Danny Neill

In teasing all the juiciest ingredients from country, folk-troubadour and rockabilly, LaVere is arguably the most undiluted Americana artist as you could wish to find. Fifteen years into her recording career, she’s consistently proving to be one of the genres finest.

Danny Neill looks back at 2019 and shares his top ten albums including releases from Mama’s Broke, Vetiver, Sean Taylor, Richard Dawson, The Waterboys, Eilen Jewell, Jesca Hoop, Steve Gunn, Joan Shelley and Anna Tivel.

Danny Neill sits down with our Artist of the Month Franc Cinelli and digs beneath the surface of his latest offering “Night Songs”. Along the way, they touch on a shared love of vinyl and more.

You must give Cinelli great kudos for his boundless approach to these recordings, he’s allowed the music to guide him down many satisfying and unpredictable avenues. ‘Night Songs’ is an album with a clear thematic purpose that emphatically realises its ambition.

Creating music is indisputably in Edd Donovan’s blood, these songs have solid foundations and were simply waiting for someone with a visionary radar to bring them into the world. An album for people with a taste for beauty, adventure, nature and wonder.

Smith & McClennan have triumphed on this debut release, in creating personal music that tells us more about who they are than we’ve ever heard before and suggests they’re only at the beginning of a fruitful musical adventure.

Danny Neill shares some of the highlights from Richard Thompson’s 70th Birthday bash at the Royal Albert Hall which featured an incredible line-up of guests “the royalty of 20th-century folk music”. A simply unforgettable night.

With ‘Battlefield Dance Floor’, Show of Hands have put together one of the most cohesive, diverse and persuasive sets of their entire career and one of the most consistently adventurous collections in their catalogue.

‘I’ve finally made the album I wanted to make’, says Vera Van Heeringen on ‘Won’t Be Broken’. We fully concur with her sense of achievement. It makes for a strong set so don’t be surprised if your first instinct is to go straight back to the start and play this mature, rich song cycle over and over again.

Danny Neill chats to Richard Thompson backstage at Cambridge Folk Festival where he shares his thoughts about hit songs, his 70th Birthday bash, recalls oversleeping in the seventies for his festival slot and the funniest far-fetched Dylan tale we’ve heard yet.

Eilen Jewell’s ‘Gypsy’ is one of those rare things, an album containing a perfect dozen songs without a single dud track. If all were right and just in the world, she would one day take her place amongst the country music legends.

The first live review coverage of Cambridge Folk Festival is in – featuring Ben Caplan, The Rails, Ralph McTell, Graham Nash, Tunng, Chloe Foy, Lisa O’Neill, Lucinda Williams, Nick Mulvey, Richard Thompson, Crooked Weather, Daoiri Farrell’s All-Star Celtic Session and more.