels, which include access to a patron-only community and a patron-only, biweekly bonus show! We hope to see you there. If you want to send us a question or comment, you can always email us at adaptorperishcast@gmail.com.

From Revd John Davies, vicar of Clapham with Keasden and Austwick with Eldroth in the Diocese of Leeds. Prayers and reflections from the Churches Weekly Newsletter in a time of the coronavirus: 10 January 2021, The Baptism of Christ. Featuring 'I heard the voice of Jesus Say' (Horatius Bonar) performed by Kathryn Crosweller from her collection 'How Deep the Father's Love for Us' and 'How Firm a Foundation' (Robert Keen) performed by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band from their collection 'Sing Lustily & With Good Courage'. Including my talk for the day, 'We draw from deep wells (Come on, Marine!)', also available here as a stand-alone podcast.

From Revd John Davies, vicar of Clapham with Keasden and Austwick with Eldroth in the Diocese of Leeds. Prayers and reflections from the Churches Weekly Newsletter in a time of the coronavirus: The First Sunday after Christmas, 27 December 2020. Featuring 'Of the Father's Love Begotten' (Aurelius Clemens Prudentius; Translators: H. W. Baker, J. M. Neale) performed by John Michael Talbot from the album 'The Birth of Jesus: A Celebration of Christmas', 'It Came Upon the Midnight Clear' (Traditional) performed by Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band from the album 'A Tapestry of Carols', and 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing' (Felix Mendelssohn) performed by Katherine Jenkins, Plácido Domingo, Sally Herbert & Nathan Pacheco from the album 'This is Christmas' Including my talk, 'All Creation is made for praise', also available here as a stand-alone podcast.

Bible readings today are Psalm 23 and Genesis 32:22-32 'Come O Thou Traveller Unknown' is on the album 'Paradise Found' by Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band, available wherever you buy your music. Many thanks to Mr Andrew Watts and the band for permission to use their music. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/richard-hall26/message

Services from Crieff - 13th September 2020 - "Work and Marriage" led by Rev Andrew J Philip ORDER OF SERVICE, READING AND SONGS INCLUDED: 0:00 Welcome & Introduction 1:59 PRAYER 1:00 From Creation to Christ - introduction 2:22 SONG: Morning has broken (Aled Jones) 5:43 SERMON 1: Keeping Sunday Special 7:08 Reading: Genesis 2:1-25 (NIVuk) read by David Suchet 11:05 SONG: How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believers ear (20schemes music) 14:44 SERMON 2: Collaborating with God caring for creation 23:43 SONG: O worship the king all glorious above (Maddy Prior) 27:07 PRAYER 31:20 Closing words and Benediction COPYRIGHT LICENSES: CCLI: Church Copyright Licence: 553295 CCLI: Streaming Licence: 906413 CCLI: PRS for Music Church Licence: 955594 One Licence: A-632614 Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

No liturgy as such today. We hear a hymn(one of my favourites: 'How firm a foundation', sung by Maddy Prior and The Carnival Band -- thanks to the band for permission to use their music), read the Bible passages for today, and offer the new day to God. Find out more about The Carnival Band on their website https://www.carnivalband.com/ Bible readings for today are Psalm 113 and John 16:8-15 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/richard-hall26/message

Bible readings today are Psalm 92 and John 11:1-16 We have a hymn today. "Come O thou traveller unknown", sung by Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band. This is one of the finest hymns in the English language and deserves to be much better known. I still can't quite believe that I've been given permission to use the band's music, so huge thanks to Andrew Watts and the band - it's a great privilege. A few years ago we organised a gig together: maybe we could have another go in the near future? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/richard-hall26/message

Bible readings are Psalm 71:17-24 and John 6:41-51. We have a Charles Wesley's hymn, O for a thousand tongues to sing, performed by Maddy Prior & the Carnival Band from their album "Sing Lustily & with good courage". (Used by kind permission) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/richard-hall26/message

The Harbour Bazaar with Steven Hastings & Zoe Howe – CARNIVAL & SOLSTICEStrike up the band for this month’s Harbour Bazaar with our third locked down show! Theme is Carnival so extravagant tracks with extraordinary hats, tales of big tops & shenanigans plus celebrations of Summer Solstice. So tales of Treme Brass Band’s New Orleans legend ‘Uncle’ Lionel Batiste with a glint in his eye at 150 years old, New Orleans & Solstice inspirations from Coco Robicheaux, Ronnie Lane’s ruinous big top, a nod to Notting Hill with The Upsetters, on the train with Janis, The Band & The Dead & find out who is the perfect drummer for The Tiger Lilies! Featured album is the posthumous PEARL by Janis Joplin, plus keeping it trad with Eddie Calvert in Zoe’s Camembert Corner, new music from Drab City, Maddy Prior, a nod to Fete de la Musique from Jacques Dutronc, an RIP to Vera Lynne & much more! We have a hoot and hope you enjoy! Like & subscribe on TuneIn/Spotify/iTunes/Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts from! PLAYLISTB’wanina (Pretty Girl) - The TokensA Minha Menina - Oz MutantesWe Shall Walk Through The Street Of The City - Tremo Brass BandMove Over - Janis JoplinSt John’s Eve - Coco RobicheauxCannily Cannily - Maddy Prior & Tim HartWorking For The Men - Drab CityLa Ultima Noche - Eddie CalvertEt Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi - Jacques Dutronc Bless The Weed - The UpsettersCry Baby - Janis JoplinDanube Incident - Lalo SchifrinThe Carnival Is Over - Nick Cave & The Bad SeedsSuch A Night (Live from The Last Waltz) - Dr JohnThe Poacher - Ronnie LaneShe Moves Through The Fair - Margaret BerryFreakshow - Tiger LilliesGoodnight & God Bless You - Vera LynnMercedes Benz - Janis Joplin

From Revd John Davies, priest in charge of Clapham with Keasden and Austwick with Eldroth in the Diocese of Leeds. Prayers and reflections from the Churches Weekly Newsletter in a time of the coronavirus: Sunday 21 June 2020, The Second Sunday after Trinity. Featuring 'Jesu, lover of my soul' performed by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band and 'Christ, be our light' by Bernadette Farrell.

