O’er the High, High Hills and Down Yon Dowy Den

It's way too early to speculate on what might end up being my favourite album of 2026, though I'd put good money on Goblin Band's newly released 'Clyde Water' finishing the year as my favourite single. 'Clyde Water', a Scottish ballad dating from the early 19th century, has been interpreted previously by a range of notable artists such as Kate Rusby, Martin Carthy, Ewan MacColl, Anaïs Mitchell and Jon Boden, though for me no-one grasped the epic tale by the throat in quite the way that Nic Jones did. The song appeared on Jones' 1980 masterpiece 'Penguin Eggs' as 'The Drowned Lovers', an alternative title that is a bit of a plot-spoiler to be honest and indeed its original title was duly restored for the release of two subsequent live versions. 

Nic Jones - Clyde Water 

Friday Photo #36

With my week of two Robyn Hitchcock shows fast approaching, a message arrived through the ether from my boss, informing me that I still had a further fortnight of holiday entitlement to squeeze in before the end of March. It was news to me. I'd calculated, incorrectly it transpires, that the Hitchcock week exhausted my annual allocation. Long story short, I was granted permission to tack on the outstanding two weeks to the already booked final week of February and made hasty plans to pay a 10 day visit to my family in New York, my first for 13 years. I'll drop odd titbits here and there in the coming weeks, rather than give you chapter and verse about the trip all in one go, but suffice it to say I had a great time catching up with my cousin, her husband and their three (now very grown up) kids. 

Last Thursday I headed out of the apartment early, bound for the Nick Cave (not that one) 'Forothermore' exhibit at The Guggenheim. Later, with a healthy dose of culture under my belt, I wandered across 5th Avenue and into Central Park for a wonderful four hour amble around the massive green space. It was a literal breath of fresh air after several days pounding the sidewalks of the Big Apple and offered up a wealth of largely unfamiliar (to this Englishman!) birdlife. I saw Grackle, Hairy and Red-Bellied Woodpeckers, Red Tailed Hawks, hundreds of geese, thousands of hilarious American Robins, Mourning Doves, Northern Cardinal, Scarlet Tanager, White-breasted Nuthatch, Red-winged Blackbird, something very blue that I've not yet identified and other birds that were just too quick for my eyes. Apparently there are also half a dozen species of owl to be seen, but alas I didn't spot any. Stars of the show though were the delightfully amiable Tufted Titmice, currently plentiful, though apparently completely (and mysteriously) absent from the park two years ago. I had them eating out of my hand.

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Here's an appropriately titled song from 'Time Was Away', the enchanting 2022 album by Emily Portman & Rob Harbron. It really is a thing of beauty - check it out here.

Emily Portman & Rob Harbron - The Birds in the Spring

This Life is Mine

Quietly chuffed with this shot I managed to capture from my front row seat 

Overall, 2022 has been a pretty quiet year for me on the live music front, though it's finishing with a flurry of folk gigs, the penultimate of which was last weekend when folk royalty visited the area in the shape of Peter Knight and John Spiers. 

At 47, John Spiers is generally acknowledged to be the foremost melodeon player of his generation, performing over the years with Bellowhead, Gigspanner, Eliza Carthy and Jackie Oates. On Saturday evening he bought five different melodeons and a concertina to the stage - not for nothing is he known affectionately as Squeezy. Outside of music he's a fervent allotmanteer, with much of his social media presence being given over to plants, crops and recipes.

Peter Knight is a classically trained violinist who was an integral member of Steeleye Span for the best part of 40 years. These days, in addition to the duo work, he leads the various iterations of Gigspanner. The dexterity and creativity in his playing belie his 75 years and it was a mesmerising privilege to witness this music at such close quarters.  

Knight and Spiers have been playing as a duo since 2016 and in performance communicate on an almost telepathic level, via a series of barely perceptible raised eyebrows, nods and smiles. It really is a joyous traditional music masterclass. As always, bottom lips wobbled and eyes moistened when Peter stepped forward to sing his wonderful 2014 composition 'From a Lullaby Kiss'.

