This week’s Folk Show has been sewn through with a nautical needle whose silken thread opens our journey in East Anglia, courtesy of Georgia Shackleton and her new single, taken from her forthcoming solo album, Windy Old Weather. Georgia hands over to Sam Larner, a recording taken from Singing the Fishing, the third programme to feature in the original Radio Ballads, created by Ewan MacColl, Charles Parker and Peggy Segger. This one featured the men and women of the herring fishing fleets of East Anglia and Northeast Scotland and was based on conversations with fishermen and their families. Our nautical opening ends on Mick Hanly‘s Farewell Dearest Nancy before we wind the clock back to 2008 and Chris Wood‘s Trespass album.
From there, we have the first of several new folk music releases, beginning with the young Scottish fiddle player Ryan Young who is accompanied by guitarist Craig Irving on his new album ‘Just A Second‘ which is released on October 27th. Ryan released his self-titled debut album in 2017, which was one of our Featured Albums of the Month (reviewed here). Due to a lengthy battle with ill health, Ryan had to delay this follow-up album several times. Where many might have called time, this journey only served to reinforce his love of playing and his love of music. Playing is his life, and the fiddle is his voice.
Earlier today, we published our review of Kathryn Tickell & The Darkening’s new album Cloud Horizons (read it here). Below, you can hear One Night in Moaña. It’s A Northumbrian version of a Muiñeira that Kathryn and Amy Thatcher wrote after the band played at Festival Intercéltico do Morrazo, in Galicia. They tell us that the ending is from a phone recording made in Bar Abolera at some point in the early hours when things were just getting going. Kathryn and the band are our Artists of the Month for September, so keep an eye out for more from them. Cloud Horizons is released today and is available to order via Bandcamp (CD/Digital): https://kathryntickell.bandcamp.com/album/cloud-horizons
In capturing a sound that effortlessly conjures the past whilst simultaneously referencing the present and future, Tickell and the Darkening have created a rather unique and striking soundscape.
Billy Rough on Cloud Horizons
Also, their album launch show at Gosforth Civic Theatre, Newcastle Upon Tyne, on 2nd September, has sold out, but the show will be livestreamed by Folkscape Live. The band, who will perform the album in its entirety, are offering a ‘set your own ticket price’ to watch the live stream. Besides the Lindisfarne Festival, this is the only time you will they will have both singers – Josie Duncan & Stef Conner, on stage at the same time. You can book your tickets here: https://www.folkscape.live/
From Martin Simpson & Thomm Jutz’s forthcoming new album on Topic Records: ‘Nothing But Green Willow: The Songs of Mary Sands And Jane Gentry‘ (reviewed here), we have two tunes, one featuring Tim O’Brien and the other featuring the ‘gloriously evocative voice’ of Angeline Morrison. As Billy said in his review, it’s a genuinely stunning, life-affirming, and beautifully produced listening experience…an instant classic. Pre-Order it here (out 29 Sept): https://simpsonjutz.lnk.to/nothingbutgreenwillow
We’ve also a tune from Edinburgh-based folk/old-time quartet Wayward Jane, featuring Dan Abrahams, Sam Gillespie, Rachel Petyt and Michael Starkey. They are releasing their third album, ‘The Flood’, due out on September 8th. They are on tour this month (see our earlier post here for details).
The last new release to feature is from Rachel Sermanni‘s forthcoming Dreamer Awake, which will be released on 15th September via Navigator Records and will be available on CD, Digital and limited edition Ultra Clear Vinyl – you can Pre-order it here. To realise Dreamer Awake, Sermanni decamped to Middle Farm Studios, Devon, with co-producer Peter Miles. Recording live to tape with people that, “most of the time, are jazz improvisers,” the sessions were conducted with an almost Lynchian approach, with Sermanni choosing “to flow through [the experience] like a dream”. The result is an album that captures the intimacy of the room and the immediacy of these songs that transform thought, memory and emotion into such wondrous light.
