The latest Simple Folk Radio show (first broadcast Sunday 14th October 5:00pm) features a session from Rob St. John which marks the re-release of his critically acclaimed first album, Weald.
“Rob St. John makes melancholy, pastoral folk-blues, his voice as deep and meaningful as Ian Curtis’s, or Stuart Staples’. It’s haunting and elegiac and sad, and I can’t stop playing it” – Andrew Collins, BBC 6 Music.
session track list
1. Charcoal Black and the Bonny Grey
2. Interlude 1
3. Shallow Brown
4. Interlude 2
5. The Acid Test
6. December and Whisky
7. Sargasso Sea
Rob St. John on his Simple Folk Radio session
“Everything’s exclusive and unreleased. I’m still struck down with lurgy, to the extent that I’m losing my speaking voice! So, what I’ve done is put together a selection of two unreleased sessions we’ve done in the last wee while. The first four tracks were recorded in the summer in a north Edinburgh living room. Charcoal Black is a Lancastrian industrial folk song, which we’ll put out as a split 7 at sometime in the new year. Shallow Brown is another traditional tune that we often end our shows with, peering out from fading swathes of feedback. The two interludes are from the session that we recorded some soundtrack music for a Jeremy Deller and Nick Abrahams documentary about Bruce Lacey. The last three songs were recorded about two years ago, in another Edinburgh living room. The Acid Test and Sargasso Sea ended up on Weald – albeit this is an early and much changed version of SS – and December and Whisky is a song by The Great Bear”.
Weald is re-released this month by Song, By Toad on CD after the 12″ gatefold vinyl sold out. If you buy it on CD from an independent record shop, there’s a CD of remixes by FOUND, Meursault, Jonnie Common and others.
This autumn, a record I’ve curated about the 400th anniversary of the Pendle Witch trials, featuring contributions from Dylan Carlson, David A Jaycock, Dean McPhee, David Orphan and others will be released as a limited edition box set, featuring maps, essays, dried nettles and other ephemera. I’m playing the last show for a while in London on November 6th with Meursault and Withered Hand.
Broadcast Schedule – UK Time Zone (BST)
Sunday: @ 5pm – on Folk Radio UK
Monday: @ 2am – on Folk Radio UK
Wednesday: @ 9pm – on Folk Radio UK
Friday: @ 1pm – on Folk Radio UK
CET: +1 hour
EST: -5 hours
PST: -8 hours
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http://www.simplefolkradio.com/
http://songbytoadrecords.com/