This week’s Folk Show features a double helping from Ciaran O’Kane who grew up in the Glens of Antrim in Northern Ireland alongside new music from Alasdair Roberts, Will Oldham, Serious Sam Barrett, Quinie as well as an early peek at the debut album from Gráinne Brady.
Tracks played on the Folk Show
00:00 Ciaran O’Kane – The Banks of the Lee
from Round & Round released earlier this year.
Ciaran O’Kane who grew up in the Glens of Antrim in Northern Ireland. He became involved in traditional music and singing at a young age, with his family being part of the local music scene. He is a talented singer and an accomplished musician, playing the accordion, bouzouki and whistle.
Find him on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/Ciaranokanemusic/
04:15 Gráinne Brady – The Glen
from The Road Across the Hills (out 22 February 2019).
The music on the album acts as a soundtrack to Patrick MacGill’s novel ‘Children of the Dead End’. Written as fiction, it is, in fact, the author’s unofficial autobiography. MacGill, ‘The Navvy Poet’, was born in Glenties, Co. Donegal in 1889. Emigrating to Scotland in the 1900s he became a self-taught writer working as a labourer on the railways as a navvy. His writings reflected on his growing preoccupation with the poor, the downtrodden and the workers who, like himself, toiled in the mud to build civilisation but lived on the outside of society. Find out more https://grainnebrady.weebly.com/
09:31 Alasdair Roberts, Neil McDermott & Tartine de clous – Cyclone’s Vernal Retreat
from Au Cube. The latest offering on the most excellent Okraina Records. This was recorded live at Cube Cinema in Bristol. Order it on Bandcamp here.
There is a sense of mirth rising within me as I riddle these notes down. I’m here at the Cube Cinema in Bristol with John Stevens from Qu Junktions in the garden talking music, while Rhodri Karim whizzes through setting up gear for Matana Roberts and Kelly Jayne Jones. They are in situ for three days for another playthecube.
All the while I lounge back and time-travel back to Dec ’17, picturing the times we all shared with the musicians you hear in these recordings. To slow things down a wee touch is such a powerful gesture, it feels. Ali and Jamie Lindsay (from the Cube) where so gentle in setting up the framework for Tartine de Clous and Neil to join in and spend five epic days and nights with us. Showing old and new films, talking, singing tight together around a table and then en masse with the Bristol Sacred Harp group, everything weaved around the Microplexian complex. The ad hoc series playthecube is inspired by olden-day folks stopping by settlements to sing, jest and make love for a hazy period, as well as urban fairytale jazz residencies and the desire to jig up the connections that frizzle between The Cube’s curious volunteer workforce, visiting artists and our audiences when you have a little more time on your hands.
Over the two nights, Tartine de Clous, Alasdair Roberts and Neil McDermott entertained plenty. The computer capturing the music at the back of the auditorium and the exquisitely placed hanging mics, like flowers at a fête, all added to the recording angel ritual. On the first evening, every breath, every track and each chair inch mattered; they shuffled things round and, on the second evening, the suite of song swept the crowd and the musicians together into a fine fettle.
To have this album and to hear these songs is to taste the stews we ate, the stories we swapped, the technology we manipulated and the people we touched. The cubic circles rippled and we all loosed a little, and the way I figure it, you can hear it.
Chiz Williams, Bristol, England (3rd May 2018)
12:41 Nancy Wallace – The Longest Day
from a 2014 Leigh Folk Festival compilation – Sandbanks, Swallows, Slatterns & Saints. You can purchase all the compilations via Bandcamp: https://music.leighfolkfestival.com/
17:22 Micah Blue Smaldone – Caroline
from The Ring of the Rise.
“The Ring of the Rise, begins at dawn the day after his austere 2008 album, The Red River. Written and recorded in a remote corner of Northern Maine, these songs knell with excitement watching new beginnings in the world from a frozen outpost. The album features much full band accompaniment, exploring sonic reaches of early 70’s era Neil Young, or Richard and Linda Thompson’s first albums, with electric guitars and homemade tube amplifiers, as well as Micah’s familiar acoustic finger-stylings.” Order it here https://micahbluesmaldone.bandcamp.com/album/the-ring-of-the-rise
23:50 Will Oldham – Ohio River Boat Song
from Songs of Love and Horror.
