Artist of the Month

Amid breathtaking Welsh landscape, we met up with twelve-string guitarist Toby Hay, our Artist of the Month for July, to discuss the mechanics behind his new set of acoustic instrumentals, The Longest Day.

This willingness to engage – emotionally and physically, with internal and external landscapes – is what sets Toby Hay apart from virtually everyone else currently making instrumental folk music. The Longest Day is a triumph, a thing of shimmering beauty.

With their new Anchor album already out and having the critics dishing out stars liberally, we met with the peerless mother and daughter duo to discuss the recording of the project, musical censorship and making a follow-up.

Anchor is a deeply intelligent and fresh selection of songs. The theme of perennial bonds through family friends and music shows its hand throughout and wraps up something very special. Another deeply satisfying, beautifully sang and arranged album of songs from a peerless musical family.

With a new ‘worth the wait’ album now delighting fans the world over, we caught up with the singular John Prine, our Artist of the Month, to discuss nocturnal writing, old songs and families.

Brilliant writing and no-frills singing from a veteran of the game and a band of experienced musicians and guests who leave the words and the nuanced experience coming through in the vocals and lyrics to stand in the foreground, while weaving a musical web that keeps the whole thing perfectly cohesive throughout.

Veteran singer songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter has just released ‘Sometimes just the Sky’, a reimagined set of songs that span a thirty-plus year long career. We met to chat about the inspiration behind the project.

Sometimes Just the Sky is the latest offering from Mary Chapin Carpenter, our Artist of the Month. The album is a beautifully conceived and considered set that provides a rich and generous window into the career of this great veteran singer songwriter.

Legendary singer, songwriter, activist and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Joan Baez releases her first new studio album in a decade. Whistle Down the Wind is a totally engaging listen from start to finish and one that invites repeated visits.

We talk to American singer songwriter Mary Gauthier, our featured Artist of the Month, about her latest album, Rifles And Rosary Beads. A work that brings new songs to her audience, from a quite remarkable source.

Rifles And Rosary Beads is a small selection of exceptional songs from a unique, and valuable project. In fact, remarkable really doesn’t cover it. When Mary Gauthier writes, records, performs, you expect remarkable; that’s what her music is. Rifles And Rosary Beads goes far beyond this.

Matthew Crampton and Paul Sartin talk to FRUK about the epic folk opera The Transports which is released as a live album this week and embarks on a 14-date UK tour from tomorrow.

There is nothing else quite like The Transports in the world of folk music, and this new version is even more ambitious than the original. The perfect combination of song and story that is a fitting tribute to its hugely talented and much-missed creator.

We caught up with Kate Rusby while on her Christmas tour, she reflects on what’s behind these special celebrations, the family and friends who take part, and her approach to the music itself. We also talk about her glittering, fun-filled new album Angels and Men and share her new video.

Blessed with a peerless voice, possessed of a remarkable talent for arranging both contemporary and traditional song, and surrounded by musicians of the highest calibre, with Angels & Men, Kate Rusby offers the very best musical backdrop anyone could hope for this Christmas.

This month, Karine Polwart releases her latest studio album A Pocket of Wind Resistance. She has just finished ten performances of Wind Resistance at The Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, and we were keen to ask her about the inspiration behind those live performances, the attendant studio release and what else these wonders might lead to.

Karine Polwart’s music and poetry, with Pippa Murphy’s exquisite settings, haven’t replicated the theatre production; it has brought Wind Resistance to a wider audience, furnished it with portability. Beautiful, potent, and engaging; A Pocket of Wind Resistance gives Karine Polwart’s enthralling theatrical début a satisfying permanence.

Eight years after the first of Jon Boden’s dystopian albums was released comes Afterglow, an urban tapestry of sound and stories that leaves one impatient for the final chapter. Here he discusses the albums’ conceptions, folk sociology and the art of leaving space.