a cura di Alessandro Achilli. Musiche degli Steeleye Span, Stormy Six (con Massimo Villa), Whole World, Lol Coxhill (prima parte)

a cura di Alessandro Achilli. Musiche degli Steeleye Span, Stormy Six (con Massimo Villa), Whole World, Lol Coxhill (prima parte)

Rick played bass on 15 albums with Steeleye Span between 1971 and 2016 and had released five solo albums since 1996 (plus another with his then-wife Maddy Prior). We discuss “Race Against Time” from Perfect Blue (2018) and two Steeleye tunes: “Cromwell's Skull” from Dodgy Bastards (2016) and “Samain” from They Called Her Babylon (2004). We conclude by listening to “Bachelor's…

From Revd John Davies, priest in charge of Clapham with Keasden and Austwick with Eldroth in the Diocese of Leeds. Prayers and reflections from the Churches Weekly Newsletter in a time of the coronavirus: Sunday 24 May 2020, The Seventh Sunday of Easter, the Sunday after Ascension Day. Featuring 'Hail the Day that Sees Him Rise' performed by Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band, and 'The Summons' (John L. Bell and Graham Maule) performed by Robert Kochis.

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. The Buggane of Gob na Scute is silenced! But William Kennish's reminiscences of his early days at the Corrany are marred by his realisation that, on his return in the 1840s after a 20 year absence, things aren't the same. We have a story about Cottage Cheese by American writer Ray Malus, who uses it to explore a father-son relationship. And our music for the old-style Oie Voaldyn, May Eve, and Laa Boaldyn, May Day: FLORS ENVERSA - Calenda Maia : CAARJYN COOIDJAGH - Irree ny greiney : JEM HAMMOND/DAFYDD IWAN & EDWARD - Cadi ha : MADDY PRIOR & FRIENDS - Padstow May song : JANIG JUTEAU - A l'arrivee de joli mois de mai : ANNIE KISSACK - Tappagyn jiargey / PHYNNODDEREE - Ben-rein y Voaldyn/Moghrey Laa Boaldyn : ANNE & FRANCIE BROLLY - The Magherafelt May fair : HELSTON HAL-AN-TOW PARTY (2019) - Hal-an-tow (paart) / THE OYSTERBAND - Hal-an-tow

Liturgy of morning prayer. Includes "How firm a foundation" sung by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/richard-hall26/message

PODCAST: 15 Dec 2019 01 Gobby’s Christmas Hornpipes – Steamchicken – 20 Years 02 Sing We All Merrily – Lady Maisery, Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith – Awake Arise: A Winter Album 03 Merry Xmas Everybody / Bloomer’s Birthday Strathspey – Broom Bezzums – Winterman 04 Sunny Bank – Kate Rusby – The Frost Is All Over 05 Here We Come A-Wassailing – Watersons – Frost And Fire: A Calendar Of Ritual and Magical Songs 06 The Huron Indian Carol – Carol Duveneck – Wassail! Wassail! 07 Christmas Day In Da Mornin’ / Christmas Day In The Morning / Mug Of Brown Ale – Broom Bezzums – Winterman 08 One More Xmas – O’Hooley & Tidow – Winterfolk 09 Family Christmas – Roaring Jelly – Golden Grates & The Rampin’ Cat 10 Silent Night – Churchfitters – A Christmas Wassail  11 The Seven Rejoices Of Mary – Oddfellows – Oddfellows 12 I Saw Three Ships – Simon Mayor – Winter With Mandolins 13 Christmas Eve 1914 – Artisan – Paper Angels 14 Bethlehem – Michael Morpurgo / Coope Boyes & Simpson 15 While Shepherds Watched / Chime On – Michael Morpurgo, Coope Boyes & Simpson – On Angel Wings 16 Sleigh Ride – Sam Bush – Our Favorite Christmas Tunes 17 X-Mas On The Isthmus – Terry Allen  & Guy Clark – Our Favorite Christmas Tunes 18 There Are No Lights On Our Christmas Tree – Cyril Tawney – Man  19 Merry Christmas To All And Goodnight – Emily Smith – Songs For Christmas  20 Christmas In Kandahar – Fred Smith – Dust Of Uruzgan  21 Christmas In The Cookhouse – Billy Bennett – Almost A Gentleman  22 A Christmas Childhood – Tom Sweeney – Favourite Irish Poems With Music  23 Up In The Morning Early / Awake Arise – Lady Maisery, Jimmy Aldreidge & Sid Goldsmith – A Winter Album 24 A Connemara Christmas (Mick’s Tune) – Johnny Coppin – All On A Winter’s Night  25 The Twelve Days Of Christmas – Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker 26 Christmas Is Coming – Lead Belly – Blues Blues Christmas Volume 3, 1927-1962  27 Christmas In Australia – Roaring Jelly – Nowt So Funny As Folk 28 Merry Christmas – Malcolm Holcombe Feat. Iris Dement – Come Hell Or High Water  29 Christmas Landscape – Laurie Lee & Johnny Coppin – Edge Of Day  30 The Holly Bears A Berry – Watersons – Frost And Fire: A Calendar Of Ritual And Magical Songs  31 A Christmas Tale / Christmas Day In The Morning – Magpie Lane – The 25Th 32 Christmas Day In The Morning – Jennifer Cutting’s Ocean Orchestra – Song Of Solstice  33 Fire & Wine – O’Hooley & Tidow – Winterfolk  34 Christmas At Sea – Sting – If On A Winter’s Night  35 Weihnachten 1914 (Christmas 1914) – Kerstin Blodig & Ian Melrose – Schneetreiben 36 The Coppers’ Christmas Song – Coope, Boyes & Simpson – Hindsight 37 Coventry Carol – O’Hooley & Tidow  – Winterfolk  38 The King – Steeleye Span – Please To See The King 39 Fairytale Of New York – Christy Moore – Smoke & Strong Whiskey 40 The 12 Folk Days Of Christmas – The McCalmans – Scots Abroad  41 I Saw Three Ships (Arr. J. Ritchie) – Tudor Choir, The – An American Christmas: Shapenote Carols From New England & Appalachia 42 Cherry Tree Carol – Jean Ritchie – Ballads From Her Appalachian Family Tradition 43 The Arrival Of The Wren Boys – The Chieftains – The Bells Of Dublin  44 The Dingle Set Dance – The Chieftains – The Bells Of Dublin  45 The Wren In The Furze – The Chieftains – The Bells Of Dublin  46 The Boar’s Head Carol – The Voice Squad – Concerning Of Three Young Men  47 Sans Day Carol – Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band – Carols At Christmas  48 Jogging Along With Me Reindeer – John Kirkpatrick – Going  49 O Little Town Of Bethlehem – Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker – Midwinter  50 Christmas Market – Mike Harding / The Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band – Available From The Website 51 Joy To The World – Tudor Choir, The – An American Christmas: Shapenote Carols From New England & Appalachia 52 The Kerrry Christmas Carol – Tim Dennehy – Between The Mountains And The Sea 53 I Am Christmas Time – Magpie Lane – The 25Th 54 All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth – The Once – This Is a Christmas Album By The Once  55 Three Ships From Sussex – Chris Newman and Máire Ní Chathasaigh – Christmas Lights