Peter Knight - From a Lullaby Kiss

Version City #75 - Jackie Oates sings Longpigs and The Cure

You find me momentarily pausing in my attempts to chuck every permutation of clothing into a bag while simultaneously rummaging through cupboards in search of my inflatable mattress. Tomorrow morning I'm off to FolkEast, my annual brief concession to what Evan Dando memorably described as being the outdoor type. I'll be sleeping under the stars (well, under canvas under the stars to be precise, but you get my drift) for three nights and catching as many bands as possible at my one festival of the year. Somewhere near the top of my 'to see' list is a rare set by The Imagined Village, the ever-evolving, genre-bending supergroup featuring Martin & Eliza Carthy, Billy Bragg, Simon Emmerson of Afro-Celt Sound System, sitar player Sheema Mujherjee, tabla percussionist Johnny Kalsi and drummer Andy Gangadeen. Also in the line-up (I hope) will be Jackie Oates, someone who I've wanted to see in concert for a very long time. True, on this occasion she'll just be part of the band, but I hope she gets to step forward for at least one or two numbers. Jackie is about to release her eighth solo album and she's made others in tandem with fellow artists such as Megan Henwood and John Spiers. They're all recommended and many of them are available to sample on her Bandcamp page (here).

For the purposes of this feature (the first new instalment since January 2021!) here are a couple of absolutely breathtaking covers by Jackie. The Cure's 'Untitled' was recorded for 'Life's What You Make It', a compilation of  various folkies tackling 1980s hits, while 'On and On' will appear on that new solo album I mentioned, 'Gracious Wings'. Steel yourself for these.

Finally, as a little light relief after those jaw-dropping beauties, here's a stripped down line-up of The Imagined Village from ten years ago with Martin and Eliza to the fore, tackling Slade's 'Cum on Feel the Noize'. 

Alden, Patterson and Dashwood

Throughout the 1990s, the Cambridge Folk Festival weekend became an excuse for me and a buddy to drink too much, talk nonsense and listen to some great music for 3 or 4 days and nights every year. I've attended the odd festival since then, but it's been a very long time since since I've tried kipping outdoors on the cold ground. This year, that same buddy came to my emotional rescue and offered me his spare ticket for Folk East. So it was that in the middle of August I spent a weekend under canvas, camping at a Folk Festival for the first time in a decade and a half. My buddy and I drank too much, talked nonsense and listened to some great music for 4 days and nights. It was just like old times and, not to put too fine a point on it, just what the doctor ordered. The highlight of the weekend was a set by the always magnificent Alden, Patterson and Dashwood. With an effortless fusing of traditional music from both sides of the Atlantic, harmonies to die for and a selection of superb self-penned songs, it's an absolute bewilderment to me that they're not internationally celebrated. If they turn up in your neck of the woods you'd be a fool to miss out. Check out their two cracking albums here.

She Had a Dark and a Roving Eye

Mrs S & I are out of town for the next few days, so the halls and corridors of Swede Towers have fallen silent. In fact, all being well, as you read these words we'll be in Oxford checking out the dreaming spires, plus the odd pub, gallery and coffee shop, before heading down into London's East End later in the week to visit my elderly Aunts. I'm a fairly regular visitor to Cambridge, that other great seat of learning, but have only ever been to Oxford once before and that was 45 years ago, so I don't recall an awful lot about the place. I'll report back with our impressions next week.

Here's the great Shirley Collins with 'The Oxford Girl', an ancient murder ballad that has appeared in many guises over the centuries. Shirley apparently heard this particular arrangement as 'The Wexport Girl', performed by Suffolk singer Phoebe Smith on a Topic Records LP. Shirley's reading of the song is taken from the 1970 record 'Love, Death and the Lady', made with her sister Dolly, a phenomenal album that remained on constant rotation in my car for well over a month late last year.

