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June 22, 2007
April, May and June music
I seem to have got behind. Roy Bailey came to our folk club and we were generally delighted with his songs and stories, but particularly impressed with his selection and delivery of children's songs. So we bought Up the Wooden Hill and Why Does it Have to be Me? Roy's well worth seeing live if you get the chance; we'd only previously seen him in his legendary collaboration with Tony Benn.
From eMusic, we got the new June Tabor album, Apples, some more Topic and Fellside back catalogue (Waterson:Carthy, Albions, Steve Tilston, four more chunks of Voice of the People, Witches of Elswick, Nancy Kerr & James Fagan), and a live album by Stan Rogers (coincidentally including 'Barrett's Privateers', which we heard a masterful unaccompanied version of by Swill of The Men They Couldn't Hang at the Big Session last week). I do need to mention specifically Topic's English Country Music. These recordings, of Walter Bulwer on his own and with a band of source musicians brought together for the purpose, are legendary. I'm not sure I'd recommend them to anyone who's not familiar with and playing the music, but if you are they're full of delights.
We went to one of the EuroCeilidhs as Cecil Sharp House, dragging along Anna Feruglio dal Dan, and had a fine old time. Bernard Loffet, the melodeon maker, was the star attraction, supported by the Anglo/French ceilidh band Gig CB! So I now have an album by each of them. Also in the ceilidh line, we've been following the young English ceilidh band the Gloworms for a little while. They've just released an album, Running Joak. I couldn't resist the title, and we also attended, briefly, their launch gig in a freezing tent at the Chippenham Folk Festival. Not quite ceilidh, but sort of related, are the 96 tunes on two CDs by Nick Barber to accompany his English Choice tunebook, which I've been playing out of extensively (I know, I should learn them all by ear. Or by heart. Or both. I'm such a lightweight.)
Back at the folk club, we had a solo set from rising star Jackie Oates, and I bought both her CD and the demo of new trio Wistman's Wood. I missed seeing PJ Wright at the same pub. I'm not exactly sure how, because it was in the diary and I had definitely intended to go. But the next club night I won his album, Hedge of Sound, in the raffle. Fab Canadian band the Paperboys played at (where else) the Borderline, and I picked up loads of stuff by them and solo work by their fiddler, Kendel Carson.
Posted by Alison Scott at June 22, 2007 06:12 PM