The Shackleton Trio – Fen, Farm & Deadly Water
Self-Released – 4 August 2018 (UK Release)
The Shackleton Trio – formerly The Georgia Shackleton Trio – seem to be one of the busiest bands working the small club circuit at the moment. Look at their website and you will see that they are booked into gigs around the country as far ahead as June next year. That will keep them busy, and for good reason as they have an album out to promote – though that won’t be too hard a job.
Fen, Farm and Deadly Water sums up the album as a whole and gives you a sense of what to expect. These three inter-linked themes are apparent in stories of farming and water inspired by the trio’s native Norfolk. The Trio consists Georgia Shackleton on fiddle and vocals, Nic Zuppardi on mandolin and Aaren Bennett on guitar. Georgia writes the words and Nic brings folk sounds from France and Sweden as well as American traditional bluegrass.
The Fashionable Farmer sets the scene with a jolly, possibly cautionary tale, about a farmer who spent his money on fashionable clothes and had nothing left to pay the rent. After a confrontation with the landlord, off to market he goes with clothes and corn and returns with enough money for the rent – and a suit of fine rags. Probably a moral in there somewhere, but this version was written by Georgia and Nic based on the broadside ballad The Fashionable Farmer and the Landlords Dinner.
It’s not that often that you come across a song about radishes – well, I defy you to name another – but Radish Boys is based on the cries of the radish boys of Norwich from the mid-19th century. According to a recent and coincidental story in the Norwich Evening News this year, East Anglia grows about 70% of the UK radish crop and the largest part of that is grown on the Norfolk Fens. Facts and folk. That’s what you get here.
There are four tune sets on the album. Only Viveka is a tune from Karen Tweed (ex The Poozies amongst others) and The Stanford, a fine, breathtaking tune written by Georgia and dedicated to the Stanford Arms in Lowestoft. Bolton Lodge was written by Nic. If you were to imagine an elderly lady, perhaps a great aunt, walking to the shops in a random but rhythmical manner, then this might be the tune you could put to that moving image. You would, of course, be not surprised to learn that this is exactly how Nic arrived at this tune written for his Great Aunt Joan. Now try listening to it and not have those images in your head.
The last set of tunes is pair from Scandinavia, arranged by the band. In Vals Till Lars-Olov/The Penknife Killer it is interesting to hear the style of the Nordic violin on a traditional instrument, and perhaps even more interesting to reflect on how these tunes seem to have more in common irrespective of their origination.
In Norfolk, the Deadly Water is never very far away from life in the fens. Powte’s Complaint is a song about the concerns of the draining of the Fens by the Dutch in the early 17th century, all to provide pasture to feed ‘Essex cattle’. Move forward 300 years and Fred Rooke’s Fenland Song offers a reminder that despite being drained, the fens as ‘dry land’ are never totally secure, being held in the ‘power of the captive power of the water’ which could get free. Not idle thought either as we are told that large tracts of East Anglia will be under water again before this century is out.
This theme is mixed with a nostalgic look, perhaps even a lament for the demise of coastal towns in Georgia’s Down Into The Sea. Their neglect, their economic decline and, for the East Anglian area, the probable incursion of the sea, are of real concern. As the song says: How did it come to this?
Fen, Farm & Deadly Water is an album with fun, thought and good tunes on which the trio bring a distinct flavour of versatility – in tunes, songs and arrangements – an accomplished set of parts and a very cohesive whole.
Highly recommended…the album is set for release on Saturday 4th August, when the trio will perform on Stage 1 at Cambridge Folk Festival.
https://www.shackletontrio.co.uk/