Tag Archives: English folk music

Gary’s favorite roots and Americana music of 2020

This was an amazing year for creativity of all sorts, not least in roots music. This list could easily be twice as long, especially as everybody else’s year-end lists come out and I learn about releases that I haven’t heard … Continue reading

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Fay Hield’s Wrackline

I’d not heard of Fay Hield before I came upon her new release Wrackline, a beautifully realized album of traditional and trad-style folk song steeped in English lore. It is startlingly good. Fay Hield is a core member of the … Continue reading

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The Unthanks’ Diversions Vol. 5 – Live And Unaccompanied

Rachel and Becky Unthank grew up in a musical family in Tyneside, North East England, and came up singing unaccompanied traditional folk songs. With Diversions Vol. 5 they’ve come full circle, making their first album of unaccompanied songs as a … Continue reading

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Norma Waterson & Eliza Carthy’s Anchor

The mother-daughter duo of Norma Waterson & Eliza Carthy are members of the first family of English folk music. Although Norma has been recording since the ‘50s and Eliza the ’90s, they hadn’t recorded as a duo until 2010’s award-winning … Continue reading

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Siobhan Miller’s Strata

I first encountered Siobhan Miller at Cropredy ten years ago. She was in a duo with Jeana Leslie and together they had won the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award that year, and that also gave them a spot at … Continue reading

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Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, 10-12 August 2017

(Please note: For various reasons I will not mention all the groups that played this year.) There is some dispute about when the first Cropredy festival took place. The most common view is that it was the farewell concert Fairport … Continue reading

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Quercus’s Nightfall

I was gobsmacked when I came across Quercus’s first, self-titled, album a couple of years after its 2013 release. The combination of June Tabor’s husky-silky delivery of largely traditional songs in a jazz setting that was somehow lush but also … Continue reading

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Bert Jansch’s Living in the Shadows Part 2, On the Edge of a Dream

This is the second installment of a massive archival re-release project of Scottish troubadour Bert Jansch’s latter-day studio recordings. This four-LP or -CD box collects Jansch’s three studio releases from the 2000s: Crimson Moon (2000), Edge of a Dream (2002) … Continue reading

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Bert Jansch’s Living in the Shadows (Part 1)

Bert Jansch, who died in 2011, was quite a prolific musician for quite a long time. I was a rather casual fan of his — well, actually I was an intense fan of one of his albums, and a casual … Continue reading

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Transatlantic Sessions to perform at 2017 MerleFest

The Transatlantic Sessions tour will be part of the 30th anniversary MerleFest in April. The Transatlantic Sessions is a series of musical productions that brings together innovative and iconic U.K. artists with the best American roots artists, under the musical … Continue reading

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