Shirley Collins - The Oxford Girl

Anne Briggs

Our mutual chum Charity Chic is without equal when it comes to sniffing out quality CDs from the piles of dross usually found in the darkest corners of the nation's charity shops. We've got no fewer than 9 such establishments in the nearby small market town and I can't remember finding a decent CD in any of them in the 6 years since we moved here. Car-boot sales though...they're quite a different matter. In the wee small hours of every Sunday morning, Mrs S and I step out into the pre-dawn twilight and drive off to the two largest car-boot sales in the local area, just over 20 miles away. Once there, we poke about in, pore over and rummage through all manner of old tosh and usually come home with a heap of dusty bits and bobs that, in all truth, we probably don't need. Over the past couple of Sunday's I've had an particularly high strike rate on the quality CD front. Take the 2007 remastered reissue of Anne Briggs' 1971 LP 'The Time Has Come' for example, picked up for a quid the week before last - a real gem. Here are two cuts from the album. Note how similar Anne's phrasing is at times, to that of her one time partner in music and life Bert Jansch - it's quite uncanny.

Anne Briggs - Sandman's Song 

Anne Briggs - Tangled Man

Bright Phoebus

Unless something really extraordinary occurs between now and December, 'Bright Phoebus' by Lal & Mike Waterson will be my reissue of 2017. On its original release in September 1972, the LP was met by a wall of anger and bafflement from a devout folk establishment that believed exclusively in the passing down of traditional songs from generation to generation and held no truck at all with singers who wrote their own material. That Lal & Mike's remarkable set of  self-written songs were frequently, if indirectly, informed by that very tradition was a fact apparently overlooked by all but a very few, less blinkered souls.

During the course of its 40+ years of unavailability, 'Bright Phoebus' has steadily gained a reputation for being the lost masterpiece that it truly is. I've had an iffy quality bootleg CDr of the album for around 25 years and had long since given up any hope of ever holding a bona-fide copy in my hands, but thanks to the good folk at Domino Records, here it is. The full story of how the songs came to be written and how the recordings came to be made is brilliantly told by Pete Paphides in the accompanying booklet (read an excerpt here), plus there is also a deluxe edition of the reissue which includes a further 12 previously unreleased performances from the period.

If you have any interest at all in the English folk and folk-rock scenes of the late 1960's and early 1970's, you really do need to hear this album. Richard Thompson, Martin Carthy, Ashley Hutchings, Tim Hart, Maddy Prior, Dave Mattacks, Bob Davenport and Norma Waterson all lend their considerable respective talents to the recordings, which gives you some idea of the quality threshold we're talking about. And then there's the songs. It's all about those songs. By turns they're dark, desolate, mysterious, beautiful and even, as in the case of the title track, positively jaunty. I honestly can't recommend 'Bright Phoebus' highly enough.

Lal & Mike Waterson - Bright Phoebus

Martin Carthy

On Sunday evening, in a basement space little bigger than my living room, Martin Carthy gave a two hour folk tradition masterclass to a riveted 50-strong audience. From 'High Germany', the very first track on his very first album in 1965, to 'Her Servant Man' from 2014's 'The Moral Of The Elephant' (his most recent LP, recorded with daughter Eliza), Carthy cherry-picked tunes from a vast repertoire, offering extensive background information to every song as well as crediting all the relevant sources in each case. 'The Bedmaking' from 1976's 'Crown of Horn', an epic 'Famous Flower Of Serving Men' from 2006's 'Waiting for Angels' and 'Georgie' from 1998's 'Signs of Life' were a few of the many high-points, as was an acapella romp through 'Oor Hamlet', which was a complete hoot that had us all in stitches. Best of the lot though was 'Bill Norrie', a tragic ballad originally recorded for 'Right of Passage' in 1988, but these days delivered at a considerably slower pace, an arrangement that only adds further gravitas to the sombre subject matter. This poor quality audience recording of 'Bill Norrie' from last year merely hints at how jaw-dropping Martin's performance of the song was on Sunday.

Six Dukes Went a-Fishing

Just lately I've been mildly obsessed with the stark 17th Century traditional ballad, 'Six Dukes Went a-Fishing'. The song, which was collected in 1906 by Percy Grainger, tells of the discovery of the Duke of Grantham's drowned body by a group of his peers. The later verses detail the preparation of the corpse for burial ('they took out his bowels and stretched out his feet') before describing the funeral and the Duke's widow in mourning ('the Royal Queen of Grantham went weeping away...')

