Tim Eriksen has just revealed a new video for ‘Solitude in the Grove’ which was filmed in the beautiful Hope Valley in the heart of the Peak District, Derbyshire. The song is taken from his new album Banjo, Fiddle and Voice.
Tim recently finished a UK tour with the fabulous Cath & Phil Tyler and if you’ve not come across them before then watch this 2008 video interview made by Architects of Harmonic Rooms as introduction to their music.
On the way to Kendal today we stopped off at Mow Cop, site of the first ever camp meeting in England in 1807. I hadn’t been there since sometime in the mid 1990s when we were following Lorenzo Dow around England while on a hybrid punk and folk tour. Lorenzo was a really interesting Yankee character, an excellent diarist and generally thoughtful and intense person. This is a song he put together as a kind of spiritual autobiography, a genre not uncommon in his day. I don’t know that he used this tune, but it seems the obvious choice. The text appears both in his published diary and in his wife Peggy’s songbook ca. 1816. Peggy is also pretty remarkable as a person and writer. I first encountered him through her diary, which I found in a used book shop some twenty odd years ago.
It’s been really great having a chance to play with Cath and Phil again these last few weeks. I hope we get to do it again soon! Tim Eriksen