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Remaining Tickets for Speyfest’s 25th Anniversary as Final Acts Announced
As much-loved Moray folk festival Speyfest gears up for its long-awaited return this summer, organisers have unveiled the schedule for the 25th anniversary festival, with more acts added to the line-up. The three-day event will take place between 22nd - 24th July, with tickets having gone on sale a 12pm today. After a two-year break, Speyfest...
“The Magpie Takes Flight “ find out where The Magpie Arc will be playing this Summer
The Magpie Arc, the cross-Border band out of Sheffield and Scotland, takes flight in 2022 with selected tour dates and festivals. Featuring the multi-award winning talents and wide musical influences of Nancy Kerr, Findlay Napier, Tom Wright, Alex Hunter and Martin...
Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith ’10 Years of Playing Together’ Tour
Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith are one of the most celebrated duos to have emerged onto the British folk and acoustic scene in recent years. Their combination of outstanding vocal work, sensitive instrumentation, and a powerful social conscience has brought them...
The Imagined Village Reunite for Rare Appearance at FolkEast
As reunions go they don’t come much sweeter or timely than this. Back in 2012, Suffolk’s inaugural FolkEast festival saw an act described as ‘the most ambitious folk fusion band of the 21st century’ perform a memorable finale headline set. Bold and cross-cultural, The...
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Access Folk Team Recruiting for Consulting Groups
An ambitious 5 year long research project has launched to investigate ways to increase and diversify participation in English folk singing. Access Folk asks: What is the place of folk singing in contemporary England? How do people want to engage with English cultural...
*Video Premiere* Silver Dagger – from Fellow Pynins
Fellow Pynins is an award winning contemporary folk duo with a keen and bucolic sense of vocal harmony, anchored in the balladry tradition. Hailing from Portland, Oregon the Fellow Pynins consists of Dani Aubert (claw hammer banjo, bouzouki) and solo artist Ian...
Eliza Carthy Marks 30th Career Anniversary With New Album
If there is one musician who embodies the dynamism and vitality of the current English folk revival, it’s Eliza Carthy MBE. Beloved of staunch traditionalists and iconoclasts alike, Eliza’s music effortlessly crosses boundaries of genre and style. Whether performing a...
REVIEWS
Katie Doherty & The Navigators Official Music Video Released Today
Katie Doherty formed the Navigators to explore the depth and strength that three players could bring to her award winning songs. What was unexpected in this combination was the power and dynamic which is often described as much bigger than its component parts. Katie’s songs are visceral in their story-telling and the music is brimming with...
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Early Home Recordings – Sandy Denny.
If you're anything like me, whenever there's news of another Sandy Denny release you'll raise a quizzical eyebrow and perhaps a sigh as the possibility of over use of her archive once more looms large. Maddy Prior told me a while back, about how early Steeleye/ Hart...
Part Machine – Yoko Pwno.
It's been noted before in these pages that Scottish acts appear far more proactive and successful than any other part of Britain at the moment in marrying traditional music to modern intentions creating a truly progressive fusion with folk hues and endemic character....
The Sea Drift – The Delines
Willy Vlautin's creative spirit broadly captures everyday people in America today who are trying to make the best of the hardships in their lives. Having started Richmond Fontaine as an outlet for his songs, several novels have appeared that cover similar territory....
FEATURES
When Spriguns Come In.
Four and a half decades on albums of Spriguns and Mandy Morton have become cult favourites and hot items amongst the rarest record collecting fraternity. Some see on line sparring rise to four figure sums. With such diverting activity the actual story of the band and the music they created can get lost. Now comes a Cherry Red box set which...
All Features
Brighter Days Ahead?
The history of British musicians finding their own voice and reflecting their own back yard in a contemporary manner is a fraught one. Few have done it with any success, Ray Davies, Alan Hull, Richard Thompson, Bob Pegg, Billy Bragg, Squeeze, Runrig, The Tansads/Merry...
All Our Back Pages.
Merry Hell. Lost Songs. The Brindley Theatre. Runcorn. Once they had another life entirely. Merry Hell, Wigan’s Chosen Few, were altogether different, they were a raucous, rough round the edges, cavorting troop of innocence, wonder and indie thinking, producing...
Family Credit.
Occasionally an album comes along which makes more of an impact than was realised at the time of release, somehow it’s more than the sum of its parts. Simply re-releasing it is not enough and it has to be reassessed because with hindsight its true importance is...
The Show Will Go On.
As the folk world slowly opens to a musical landscape constantly shifting and coming to terms with the limitations of a continuing pandemic, amidst festival cancellations galore, Simon Jones ventures to one of the few, brave survivors, Shrewsbury. “The weather’s been...
FESTIVALS
Remaining Tickets for Speyfest’s 25th Anniversary as Final Acts Announced
As much-loved Moray folk festival Speyfest gears up for its long-awaited return this summer, organisers have unveiled the schedule for the 25th anniversary festival, with more acts added to the line-up. The three-day event will take place between 22nd - 24th July, with tickets having gone on sale a 12pm today. After a two-year break, Speyfest...
All Festivals
The Imagined Village Reunite for Rare Appearance at FolkEast
As reunions go they don’t come much sweeter or timely than this. Back in 2012, Suffolk’s inaugural FolkEast festival saw an act described as ‘the most ambitious folk fusion band of the 21st century’ perform a memorable finale headline set. Bold and cross-cultural, The...
Brighton and Hove Folk Festival announce multi-award-winning Headliners
Martin and Eliza Carthy, each an icon of English folk music in their own right, have been announced as the headliner for this year’s Brighton & Hove Folk Festival, which will take place at the beach-front venue Patterns on September 10th. It’s the second year for...
Fairport Convention Spring Dates Announced Ahead of Triumphant Return to Cropredy
Despite the ever-present challenges, Fairport Convention's 55th Anniversary celebrations continue, with a further 30 dates across the UK in April, May and June, ahead of a triumphant return to the fields of Oxfordshire at Cropredy Convention this August... The Spring...
Brighton’s very own Folk Festival returns for Second Year!
After a sell-out debut last summer despite lockdown worries, Brighton and Hove Folk Festival will officially return on September 10th 2022.Bigger and better in new host venue Patterns, this brilliant one-day event is a welcome addition to the Brighton scene, run by...
Kate Rusby to Headline FolkEast’s 10th Anniversary Finale
When FolkEast returns to Suffolk this summer it will be celebrating a decade’s unbroken run – a journey that not even a pandemic could stop. And topping the Sunday bill will be none other than the legendary ‘First Lady of Folk’ Kate Rusby. 2022 is a special year for...
Orkney Folk Festival’s Return to Full Scale Live Event
Stromness is set to come alive to folk music from around the world once again, as the team behind the Orkney Folk Festival have announced a return to a full-scale live event this spring. In the first wave of line-up announcements, 24 acts have been unveiled for the...
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