Despite forming at the end of 2019, The Ciderhouse Rebellion have been extraordinarily prolific, productive and creative in their output. The folk duo featuring Adam Summerhayes (fiddle) and Murray Grainger (accordion) released their debut CD ‘Untold’ at the beginning of lockdown which was also one of our Featured Albums of the Month.
It is a rich, durable and mercurial sound that will reward many listens by providing something new to the ear every time. Adam Summerhayes and Murray Grainger have set their bar very high with this one, let’s see how their ‘planned’ album sounds in comparison.
Glenn Kimpton, Untold review for Folk Radio UK
For their latest project, an interweaving of poetry and musical improvisations, the duo becomes a trio, joined by Adam’s daughter, poet Jessie Summerhayes – collectively, they are Words Of A Fiddler’s Daughter. They are releasing a CD of poetry, plus a book of the poems – rúnian (Anglo-Saxon for ’whisper’) – on September 25th, 2020.
Master accordionist Murray and ‘Paganini of the folk world’ fiddle player Adam specialise in creating music within the moment together, so each performance is uniquely magical in its improvisatory focus, whether based on a trad. tune or springing from a single unplanned note.
Jessie Summerhayes, Adam’s daughter and a natural wordsmith who has been enveloped by music her entire life, at times even sleeping in her father’s violin case as a baby, was inspired by the duo, and presented her new poem ‘Young Water Eyes’, in the shy hope that it might be read by Adam over one of their spontaneous creations. Instead, she was invited by her father and Murray to read her own words while they improvised as they heard her speak. This became the first of a new three-way real-time collaboration: the subsequent recording was something wholly new, built upon the foundations of The Ciderhouse Rebellion’s previous work, but with the added intimacy and connection of the human voice.
Jessie’s words are steeped in the same history and folklore that flows through the music of her father, inhabiting the protagonists and landscape of her beloved North East of England with her fresh and timeless voice. As she continued to produce meticulously researched poems, also drawing on the historical records and literary creations of the early-medieval period — The Magna Carta, the writings of The Venerable Bede, the Norse Sagas — it became clear that this body of evocative work should stand alone, and Words Of a Fiddler’s Daughter was born.
Watch them performing Young Water Eyes below:
Background: The first record of cider making in England is in Norfolk, in the year 1205. This is some 200 years after the Norman conquest and those years involved the violent seizing of The Fens by the French invaders: villages were burnt unless they paid tax to their new French Landlords. The resistance to this was comprised of bands of ‘green men’ who lived in the fens and organised small scale attacks on the occupying French – a famous leader of ‘green men’ was Hereward The Wake. The initial action of the poem is set in Lord Banham’s orchard 1281, around the village of Banham (in Norfolk); this orchard’s size was recorded as being large enough to produce three casks of cider for ten shillings each – the first recorded casks. The action then moves to Lopham estate, land owned by Earl Roger Le Brigand. The Magna Carta tells us that ‘certain unknown evildoers’ trespassed on this land in 1281 – there is no record of them being prosecuted.
The album will be previewed online at Yorkshire Festival of Story on Thursday 27th August 7pm as part of their Thursday Folk Night series. At this event, the trio will showcase a selection of poems/music from rúnian and Jessie completely improvises a brand new poem, alongside the duo’s spontaneously created music.
Tickets are free – but must be booked: https://yorkshirefestivalofstory.com/event/words-of-a-fiddlers-daughter/
The CD and the book of poems will be released on 25th September and are available for pre-order now from https://theciderhouserebellion.com/discs/