I came across Tim Wilkinson performing at Purbeck Folk Festival in the intimate setting of the Duck Shed stage. It was here that I found myself spending a lot of time this year thanks to the great unsigned talent, the best I’ve seen at Purbeck. Tim’s set was one of my festival highlights, his pastoral songs left me with a yearning for more so when he agreed to record a couple of songs for us back up at the campsite I was of course a very happy man.
A lot of his songs have a folkloric theme and touch on our connection to the land and nature. I have no problem understanding this attraction, it was wildlife conservation that took me away from a regular office job many years ago before running FRUK full-time but I still find time to head out to the countryside every day. We spent some time talking about the surrounding Purbeck countryside marveling at how diverse the landscape was before settling down to record these two songs.
The first song is called Willowman which was inspired by an old Cotswold legend. He played this one on a beautiful looking Ozark Dojo 5-string banjo. He followed this with The Fall of Trees. In his introduction he explained that the symbolism of trees and the loss of them seemed to resonate with the English psyche…a yearning for an ideal past.
Tim Performing on the Duck Shed Stage at Purbeck Folk Festival
Back at the campsite recording this session:
Tim’s a talented song-writer and performer, book him for your clubs or festivals, you won’t be sorry.You can find his website here: http://www.magpiechatter.co.uk/