Oxfordshire-born, Leicester-based multi-instrumentalist Adam Weikert has announced his innovative new album, To Whom Ourselves We Owe, set for release on December 19th via The Gleeman Guild. The first single, ‘Farewell to the Green Man’, backed with B-side ‘The Care’, featuring stunning strings from Alice Beadle of Goblin Band (Broadside Hacks) is out today.
The album stems from Weikert’s personal journey into the British folk scene, initially a “social prescription” from his therapist. This exploration led to a collection of songs that reinterpret folklore to question modern British identity, focusing on themes of class, migration, and history. Weikert masterfully blends reimagined traditional tunes with powerful originals.
The accompanying press shares the following on the two tracks you can hear above:
Farewell to the Green Man takes inspiration from Edward Carey’s short story These Are Our Monsters, which recasts the telling of The Green Children of the Woolpit (a tale of green-skinned children speaking an unknown language appearing in the village of Woolpit, Sussex) as one of extreme distrust and stigma. Weikert utilises this alongside the deeply rooted visage of The Green Man as an allegory for immigration and a nation turning its back on its once-welcoming ways. The end of the song drives the hammer home, with a granulated litany of garbled news presenters decrying small boats, before falling off hopefully into the bells of the Church of St Mary De Castro, Leicester, where Chaucer once married.
Whilst B-side The Care tells a semi fictionalised tale of Liverpool sailor James Kelsall who sailed on the real-life boat ‘The Zong’, a slave ship that the English captured from the Dutch, which, due to the inexperienced captain, overshot and had to turn around, and with supplies running low, the crew decided to throw several slaves (who were classed not as people, but as cargo and chattel) overboard thinking they could claim the insurance. This horrifying event was reported to Granville Sharpe by Olaudah Equiano, and the subsequent trial went on to galvanise the abolitionist movement. The song is Weikert’s attempt to document both the hard times of sailors and also to contrast them against the horrors of the slave trade, so deeply embroiled in our sailing history but so rarely sung of.
To Whom Ourselves We Owe re-imagines and re-interprets folklore – from original songs inspired by folk stories through to Morris dance tunes and folk classics – in a collection of songs that question what it truly means to be British, often through the lens of migrants, himself, the present day, and the working classes.
To Whom Ourselves We Owe promises a unique-sounding album, fusing a host of traditional instruments—including a musical saw, hammered dulcimer, and Morris bells—with modern synths, MPE controllers, and evocative field recordings, and featuring folk musicians Roger Wilson and Chris Conway.
Pre-Order the album here: https://adamweikert.bandcamp.com/album/to-whom-ourselves-we-owe