Jon Boden, composer, folk singer, songwriter, and former lead singer of Bellowhead, has shared details of his forthcoming album with The Remnant Kings – Sam Sweeney, Ben Nicholls, Rob Harbron, Sally Hawkins & M. G Boulter.
Parlour Ballads will be released on 27th September 2024 on Hudson Records; described as a piano-led record full of sentimental ballads that tie together parlour music and folk song. Parlour Ballads seeks to awaken the sound of the old, well-loved, slightly out-of-tune domestic piano and to reunite it with (or introduce it to) songs that might feel glad of the acquaintance.
The accompanying press shares how, as a genre, “Parlour Music” has been much derided over the centuries. Its heyday was the Victorian era when many middle-class houses had pianos and many children who could sight-read piano scores to a high level, musical literacy being highly prized. Parlour songs were composed and disseminated through sheet music, to be performed in private and public houses alike, but with an air of respectability not found in the music hall repertoire. This practice continued well into the twentieth century until technological advances supplanted the printed stave as the primary means of musical transmission.
Boden shares:
“My great-great-grandfather Alphonse Cary (1848-1922) ran a music shop in Newbury and would, for a fee, perform the latest parlour songs, recording himself (accompanied on piano by a colleague) onto wax cylinder there and then for the customer to take away. Sadly I have yet to find any surviving cylinders of his voice.
I have been toying with the idea of a piano-based folk album for many years. Although I consider myself a competent-at-best pianist (my sight reading would certainly not have passed muster in the middle class Victorian parlour described above) I adore playing piano and have probably spent as many thousands of hours trying to get to grips with it as I have the fiddle or the guitar. In particular I love using it to accompany slow, sentimental ballads such as several of the tracks on this album”.
Jon Boden and The Remnant Kings have an album launch tour in September (details below).
Parlour Ballads Tracklisting
- On One April Morning
- Bonny Bunch of Roses
- Clock O’ Clay
- Merry Mountain Child
- Mortal Cares
- Oggie Man
- Old Brown’s Daughter
- Prentice Boy
- Danny Deever
- Rose of Allendale
- London Waterman
Parlour Ballads is released on Hudson Records on 27.09.24 on CD/LP/LPX/DL and will be accompanied by a Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings tour in September 2024.
The first single ‘Old Brown’s Daughter’ is released 16th August.
Pre-order link – https://hudsonrecords.ffm.to/parlourballads
Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings Album Launch Dates
Tickets and details: https://jonboden.com/shows
WED, SEP 25 – The Witham, Barnard Castle
THU, SEP 26 – Live Room, Saltaire
FRI, SEP 27 – Revelation, Ashford, Kent
SAT, SEP 28 – The Sub Rooms, Stroud
SUN, SEP 29 – The Lexington, London