M.Cambridge provides our second nautical thread, with two tracks taken from his 2019 Sea Songs: Anatomy of a Drowning Man, a project that he painstakingly pulled together over 18 months. The album features sea songs based on old shanties, Ulster weaver-poet poems, traditional ballads and original compositions, and I still count it as one of the most beautiful and remarkable albums I’ve heard. Part-recorded in a Curfew Tower, owned by Bill Drummond, in the County Antrim, seaside village of Cushendall, the songs are littered with soundscapes and tales from a cast of scholarly sea-dogs but have been unashamedly pulled into the modern age with thrumming guitars, children’s choirs and scattered rhythms. “Like the moon on the tide, the sea has always had a certain command over me,” Mark says, “I imagine it to be the same for most of us in this part of the world; we are island people. And in an age of constant noise over borders, place and identity, there is a wonderful escapism in the sea, a comfort to its landlessness. And there are centuries of music in its fathoms.” You can order it via Bandcamp here.
Sticking with Ulster, there is also a track from Len Graham’s Do Me Justice album, his first release on Claddagh Records (1983). Len is a native of County Antrim and a renowned traditional singer with a rich recording history spanning many years with over twenty highly acclaimed albums. He’s also a collector of songs by Ulster’s older traditional singers, and I highly recommend his book on Joe Holmes (Joe Holmes – Here I Am Amongst You), a fiddler, lilter and traditional singer.
Some older favourites appear, including Then You Remember, a track by Steve Tilston & Maggie Boyle.
There’s a bit of a Gloaming theme here as well. The Weight Of Things is from their last album, the ‘bold, beguiling, and magnificent’ The Gloaming 3. Further on, there are tunes from their members, including Martin Hayes, Thomas Bartlett and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh.
Martin Hayes Quartet features the much missed Dennis Cahill, Doug Wieselman and Liz Knowles. The Blue Room was recorded in 2016 at Bantry House, a historic 18th-century house on the edge of Bantry Bay, West Cork. The four sit in a circle in the Library with fires blazing at both ends of the room. In the recording process, they play each traditional piece a number of times and each time, something different emerges…if you’ve not heard this album, then seek it out… It’s heavenly.
As is the music of Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, who features twice, once with Thomas Bartlett (from their 2019 self-titled album reviewed here)…
They have created an album that is seductively dreamlike but sometimes sad, layered like a palimpsest but accessible on every one of those layers. It is unlikely you will hear a better instrumental album this year.
Thomas Blake on Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Thomas Bartlett
…and again with Dan Trueman, a composer, fiddler, and electronic musician who is also no stranger to collaboration and experimentation. They released Laghdú in 2020, which translates as a lessening, a decrease, a reduction; it was described by The Irish Times as a ‘rare find’, describing both the diversity at play from “baroque to minimalism” as well as the freedom that both musicians allowed themselves to explore and revel in.
Enjoy
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Folk Show Playlist
- Georgia Shackleton – Windy Old Weather
- Ewan MacColl – Up Jumped the Herring, The King of the Sea…
- Ewan MacColl – Come All You Gallant Fishermen…
- Mick Hanly – Farewell Dearest Nancy [Song]
- Chris Wood – Summerfield Avenue
- Ryan Young – The Bird’s Nest/’S Iomadh Rud A Chunnaic Mi
- Kathryn Tickell & The Darkening – One Night in Moaña
- Martin Simpson & Thomm Jutz – Edwin In The Lowlands Low [Feat. Tim O’Brien]
- Wayward Jane – Shake Sugaree
- The Gloaming – The Weight Of Things
- Len Graham – Young Willie O’Reilly
- M.Cambridge – “Shanties Ashore”
- M.Cambridge – My Sailor Boy
- Rachel Sermanni – Grace of Autumn Gold
- Steve Tilston & Maggie Boyle – Then You Remember
- Martin Hayes Quartet – Tommy People’s Reel
- Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh & Thomas Bartlett – My Darling Asleep
- Martin Simpson & Thomm Jutz – The Suffolk Miracle [Feat. Angeline Morrison]
- Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh & Dan Trueman – What What What