The Furrow Collective: Rachel Newton, Lucy Farrell, Emily Portman and Alasdair Roberts recently released their debut album At Our Next Meeting which Thomas Blake described as “one of the finest collaborative albums of the past few years” (full review here). With such accolades it is a great pleasure to première their new video for ‘I’d Rather be Tending my Sheep‘ which was made by Marry Waterson whose brilliant animations have featured several times on FRUK:
A few words from Emily Portman:
Lucy found ‘I’d Rather Be Tending My Sheep’ in Ruth Tongue’s intriguing book Chime Child. Tongue says it was composed and sung by ‘Old Shepherd’ from The Blackdown Hills, 1870-1900.
We stayed late one night in the village hall where we were recording with Andy Bell and he recorded this song live, with us all stood in a circle singing together. So hopefully some of that magic of the moment has been captured!I’m already a big fan of Marry Waterson’s singing and writing, so when she offered to do the video I was really intrigued to see what she’d come up with. I love Marry’s attention to details in the narrative and I’m sure that’s got a lot to do with being a singer herself! She’s created a beautiful video, seemingly with a few balls of wool – it’s inspired!
We’re off on tour for the first time together from 19th Feb and we’re also very excited to be making our London debut, with Marry Waterson as our special guest, at Kings Place on 28th March as part of a festival which myself and Alasdair are curating. It’s a lovely bit of serendipity to have Marry joining us and we’ll definitely be asking her to join us in Singing ‘I’d Rather be Tending My Sheep!
Launch Tour
Feb 19 – Cornwall at Calstock Arts
Feb 20 – Bristol at The Lantern, Colston Hall
Feb 21 – Wigton at Gilcrux Village Hall
Feb 22 – Glasgow at The Glad Cafe
Feb 23 – Edinburgh at House Concert
Feb 25 – Cardiff at Chapter Arts Centre
Feb 26 – Southport at The Atkinson
Feb 27 – Bury at The Met
Mar 28 – London at Kings Place
The Furrow Collective + special guest Marry Waterson
Outlandish Nights
Music / Friday, 28 March 2014 – 7:30pm / Hall One
Tickets and details