Ben Walker is no stranger to these pages, both as a guitarist and producer. Last year Ben released an EP – The Fox on the Downs - in 2018, drawing simply on one solo instrument and his love for traditional English music. Our reviewer Peter Shaw called it jaw-dropping and concluded by requesting for an album. Well, Echo, due for release on, is that record. If you’re after more virtuosity on six strings there’s ample evidence, but this is also a gentle reminder of why with Ben Walker, ‘guitarist’ can never quite say it all.
In divided times, Echo reflects centuries-old words back to us for today, reimagined in new music. Examining traces of the past to help make sense of an uncertain present, Ben found that some things never grow old; the cycles of life, the sound of the land and the water, stories of loss of innocence, of pride and shame, hope and fear.
Drawing on field recordings from the EFDSS library, the newly established Sussex Tradition archive and lyrics from the 18th and 19th centuries, with composition influenced by contemporary classical and electronic music and Ben’s trademark fingerstyle, Echo combines original instrumental pieces, traditional songs and poems set to music. It features an enviable list of guest vocalists, with Kitty Macfarlane, Laura Hockenhull, fellow Folk Award winners Bella Hardy and Hazel Askew and rising stars Thom Ashworth, Laura Ward (Hickory Signals/Bird in the Belly) and JinnWoo (Bird in the Belly) lending their voices to the project.
Watch the accompanying video for Rings, which is also out Song of the Day.
Ben: “I’d found a tune from 1780 called The Ring in a book in Cecil Sharp House while researching The Lost Tunes with Rob (Harbron, of Leveret) and I’d wanted to do something with it for a while. There are all these reel-to-reel tapes in there too, including one with George Maynard singing A Sailor From The North Country on it, recorded in the 1960s when he would have been past ninety years old. Finding those was like unexpectedly finding a stack of long lost letters addressed to me. The two pieces seemed to work together, first with the guitar and then with strings and synth; fragments of a tune coming back around and around like waves. Playing it live is complicated but a lot of fun, conducting something that’s half classical orchestra and half vintage office equipment while keeping perfectly in time on the guitar! It’s all worth it – bringing George’s voice back like this and sending it out to sea always sends shivers down my spine. I hope I’ve done it justice.”
As Ben says: ‘Making this album has felt a bit like a treasure hunt – finding lost pieces in Cecil Sharp House, going out with a field recorder to listen properly to where I am, digging back into a place name. The more I looked, the more I found – long-lost ballads and poems written as songs but hardly ever sung. I could hear the echoes of times that felt like ours, when people were having to think again about their national identity, about inequality, and how technology was changing things. People love to hark back to the good old days but the truth is it’s never been simple. Running underneath it all, some of the words we still use for rivers and suchlike are literally thousands of years old.
Sometimes a tune says all that needs to be said, but I felt like these old words held a lot we’d recognise too. It’s been awesome and a bit humbling to have so many amazing artists and friends keen to help me bring this project to life. I can’t thank them enough. Occasionally the only singer for a song is still the old chap who sang it in a pub eighty years ago, but then a young singer picks up something three hundred years old and it hits you like a brick.
There’s a touch of hauntology to it all – the shadows of the past are always there in the future, whether we like it or not. Weirdly, I’ve found a little solace in the fact that some things come and go, and some things stay.’
Echo is released via Folkroom Records on 5 July 2019.
Pre-Order it here: https://benwalker.lnk.to/echo
https://www.benwalkermusic.com/