The legendary folk music label, Topic Records, has a new jewel in its crown – Award-winning songwriter and guitarist Martin Simpson has teamed up with Grammy-nominated and IBMA Award-winning songwriter and guitarist Thomm Jutz for Nothing But Green Willow: The Songs of Mary Sands and Jane Gentry, to be released on September 29th (Pre-Order it here). The names of Mary Sands and Jane Gentry may be ringing bells among the folklorists. They were prominent contributors to Cecil Sharp’s 1916 and 1918 collection “English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians.” For Thomm Jutz, this collection has been something of a long-running obsession and forms the core of this new album.
Talking about the collection, Jutz says:
“The stories and messages in these songs are as important today as they were hundreds of years ago. The reason for this is that they deal with archetypes. And archetypes and the problems related to them transcend time and place.” Jutz’s journey through the English folk song collector’s work led him to these two particular women who might’ve unknowingly changed the course of folk music history—and to his trans-Atlantic collaborator, award-winning English artist, songwriter, and guitarist, Martin Simpson.
“Martin Simpson is one of the greatest guitar players on the planet and it was a dream to work with him on this album,” says Jutz. “Together we selected the songs and paired singers and songs. It was easy. We had talked on the phone but never met in person. I picked him up at the Nashville airport and five days later we had the first six songs. Then we flew to England together and after a week had the rest.”
Thomm Jutz has collaborated with numerous artists, including Nanci Griffith, Mary Gauthier, Otis Gibbs, Kim Richey, Amy Speace and many more. Many have also recorded his songs, including the legendary John Prine.
In 2020, Martin Simpson delivered Home Recordings, an all-acoustic solo se, crafted as simply as life’s restrictions allowed at the time. Before this, his last proper studio album was 2019’s Rooted, which Folk Radio’s Glenn Kimpton praised, calling it a “triumphant album from an artist still operating at the highest level anywhere in the world.”
In the opening of that review, he states:
You really do get your money and time’s worth from a Martin Simpson album; there is so much variety in instruments used, musical cultures, tunes and musicians on Rooted, that it constantly surprises across thirteen tracks and fifty minutes.
In this new collaboration, Simpson and Jutz take this ‘money and time’s worth‘ to another level. In recognising the need for each new generation to reinvent these folk songs, they invited onboard a mix of roots artists from both sides of the pond—Sierra Hull, Angeline Morrison, Emily Portman, Fay Hield, Odessa Settles, Tim O’Brien, Tammy Rogers, Seth Lakeman, Cara Dillon and more—to create a homage to the bridge from Appalachia to England and back, just as the songs of Sands and Gentry originally did.
“I strongly believe that innovation requires preservation,” says Jutz. “How can we claim to play traditional music or write ‘Folk music’ without knowing the roots of it?”
Their lead single ‘Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies’, features the amazing vocals of Northern Irish folk singer Cara Dillon. It’s the song that inspired a book by Lee Smith and is still being sung on the Grand Ole Opry by the vocal group The Whites. Dillon’s stunning vocal performance is only matched by Simpson and Jutz’s instinctual guitar counterpoint. “This is one of my favourite examples of how Martin and I played off each other,” says Jutz. “None of it was planned or premeditated. We ran through this song once in Cara’s kitchen before we recorded it on a gorgeous summer day in Frome.”
Streaming Links can be found here: https://topicrecs.lnk.to/CAYFATL
Nothing But Green Willow: The Songs of Mary Sands and Jane Gentry will be released on September 29th via Topic Records on LP deluxe CD edition, which includes an astonishing, highly educational 20-page booklet featuring in-depth liner notes by Dr Ted Olson (Professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University).
Nothing But Green Willow Tracklisting
‘Fair Annie’ feat. Emily Portman
‘Geordie’ feat. Sierra Hull & Justin Moses
‘Pretty Saro’ feat. Odessa Settles
‘Edward’ feat. Seth Lakeman
‘Edwin in the Lowlands Low’ feat. Tim O’Brien
‘Jacob’s Ladder’ feat. Dale Ann Bradley & Tim Stafford
‘Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies’ feat. Cara Dillon
‘The Wagoner’s Lad’ feat. Martin Simpson
‘Married and Single Life’ feat. Tammy Rogers
‘The Gypsy Laddie’ feat. Thomm Jutz
‘The Suffolk Miracle’ feat. Angeline Morrison
‘I Whipped My Horse’ feat. Fay Hield
‘Awake! Awake!’ feat. Thomm Jutz
Pre-Order Nothing But Green Willow here.