Lisa Simone, songwriter, singer and daughter of Nina tells us all about her new album. Maddy Prior the folk singer and member of Steeleye Span talks about a career in music that's spanned more than 50 years. At BBC Introducing Live we look at how to get into the music business and once you're there how to thrive. Plus what’s it really like to be a teenage mum? Genetic Counselling – how do families deal with the news that the man they thought was dad isn’t biologically related? Women in the horror films industry what’s behind their creations? And author Jenny Downham joins on her latest novel Furious Thing about a fifteen year old girl struggling with her feelings of anger. Presenter Jane Garvey Producer Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor Beverley Purcell Guest; Lisa Simone Guest; Maddy Prior Guest ; Jenny Downham Guest; Chyna Powell-Henry Guest; Dr Kim Jamie Guest; Aislinn Clarke Guest; Anna Bogutskaya Guest; Lizzie Franke Guest; Nicola Dunn

Here's Maddy Prior, photographed when All Round My Hat was in the charts in the '70s. She's been performing now for over 50 years and she's done more than 3000 shows. She's made 11 albums of her own and 28 with Steeleye Span. Maddy talks to Jenni about her life and music. Last week we spoke to Cyntoia Brown-Long, who was given a life sentence in America for a murder she committed when she was 16. Today we speak to Jennifer Ubiera who is an attorney at the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Initiative in Washington DC. Her focus is young people in the criminal justice system, especially teenage girls and the poor. She explains how Cyntoia represents the young women she supports. Linda Boström Knausgård is a Swedish writer whose second novel, Welcome To America, has been awarded the prestigious August Prize. It's about a sensitive, strong-willed child who's 11 and has stopped talking. She thinks she may have killed her father. Her brother barricades himself in his room. Their mother, a successful actress, carries on as normal. Linda Boström Knausgård talks about silence, trauma, childhood, mental illness and imploding families. Nicola Dunn is a family therapist. She supports people who have genetic testing for medical conditions. Occasionally, perhaps more often than you think, these tests reveal that the man thought to be someone's Dad, turns out not to be. So what impact do these revelations have on the whole family? Woman’s Hour investigates.

On PRAISE today we reflect on some of the lesser-known aspects of that historic moon landing, 50 years ago; Pioneer Minister Reverend Alex Brown shares some more of his vision for churches that aren't churches; we have a first mention for SPRING HARVEST LOCAL that's coming to the Island on 17th September, and the Manager of Churches Bookshop has a plan to take care of his customers Island-wide, whilst access to the shop is affected by the major works on Douglas Promenade - plus music from Maddy Prior and Lou Fellingham!

Selkie – Still Waters Run Deep.Come, join Kitty and bask under the warm glow of the doe-eyed Selkie.The Selkie story is a familiar one: under the light of the moon, a beautiful woman with milky white skin, long brown hair and big brown eyes, dances on the rocky shore. A canny man steals her sealskin and she is evermore bound to live on land, to be his wife and bear his children. She is a fine wife, a loving mother and, although she spends every spare moment gazing out at sea and talking to seagulls, theirs is a good life.NUTS TO THAT!It’s time to wipe the misty romanticism from our eyes and take a real look at Selkie. Her predicament is no fairytale.Faerie of traditional Folklore are old, clever and can shed their skin whole. They are all around us, always watching. But what are they thinking? Do they yearn to befriend us?It is said “still waters run deep” and so it is with Selkie, the ‘feel-good’ member of the Good People.Kitty takes a close look at these romanticised creatures to discover the fascinating character bubbling beneath those soft brown eyes. You might be surprised to find we have plenty in common with the creatures who have long dwelled in the waters off Scotland and Ireland.In this episode we ponder:the true nature of the Selkiethe shocking methods used to treat webbed hands and feet of those descended from a Selkie-Human union.one rare occasion of Selkie revengeand tips on where best to spot Selkie.As always, Kitty explains why it’s okay to believe in Faeries and invites you to read more true tales of encounters with the Good People and share your own experiences at:www.encounterswiththegoodpeople.comglassonionstories@gmail.comwww.facebook.com/encounterswiththegoodpeopleCredits:Theme Music: ‘Irish Coffee’ by Giorgio Di Campo.Poem adapted from ‘The Mermaid Song’ written by James Reeves. Read by Owen.Poem adapted from ‘Tell me, tell me, Sarah Jane’ written by Charles Causley. Read by Carol.‘The Great Silkie of Sules Skerry’ – Traditional. Performed by Maddy Prior from the album ‘Collections’, 2005.Additional Music: 'Sea Waves' by superfunnysheet

It's the Easter episode and we can hardly contain our joy READING Luke 24:1-12 On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.   MUSIC Christ the Lord is Risen Today, NCC Worship Loves Redeeming work is Done, High Street Hymns Come Away to the Skies, Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band  

