Green Ribbons is a project dedicated to the celebration of unaccompanied song. The current line-up features Debbie Armour (Burd Ellen), Frankie Armstrong, Alasdair Roberts and Benjamin “Jinnwoo” Webb (Jinnwoo, Bird in the Belly).
Their debut release is an intimate collection of traditional and newly composed songs. Recorded live at Studio 95 in Brighton by engineer Tom Pryor, GREEN RIBBONS sees each artist featured solo, in duet and in full ensemble. Watch their accompanying music video for Garden Song below, one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard in a long time, it’s also our Song of the Day.
Garden Song (Words & Music Jinnwoo; Arr Green Ribbons)
I think I wrote this song early 2018, sat at the desk of one of many temp jobs. I can’t remember what work I should have actually been doing instead of writing songs. It’s about looking at a garden and seeing it decay beyond repair, then thinking “Well, I suppose I’m not doing so well either”. It was written with the help of expert gardener Gervase French, who knows all the plants by name (and tolerates me only wanting to learn about the ones with funny names). I dedicate this song to my friend Adele and her daughter Kitty who took a liking to a demo version I sent them when it was fresh off the notepad.
Ben “Jinnwoo” Webb brought the project together in July of 2018:
“Very broadly speaking, unaccompanied singing seems to have gone out of fashion in more recent years – but it’s always something I have enjoyed performing and listening to when I’ve had the chance. I wanted to get a group together whose voices I feel really lend themselves to storytelling and focus purely on the voice and the stories. We wanted to make something very rough around the edges and unpolished, a kind of documented swapping of songs…”
Of the track that gives its name to the project and album, he says:
“I found these words in the Bodleian Archive and set them to my own melody. Green Ribbons were used to label people as ‘insane’ in the 1800s. I enjoyed the historical reference to mental health, a subject which features in some of my own writing. I liked, too, the directness of the lyric.”
GREEN RIBBONS will be released in June 2019 on limited edition green vinyl and on CD by Belgian label Matière Mémoire. Pre-Order it here: https://www.matiere-memoire.com/
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