To celebrate the 15th anniversary of his Freedom Fields album, Seth Lakeman will be playing a worldwide concert stream with his band. Released in 2006 and produced by brother Sean, it featured ‘King and Country’ and ‘White Hare’ as well as ‘Lady of the Sea‘. The album went gold making it one of the biggest selling traditionally based folk records ever in the UK and went on to become Seth’s first of 6 UK Top 40 albums.
Westcountry folk singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Seth Lakeman was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2005 for ‘Kitty Jay’. It catapulted him into the forefront of the new British folk movement drawing in a new younger audience. Freedom Fields would see him pick up Folk Singer of the Year and Best Album at the 2007 BBC Folk Awards.
Seth was actually nominated for four awards that year, including Best Live Act and the unforgettable Best Traditional Track for ‘White Hare‘ which saw the folk police getting their knickers in a twist over it being called a traditional track (it didn’t take much to upset them – I’ve fallen foul of them several times) – Lakeman had innocently based the song on an old Dartmoor legend and played it to a tune he had heard in a pub session which he didn’t know the title of. Not wanting to claim the tune his own it was credited as Traditional. Arranged Lakeman…Seth even offered to withdraw the track but Smooth Ops, the team behind the Folk Show declined and kept it in…if it had been withdrawn it could have been the icing on the cake, as, according to an article about the whole debacle by Colin Irwin in The Guardian, the next song in line for the nomination was Seth’s King & Country -oh how I would have laughed. That little sideshow aside, it’s a damn fine album that has easily stood the test of time and I’m sure it has introduced a whole new audience to British folk music…that’s a good thing in my book!
To celebrate its anniversary, Seth will be performing the album in a special online concert on 27th February at 8pm GMT (). This will be a special one-off concert with a live band including the talented Ben Nicholls, Benji Kirkpatrick and Alex Hart.
“I’m really excited to be able to share the whole Freedom Fields album for its 15th anniversary! It’s a collection of songs hugely inspired by the Westcountry and it still seems to be the most popular album I’ve recorded so far. This is going to be pretty special. I hope you can tune in to watch!” – Seth
To celebrate, we have a special preview from the show. Watch Seth and his band perfomring Childe the Hunter – ‘Childe the Hunter is a reworking of a traditional set of lyrics I found in Baring-Gould’s Songs of the West. It tells the story of a noble man from Dartmoor who died on Dartmoor in a fierce blizzard.’
Even without the temptation of that video above, we know this will be a cracking show.
Don’t miss it on 27th February at 8pm GMT
Tickets on sale now, .