This episode traces the age-old European origins of many of the Winter Solstice traditions we enjoy today, from mother goddess worship through stories of the wizard child Jesus, to Christmas fortune telling with bones. Support Fair Folk: www.patreon.com/fairfolkcast PayPal.me/DanicaBoyce Music: “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” by the Ballycastle Players “Miri it is While Sumer Ilast” by Ensemble Belladonna “O Frondens Virga” by Augsburg Early Music Ensemble “Podblyadnye Song” by byAgrafena Glinkin “Ancient Gates” by Olga Glazova “Podblyadnye Songs” by Ensemble Joy “Persephone” by Stellamara “Tec, Peleite, Zernju Zogtu” by Kitka “The Holly She Bears a Berry” by the Voice Squad “Haugebonden” by Tiriltunga “Oi Linksta Suolaliai” by Keisto Folkloro Grupė” “Et Lite Barn Så Lystelig” by Julestemmer “The Bitter Withy” by the Valley Folk “Cherry Tree Carol” by Shirley Collins “Mari Lwyd (The Grey Mare)” by Carreg Lafar “Ecco donne la befana / Ninna nanna ninna oh (Filastrocche e canto natalizio Bologna)” by Stefano Zuffi & Pneumatica Emiliano Romagnola “Fum, Fum, Fum” by Winter Harp Ensemble “Frau Holle, Frau Holle, die Schüttelt ihre Betten aus” by Philharmonischer Kinderchor Dresden & Blockflötengruppe Bautzen “Bring Us In Good Ale” by Maddy Prior & Tim Hart

This is Day 14 of my Advent-themed podcast series. I'll be posting a short devotional here every day between now and Christmas. Today's scripture is Matthew 2:3-6. Featured music is Maddy Prior & the Carnival Band's version of "See, Amid the Winter's Snow," which is found on their 2012 album The Best of Maddy Prior & the Carnival Band: A Christmas Caper. I blog regularly at revbrentwhite.com.

This is Day 5 of my Advent-themed podcast series. Scripture is Genesis 22:1-13. Featured music is "Poor Little Jesus" and "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band, both of which are found on The Best Of: A Christmas Caper. I blog regularly at revbrentwhite.com.

PODCAST: 17 Sep 2017     01 Will It Ever Stop Raining? – The Saw Doctors – Songs From Sun Street 02 Stockyard Hill – Sam Gleaves & Tyler Hughes – Sam Gleaves & Tyler Hughes 03 The Ivy Leaf – Kevin Crawford – Carrying The Tune 04 This Boy – The Jeremiahs – The Femme Fatale Of Maine 05 Song Of The Jay – Edgelarks – Edgelarks 06 Dance Around The Gallows Tree – Magpie Lane – Three Quarter Time 07 The Crow On The Cradle – Tan Yowes – Hefted 08 Lord Of The Dance – Maddy Prior – Lovely In The Dances – Songs Of Sydney Carter 09 John Ball – The Young'uns – Never Forget 10 Bold Riley –  Peter Knight's Gigspanner – The Wife Of Urban Law 11 The Day They Dredged The Liffey / The Banks Of Montauk  /  The Road To Santa Fe – Tom Russell – Folk Hotel 12 Lord Thomas And Fair Ellender – Paul Brady – Unfinished Business 13 Cold Missouri Waters – Richard Shindell / Dar Williams / Lucy Kaplansky – Cry Cry Cry 14 82 Fires – The East Pointers – What We Leave Behind 15 Eli Greene's Cakewalk/Little Judique – George Penk, Clyde Curley & Susan Songer – A Portland Selection: Contra Dance Music In The Pacific Northwest 16 Turpin Hero – Pilgrims' Way – Stand & Deliver 17 The Wild Mountain Thyme – Paper Circus – 4 Track Demo 18 Byker Hill – Emerald Hill – The Lark, The Mermaid And Molly

PODCAST: 03 Sep 2017     01 Aragon Mill – Dolores Keane – Delores Keane 02 Cotton Mill Girls – Lucky Bags – Food For Thought 03 Cotton Picker’s Rag – The Carolina Jug Stompers – Rooster On A Limb 04 Factory Girl – Ian Bell – Signor Farini And Other Adventures 05 The Doffing Mistress – Maddy Prior – Ballads And Candles 06 The Handweaver And The Factory Maid – The Imagined Village – Empire And Love 07 Pay Day – Harp And A Monkey – All Life Is Here 08 Granite Mills – Cordelia’s Dad – Spine 09 Shift And Spin – Mick West – A Poor Man’s Labours 10 Owensboro – Cara – Long Distance Love 11 Along The Rossendale – Mark Dowding – The Well-Worn Path 12 Four Loom Weaver – Swan Arcade – Full Circle 13 The Weaver’s March – The Celebrated Working Man’s Band – The Iron Muse 14 Poverty Knock – The Wayfarers – The Wayfarers 15 The Little Piecer – Dave Brooks – The Iron Muse  16 Cotton – Sam Baker – Cotton 17 Old ‘Arris Mill – Yan Tan Tether – Over The Heather 18 Bread And Roses – Bronwen Lewis – Pride

PODCAST: 05 Mar 2017   01 Gypsy Davey (Joe Boyd Mix) - Fotheringay - Nothing More - The Collected Fotheringay 02 Born In The Middle Of The Afternoon - Ewan MacColl, Charles Parker & Peggy Seeger - The Travelling People 03 The Moving On Song - Ewan McColl - The Definitive Collection 04 The Special Way - Mic and Susie Darling - The Special Way 05 Wexford Town - Beoga - Before We Change Our Mind 06 Sullivan's John - Pecker Dunne - The Very Best Of Pecker Dunne 07 Strike The Gay Harp/ Jimmy Ward’s/ Doberman’s Wallet - Mickey Dunne - Keepers Of The Flame 08 Barbara Allan - Debbie And Pennie Davis - Travellers Joy 09 Father Had A Knife - Jasper Smith - The Travelling Songster - An Anthology From Gypsy Singers 10 Dear Father, Pray Build Me A Boat - Sheila Smith - I'm A Romany Rai Disc 2 11 The Ballad Of George Collins - Sam Lee - Ground Of Its Own 12 Queen Among The Heather - Belle Stewart - Three Score And Ten: A Voice To The People 13 Gypsy Medley - Martin Taylor  - Gypsy 14 One Day - Martin Simpson - True Stories 15 Rambling Candyman - “Rich” Johnny Connors - From Puck To Appleby 16 Gum Shellac - Thomas Mccarthy - Round Top Wagon 17 The Well Below The Valley - Planxty  - The Well Below The Valley 18 Lish Young Buy-A-Broom - Tim Hart & Maddy Prior - Folk Songs Of Olde England - Vol. I & Ii 19 Lemmy Brazil's Hornpipe - John Spiers - Folk Music Of The British Isles  20 Will There Be Any Travellers In Heaven? - Derby Smith - Travellers (Topic) 21 Champagne For Gypsies - Goran Bregović Feat. Selina O' Leary - Champagne For Gypsies

