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David Gibb updates us on Day Four of Beyond The Marches / Dros y Ffin which starts off with the word ‘Rum’ and ends on ‘Rum’. Next thing you know they’ll be turning up for breakfast late in their pyjamas…Archie.

With a new line up including Dan Walsh, Paloma, Joe and Tom have pushed the UFQ to new heights and The Escape offers exactly that with myriad musical highlights and global grooves to get lost in for months. This is the band at their brilliant best so make sure you catch them live on their current tour.

The Spyglass & The Herringbone gathers up all of Jackie Oates promise to date, dusts it down and adds polish to present a sparkling jewel of a folk record. It’s a rare and most refined thing of gift of great beauty and as good a record as you could rightly hope for, that’s all yours for the small price of admission.

We continue our guest blog series Beyond The Marches / Dros y Ffin. Elan heads to the National Library of Wales, receives a talk from Welsh harpist Robin Huw Bowen including an insightful introduction to the triple harp before looking at some of the difficult to access archives. A perfect example of why a digital archive is needed.

As part of our ongoing coverage of Beyond The Marches / Dros y Ffin award winning song writer and story teller David Gibb shares his thoughts on Day Two. A visit to the Museum of Welsh Life in St Fagans, a lecture from Wales’ answer to Cecil Sharp, Roy Saer and you can watch them all performing Lord Randal.

As part of our ongoing coverage of Beyond The Marches / Dros y Ffin which is now underway, we have the first guest blog from Elan Rhys, the lead vocalist of folk group Plu. Day one included a performance on Radio 4’s Front Row programme and research at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House.

We get the first thoughts from Elan Rhys and David Gibb on Beyond The Marches / Dros y Ffin which will be exploring and celebrating in the shared history of England and Wales. We will have more from them this week as the project progresses.

In a new project titled Beyond The Marches / Dros y Ffin, some of our finest contemporary folk musicians will be exploring and celebrating in the shared history and culture of two nations, England and Wales. Feat: Lucy Ward, David Gibb, Elan Rhys, Patrick Rimes, Georgia Ruth and Archie Churchill-Moss. Over the coming week FRUK will be bringing you a unique insight.

Block booking Dublin’s prestigious Vicar Street for a month of concerts was a bold move, but one that has paid off handsomely for Paul Brady, with a little help from his friends. You can hear it for yourself on The Vicar St. Sessions Vol. 1 which is released this month via Proper Records. Read our review here.

Tom Russell’s epic The Rose Of Roscrae is the crowning achievement of one of America’s most potent songsmiths, a brilliant and dramatic, western folk opera with an all star cast. It could just be the single most important Americana release of all time.

For his second album A Day Like Tomorrow Fabian Holland returns with more magical guitar playing, a much bigger sound and another superb set of songs and the notable addition of percussionist Fred Claridge, a young and up coming star himself, while Jacob Stoney’s keyboards add variety and texture to the bigger sound that producer Mark Hutchinson has helped Fabian realise.

Kris Drever and Boo Hewerdine, both exceptional on their own, bring their collaborative skills to Last Man Standing a duo EP of song craft at its finest. With the tour just underway and the first date tonight, there will be a chance to see just how far that Kris and Boo can push this partnership. With two songwriters as good as this pairing you should make every effort to see …