Will Oldham’s Songs of Love and Horror is a new offering featuring new acoustic versions of old songs, many of which are classic Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy/Palace Music songs. The a cappella cover of Richard and Linda Thompson’s ‘Strange Affair’ at the end of this week’s show is a real treat. Order it here.
27:24 The Knights Project – Land Of The Dead
from The Shoreham Sessions which we featured here.
31:07 Serious Sam Barrett – Holmfirth Anthem
from Where the White Roses Grow.
We premiered the video for Where the White Roses Grow here. I couldn’t resist including this a capella rendition of Holmfirth Anthem which he learned from the recording by The Watersons.
33:02 Folkatron – Eleno Kerko
from Mais c’est quoi maman?
Folkatron is a project from Upcycled Sounds, an independent sound production team based between Oxford and Paris. It brings together young folk and electronic musicians together for a week to produce experimental arrangements of traditional folk music. More here: https://folkatron.bandcamp.com/
38:08 Cinder Well – Through the Tendons
from The Unconscious Echo
The Unconscious Echo features seven dynamic and original tracks, with moments ranging from Swan Arcade style unaccompanied harmony vocals, to swelling instrumental choruses reminiscent of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Each piece is a collaborative arrangement of Amelia Baker’s songs, featuring folk and punk veterans of the Pacific Northwest, New Orleans, and Norway. Baker’s lyrics explore themes of loss, empty houses, and generational trauma. The album is dedicated to friends of the band who have passed in recent years. More here https://cinderwell.bandcamp.com/
41:40 Amanda Opelt – When I First Met You
from Embers.
Amanda Opelt is a singer-songwriter whose style is rooted in the re-emerging Americana/folk style. Her bio tells us that she is deeply influenced by the surroundings of her childhood and young adulthood, she sings stories that reflect life and culture of small-town southern America, particularly the mountains of Appalachia. After several years of working and living in Nashville, she now lives in the mountains of North Carolina and has found a home in the strong community of artists and musicians there. More here: https://amandaopelt.bandcamp.com/album/embers
46:20 Ciaran O’Kane – The Moorcocks Crow
see above.
51:02 Quinie – The Snows they melt the soonest
from Buckie Prins
Glasgow based musician Quinie, aka Josie Vallely, returns with her second album Buckie Prins due to be released in November 2018.
Following on from a sell-out debut release in 2017, the eponymous Quinie, Vallely returned to Glasgow’s beloved Green Door Studios to record this full-length follow up. The album further explores the versatility of Vallely’s voice, as she sings primarily in Scots, with a style inspired by the traditions of Scottish Traveller singers Lizzie Higgins (1929-1993) and her mother Jeannie Robertson (1908 –1975). Collaging together source material, Vallely amalgamates sean nos style melodies, children’s rhyme, story poems and snippets of more traditional tunes to create a bleak and extended blur of narratives routed in an imagined Scotland. Throughout the tape we are confronted with women’s stories that investigate the tensions that exist between the formidable (mountains / moor / ocean) and domestic (tedium / objects / care).
Building on the largely accapella first release, Buckie Prins sees Vallely accompanied by Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh (Circuit des Yeux, Josephine Foster. Woven Skull), Oliver Pit (Golden teacher, Dick 50, Ultimate Thrush) and Neil McDermott (Askolenn, Tartine de Clous, Alasdair Roberts & Friends). They bring a musicality to the tracks that combines minimalist tension, foundations of drone, stabbing atonal noise, and choppy medieval repetition.
The release is accompanied by an essay by Megan Jones, a medievalist based in Glasgow. Her research interests involve the post-medieval legacy and reception of the Middle Ages and the ideological potency of the period in modern discourses. Also included is a copy of a handwritten letter by Michael Dempster, The Scots Scriever.
The album will be released via GLARC (The Greater Lanarkshire Auricular Research Council) as a limited edition shell-coated cassette and digital download. More here: https://quinie.bandcamp.com/album/buckie-prins
57:20 Will Oldham – Strange Affair
see above
Photo (New Forest National Park, UK) by Annie Spratt on Unsplash