This episode, you’ll learn why the Swedish will be wearing candles on their heads and dressing up as goats this week, you’ll hear about Saint Nicholas’ past life beating and kidnapping children with his demon slave companion, and you’ll meet St. Stephen, the first man to be stoned to death for bringing a rooster back to life. Music: Intro theme - "Forest March" by Sylvia Woods Staffansvisa Från Jämtland by Triakel Karolinermarsch by Peter Hedlund Staffan Var en Stalledräng by Folk & Rackare Vittskövlevisan by Esbjörn Hazelius Ut Kommer Staffan by Folk & Rackare Rudisar Vísa by Kari Sverrisson Saint Stephen by Magpie Lane The Carnal and the Crane/King Herod and the Cock/The Miraculous Harvest by Nowell Sing We Clear St. Nicholas by Anúna La Légende de Saint Nicolas by Anne Sylvester The Last Stand by Michael Sobel Tackvisan by Triakel Coventry Carol by Maddy Prior & the Carnival Band

Our 27/12/15 songs podcast is of Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band. Her songs include: The Sans Day Carol (Cornish traditional) Rejoice and be Merry (English traditional) On Christmas Night (Sussex carol) Click the play button for the audio. Play time is 8 minutes. Right click download to download Songs of Hope songs on itunes

PODCAST: 27 Sep 2015  01 Diggin’ My Potatoes - Lonnie Donegan - This Record Is Not To Be Broadcast 02 Cold Blow and The Rainy Night - Planxty - Cold Blow and The Rainy Night 03 Eggs In Her Basket  - Susan McKeown - Sweet Liberty 04 While Cruising Round Yarmouth - Ewan MacColl and A L Lloyd - Blow Boys Blow 05 Yarmouth Town - Nic Jones - Nic Jones Unearthed 06 The End Of My Old Cigar - Roy Hudd - Those Music Hall Days 07 The Trooper’s Nag - Maddy Prior - Seven For Old England 08 The Foggy Foggy Dew  - Tim O’Brien - Cornbread Nation 09 Bonny Black Hare - Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick - Byker Hill 10 Navvy Boots - The Dubliners - Original Dubliners 11 German Clockmender - George Spicer - Blackberry Fold 12 Jolly Tinker - Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem - Greatest Hits 13 Candy Man - Steve Earle - Avalon Blues: A Tribute To Mississippi John Hurt 14 With My Little Stick Of Blackpool Rock - George Formby - With My Little Ukulele In My Hand 3 15 Little Ball Of Yarn - Jim Causley - Dumnonia 16 The Molecatcher - Peter Bellamy - Fair Annie 17 The Crayfish - John Roberts and Tony Barrand - Across The Western Ocean 18 The Widow’s Promise - Crows - No Bones Or Grease 19 Isabel Makes Love Upon National Monuments - Jake Thackray - Jake In A Box 20 Take Your Fingers Off It - The Even Dozen Jug Band - The Even Dozen Jug Band 21 My Husband’s Got No Courage In Him - The Once - Row Upon Row Of The People They Know

PODCAST: 08 Feb 2015 01 - House Carpenter / Pipeline - The Mammals - Evolver 02 - King Orfeo - Emily Smith - Echoes  03 - Sir Patrick Spens - Nic Jones - Ballads and Songs 04 - Edward - Jenna Leslie and Siobhan Miller - In a Bleeze 05 - Six Pretty Maidens - Fred Jordan - Good People Take Warning 06 - The False Knight On The Road - Tim Hart and Maddy Prior - Summer Solstice 07 - The Duke Of Athole’s Nurse - June Tabor - An Echo Of Hooves 08 - The Wife Of Ushers Well - Hedy West - Ballads and Songs From - The Appalachians 09 - Geordie - Martin Carthy - Essential 10 - The Dowie Dens Of Yarrow - Karine Polwart - Fairest Floo’er 11 - The Lovers Ghost - Martyn Wyndham-Read - Ballads 12 - Barbara Allen - Debbie and Pennie Davis - Travellers Joy  13  - Robin Hood and The Pedlar - Barry Dransfield - Barry - Dransfield 14 - Seven Yellow Gypsies - Dolores Keane - Claddagh’s Choice Vol 2 15 - Little Matty Groves - Fairport Convention - Liege and Leaf

PODCAST: 25 Jan 2015 01 - Bonny Ship The Diamond - Fresh Handmade Sound - From Source To Sea 02 - Bully In The Alley - Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends - Port Isaac’s Fisherman’s Friends 03 - Yarmouth Town - Bernard Wrigley - Folk Songs At The Octagon 04 - Pleasant and Delightful - Hannah Sanders - Charms Against Sorrow 05 - Shallow Brown - Coope, Boyes and Simpson - Hindsight 06 - The Leaving Of Liverpool - Steve Tilston - Of Many Hands 07 - Can’t You Dance The Polka - Bob Roberts - Sea Songs and Shanties 08 - The Flying Cloud - Roy Bailey - New Bell Wake 09 - The Wild Goose - Kate Rusby - Ten 10 - The Little Pot Stove - Nic Jones - Penguin Eggs 11 - Blood Red Roses - Sting - Rogues Gallery 12 - Grey Funnel Line - Maddy Prior and June Tabor - Silly Sisters 13 - Cape Cod Girls - Dan Zanes - Sea Music  14 - The Talcahuano Girls - Robin and Barry Dransfield - Popular To Contrary Belief   15 - Farewell To Tarwathie - Judy Collins - The Very Best Of 16 - Johnny Todd - The Spinners - The Best Of The Spinners  17 - The Sloop John B - Carnival Steel Drum Band - St. Thomas Way and Beyond 18 - Pique La Baleine - The Young Uns - When Our Grandfathers Said No 19 - Bye Bye Skipper - Mike Waterson - Mike Waterson 20 - Fiddler’s Green - Marley’s Ghost - Live At The Freight

Playlist: JoJo Worthington - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas Lisa Reagan Love - O Come O Come Emmanuel Maddy Prior - I Saw Three Ships PennyAnty featuring Rhonda Hitchcock - Sugar Cookie LoveCollide - Medley - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings Willow & The Embers - Blue Christmas Cassandra Kabinski (writer Judy McDonald Lemay) - Seasons of Peace Meiko - Wonderful Christmas Time   Purchase music from this episode on  Purchase music by Valerie JanLois:  Puchase "Christmas For Two":       

