Nancy Kerr

We chat to Sheffield’s Melrose Quartet about their new album ‘Make the World Anew’ – a staunch defence of the sheer joy of creativity, allowing for contemporary political songwriting and age-old dance tunes, poignant a cappella standards and complex instrumentals.

Make The World Anew attempts in a small but determined way to achieve the edict set out in its title, and it succeeds resoundingly. It is the Melrose Quartet’s most upbeat and accomplished album to date.

Melrose Quartet, featuring Nancy Kerr and James Fagan, and Jess and Richard Arrowsmith, announce their new album, ‘Make The World Anew’ and share their lead single and video animation (by Marry Waterson) for ‘Scarecrow’, a song written by Lal & Mike Waterson.

As far as tribute albums go, they don’t come much better than this. Nancy Kerr’s ‘The Poor Shall Wear the Crown‘ is a heartfelt and tremendous album that shines a bright light on the poetic work of Leon Rosselson.

Nancy Kerr releases Tunnellers, a new 5-track EP commissioned by the British Tunnelling Society which covers tunnelling history, achievement, celebration and hardship. Marvellous stuff.

This week on the Hudson Records listening club they have some of their favourite fellow Sheffielders, Nancy Kerr & James Fagan, with their album ‘Twice Reflected Sun’.

Ahead of her appearance at Kings Place ‘Wild Singing’ weekend, alongside Eliza Carthy, Martin Simpson and more, we catch up with Nancy Kerr to chat about nature, living on a canal boat, folk music and more.

Our Song of the Day comes from The Magpie Arc, a new cross-border folk/rock band featuring Nancy Kerr, Martin Simpson, Adam Holmes, Tom A Wright and Alex Hunter. Watch them performing their first release – ‘Autumn Leaves’.

An Evening With Nancy Kerr And James Fagan captures one of folk music’s most enduring and talented acts in their natural habitat and provides the perfect snapshot of the duo at the top of their game.

Watch Nancy Kerr performing the opening track from Stick in the Wheel’s second volume of English Folk Field Recordings. The album is out on 19th April and it will be released via their own label ‘From Here Records’.

The Melrose Quartet embody the kind of collaborative spirit and socially aware stance that makes folk music such an interesting, challenging and continually relevant form. As demonstrated on Dominion, they have prospered by seizing the day, by daring to do things that are slightly different…who are able to make old songs sound new, and new ones sound timeless.

With passion, respect, and immense musical talent, Shake the Chains have created a powerful and inspiring album, which deserves to be heard on the streets as well as indoors.  Listen, sing, and go and change the world.

The Shake the Chains cast along with special guest Martin Simpson gave a performance to lift the most sullen heart in these trying times and to point the way to a better future. With a finale which saw everyone singing We Shall Overcome, the evening was a potent reminder that together we could be harmonious and unvanquishable.

The 40th-anniversary all-star revival of Peter Bellamy’s ‘The Transports’ starts this month taking it dates at Celtic Connections, Cecil Sharp House and more. Watch this excellent short documentary about the ballad folk opera.

As Shake the Chains kicks off on tour next month featuring new and classic protest songs from Nancy Kerr, Findlay Napier, Hannah Martin, Greg Russell & Tim Yates with special guests we talk to Greg Russell about the project and have our first listen.

Seamless, powerful, thought-provoking…As promised in the publicity surrounding the series, this was indeed a truly unique event: not just a concert, not just a book reading, but a journey of discovery, and one which lingers in the mind long after the tube ride home.

Next month, folk singer Nancy Kerr will curate a series of events at London’s Kings Place exploring dialogues that spring from our environment and our relationships with, and within it, through literature, music, and song.

Read our in-depth interview with Nancy Kerr as she discusses her new album ‘Instar’, the reaction to it, politics in music, balancing her musical life with being a mother, and she also offers her own words of wisdom on surviving in the music industry.