Here are three distinct versions of 'Six Dukes', drawn from the many available. From 1960, leading folk revival figure, A.L Lloyd's second recording of the song, Shirley & Dolly Collins' unsettling reading from their 1970 LP 'Love, Death and the Lady' and an interesting contemporary approach by Mishaped Pearls from 2014.

Martin Carthy

Looking back through my old emails (I never delete anything), I note that the first concert ticket I bought for 2015 was actually purchased on December 28th 2014. The gig in question was the great Martin Carthy, who, back in February, played to an audience of around 200 in the beautiful surroundings of a 17th Century octagonal chapel.

Earlier today I booked my first concert ticket for 2016 and once again it's for Martin Carthy, though this time I have to wait a full five months, until mid-March, for the show. The venue on this occasion is a tiny basement room where I've previously seen both Hot Feet and David Thomas Broughton. Capacity? I reckon if they try to squeeze more than 75 through the door we'll have to hold our breath. 

One of the many highlights of Martin's performance in February was his solo interpretation of 'Her Servant Man', a song originally recorded with his daughter Eliza on their 2014 LP 'The Moral of the Elephant'.

The Furrow Collective

For the penultimate song of their tremendous performance in Norwich on Thursday evening, The Furrow Collective deployed that most underused of instrumental combinations - guitar, harp, banjo and musical saw, after which Emily Portman, Alasdair Roberts, Lucy Farrell and Rachel Newton stepped around the microphones to bid us farewell with a gorgeous unamplified reading of 'Blow Out the Moon', from their recent EP of the same name.



Listen to / buy the whole EP here.

Shirley Inspired

This tribute to the great Shirley Collins pulls no punches and leaves few stones unturned - 3 CD's containing 45 tracks stretching to just under 3½ hours of music. It's a mighty undertaking. Does it overstay its welcome, sag, drag or bore? No, no, no and absolutely no. You've got traditional folk, you've got modern folk, you've got freak folk and you've got interpretations of songs that stray far outside any recognised definition of the F-word. It's a marvellous, lovingly curated set that I'm sure will continue to reveal further treasures with repeated plays. 'Shirley Inspired' was put together, in part, to help fund a new documentary film, 'The Ballad of Shirley Collins' and I'm pleased to have played a tiny part in such a worthwhile venture. Find out more here.

Nic and Joe Jones - In Concert

As the house lights dim, Nic Jones appears from the side curtain, puts down his walking stick and makes his way unsteadily across the stage, pausing to wave and bow to the cheering and already emotional audience. Behind him, Joe, rake thin, jet black hair, steps to the microphone to affectionately address his Dad. 'What are you bowing for? You haven't done anything yet!' Later, Nic introduces Bill Worsfold's, 'I Only Spoke Portuguese', by explaining that it's the true story of a couple, neither of whom spoke the other's language, who were therefore unable to speak directly to each other throughout their long marriage. Joe, busy re-tuning his guitar, looks up for long enough to mutter, 'Yes, I expect Mum would've quite liked that...' Badum tish!

The set, beautifully paced, is weighted towards the classic 'Penguin Eggs' LP and for the latter part of the concert Nic and Joe are joined on stage by the original melodeon player on that record, East Anglian native, Tony Hall. The significance of this reunion isn't lost on Joe who stands strumming gently, grinning from ear to ear, between the two men, as they delicately rekindle their musical relationship. Not for the first time this evening, high emotion threatens to overshadow the moment and it's skillfully diffused by Tony Hall's quip after Joe introduces 'The Little Pot Stove'. 'What are we playing now?' he asks, pretending not to have caught Joe's announcement, 'The Little Pot Noodle?'

Joe, an astounding player, prompts approving smiles and warm paternal applause several times during the concert, Father and Son lightheartedly disagreeing about just how much guitar know-how Nic has passed on to Joe. 'Three chords' says Joe, 'No - I just told you how to hit the thing!' counters Nic. Though he's understandably frail, Nic's voice is strong, his phrasing undiminished. A towering presence, thought lost to us forever, but, against all odds, here he is, performing again. Long may he continue. An unforgettable evening.

(Nic and Joe in 2011)

(More Nic Jones here)