Playlist: JoJo Worthington - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas Lisa Reagan Love - O Come O Come Emmanuel Maddy Prior - I Saw Three Ships PennyAnty featuring Rhonda Hitchcock - Sugar Cookie LoveCollide - Medley - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings Willow & The Embers - Blue Christmas Cassandra Kabinski (writer Judy McDonald Lemay) - Seasons of Peace Meiko - Wonderful Christmas Time   Purchase music from this episode on  Purchase music by Valerie JanLois:  Puchase "Christmas For Two":       

Playlist: JoJo Worthington - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas Lisa Reagan Love - O Come O Come Emmanuel Maddy Prior - I Saw Three Ships PennyAnty featuring Rhonda Hitchcock - Sugar Cookie LoveCollide - Medley - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings Willow & The Embers - Blue Christmas Cassandra Kabinski (writer Judy McDonald Lemay) - Seasons of Peace Meiko - Wonderful Christmas Time   Purchase music from this episode on  Purchase music by Valerie JanLois:  Puchase "Christmas For Two":       

It is quite literally Halloween, so the folk buddies  decide to have an in depth scholarly discussion about Tam Lin. They end up bickerig about who they love more, Sandy Denny or Maddy Prior.  There's a playlist and everything. 

PODCAST: 22 Jun 2014 01 - Railroad Bill - Lonnie Donegan - Talking Guitar Blues: The Very Best Of Lonnie Donegan 02 - Arthur McBride and the Sergeant - Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick - Prince Heathen 03 - I Know My Love - Nancy Kerr & Eliza Carthy - On Reflection 04 - George White's Favourite / The Galway Rambler - They Sailed Away From Dublin Bay - Liam Farrell, Joe Whelan 05 - Frankie & Albert - Chris Smither - Avalon Blues: A Tribute To Mississippi John Hurt 06 - Six Pretty Maids - Fred Jordan - Good People, Take Warning - The Voice Of The People 07 - The Rolling English Road - Maddy Prior - Flesh and Blood 08 - The Way Through The Woods - David Gibb and Elly Lucas - Up Through The Woods 09 - Angel Of Birmingham -  Fred Smith & The Spooky Men's Chorale - Urban Sea Shanties 10 - Bal Maiden - Seth Lakeman - Word Of Mouth 11 - Sandy Boys - Sara Grey - A Long Way From Home 12 - Mrs O'Dwyer's / Packie Russell's - Old Swan Band - Swan for the Money 13 - King Of The World - Show Of Hands - Wake The Union 14 - Mrs Adlam's Angels - Ralph McTell - Spiral Staircase 15 - Wild Mountain Thyme - The Yetties - Wild Mountain Thyme 16 - Le Démon Sort De L'enfer - La Bottine Souriante - Cordial

PODCAST: 20 Apr 2014   01 - The Rout of the Blues - Robin and Barry Dransfield - The Rout of the Blues 02 - Dirty Old Town - Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger - Black and White 03 - Arthur McBride and the Sergeant - Martin Carthy - Prince Heathen 04 - I Live Not Where I Love - Tim Hart and Maddy Prior - Summer Solstice 05 - Blues Run the Game - Jackson C Frank - The Story of British Folk Vol 1 06 - The Verdant Braes of Screen - Swan Arcade - Full Circle 07 - The Molecatcher - Bernard Wrigley and Dave Brooks - Folksongs from the Octagon 08 - Early Morning Rain - Barbara Dickson - B4 74 The Folk Club Tapes 09 - The Blacksmith - Dave Burland - Benchmark 10 - Desperate Dan - The Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra - Piggery Jokery 11 - Streets of London - Ralph McTell - From Clare to Here 12 - Rambling Robin - Christy Moore - Prosperous 13 - Bolweevil Blues - Jo Ann Kelly - Women In (E)motion 14 - Sir Patrick Spens - Nic Jones - Ballads and Songs 15 - Homeward Bound - Paul Simon - Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits

PODCAST: 23 Feb 2014   01 - The Last Rider - Seth Lakeman - Word of Mouth 02 - Danns' A Luideagan Odhar  - Julie Fowlis - Gach Sgeul 03 - Welcome to Mugsborough - Robb Johnson - Draw Down The Moon 04 - Galway to Graceland - Eleanor Shanley - Desert Heart 05 - Kerry Polka / I Have A Bonnet Trimmed With Blue - Bob Davenport and the Rakes - Red Haired Lad 06 - Bonny Light Horseman - Socks in the Frying Pan - Socks In The Frying Pan 07 - The Isle of St Helena - Brid Dower - Comings and Goings 08 - Blacksmith - Maddy Prior - Ballads and Carols 09 - It Was Only A Gypsy - Jake Thackray - Jake in a Box Disc 3 10 - Gypsy’s Wedding - English Rebellion - Four Across 11 - The Emigrant’s Farewell - Mareld- And So It Goes 12 - Sweetheart on the Barricade - Richard Thompson - Industry 13 - New River Train  - Mark Graham - Southern Old Time Harmonica 14 - The Final Trawl - Emily Smith - Echoes 15 - Rocky Brown - Benji Kirkpatrick - Boomerang

PODCAST: 29 Dec 2013   Sig - The Hogmanay / Mrs Grace Bowie - Bill Spence and Fennigs All-Star String Band - The Hammered Dulcimer Strikes Again   01 - Big River - Jimmy Nail - Big River 02 - Byker Hill - Jed Grimes -  Heart and Hand 03 - Bless the Weather - John Martyn and Danny Thompson - Bless the Weather 04 - Stick Stock - Emily Portman - The Glamoury 05 - Bitter Gap - Béla Fleck - Natural Bridge 06 - Country Life - The Watersons - For Pence and Spicy Ale 07 - Dimming of the Day - Dave Burland - His Masters Choice 08 - 4 Loom Weaver - Maddy Prior and June Tabor - Silly Sisters 09 - Rua Reidh - Gareth Davies-Jones - Now But Not Yet 10 - Arizona - Tarras - Walking Down Main Street 11 - Notown - Michelle Holding and Bonz - Seeds Are Sown 12 - Blood Runs Red - Joe Solo (feat. Rebekah Findlay) - No Pasaran! 13 - She Moved Through the Fair - Anne Briggs - A Collection 14 - Lead The Knave / Bunker Hill - Nollaig Casey and Arty McGlynn - Lead The Knave 15 - There But For Fortune - Phil Ochs - There But For Fortune 16 - Doin’ the Manch - Cockersdale - Nowt So Funny As Folk 17 - Good Friends - Allan Taylor - unreleased 18 - Piper to the End - Mark Knopfler - Get Lucky 19 - Johnny Miner - The Mighty Doonans - The Mighty Doonans   Sig - Mrs Grace Bowie / The Hogmanay - New Victory Band - One More Dance And Then

PODCAST: 22 Dec 2013   01 - The Holly Bears the Berry - The Watersons - A Yorkshire Christmas 02 - In the Bleak Midwinter -  Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker - Midwinter 03 - Family Christmas - Roaring Jelly - Golden Grates 04 - Sleigh Ride - Sam Bush - Our Favorite Christmas Tunes 05 - The Oxen - Thomas Hardy (read by Martin Jarvis) - Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems 05a - Wassail - Johnny Coppin - Edge of Day 06 - The Virgin Mary Had A Baby Boy - Harry Belafonte - Island In The Sun 07 - As Joseph Was A-Walkin' - The Albion Band - Albion Sunrise 08 - Joseph - Jake Thackray - Jake In A Box 09 - While Shepherds Watched - Voices At The Door (Coope, Boyes and Simpson : Fi Fraser : Jo Freya : Georgina Boyes) - On Angel Wings 10 - Sans Day Carol - Maddy Prior and The Carnival Band - Carols at Christmas 11 - A Christmas Childhood -  Patrick Kavanagh (read by Tom Sweeney) - Favourite Irish Poems 12 - The Apple Tree Wassail - The Watersons - For Pence and Spicy Ale 13 - Christmas in Southgate - Ry Cooder - My Name Is Buddy 14 - Christmas At Sea - Sting and Mary Macmaster - If On A Winter's Night 15 - The First Tree In The Greenwood - Chris Newman and Máíre Ní Chathasaigh - Christmas Lights 16 - Christmas In Kandahar - Fred Smith - The Dust of Uruzgan 17 - Hunting the Wren - Julie Murphy, Dave Townsend, Steáfán Hannigan - A Celtic Christmas 18 - The King - Steeleye Span - The Lark In the Morning 19 - The Worthy Wood Carol - Jackie Oates - Lullabies 20 - King Herod and The Cock - The Watersons - A Yorkshire Christmas 21 - Gaudete - Steeleye Span - Spanning the Years  

PODCAST: 15 Dec 2013   01 - King Orfeo - Emily Smith - Echoes 02 - I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing By - Maddy Prior - Carols at Christmas 03 - Billy Far Out - Andy Irvine with Rens van der Zalm - Parachilna 04 - Ned of the Hill - FullSet - Notes After Dark 05 - Tatter Jack Walsh/An Rogaire Dubh/Tongs By The Fire (Jigs) -  Noel Battle And Roísín Broderick - Up and About in the Morning 06 - Jock O Hazledeane - Jim Malcolm - Still 07 - The True Story of Amelia Earhart - Dave Burland - Rollin’ 08 - Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight - Plainsong - In Search of Amelia  Earhart 09 - Necklace of Wrens - The Gloaming  - The Gloaming 10 - Troubles - Tara Nevins - Mule to Ride 11 - The Birmingham Six - Christy Moore - Where I Come From 12 - African Cargoes - The Details - The Details 13 - Magic Christmas Tree - Pilgrim's Way - download only 14 - There Are No Lights On Our Christmas Tree - Cyril Tawney - Man of Honour 15 - The Strayaway Child - Peter Carberry & Pádraig McGovern - Forgotten Gems 16 - The Southern Girl’s Reply - The Long Hill Ramblers - Beauty and Butchery 17 - Christmas at the Fallen Angel Lounge - Charlie Roth - Tartan Cactus Heart 18 - All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth - The Once - This is a Christmas Album from The Once

PODCAST: 06 Oct 2013 01 - La Turlutte de Rotoculture - de Temps Antan 02 - Bonny Gateshead Lass - Bob Fox 03 - Wherefore Art Thou Jane - Mean Mary 04 - Sauchiehall St Salsa / McHugh’s Other Foot / The Man With Two Women - Battlefield Band 05 - Awake Awake - The Full English 06 - The Ballad of Tom Joad - Patrick Street 07 - The Ghost of Tom Joad - Springsteen / Seeger 08 - Handsome Polly O - Dervish 09 - Let the Bulgine Run - Jolly Jack 10 - Old Bangum - Rayna Gellert 11 - Dark Eyed Molly / Snowy Monday - Pilgrim's Way 12 - Bye Bye Bohemia - Tom Yates 13 - Hippy on the Highway - Tom Patcheco 14 - Farewell Farewell - Martin Carthy and Maddy Prior 15 - Jimmy’s Jone to Flanders - Jim Malcolm 16 - The Drinking Gourd - Eric Bibb 17 - Rambling Siuler - Swan and Dyer 18 - Rambling Irishman - Arcady

PODCAST: 18 Aug 2013 01 - Border Reiver - Mark Knopfler 02 - The Weight Of It All - The Duncan McFarlane Band 03 - The Handweaver and the Factorymaid - Pilgrim's Way 04 - The Banks of the Bann - Mick Ryan and Paul Downes 05 - The Down Yonder Medley - Harvey Reid 06 - Peggy O'er the Sea with a Soldier - Hedgehog Pie 07 - She Moved Through The Fair - Trees 08 - Horn Fair - Spiers and Boden (feat. Maddy Prior) 09 - The Last of the Widows - Bob Fox 10 - Dido Bendigo - The Watersons 11 - Big Boned Girl - Charlie Dore 12 - The Island - Dolores Keane 13 - Geronimo's Cadillac - Dick Gaughan 14 - Wasps in the Woodpile - Andrew Cronshaw 15 - Young Martha's Well - Ange Hardy 16 - Harry Stone - John Tams 17 - Mary Ann - Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends 18 - Train in G Major - Lindisfarne

PODCAST: 12 May 2013  01 - Dancing in the Dark - Ruth Moody 02 - Poor Ellen Smith - Dubl Handi 03 - The Wife of Ushers Well - The Cecil Sharp Centenary Collective 04 - Rangoon / Eva - Kan 05 - What You Do With What You’ve Got - Eddi Reader 06 - Wayfaring Stranger - Al Petteway and Amy White 07 - Washed in Grey - Gren Bartley 08 - Soldier Soldier / The Flowers of Edinburgh - Brass Monkey 09 - Doodle Let Me Go - Bob Fox and Stu Luckley 10 - Castle Grant - Vamm 11 - Handsome Polly O - Dervish 12 - Yorkshire Rose - Stuart Forester 13 - Nottamun Fair - Lady Maisery 14 - Grey Funnel Line - Maddy Prior and June Tabor 15 - It’s Pete - Peggy Seeger 16 - Willie Moore - Dave Burland 17 - Loving the Skin You’re In - Merry Hell

PODCAST: 31 Mar 2013 Sig - Doon Reel - Frankie Lane 01 - Seabone Howl - The Groanbox Boys02 - Handsome Molly - Rosie Carson and Kevin Dempsey03 - Si Tu Dois Partir - Ruth Notman04 - Keefe's / The Star Above the Garter - Joe McHugh and Barry Carroll05 - I Live Not Where I Love - Tim Hart and Maddy Prior06 - The Banks Are Made Of Marble - Ewan McLennan07 - Cuthroats Crooks and Conmen - Little Johnny England08 - Castleford Ladies Magic Circle - Jake Thackray09 - Altisadora - Lal Waterson and Oliver Knight10 - Horkstow Grange - Jim Moray11 - Legetts Reel / The Old Gray Cat - Gina Le Faux12 - The Last Polar Bear - O’Hooley and Tidow13 - Collector Man - Rory McLeod14 - Sing About These Hard Times - Peggy Seeger15 - The Outlaw - The Willows16 - Jesus Will Fix It For You - Sonny Treadway  Sig - Doon Reel - Frankie Lane

PODCAST: 17 Feb 2013 Sig - Doon Reel - Frankie Lane 01 - The Laughlin Boy - Tracy Grammer02 - A Lyke-Wake Song - Johnny Dickinson03 - Farewell To Stromness - Eamonn Coyne and Kris Drever04 - The Monaghan Twig / Paddy Lynne's - Iron Lung05 - The False Knight On The Road - Tim Hart & Maddy Prior06 - The Shoemaker - Billy Mitchell and Bob Fox07 - Coal Black Mining Blues - Nimrod Workman08 - West Virginia Mine Disaster - Kathy Mattea09 - Western Train - Tony Trundle10 - The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos) - Christy Moore11 - They Dance Alone - Sting12 - No Town - Michelle Holding and Bonz13 - Do the Boogie Mama - Yank Rachell's Tennessee Jug-Busters14 - The Factory Girl - Eilis Kennedy15 - The Silver Tassie - Emily Smith16 - The Back Door - D. L. Menard17 - Tell God and the Devil - Solas18 - The Mingulay Boat Song - Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends Sig - Doon Reel - Frankie Lane

Maddy Prior MBE is one of the founding members of Steelye Span - the band credited with bringing folk music into the electronic age and making it commercially successful. Andy Watts is musical director of the Carnival Band which has been performing Christmas carols with Maddy every year for 25 years. Their repertoire features obscure and ancient versions of traditional carols and a different take on more familiar material. 'The Best of Maddy Prior and The Carnival Band - A Christmas Caper'' is released on Park Records Simon Callow CBE is an actor, director and writer who is currently appearing in his one-man show, Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. A new edition of his biography of Charles Laughton is published this month to mark 50 years since Laughton's death. Simon has a strong association with the work of Charles Dickens and has played the writer on stage, film and television. A Christmas Carol is at the Arts Theatre, London. Eddie Johnson is a former publican and the author of Tales From The Two Puddings, a memoir about his life and career. In 1962 he became licensee of the notorious Two Puddings pub in Stratford, East London. Known as one of London's busiest and most fashionable pubs, it attracted a cast of disparate characters including actors, writers, singers, musicians and infamous gangsters. 'Tales From The Two Puddings' is published by Fifty First State Press. An exhibition of photographs from the book will be on display at the Bishopsgate Institute, London from January. John Lang is a British seafarer who has served both the merchant service and the Royal Navy. In a naval career spanning 33 years he commanded two submarines and a frigate. He retired from the Navy with the rank of Rear Admiral in 1995 and was appointed head of the UK's Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) two years later. His book 'Titanic - a fresh look at the evidence by a former Chief Inspector of Marine Accidents' is published by Seafarer books. Producer: Paula McGinley.

Newcastle Roots Music Radio brings you a monthly world roots and folk music podcast wherever you live! There's also a gig guide for those of you who live in Northeast England on the podcast and the related blog: http://www.rootsoftheworld.blogspot.co.uk/. This month sees featured Northeast vocal quartet , The Cornshed Sisters, with songs from the eclectic stream they draw from. In addition there's music from Scotland, Puglia, Mali,the USA , Portugal and India and more! British artists, as well as the Cornsheds include Bob Fox, Calum Stewart and Lauren MacColl, Bella Hardy, Duncan Chisholm, and Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band.

In this month-ending show for October 2012 there is a subtle mood of menace for the mysterious season, with strange tales of a modern woodland battle, of blazing bonfires, punch-ups with army recruiting parties, of deadly border raids and of a real life medical man who may not have been all he seemed... Music in this show: Leaves Of Gold by FolkLaw Bonfires by Garforth and Myers Are We There Yet? by Hadrian's Union Dance Around The Fire by The Halstead Clan Crinkle Drive by Dodson And Fogg Girl In A Room (remix) by Antiqcool Arthur McBride/Graeme McDowell's by The Ralf Weirauch Trio She Moved Through The Fair by Maeve Mackinnon Willow Tree by Galley Beggar A Quarter Hour Of Fame by The Albion Band Doctor James by Gilmour & Roberts Black Is The Colour by Blair Dunlop Icy Shivers by Mulholland & Ward The Raiders by Maddy Prior with Hannah James and Giles Lewin For full details and links see http://www.folkcast.co.uk/ShowNotes/shownotes079.html